The Book That Was Never Published
By: Lyle E. Schaller

Sam Willis, an 84-year-old retired minister, watched the evening news on television one evening in November 2004, brushed his teeth and went to bed. Sometime during the night, he died of a sudden heart attack. His daughter-in-law discovered the body that morning. Ever since Sam's wife, Ruth, of 61 years had died the previous July, she had telephoned him around nine o'clock every morning. When no one answered the telephone, she drove the 11 miles to his house, used her key to unlock the door and discovered her father-in-law had followed the sequence many recently widowed husbands take. Bereavement is followed by loneliness and death.

Sam and Ruth had lived in that same house for 19 years. One consequence was the heirs had dozens of boxes of "stuff" to open, study, sort and choose between discarding and distributing among the interested children and grandchildren.

One box of papers produced a big surprise. The contents included typed copies of a manuscript for a book that Sam had written back in 1953-55. The box included what appeared to be the original draft completed in 1953, plus revisions dated 1954 and 1955. That coincided with Sam's second pastorate from 1952 to 1958 when he served as the associate minister of a large downtown congregation in a university city . While Sam never mentioned it, the contents of this box indicated that he had completed the manuscript for a book that was never published. That box also included letters of rejection from nine publishing houses.

On letter indicated interest, but included a request for several revisions. The next asked for more radical revisions. A third thanked the writer for his persistence, but concluded that while the editors admired the style, they agreed the contents represented a stretch of the imagination that few readers would be prepared to make. The final sentence read, "We enjoyed reading it, but we concluded an economically viable market does not exist for this book."

The title for this manuscript was, " America in 2005: Twenty-One Scenarios for the Twenty-First Century."

The theme was the next five decades would bring unbelievable changes. A specific change was described in each of 21 chapters. A brief synopsis of each chapter will explain why nine publishers in the early 1950s rejected this manuscript.     

1. This first chapter clearly was placed first to grab people's attention. In it, Sam, a Truman Democrat, forecast that thanks to solid political support all across what in 1955 was still the Democratic South, a Republican will be elected President of the United States in 2000 and re-elected in 2004.     

2. In this next chapter, Sam predicted that, rather than be removed from office by impeachment, sometime during the next half century a President of the United States will resign from that office.

3. The United States will land a man on the moon sometime before 1980.

4. Long before 2005, television will have replaced radio, newspapers and weekly newsmagazines as the No. 1 source of both national and world news in the vast majority of American homes.

5. Commercial air travel will become common and far less expensive. The cost of a New York City -to- Los Angeles ticket in 2005 will be less than one-fourth the price in 1955.

6. The very large Protestant congregations in 2005 will average between 10,000 and 25,000 at worship compared to 2,000 to 5,000 in 1955.

7. One of the longer chapters focused on the growth in the size of America 's public schools. Sam projected that in 2005, three and perhaps even four out of 10 students enrolled in a three-year or four-year public high school in America will be attending a school with an enrollment of 2,500 or more. Only 15 percent will be enrolled in public high schools with fewer than 500 students. (That turned out to be consistent with the decrease in the number of public secondary schools from 29,550 in 1954 to 22,500 in 2005.)

8. Sam suggested another example of the increase in the size of institutions in America will be in the supermarkets selling groceries. In 2005, the large ones will have four to five times the ground floor area as the typical supermarket of 1955.

9. The next chapter was a strong affirmation of the past two decades of the consolidation of public school districts. That number had plunged from 127,531 districts in 1932 to 71,094 in 1952. Sam predicted that number would plateau at about 48,000 by 2005. The number of one-teacher public schools had dropped from more than 200,000 in 1916 to 42,825 in 1954. The manuscript predicted that number would drop to 18,000 by 1970 and be down to several hundred, mostly in rural America , by 2005. This young futurist of 1955 used that as the basis for projecting a sharp reduction in both rural and urban America in the number of small Protestant congregations averaging fewer than 50 at worship. This turned out to be the only major error in the forecasts in this manuscript. The number of Protestant congregations averaging fewer than 50 at worship dropped only from an estimated 100,000 in 1955 to about 90,000 today. The significant decrease between 1955 and 2005 was an estimated 15 percent decrease in the number averaging between 50 and 100 at worship.

10. Sam predicted the growing support for the merger of several of the mainline Protestant denominations will reach a peak within 20 years and begin to decline in the following decades. The planned unification of the Evangelical and Reformed Church with the Congregational Christian Church in 1957 will bring together two denominations with a combined total of more than 8,000 congregations in 1955. This chapter included an explanation of why that number in the new denomination would be under 6,000 by 2005. (In their rejection letters, two editors urged this chapter be revised to provide a more optimistic view of the ecumenical movement.)

11. The economic depression of the 1980s will force states all across the nation, and most remarkably of all in the South, to rely on state-sponsored lotteries and the taxes from casinos to produce the dollars required to balance the budgets of these states. (Three of the rejection letters insisted this must be removed for them to even consider publication of the manuscript.)

12. The chapter that drew the most negative comments in those letters of rejection focused on one prediction. Sam began with a celebration of the fact that the anticipated depression following World War I had not occurred. The earlier pattern of a wartime economic boom followed by economic upheaval after the end of a war had occurred with and after the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and the first World War. Sam correctly pointed out that the deflationary era of the 1920s and early 1930s was not about to be replicated. Deflation was being replaced by inflation. While the projected long-term economic prosperity would be interrupted twice by economic recessions during the next half century, this futurist's projections called for a significant increase in wages and salaries. He offered three examples. One called for skilled workers in the building trades to be earning $40,000 to $56,000 annually in 2005. Another forecast called for a median salary for public school teachers with a master's degree and 10 years of experience to be in the $45,000 to $60,000 range by 2005. Sam, who had graduated from seminary in 1948 after three years of military service, was receiving a cash salary of $3,200 plus housing as the associate minister of a large and prosperous downtown church in 1955. He forecast that in 2005 the congregation averaging 150 to 200 at worship and served by a full-time and fully credentialed pastor with 10 or more years of experience would cost that congregation between $50,000 and $65,000 in total compensation including cash salary, housing, utilities and other fringe benefits but not including reimbursement for expenses such a automobile mileage, continuing education or attendance at meetings.

One rejection letter included the comment, "That's ridiculous. That's more than twice what our chief editor is paid!"

13. The chapter that elicited the second largest number of scornful comments forecast that by 2005 millions of television viewers would watch hour-long sequels in which women modeled new fashions in ladies' underwear.

14. The third largest number of negative comments responded to a chapter that predicted by 2005 marriage ceremonies for homosexuals would become an open, but highly divisive, issue in the churches.

15. The shortest chapter in the manuscript began by pointing out that in the 1950s the five most popular names for female babies were Linda, Mary, Patricia, Barbara and Susan. It concluded with the forecast that in the first years of the 21st century the five most frequently chosen names for baby girls would be Emily, Emma, Madison, Hannah and Olivia followed by Abigail, Alexis, Ashley , Elizabeth and Samantha. Sam added that Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew and Andrew would replace John, James, Robert, William and Michael as the five most common names for male infants.

16. The chapter that would have produced the most reservations from parish pastors in 1955 might have been this one. Sam forecast that by 2005 a substantial number of Lutherans and Catholics would be looking forward to sharing in Holy Communion by 2017.

17. A relatively long chapter forecast the creation of the United States of Europe by 2005. It would include a reunited Germany, France, Poland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and a dozen other countries. (Two editors explained this was such a remote possibility that it entered into their decision to reject the manuscript.)

18. This pastor who had graduated from a church-related college in 1942 predicted that by 2005 the men's dormitory with two-person rooms, one bathroom down the hall and a pay telephone on the wall in the corridor would be obsolete. The new residential halls would consist of attractive suites with a living room, two-to-four one-person bedrooms, a shared bathroom and a kitchenette. Every room would include a television set and be wire into a campus-wide communication network. (One editor commented, "Why don't you really go out on the limb and predict coed dorms?")

19. The chapter that required the greatest stretch of one editor's imagination forecast a gradual replacement of telephones connected by a land line with tiny wireless portable telephones that also could take color photographs. One paragraph in this chapter predicted that by 2005 40 percent of the population age 10-to-18 would own these wireless telephones. One editor highlighted that paragraph in red ink and wrote, "If you need one reason to explain our rejection, this is it."

20. Sam Willis had been born on a farm in 1920. He watched as American agriculture evolved in the middle of the 20th century from a labor intensive operation to a capital intensive industry. In this next-to-the-final chapter in his manuscript, he explained why the number of farms in the United States had dropped from 6.8 million in 1935 to 5.3 million in 1953 and would decline to fewer than 2 million by 2005. He also predicted that by 2005 the number of people who both lived and worked on the same farm would plunge from 13.5 million in 1910 to 8.8 million in 1953 to under 3 million in 2005. Sam
forecast the production of corn would more than triple from 3 billion bushels in 1954 to more than 10 billion bushels in 2005, while the production of wheat would more than double from 900 million bushels in 1954 to 2.3 billion in 2005. Sam forecast the production of soybeans would triple from 270 million bushels in 1953 to 900 million bushels in 2005, but he missed that one, as the production for 2005 is estimated at 2.5 billion bushels. In 1953, a total of 23.5 million dairy cows produced 120.2 billion pounds of milk. Sam also missed that one. He forecast that 25 million cows would be needed in 2005 to produce 150 billion pounds of milk. In 2005, however, only l9 million cows produced 170 billion pounds of milk. The number of farms with dairy cows was projected to drop from more than half million in 1954 to 82,000 in 2005.

21. In the final chapter of this manuscript, Sam had forecast that the increasing size of institutions in the United States would lead to bitterly contested struggles over control. He predicted this conflict over control would be a disruptive force before the end of the 20th century in large financial institutions, big manufacturing corporations, in institutions of higher education, in the largest Protestant denominations, in national retail chains, in state and national political parties, in both state and national legislative bodies, in the very large local public school districts, in the United Nations and in major league professional sports. Sam's thesis was size plus affluence plus anonymity generates divisive conflict.

The day after the memorial service to celebrate Sam's life and ministry, his five children gathered to discuss a delicate subject. Several years earlier, Sam and Ruth had purchased a cemetery plot for two graves. After Ruth's funeral, the five children met with their father to discuss a headstone. All five assumed the proper decision was one stone for the two graves. Sam, who had become an egalitarian in recent decades, categorically rejected that idea. "For more than 40 years, Ruth walked in my shadow. She's entitled to her own separate marker in the cemetery!" The children reluctantly agreed, and the headstone for Ruth's grave had been installed in August.

The new question was, what words should be on Sam's matching headstone? The third child, John, suggested, "After reading Dad's manuscript, I believe the grave marker should simply declare, in four words, 'I told you so!' plus his name and the years 1920 and 2004." "That's a good idea," agreed Susan, "but maybe we should add five more, 'but no one believed me,' and let that be Dad's epitaph."

For more than four decades, Lyle E. Schaller has served as a parish consultant to hundreds of congregations and scores of denominational agencies. His recent books include From Geography to Affinity , The Ice Cube Is Melting, and A Mainline Turnaround .

Copyright © 2005 Lyle Schaller