Future / Future Home Journal, The.
A Magazine of Inspiration and Success / A Monthly Home Journal of Inspiration, Progress and Success. An Education for the Whole Family for a Dollar.
Other titles: Future / Future Magazine
1908--1908 Monthly
New York, NY. Publisher: Future Publishing Co.; Future Home Publishing Co..
Editor: F.T. McIntyre, president and editor in chief, Calvin Vos, secretary and treasurer, Harvey Lewis (H. Spencer Lewis), associate editor; Henry Austin, editor and proprietor and Mary Madeleine Wood and Harvey Lewis, associate editors.
Succeeds: Modern Miracles(?) Succeeded by: The Future Home Journal
1/1, 1908. One dollar a year, 16-20 pp.

This was a short-lived publishing venture by F.T. McIntyre, appearing in early 1908 and ordered banned from the mails by the government in April 1908--promptly re-appearing under a slightly different name. It is most notable now because of the involvement in it of H. Spencer Lewis who was shortly thereafter to found AMORC. McIntyre was one of the premier New Thought mail-order confidence men of the period. With Elmer E. Prather/Elmer E. Knowles he was one of principals of the Metropolitan Institute of Science of New York that sold, among many other things, "Hindoo Methods of Hypnotism" and other lessons on telepathy and Personal Influence." Lewis was intimately involved with both Prather and McIntyre and their ventures at the time, a fact that casts a revealing light on his later development. He had been an associate editor of Modern Miracles (edited by Prather’s wife, Abby) in 1906-1907 and a lecturer at the Metropolitan Institute of Science until the Post Office in November 1907 served them and A.H. Postel and others with an order to show cause to bar them all, together with their attendant American Temple of Astrology, the Psycho Success Club, and other businesses, from the mails. A similar fate lay in store for this journal. In April 1908, the Post Office issued a fraud order (Docket no. 109929, as unearthed by John B. Buescher), prohibiting the use of the mails to Future Magazine and its principals, Professor Lewis, Prof. H. Spencer Lewis, The Lewis Co., H. Spencer & Co., and an unknown "E. Smith." On the return date of the order to show cause to bar delivery of mail or payment of mail orders, Lewis appeared, accompanied by F.T. McIntyre. Apparently Lewis and McIntyre had been using the journal as the vehicle for a scheme for selling pre-printed horoscopes for $3.00, as well as a full line of charms for becoming expert in hypnotism.

After the fraud order the journal reappeared in May without missing a beat, using the same cover art (probably by Lewis, who is known to have been the "artist" for the publication) but with re-started volume numbering and a new name: The Future Home Journal. This new journal completely ignored its predecessor and the fraud order, even though several articles in it (notably Lewis’s "New Ontology") were continuations of what had been begun in its predecessor. The only reference to the Post Office’s prohibition of the mails to The Future was oblique: some astrologers were crooked and the overburdened Post Office had seen fit to crack down on them all, so if the readers’ correspondence is being returned by the post office it doesn’t mean that any particular astrologer was unreliable or a crook. Initially, McIntyre remained president of the venture although the publisher had mysteriously become Future Home Journal, Inc. The journal seems to have been the same in its content, omitting only the various articles and advertisements by Professor Lewis (in his various guises) that had brought it to the attention of the postal authorities in the first place. It promised readers success if they faithfully read the journal and added a promise to return the $1 subscription price if they failed to receive a benefit from doing so, and announced an Esperanto Department; a Universal Church of the Future with rather generic prayers and a monthly sermon; The Future Magnetic Success Club (with "Magnetic Thought Waves" for the month--"Love, Strength, Power, We are Gaining Every Hour"); a Department of Instruction in Success, Personal Influence and Mental Development, conducted by McIntyre himself and then by certain unnamed "World’s Best Instructors"; a Chat with Women conducted by the unknown Beatrice Lewis; a Home Study Club ("Complete Course and Seven Books Free"); a Home Improvement Department ("The Importance of Curtains"); a Department of Science and Invention ("Was the Garden of Eden in Ohio?"); novelettes; various short excerpts from the press, including scientific predictions of a coming ice age, all leading to the conclusion that "We find that we are slowly dropping the material and becoming more familiar with the mental, the occult and the psychic, and this of course can lead to but one thing, -- man’s better understanding of himself and the laws of nature, and God." The first issue, in a column headed "The Men Behind the Journal," carried a photograph of McIntyre and a glowing account of his work: "Those who are interested in their own future, and who desire to succeed in life’s race for health, power, success, happiness and contentment, will do well to subscribe to our Journal NOW so as to benefit by all of the lessons on Hypnotism, Personal Magnetism, Personal Influence, Telepathy-- The Art of Healing without drugs, as if by magic -- the art of succeeding in business and society __ Rapid Character Reading and the development of self-confidence--Will Power--Determination--Continuity of Thought---and a charming, magnetic personality." "The New Ontology" by "Royle Thurston" (Lewis) described itself as "A Complete Course of Lessons On A New Science Which Explains Life, Death and all Spiritual Phenomena" but was neither new nor ontology but was a restatement of the basic New Thought principle of the two minds in man, objective and subjective, that allows man to control his body and his environment by suggestion and autosuggestion. The method was said to have been perfected during the author’s three-year work before the New York Institute for Psychical Research. Lewis undoubtedly wrote other material for the journal, like the Department of Solar Biology by "Harvé," and probably was behind other names like "Maxwell Fuller" (his maternal grandfather’s name was Maxwell, as was his son Ralph’s middle name). In August the journal let it be known that the Post Office was looking into the journal, and in September it announced that it had been taken over by Henry Austin, an old progressive journalist and editor, with Mary Madeleine Wood and Harvey Lewis (i.e., H. Spencer Lewis) as associate editors. The new journal announced its intention of addressing a more general and less occult audience than its predecessor and McIntyre in his "Valedictory" promised to "contribute as much as I possibly can, both by my pen and influence." Well he might have wished the new owner well because, as he listed in his petition for bankruptcy in October, he had taken back promissory notes for $1,000 for his interest in the journal. The October issue carried an article by "Harvey Lewis" on "The Psychology of the Moving Picture," and a condensation of Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story by "Royle Thurston," but an aura of approaching doom was on the journal and no more seem to have appeared. LOC (Future Home Journal); AMORC Library in San Jose has several issues of The Future but for unknown reasons will not allow them to be seen. Lewis appeared in the Future Home Journal as "Prof. Lewis," the head of the Department of Astrology and Astral Projection, and as "Royle Thurston," the author of a series on ontology.

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