 Initially devoted to textbooks, due to the increasing of the number of schools in the country (in the last years of the Empire, schools increased from 3,561 to 7,500), Francisco Alves came to have a near monopoly of textbooks in Brazil.Livraria Francisco Alves opened its first branch in São Paulo, on April 23, 1893, where Manuel Pacheco Leão, some of the education secretary and friend of Francis, Teófilo das Neves Leão, was charged with part of the shares of the company.In 1906, he opened a second branch in Belo Horizonte.