For the Hart, Schaffner, & Marx Prize Essays in economics for 1914, the following topics are suggested: (1) The competitive relations of the Suez and Panama canals; (2) A study of the economic conditions preceding and following the crisis of 1907 ; (3) Price regulation by governmental authority; (4) A theory of public expenditures; (5) A study of shipping combinations in ocean transportation, and their influence on rates; (6) How far has the regulation of freight charges affected the development of railways in the United States? (7) A study of the changes of modern standards of living; (8) A study of the cost to the United States of its possession of the Philippine Islands. Papers should be sent before June 1, 1914, to J. Laurence Laughlin, University of Chicago.

The first number of The Scout, a magazine for Boy Scouts, will appear in New York this month. The publication office will be at the national headquarters of the American Boy Scouts, 68 William street, and P. T. Mason will be editor-in-chief, with Norman L. Sper as assistant editor.

A new monthly, which will probably be called Pulitzer's Magazine, will be published in New York beginning next fall by the Pulitzer Magazine Company, which Walter Pulitzer, one of the corporators, says has a capital of $200,000. Of the projected publication Mr. Pulitzer is quoted as saying: "It will be the mouthpiece of a new conservatism and the constructive elements of the country which have worked in silence too long."

The Thinker's World is a new monthly published in Chicago by Cora Mickle Hoffer. The publication is devoted to "new thought."

A new London magazine, the Blue Review, will be conducted on co-operative principles, similar to those successfully adopted in the case of certain French reviews, notably Le Mercure de France. Writers of the younger generation have bound themselves to contribute regularly to the Blue Review without payment for nine months, at the end of which the profitsharing scheme will come into operation.

The New Statesman is the name of a new sixpenny London weekly inspired by Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw.

Harper's Bazar has been sold by Harper & Bros. to William Randolph Hearst. A new company, known as Harper's Bazar, Inc., will publish the periodical. Offices have been established at No. 381 Fourth avenue, where other Hearst magazines — the Cosmopolitan, Hearst's Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Motor and Motor Boating - have headquarters. Elizabeth Jordan, who has conducted Harper's Bazar, will stay with the Harpers.

The business of the Woman's World Publishing Company has been placed in the hands of Curtis P. Brady, as receiver in bankruptcy, the court instructing him, until further orders, to continue the business of the Woman's World Publishing Company as usual. Thus the publication of the Woman's World (Chicago) will not be interfered with by the bankruptcy proceedings.

The Bellman says that for more than a year it has been seeking an artist who could produce political cartoons fit to rank with those in Punch for wit and workmanship, but although it is prepared to pay a liberal price and to make a term engagement with such a man, its quest has been vain.

"From Fiction to Facts" is a useful booklet issued by the Milwaukee public library, which gives directions for using good fiction to enliven and illustrate English history and American colonial history, telling, for instance, at just what points in reading Green's "Short History of the English People" certain historical novels should be read.

Will Carleton's estate, according to the appraiser, amounted to "seventy-five dollars less than nothing."

Clifton Bingham died at Bristol, England, March 26, aged fifty-three.

Professor Edward Dowden died in Dublin April 4, aged sixty-nine.

Thaddeus Burr Wakeman died at Cos Cob, Conn., April 24, aged seventy-eight.

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82

A PROTEST AGAINST INDECENT FICTION.

No. 6.

blers and murderers. - as patterns of vice and not of virtue. No girl, reading "Vanity Fair," is tempted to be a Becky Sharp, nor any boy, reading "Oliver Twist," to be a Bill Sykes.

Many of the modern novels — and the tendency seems to grow-breathe the air of a hothouse of sexual passion. They are an unwholesome and insidious influence on young men and women, and a demoralizing source of contamination - the more dangerous because accepted as current modern literature. They infest the shelves of the book stores. Publishers print them because they sell," as of course they sell, just as vile photographs would sell if they were allowed on every shop counter. The popular novelists of to-day, too many of them, exercise their talents in a study and presentation of the erotic passion, and make it a theme for fine phrasing and seductive philosophy and winning attractiveness. A lady recently took from the village circulating library a novel which the young woman in charge, who probably had never read it, glibly commended in the usual style as "very popular and interesting." It was so insidiously salacious, and at its close so actually detailed in its word-picturing that the lady bought and burnt it to prevent its circulation in the town.

No wonder that domestic scandals and irregularities and unseemly divorce sensations grow apace and fill our newspapers. Of course the age is lax in this respect, and no doubt the novelist may claim that he is only catering to a public sentiment and portraying what exists. But there are good many nastinesses which exist but which it is not desirable to have continuously under our noses. And it is unfortunate that

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the novelist, and the publisher also, do not feel that their function is not to pander to a depraved taste and encourage it, but to eliminate it and bring in something better.

I am sure that there is a growing protest against this glossed and candied poison. I was struck by a letter which I saw from an elderly lady of true New England refine

ment to a leading magazine. She has read it with reverence and delight for fifty years, and she asked it: "Is it necessary or wise that the irregularities of our social life should be photographed in a serial such as yours?" The words were mild, but they were full of meaning. John D. Long. HINGHAM, Mass.

The happy ending, I was about to say, is always vicious. But adjectives must be chosen nowadays with as much care as vintages. So let us assert that the happy ending is more often than not obviously inartistic, and at times even blindly immoral, whereas the author's purpose was ostensibly something both moral and artistic.

Happiness, in life as in fiction, seems to be accepted as a goal in itself, justifying the use of any means for its attainment. This may be a good philosophy of life, but it is no creed for an artist. There are two objections to this current opinion regarding fiction for one thing, an enforced happy ending, in any form of art, twists and warps so grievously what should be the natural, logical conclusion as to render the achievement as a whole inharmonious, artificial, untrue to life. It is bad art, which is the same as saying that it is not art at all.

Of course any form of imaginative literature may be from first to last essentially joyful and sing itself through to an impossibly blissful conclusion, and be a masterpiece; it is well that it should be so; its creator could not conclude it other than happily and remain true to the principles of art. But he has of his own choice selected that kind of theme which is fragrant with honey and clover. That is one thing. But something quite different is the happy ending merely for the sake of the happy ending. This latter mode of treatment is repre

hensible, particularly from the aesthetic point of view, and finds its only apology in the acknowledged commercial exigency of the moment. If that commercial intent of the writer and publisher be fully and generally understood, the less the possibilities for harm; but even then the evils of the. offense are not in the least mitigated.

In the name of Art, whether moral or not; in the name of Morals, whether artistic or not, let us have the happy ending only when consistency and the harmony of the theme demand it, unless we wish to make all ideals basely commercial ones. I have my doubts as to whether any portion of the reading public prefers a happy ending all the time. One cannot live by honey alone. Pleasure can be derived from an unhappy ending through the pleasure we take in the beauty of artistic achievement. If this were not true "Hamlet" would have to be re-written to meet the requirements of to-day, and "Othello" would end with beer and skittles. But what would "Hamlet" or Othello be with a happy ending? Or "Tannhäuser"? Or the Laocöon group of the Vatican? Or Rubens' “Descent From the Cross"? We forget sometimes in making our demands on fiction that we should not expect the same unreasonable requirements to be followed in the sister arts of the drama, painting, and sculpture. By carrying these demands into neighboring fields of art we get a true perspective of

the folly and falsity of our narrow artistic vision. If we think as much of beauty as we claim to do, we should ask for more unhappy endings where in the nature of the theme they are essentials. Happiness has no more to do with art than sorrow has with morals, and a happy ending merely for the sake of pleasing is as offensive as an unhappy ending for the sake of sentiment.

But the public is supposed to demand the happy ending. Very well. But if the public be given what it wants, from the editorial point of view, and in order to meet the publisher's requirements of a monetary success, then, in the very nature of things, a lower standard of literary art is established

as a measure of the public taste; but low standards beget lower ones, until the lowest no longer suffices, and the public taste, vitiated by false editorial estimate, requires a still lower standard to be written down to, until at last that which is put forth in the guise of literature approaches real literature in name only. It all ends by our having no worthy, workable standard at all. At the present rate of deterioration pure literature, as such, will become as extinct as the American buffalo. Nothing can save it but a daring, artistic, democratic literary movement defiant of all commercial considerations. Ford Walsh.

The Chicago Evening Post.

What publishers think of them is not of public record: Probably it's what the housewife thinks about the man who stands between her and the farmer. I happened the other day to be in the office of the head of a string of popular magazines as he was opening his mail. One heavy envelope, fully paid as to postage, yielded a manuscript as neatly done up as a lawyer's brief, yet the magazine chief, after glancing at the name in the corner, at once folded it into a fresh envelope for return.

"Don't you even read the first page any

more?" I inquired, remembering the tradition about the eternal quest of editors for the new talent.

"Not if it comes through an agent," he answered. "We have two rates for all material - two cents a word for what goes into one class of magazine, and five cents a word for what is acceptable for another. These agents arbitrarily put up prices, to make their commission larger."

This seemed to support the chiefest claim of the agencies, which is that they are better bargainers than people merely literary. One, seductive appeal is something like this: "You, a worker in the literary vineyard, doubtless have often felt that the labor of watching the markets, filing, mailing, and remailing manuscripts, and deciding upon the real availability of your work, is a very disturbing factor in your creative life. Equally, without doubt, you have often felt that you would like to have a literary man of business' if you knew one who would charge no more than a certain per cent. on sales effected, and who knew the markets, and who spared you the inevitable barter

ing. If you knew he could get twice as much as yourself, besides being able to crack up your wares, you would be sure to patronize him.”

Whatever the cause, the price of manuscripts has risen contemporaneously with other necessities. Miss Edna Ferber is to speak at the vocational conference at the University of Wisconsin on fiction writing, and the Magazine Maker quotes her: "Magazine men are paying four-figure sums for short stories of four or five thousand words." Four figures at least $1,000 a story. Of course any first-class short story is worth $1,000; the trouble has been to get it. I asked one of the most respected agents whether many magazines were paying that price. His reply was:

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"Kipling got it. Robert W. Chambers had occasionally achieved it but in both cases it was through the interposition of agents. If Miss Ferber got it through her own bargaining, she is an exception. don't like to hear people generalize so loosely about prices; it starts many persons wrong, and disappoints many a capable craftsman. My feeling is that writing should not be artificially stimulated. It is only when a person has to write, can't help doing it in preference to anything else, that that person should seriously take it up. A writer is like an inventor - if he is any good you can't suppress him and he needs no en

couragement.

"One thing agents have done is to show the author how he can multiply his receipts. For example, it is only within a few years that he did not sell all his rights with the first publication. We have taught him that magazine rights are one thing, book rights another, dramatic and photo play rights another, and newspaper rights still another. Our agency advises parting with only the magazine rights to a magazine. Thereafter his story is perfectly good for newspaper syndicating. I've just sold ten short stories of Blank for $10,000, and of that ten only three are really new work. That is, on seven of them he already has received pay for magazine rights. After the coming

publication he will still have book and dramatic rights."

"What proportion of fiction is now 'placed' through agents?" he was asked. "I should say about seventy-five per cent.” "Is it true that $10,000,000 a year is paid out to fiction writers in this country?" "No one can estimate the amount, there are SO many contracts not open to inspection."

"Why is it American readers can't see the best short stories that are being written abroad just as the International Art Show exhibits the 'new spirit' in painting and sculpture?"

"Because editors are timid. Some lack breadth. They have seen certain kinds of story succeed, and not wanting to take chances, they follow on. One editor is addicted to a special formula, and another to another. Each publication has its fiction policy, though they may seem all alike. There are only three magazines which will take a French story as the French write it. At the moment, one idea is that a story must be American, and written in the language of a stevedore."

"What is meant by 'fashions in stories changing in a twinkling'?”

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"Well, for instance, Harper's Weekly this week sends us word that it will use no fiction hereafter. Adventure has quit what is understood by adventure, and wants 'adventures in business.' One magazine count it one - now wants 'love' poems. It's a suffragette publication, too! Others are short on the 'heart interest' story. One announces 'no story containing a foreign phrase accepted.' Character studies, dialect, ghost, and dream stories are anathema in many offices just now. In my drawer are three interesting tales, which editors and assistants have read with avid interest. But they won't take them, because they call them 'psychological studies,' and these are not in fashion."

One of the most successful editors in town, who has trained many writers, gives the editor's side: "I should say about fifteen per cent. of what we use comes through two