Editor, the Forum:

When the versatile pen of Horace Greeley was stilled, it marked the passing of a man who in reality was the father of American agricultural journalism. Greeley wrote with a sympathetic style for the country folk and there are those who are living today who can recall when they used to wait to hear someone read from the Tribune what "Mr. Greeley had to say." Greeley was a pioneer in a profession that promises to be one of the richest fields in the future for the journalistic-minded who understands farmers and farm conditions.

Since the days of Greeley agricultural journalism has been in a state of evolution. Its days of pioneering were marked by the country newspaper man who was promoted to the ranks of the farm journal or the writer who had a great understanding of rural conditions. Those men were real pioneers. They helped "hew a civilization out of the backwoods." Their task at editing a farm journal was a hard one but they persevered and out of the work that they gave to the profession we have the agricultural journalism of today. Those pioneers knew rural life and they loved it. They wrote from their hearts and while they might not have had all of the technical knowledge of the ages at their command they made the world better because they lived.

Agricultural journalism, it seems, is entering a new era. College and university graduates are entering the field. During the past few years colleges and universities have prepared curriculums which would specifically train students to take up work on the staff of a farm journal or a farm weekly. Possibly the University of Missouri, Iowa State College and Kansas Agricultural College have done more or as much along this line as any other educational institution.

There has always been a lot of criticism for the "college trained journalist." He has been accused of practically everything "unbecoming a gentleman." The greatest objections appear to be that he does not know how to write after he graduates and that he comes out of college loaded with egotism that it takes the average editor a decade to eliminate. These criticisms are true in far too many cases but

of course in many they are not. To train a student for the straight profession of journalism is a hard task but to combine the study in a curriculum and ask him to master technical agriculture and journalism makes the task harder. A student may like farming and farm life and to study the technical side but may have absolutely no inclination to write and may be unable to develop a style that would make him a valuable man in a farm journal office. On the other hand, he may love the profession of newspapermaking and may be a good reporter but if he cannot master the subject matter of technical agriculture and has no clear-cut understanding of rural life he had better go into some other kind of work.

The college-trained agricultural writer is hard to find. There is a great demand for this "dual purpose" writer and as soon as he is through school he usually has more jobs offered him than he can ever consider, so he usually takes the best. There are only a few students following the curriculum in our colleges and universities that lead to a degree in agricultural journalism. At the University of Missouri last year there were only four students who were following the curriculum and at the other schools in like proportion. Another reason why more students do not go into this kind of writing may be due to the fact that people connected with agricultural work other than writing are usually underpaid. The agricultural journalism curriculum may also be to blame in many cases. The curriculum usually embraces a four-year period of study of about 125 hours collegiate training. The curriculum seems to include an abundance of chemistry and science which is irrelevant for the man who is to write intelligently along agricultural subjects. From twelve to fifteen hours of chemistry are required together with about the same amount of biological science and a course or two in physics - all this besides many hours in technical agriculture and practical writing and journalism.

If a student, for example, is to prepare himself for farm journal work in the South, he must gain a large amount of knowledge about technical agriculture and then possibly specialize in cotton or other native field crops, or some phase of animal

husbandry. But with the great number of useless scientific requirements, he goes out of school unarmed with the real knowledge that he needs. If he attempts to write as he has been trained he is apt to become too scientific and his writing will be tiresome. Above all, an agricultural writer should write interestingly and with information. His purpose should be to inspire and not merely to give the farmer so many facts as how to cultivate beans or squashes. The farmer can get that information from any seed catalogue or from the back of a package of seeds.

Deans of the different colleges hold to different theories. Some contend that a student should go out armed with all of the agricultural information that he can carry without much regard for the writing side, while others hold to the other view point that a student must know how to write or he will certainly fail as an agricultural writer. Agricultural information can be acquired but the ability to write is something born in a man. Dean Don T. Gray of the Arkansas College of Agriculture hired an agricultural editor not long ago and he selected a man who did not know anything about technical agriculture but who was a good writer, had graduated from a school of journalism, and had had years of newspaper experience. The Dean felt that the man could acquire a knowledge of agriculture far easier

Editor, the Forum:

than he could acquire the ability to write. His theory is working out fine.

Regardless of the theories that are held by the colleges and universities, they will come to train their students as the profession wants them trained. The profession will demand a man with some knowledge of technical agriculture, of rural institutions, and who can write sympathetically of rural folks. The man who cannot live up to that will not be in demand by the farm press of the future. The bright day in farm journal and other farm writing fields has just dawned. There must be a bright outlook on it. The man who enters it must be trained to help fight the farmers' battles, must be a diplomat, must be "another wise man," must be a writer that can write so that the tired farmer will read instead of throwing the paper under the table and going to bed after supper. In other words, he must represent the apex in this new era of journalism. To train men for this field the colleges and universities must be broad-minded, or men for this profession will be recruited elsewhere than from the college campus, for after all "education is training men. It is the same now as it was when Mark Hopkins sat on one end of a log and James Garfield sat on the other." Clyde Duncan.

Little Rock, Ark.

According to my impression of prize ring etiquette (by one who has never been there), it is customary and courteous, before pounding one's adversary to a pulp, to shake his hand. Therefore, in taking issue with Mr. Hillyer's article on poetry in the March issue of THE WRITER, I should like to begin by thanking him for two sound statements: "Without for a moment losing sight of that existence which he shares with his kind, the poet will at the same time, observe it with a greater excitement than others and from a larger perspective. In like manner, he uses the same words as the rest of his race, but in rarer and more suggestive combinations."

As Hashimura Togo would put it, so farly, so goodly! But Mr. Hillyer goes farther too far. In his statement, "The Revolutionist who insists that his thoughts are too vast to be 'trammeled' by traditional forms has much to prove in his case we perceive the exaggerated egotism which refuses to comply with universally accepted standards," Mr. Hillyer omits one very important point the distinction between egotism and individualism. They are not, necessarily, the same. Because they show the same surface symptom-i.e., impatience of restraints and interferences - the av

erage unthinking man is constantly confusing the two. I give Mr. Hillyer full credit for understanding perfectly where the difference lies; but I think he should have made the distinction clear in his article, because the average unthinking reader is far too prone, as it is, to size up every manifestation of individualism as pure and simple pose.

The egotist says, "I must not be trammeled!" The individualist says, "The poet any poet must not be trammeled. I must decline to be either the trammeler or the trammelee." The egotist says, "I am a law unto myself." The individualist, 'Every creative worker must be a law unto himself." That such an attitude makes criticism difficult is true, but irrelevant; for is it not, after all, the chief function of a poet to make the critic's job an easy one? Individualism often accompanies egotism. Also, it often accompanies a profound personal humility. It has no direct bearing upon either.

Mr. Hillyer regrets that he receives many more appeals for advice on how to get published than on how to do good work That is perfectly natural. It does not prove that the poet values publication more than good work. It merely proves that in writing to Mr. Hillyer, he is viewing Mr. Hillyer more in the light of an editor than of a

teacher. This view of Mr. Hillyer may be the wrong one, but it proves nothing, one way or the other, about the poet's absolute standard of values, where publicity may or may not rank above good work.

One very good saying of Mr. Hillyer's - which is neither trite nor platitudinous - nevertheless possesses, in common with platitudes and trite saws, this dangerous trait: that if swallowed whole it may, by very reason of the large element of truth it contains, become a tyranny and an impediment to progress. The saying I refer to is this: "The emotion of an individual is only important in so far as it is the emotion of the race." There are two sides to every shield, and the other side of this one is fact that any emotion of any individual - even to a mania for collecting tomato cans

Should these be discarded as poetically worthless? Certainly they do not describe the experiences of the majority of the race! Yet they are representative passages from the works of two first-rate poets.

Moreover, as James Branch Cabell has so amusingly put it, "In Homer, when Ajax lifts a stone it is with the strength of ten warriors, and Odysseus, when it at all promotes the progress of the story, becomes invisible. It seems, upon the whole, less probable that Homer drew either of these accomplishments from the actual human life about him, than from simple consciousness that it would be very gratifying if men could do these things."

In my own poems, by preference, I stick rather closely to approved rhythms, conventional capitalization, and realistic subjects; but I hotly defend the right of any poet to "adopt strange diction and bizarre forms" if that is better suited to the nature and unity of his work.

Finally, while I grant that absurd elocution on the lecture platform is annoying, and that conscious, deliberate eccentricity is deplorable in people of any craft nevertheless the world in general is far too quick to forget that many so called "eccentricities" of poets really arise from the desperate shifts to which the poor creatures are compelled to resort, by reason of being, without exception, the poorestpaid class of workers under the sun. Many a "longhaired" poet gets that way because he is flatly faced by the stark necessity of choosing between a haircut and a copy of THE WRITER. That being the situation, can you blame him?

San Francisco, Calif.

Gladys Guilford Scott.

Editor, the Forum:

Writers are quite ordinary people. Such a simple statement may lack all the charms of conceit, but it has the one of truth. Writers are quite ordinary people even in their desire to think of themselves as beings beyond the ordinary. Writers eat (even if they may not always overeat), sleep, dress, go to the moving pictures, collect stamps or picture post cards, buy gilt-edge bonds, ride in jitneys, and play the saxophone. Even "great" writers.

And writers get tired. Energy-physical, mental, emotional comes and goes. A day comes when the wielder of pen and pencil or the pounder of typewriter keys feels fatigued and sits staring at the blank sheets of paper that somehow won't become filled with magic words. Slowly it becomes painfully plain that the fountain has somehow gone dry. The brain fails to respond at his bidding, the emotions are sluggish, the creative thrill is no more.

It is easy for the outside medicoes to look wise

and prescribe a rest-cure. But writers being what they are, ordinary people, cannot always pack up and go into the mountains for a holiday. They cannot always run off to Palm Beach, to Europe, or even to Atlantic City. Besides, being also what they are, a wee bit extraordinary, they love their work and cannot keep away from it. Writing has become their very life, and it is easier for a camel to strain his hump through the eye of a needle than for a writer to live without writing. No, he cannot always take a rest-cure. Another remedy must be sought.

Fortunately, there are stimulants. Still more fortunately, there are inexpensive and readily accessible stimulants. Two of these I have found practicable and I have since discovered that other writers have resorted to their invigorating effect.

One easily obtainable stimulant is letters. A large file of personal and business letters is a valuable possession. It is a reservoir of energy which costs little to maintain and can always be depended upon.

Letters from old friends, sweethearts, school-chums, relatives, business associates, traveling companions - what a power of life is in them! When the mind becomes dull and the imagination weary, pull out that file of old experiences and memories will come trooping in, living, throbbing, glowing. Forgotten incidents are there, and half-forgotten characters, words that once meant joy and pain and sorrow and hope, messages that meant conquest or defeat, confidences reticently made, confessions stated and implied. Human kindness is in that file, and human frailty jealousy and duplicity and slyness and diplomacy. Perhaps a mother's tenderness is there, a father's solicitude, a friend's readiness in a trying moment, an enemy's plotting, a sweetheart's first timid yearning, a fellow-traveler's bravery, an employer's miserliness or benevolence, an aged relative's loneliness, a youngster's villainy. The age of these mementoes is no blemish; on the contrary, the older they are the more mellow they have become, because one's point of view has become more tolerant and objective.

It is no discredit to a writer to acknowledge his occasional need of stimulants. Literature is always a result of stimulation. Perhaps it is only what Wordsworth called poetry: "Emotion recollected in tranquillity." Letters are crystallized emotion. An occasional rereading, at a psychological moment, is merely a recollection in tranquillity of past emotions. That's what letters are kept for. Great writers have not been ashamed to acknowledge their indebtedness to the power of letters. Here's a tribute from James Branch Cabell. "From letters," says Charteris in "Beyond Life," "somehow, one gets more of a genuine accent, of a real flavor, than it is easy to invent. Indeed, as I grow older I find it impossible to 'do' a satisfactory heroine without a packet of old love-letters to start on and to work in here and there, you know, for dialogue."

Another stimulant that is almost of equal value to the writer is a good collection of photographs and pictures. So many faces float in a writer's fancy that they are sometimes likely to become confused,

indistinct, hazy. If he can open an album of old pictures his imagination is re-charged. Here are distinct faces with definite personalities, faces with lines and shadings, beautiful faces and ugly faces, kind faces and evil faces, heroic faces and weak faces. One can use these faces and the personalities behind them or one can use but parts of these faces and personalities behind them. One's creative imagination may seize upon the eyes of one face, the forehead of another, the chin of a third, and the expression of a fourth, and create a composite personality that will have the hard reality common to all, tempered by the soft ideality in the writer's mind.

To collect such an album is not a difficult matter. Snapshots will do; graduation, wedding, picnic, office, family reunion, honeymoon, and tourist pictures. Cuttings from the rotogravure section of the Sunday newspaper will do; counts and countesses, cabinet officers, pugilists, chorus girls, tennis champions, prize beauties, destitude old mothers, immigrants in colorful costumes, ditch diggers, dudes, criminals, and famous writers. The scissors and a little paste, operated by an interested and judicious mind, will do wonders. No writer need worry about the "haziness" of his characters while the camera is busy registering the external, and a large amount of the internal, likenesses of humanity.

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The stimulants here suggested are not designed to take the place of the one all writers are addicted to, or should be the notebook. The notebook is a record of the writer's fleeting thoughts, observations, memoranda. If it be properly kept it should be a treasure-house of valuable material and a source of inspiration. But letters and pictures, which come to us so easily, are such positive additions that they deserve the earnest attention of all writers, both timid and overconfident. Who knows what the morrow may bring? Imagination is mortal and subject to infirmities, and energy has its low moments. N. Bryllion Fagin.

Baltimore, Md.