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threaten the philosophy with utter extinction, and to handicap seriously my efforts to reach more of the magazines with feature articles. It was my fate to be damned at every turn with crosspurposes.

One day I got the tip that the associate editor of a trade publication was soon to quit and start a periodical of his own, and that I could have his position. For me this was the red light-the danger signal. I was succeeding at everything except the big task, and now was the time to watch out again.

We had the combination to a living income, anyhow, when we needed it, and my wife and I both felt that the day had come to go after philosophy hard and fast.

It was around this time that I made a hurried trip to Chicago in the attempt to collect several hundred dollars due me by a magazine, now defunct. This was money I really wanted.

Failing in this errand, and having cut off a good income, I felt poor indeed. There was no item of personal traveling expense in our budget, and just how my wife would take care of this wasted trip I could not guess. She had ways of slicing off here and there. For all I knew, she might let her toothache go until next year, and thus switch over the dental item to traveling. Anyhow, I saw a way to cut out Pullman fare. I could ride in a day coach.

I had done a lot of this in my early years, and now the adventure of riding all night in a red-plushed car began to have its appeal. Some of this oozed away during the night, especially as I could not get a windowsill for my elbow, and had to sit on the end of my back and sleep with my neck hitched upon the rim. of the car seat.

Around two o'clock I got out for a sandwich during a stop, and as I climbed aboard again it became my lot to assist a pathetic woman with two babies and numerous bags. She was changing from some other train, and as every seat was

filled I took out my grip and gave her my seat.

The rest of the night I spent in the smoking car, thinking that I could write a special article on People Who Sit Up Nights on the Railroad. This title hit me. at four o'clock, and clinched the idea. Sometimes when an author conceives a headline with a swing and punch, before he writes the article, it will exude an aura of inspiration and help him do the work.

The mistress met me at the Grand Central Station, and the moment she looked into the sooty canals of my countenance she rebuked me. "You came home in a day coach!"

I showed her twenty pages of copypaper, written in pencil between four and seven o'clock, with the catchy head at the top. I had the story typed that day, and sold it immediately to a newspaper syndicate for a hundred dollars. My wife thereupon entered a travel column on our budget and charged my Chicago expense against it.

Even if I commit tautology, I must observe again that closeness to real life, coupled with keen observation and a sleepless imagination, will open to the writer unsuspected opportunities strange places. It is hard to write of the people if we travel through life always

in a Pullman.

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Life, and the Associated Sunday Magazines. My Idea offerings were responsible in every instance, I believe.

I had been doing some work for System Magazine since coming to New York, but in my efforts to get away from the business field I had virtually ceased to offer this publication ideas.

One day, in 1910 I think, the newspapers were agog with a sensational statement made by Louis D. Brandeis, then counsel for a group of shippers before the Inter-State Commerce Commission. He declared that the railroads could save a million dollars a day through the use of brains, or something to that effect:

So-called scientific management was then in its infancy, and the public had heard little about it. Mr. Brandeis' spectacular announcement seemed to fit exactly into my plans, and here I saw a chance for a big new crop of ideas. Even though the work might impinge again on the field I wanted to escape, it was too big an opportunity to let slip.

That same day I went to Philadelphia, after wiring Frederick W. Taylor, of that city, and making an appointment. Mr. Taylor was a distinguished mechanical engineer, and was the father of scientific management, which had for its basis the elimination of waste motion and the conservation of supplies and energy of every

sort.

Soon afterward I saw Mr. Brandeis in Boston, and Henry L. Gantt, another well-known engineer who had taken up scientific management as a distinct branch of his profession. No grass was allowed to grow under my feet, for never had I seen such an opportunity for rich magazine material. The newspapers were following up Mr. Brandeis' asseveration that a million dollars a day could be saved, but I knew that in a week the subject would exhaust itself for the press -as it did. I was resolved to be the first writer to dig into the real substance of the thing, and to popularize scientific management as a magazine theme.

I could see no reason why this subject should not appeal to any of the monthly

or weekly periodicals, if I could translate it into terms of men and romance. Surely, here were glittering possibilities.

I did not realize what a stupendous task I was undertaking. I knew nothing of mechanical engineering. The technique underlying this new industrial method was Greek to me, yet I proposed to translate and interpret it for the masses, and to make it so human that the cold-blooded editors of the popular magazines would send for me and say, "Go and do this writing job for us."

My wife and I were now glad indeed we had resisted the lure of salaried positions, even though our faith had wavered and at times we had despaired. Now I was free to go into this new subject on my own account. Mr. Taylor gave me every opportunity to study his methods of analyzing time and motion, which of course were only one element of a very complicated procedure. He went with me through various plants, demonstrating for my benefit his work with the stop-watch; and he proved that waste motion among the workers might easily run into a million dollars a day when spread over a large group of industries.

Then of course this waste reached into the movement of materials, and into the materials themselves; into the machines and their arrangement on the factory floor; into the cost-finding methods; into almost everything connected with manufacturing.

Then I could see, by extension, that all these truths must apply to merchandising, and especially to selling.

Guided by mechanical engineers and other technicians, I floundered through a dozen kinds of factories at that particular time, listening to deeply-involved technical explanations that I did not want but must understand to a certain extent. On them must be raised my superstructure of popular narrative. It was all a mighty miracle, but at times I despaired of my ability to interpret it.

I think it was my general newspaper training and my experience with fiction and feature articles that finally enabled

me to contrive methods of presenting the theme to magazine editors, and to get their interest.

Among the first of the editors to send for me, in response to this suggestion sheet, were those who conducted the newspaper syndicates, especially the Sunday magazines. My news instinct had told me that here lay my best chances for quick results. And even though my wife and I had been sanguine, the actuality took us by storm. They gave me so many orders that I employed several men to help in the "leg work."

It was harder to sell the regular magazines this idea, but several of them began to pick at it. They were afraid of the term "scientific management," as too cold and mathematical. They did not like business themes as a rule. Yet somehow I had touched a spot in the editorial mind that seemed to offer a hope of penetration.

I'd like to

With considerable temporary sacrifice of valuable time, I accepted their invitations to come up and talk it over, and to have lunch at Delmonico's or Rector's or perhaps the Knickerbocker. Once I came home from Pittsburgh just to lunch with a well-known New York editor, who finished the interview by observing, "I have a notion that there is something well worth while in all this. take up a series on scientific management as you propose to popularize it. Before giving you the definite order, however, I've got a tough job on my handsto convince my associates on the magazine, and particularly the owners. You understand that the business end of the magazine has its ideas, and often they are in conflict with the editor's. And the business end handles the cash that must pay for the editorial schedule:"

It was some months later that I received a telegram from him to go ahead, and to rush the work.

System Magazine came into this merry game very early, however, wiring me to undertake comprehensive work, and to hurry it through as fast as possible.

During the next few months I made. innumerable journeys, visiting almost all the conspicuous plants in the United States that used adaptations of scientific management, and writing myself sick to satisfy the clamorous demand. To tell all this in the language of the people, with the necessary imaginative touches, was a task indeed conducive to brain fag. I longed for the time to come, as I knew it must, when scientific management would cease to be a vogue with the magazines. I still had other plans.

In the meantime it was my fortune to receive a great deal of unsolicited publicity in the newspapers and at the hands of the editorial commentators. They quoted from my articles and gave me credit, and naturally many persons imagined me to be some tremendous authority, some super-engineer of waste motions and cash-getting miracles. The very simplicity and lack of technicality in my work contributed to this result, for otherwise few people would have read it. Scores of letters, and even telegrams, came to me through the periodicals, offering inviting fees for applying my prestidigitation to their establishments. The correspondence necessary to explain my status consumed an aggregate of weeks.

To all of these eager inquirers I was obliged to write my regrets, saying that my function was merely that of painter of word pictures-that in this mighty. drama of struggle and achievement I was a spectator, sketching from my gallery.

THE

Technical Poetry Critique

By ROBERT HILLYER

HE number of manuscripts submitted for criticism is so large that contributors will have to exercise much patience. In sorting over the poems, I have at once discarded those which show that their authors have either not read the series on the technique of verse or have failed to apply the fundamental principles set forth. Next, I have put to one side all contributions of the nature of greeting card verses, rhymed moralizings, and sentimental jingles. The sixtyodd poems which remain I have divided according to their subjects and their forms.

First, let us examine a lyric, the stanza form of which is well-turned and musical, influenced, perhaps, by the Eliza

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to certain poets (Donne, for example) a deal of metrical license because their ideas are so interesting. Now in the poem quoted above, we have a right to expect very fine music indeed because the content is slight and because the second stanza, instead of developing the thought, merely repeats it. But the music has faults. Line 5 is unmetrical because it fails to bring to the insignificant word it sufficient stress; as it stands the line reads as if it had a feminine ending. A monosyllable should be substituted for beauty. Furthermore, there is a violent run-over into line 6, which is also unmetrical, and, in turn, runs over into line 7. Trisyllabic feet, such as the one in line 5 are often desirable, as are runovers from line to line. But lines 5, 6, and 7 show too many irregularities, particularly since they are unmetrical within themselves. The phrase "lent her" is a gallant attempt to couple a rhyme with. winter but it is too rough and conspicuous to be successful. The beginning of the second stanza illustrates very well the principle that in verse one should preserve the logic of prose. The subject of the first sentence is I, and I, apparently, is alone in loveliness. Dare, line 14, in the sense of challenge or defy, seems a concession to the rhyme. Line 15 is awkwardly inverted, and the trisyllabic foot in line 16 is unpleasantly lilting. The two last lines are effective. To sum up; this lyric should be rewritten in more reg

Somewhere I have remarked that only perfect music can compensate for a lack of idea; that, on the other hand, we grant

ular measure and with stronger diction. The feeling is good and the underlying music; the stanza form itself, ingenious.

There is a lyric in this month's collection which seems to me much influenced by Emily Dickinson's work, and which, if it has some of the felicity of her greater poems, is weakened at the same time by the obscurity which mars some of her work. Very likely the author of this poem will retort that she has never read Emily Dickinson, and certainly the influence is not so strong as to mar the individuality of the poem.

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Instead of numbering the lines, I have numbered the sections in which the thought is developed. In the first place, we all agree that the versification is skillful, and the diction, for the most part, unusually distinguished. The difficulty with the poem is that it has more puzzle-element than it is entitled to. II is beautifully stated, but just what is its application to I? III, again, is clear within itself and illustrated by a splendid figure of speech, but what is its connection with I, II, or even IV? It is often well to omit the transition between two kindred thoughts; sometimes that method brings great emphasis to bear. But these thoughts seem not kindred, and we soon begin to suspect that this is not one poem but several included in one. However, our ingenuity is challenged and we are pleased with the apt phrasing, so we give the author our best attention through two, three, four readings. And we are still left with several legitimate questions. What is the time.

foretold in IV? Just where is the here referred to in V? We decide that the which in VI refers to a choice between burying and saving, but we still do not see the connection with VII. And lastly, in VII, what does this refer to? I am rather reluctant to bid this author beware of obscurity, because obscurity is a rare fault and easily remedied. If it is not wilful obscurity, its presence implies a packed idea which, if we could, we would gladly understand. And obscurity is almost a relief after the too obvious and over explained productions so generally met with. But the fact remains that this poem, though interesting and well illustrated, is not clear.

Here is a sonnet by the same author:

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14 And from some sky peace may descend to save.

Here again, we find a certain clogging of the thought. The thought-structure of the sonnet, which is the essence of the form, has been ignored. Consequently, we find no reason for the use of the son

Yet the poem is interesting. One suspects its author of being bombarded with ideas during the composition of the poem and of not resisting sufficiently the impulse to include them all. Composition, as may be seen by considering the meaning of the word, precludes the entertainment of new material. It seems evident to me that this author does not separate, as she should, the three stages in the writing of a poem: observation, recollection, composition. If a new idea, or an important development of the old idea, arrives during composition, it may be jotted down as the nucleus of a second poem, or, if it be sufficiently powerful, it may be substituted for the original

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