FAULTS IN DICTION. Since newspaper reporters and correspondents are
called upon day after day to write on similar events and to write at top
speed, they are prone to use the same words over and over again, without
making much of an effort to "find the one noun that best expresses the
idea, the one verb needed to give it life, and the one adjective to
qualify it." This tendency to use trite, general, "woolly" words instead
of fresh, concrete ones is not infrequently seen in special feature
stories written by newspaper workers. Every writer who aims to give to
his articles some distinction in style should guard against the danger
of writing what has aptly been termed "jargon." "To write jargon," says
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his book, "On the Art of Writing," "is to be
perpetually shuffling around in the fog and cotton-wool of abstract
terms. So long as you prefer abstract words, which express other men's
summarized concepts of things, to concrete ones which lie as near as can
be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand material for your
thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at second-hand. If your
language be jargon, your intellect, if not your whole character, will
almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should go straight, it will
dodge; the difficulties it should approach with a fair front and grip
with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or circumvent. For the
style is the man, and where a man's treasure is there his heart, and his
brain, and his writing, will be also."
FIGURES OF SPEECH. To most persons the term "figure of speech" suggests
such figures as metonymy and synecdoche, which they once learned to
define, but never thought of using voluntarily in their own writing.
Figures of speech are too often regarded as ornaments suited only to
poetry or poetical prose. With these popular notions in mind, a writer
for newspapers and magazines may quite naturally conclude that
figurative expressions have little or no practical value in his work.
Figures of speech, however, are great aids, not only to clearness and
conciseness, but to the vividness of an article. They assist the reader
to grasp ideas quickly and they stimulate his imagination and his
emotions.
Association of ideas is the principle underlying figurative expressions.
By a figure of speech a writer shows his readers the relation between a
new idea and one already familiar to them. An unfamiliar object, for
example, is likened to a familiar one, directly, as in the simile, or by
implication, as in the metaphor. As the object brought into relation
with the new idea is more familiar and more concrete, the effect of the
figure is to simplify the subject that is being explained, and to make
it more easy of comprehension.
A figure of speech makes both for conciseness and for economy of mental
effort on the part of the reader. To say in a personality sketch, for
example, that the person looks "like Lincoln" is the simplest, most
concise way of creating a mental picture. Or to describe a smoothly
running electric motor as "purring," instantly makes the reader hear the
sound. Scores of words may be saved, and clearer, more vivid impressions
may be given, by the judicious use of figures of speech.
As the familiar, concrete objects introduced in figures frequently have
associated emotions, figurative expressions often make an emotional
appeal. Again, to say that a person looks "like Lincoln" not only
creates a mental picture but awakes the feelings generally associated
with Lincoln. The result is that readers are inclined to feel toward the
person so described as they feel toward Lincoln.
Even in practical articles, figurative diction may not be amiss. In
explaining a method of splitting old kitchen boilers in order to make
watering troughs, a writer in a farm journal happily described a cold
chisel as "turning out a narrow shaving of steel and rolling it away
much as the mold-board of a plow turns the furrow."
The stimulating effect of a paragraph abounding in figurative
expressions is well illustrated by the following passage taken from a
newspaper personality sketch of a popular pulpit orator:
His mind is all daylight. There are no subtle half-tones, or
sensitive reserves, or significant shadows of silence, no landscape
fading through purple mists to a romantic distance. All is clear,
obvious, emphatic. There is little atmosphere and a lack of that
humor that softens the contours of controversy. His thought is
simple and direct and makes its appeal, not to culture, but to the
primitive emotions. * * * * His strenuousness is a battle-cry to the
crowd. He keeps his passion white hot; his body works like a
windmill in a hurricane; his eyes flash lightnings; he seizes the
enemy, as it were, by the throat, pommels him with breathless blows,
and throws him aside a miserable wreck.
SENTENCES. For rapid reading the prime requisite of a good sentence is
that its grammatical structure shall be evident; in other words, that
the reader shall be able at a glance to see the relation of its parts.
Involved sentences that require a second perusal before they yield their
meaning, are clearly not adapted to the newspaper or magazine. Short
sentences and those of medium length are, as a rule, more easily grasped
than long ones, but for rapid reading the structure of the sentence,
rather than its length, is the chief consideration. Absolute clearness
is of paramount importance.
In hurried reading the eye is caught by the first group of words at the
beginning of a sentence. These words make more of an impression on the
reader's mind than do those in the middle or at the end of the sentence.
In all journalistic writing, therefore, the position of greatest
emphasis is the beginning. It is there that the most significant idea
should be placed. Such an arrangement does not mean that the sentence
need trail off loosely in a series of phrases and clauses. Firmness of
structure can and should be maintained even though the strongest
emphasis is at the beginning. In revising his article a writer often
finds that he may greatly increase the effectiveness of his sentences by
so rearranging the parts as to bring the important ideas close to the
beginning.
LENGTH OF THE SENTENCE. Sentences may be classified according to length
as (1) short, containing 15 words or less; (2) medium, from 15 to 30
words; and (3) long, 30 words or more. Each of these types of sentence
has its own peculiar advantages.
The short sentence, because it is easily apprehended, is more emphatic
than a longer one. Used in combination with medium and long sentences it
gains prominence by contrast. It makes an emphatic beginning and a
strong conclusion for a paragraph. As the last sentence of an article it
is a good "snapper." In contrast with longer statements, it also serves
as a convenient transition sentence.
The sentence of medium length lends itself readily to the expression of
the average thought; but when used continuously it gives to the style a
monotony of rhythm that soon becomes tiresome.
The long sentence is convenient for grouping details that are closely
connected. In contrast with the rapid, emphatic short sentence, it moves
slowly and deliberately, and so is well adapted to the expression of
dignified and impressive thoughts.
To prevent monotony, variety of sentence length is desirable. Writers
who unconsciously tend to use sentences of about the same length and of
the same construction, need to beware of this uniformity.
The skillful use of single short sentences, of series of short
sentences, of medium, and of long sentences, to give variety, to express
thoughts effectively, and to produce harmony between the movement of the
style and the ideas advanced, is well illustrated in the selection
below. It is the beginning of a personality sketch of William II, the
former German emperor, published in the London _Daily News_ before the
world war, and written by Mr. A.G. Gardiner, the editor of that paper.
When I think of the Kaiser I think of a bright May morning at
Potsdam. It is the Spring Parade, and across from where we are
gathered under the windows of the old palace the household troops
are drawn up on the great parade ground, their helmets and banners
and lances all astir in the jolly sunshine. Officers gallop hither
and thither shouting commands. Regiments form and reform. Swords
flash out and flash back again. A noble background of trees frames
the gay picture with cool green foliage. There is a sudden
stillness. The closely serried ranks are rigid and moveless. The
shouts of command are silenced.
"The Kaiser."
He comes slowly up the parade ground on his white charger, helmet
and eagle flashing in the sunshine, sitting his horse as if he lived
in the saddle, his face turned to his men as he passes by.
"Morgen, meine Kinder." His salutation rings out at intervals in the
clear morning air. And back from the ranks in chorus comes the
response: "Morgen, Majestät."
And as he rides on, master of a million men, the most powerful
figure in Europe, reviewing his troops on the peaceful parade ground
at Potsdam, one wonders whether the day will ever come when he will
ride down those ranks on another errand, and when that cheerful
response of the soldiers will have in it the ancient ring of
doom--"Te morituri salutamus."
For answer, let us look at this challenging figure on the white
charger. What is he? What has he done?
By the three short sentences in the first paragraph beginning "Officers
gallop," the author depicts the rapid movement of the soldiers. By the
next three short sentences in the same paragraph beginning, "There is a
sudden stillness," he produces an impression of suspense. To picture the
Kaiser coming up "slowly," he uses a long, leisurely sentence. The
salutations "ring out" in short, crisp sentences. The more serious,
impressive thought of the possibility of war finds fitting expression in
the long, 64-word sentence, ending with the sonorous--"ring of doom,"
"Te morituri salutamus."
The transition between the introduction and the body of the sketch is
accomplished by the last paragraph consisting of three short sentences,
in marked contrast with the climactic effect with which the description
closed.
PARAGRAPHS. The paragraph is a device that aids a writer to convey to
readers his thoughts combined in the same groups in which they are
arranged in his own mind. Since a small group of thoughts is more easily
grasped than a large one, paragraphs in journalistic writing are usually
considerably shorter than those of ordinary English prose. In the narrow
newspaper column, there is room for only five or six words to a line. A
paragraph of 250 words, which is the average length of the literary
paragraph, fills between forty and fifty lines of a newspaper column.
Such paragraphs seem heavy and uninviting. Moreover, the casual reader
cannot readily comprehend and combine the various thoughts in so large a
group of sentences. Although there is no standard column width for
magazines, the number of words in a line does not usually exceed eight.
A paragraph of 250 words that occupies 30 eight-word lines seems less
attractive than one of half that length. The normal paragraph in
journalistic writing seldom exceeds 100 words and not infrequently is
much shorter. As such a paragraph contains not more than four or five
sentences, the general reading public has little difficulty in
comprehending it.
The beginning of the paragraph, like the beginning of the sentence, is
the part that catches the eye. Significant ideas that need to be
impressed upon the mind of the reader belong at the beginning. If his
attention is arrested and held by the first group of words, he is likely
to read on. If the beginning does not attract him, he skips down the
column to the next paragraph, glancing merely at enough words in the
paragraph that he skips to "get the drift of it." An emphatic beginning
for a paragraph will insure attention for its contents.
REVISION. It is seldom that the first draft of an article cannot be
improved by a careful revision. In going over his work, word by word and
sentence by sentence, the writer will generally find many opportunities
to increase the effectiveness of the structure and the style. Such
revision, moreover, need not destroy the ease and naturalness of
expression.
To improve the diction of his article, the writer should eliminate (1)
superfluous words, (2) trite phrases, (3) general, colorless words, (4)
terms unfamiliar to the average reader, unless they are explained, (5)
words with a connotation inappropriate to the context, (6) hackneyed and
mixed metaphors. The effectiveness of the expression may often be
strengthened by the addition of specific, picture-making, imitative, and
connotative words, as well as of figures of speech that clarify the
ideas and stimulate the imagination.
Sentences may frequently be improved (1) by making their grammatical
structure more evident, (2) by breaking up long, loose sentences into
shorter ones, (3) by using short sentences for emphasis, (4) by varying
the sentence length, (5) by transferring important ideas to the
beginning of the sentence.
Every paragraph should be tested to determine whether or not it is a
unified, coherent group of thoughts, containing not more than 100 words,
with important ideas effectively massed at the beginning.
Finally, revision should eliminate all errors in grammar, spelling,
punctuation, and capitalization. Every minute spent in improving an
article adds greatly to its chances of being accepted.
CHAPTER IX
TITLES AND HEADLINES
IMPORTANCE OF HEAD AND TITLE. Headlines or titles, illustrations, and
names of authors are the three things that first catch the eye of the
reader as he turns over the pages of a newspaper or magazine. When the
writer's name is unknown to him, only the illustrations and the heading
remain to attract his attention.
The "attention-getting" value of the headline is fully appreciated not
only by newspaper and magazine editors but by writers of advertisements.
Just as the striking heads on the front page of a newspaper increase its
sales, so, also, attractive titles on the cover of a magazine lead
people to buy it, and so, too, a good headline in an advertisement
arouses interest in what the advertiser is trying to sell.
A good title adds greatly to the attractiveness of an article. In the
first place, the title is the one thing that catches the eye of the
editor or manuscript reader, as he glances over the copy, and if the
title is good, he carries over this favorable impression to the first
page or two of the article itself. To secure such favorable
consideration for a manuscript among the hundreds that are examined in
editorial offices, is no slight advantage. In the second place, what is
true of the editor and the manuscript is equally true of the reader and
the printed article. No writer can afford to neglect his titles.
VARIETY IN FORM AND STYLE. Because newspapers and magazines differ in
the size and the "make-up" of their pages, there is considerable variety
in the style of headlines and titles given to special feature articles.
Some magazine sections of newspapers have the full-size page of the
regular edition; others have pages only half as large. Some newspapers
use large eight-column display heads on their special articles, while
others confine their headlines for feature stories to a column or two.
Some papers regularly employ sub-titles in their magazine sections,
corresponding to the "lines," "banks," and "decks" in their news
headlines. This variety in newspapers is matched by that in magazines.
Despite these differences, however, there are a few general principles
that apply to all kinds of titles and headlines for special feature
articles.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD TITLE. To accomplish their purpose most
effectively titles should be (1) attractive, (2) accurate, (3) concise,
and (4) concrete.
The attractiveness of a title is measured by its power to arrest
attention and to lead to a reading of the article. As a statement of the
subject, the title makes essentially the same appeal that the subject
itself does; that is, it may interest the reader because the idea it
expresses has timeliness, novelty, elements of mystery or romance, human
interest, relation to the reader's life and success, or connection with
familiar or prominent persons or things. Not only the idea expressed,
but the way in which it is expressed, may catch the eye. By a
figurative, paradoxical, or interrogative form, the title may pique
curiosity. By alliteration, balance, or rhyme, it may please the ear. It
permits the reader to taste, in order to whet his appetite. It creates
desires that only the article can satisfy.
In an effort to make his titles attractive, a writer must beware of
sensationalism and exaggeration. The lurid news headline on the front
page of sensational papers has its counterpart in the equally
sensational title in the Sunday magazine section. All that has been said
concerning unwholesome subject-matter for special feature stories
applies to sensational titles. So, too, exaggerated, misleading
headlines on news and advertisements are matched by exaggerated,
misleading titles on special articles. To state more than the facts
warrant, to promise more than can be given, to arouse expectations that
cannot be satisfied--all are departures from truth and honesty.
Accuracy in titles involves, not merely avoidance of exaggerated and
misleading statement, but complete harmony in tone and spirit between
title and article. When the story is familiar and colloquial in style,
the title should reflect that informality. When the article makes a
serious appeal, the title should be dignified. A good title, in a word,
is true to the spirit as well as to the letter.
Conciseness in titles is imposed on the writer by the physical
limitations of type and page. Because the width of the column and of the
page is fixed, and because type is not made of rubber, a headline must
be built to fit the place it is to fill. Although in framing titles for
articles it is not always necessary to conform to the strict
requirements as to letters and spaces that limit the building of news
headlines, it is nevertheless important to keep within bounds. A study
of a large number of titles will show that they seldom contain more than
three or four important words with the necessary connectives and
particles. Short words, moreover, are preferred to long ones. By
analyzing the titles in the publication to which he plans to send his
article, a writer can frame his title to meet its typographical
requirements.
The reader's limited power of rapid comprehension is another reason for
brevity. A short title consisting of a small group of words yields its
meaning at a glance. Unless the reader catches the idea in the title
quickly, he is likely to pass on to something else. Here again short
words have an advantage over long ones.
Concreteness in titles makes for rapid comprehension and interest.
Clean-cut mental images are called up by specific words; vague ones
usually result from general, abstract terms. Clear mental pictures are
more interesting than vague impressions.
SUB-TITLES. Sub-titles are often used to supplement and amplify the
titles. They are the counterparts of the "decks" and "banks" in news
headlines. Their purpose is to give additional information, to arouse
greater interest, and to assist in carrying the reader over, as it were,
to the beginning of the article.
Since sub-titles follow immediately after the title, any repetition of
important words is usually avoided. It is desirable to maintain the same
tone in both title and sub-title. Occasionally the two together make a
continuous statement. The length of the sub-title is generally about
twice that of the title; that is, the average sub-title consists of from
ten to twelve words, including articles and connectives. The articles,
"a," "an," and "the," are not as consistently excluded from sub-titles
as they are from newspaper headlines.
SOME TYPES OF TITLES. Attempts to classify all kinds of headlines and
titles involve difficulties similar to those already encountered in the
effort to classify all types of beginnings. Nevertheless, a separation
of titles into fairly distinct, if not mutually exclusive, groups may
prove helpful to inexperienced writers. The following are the nine most
distinctive types of titles: (1) label; (2) "how" and "why" statement;
(3) striking statement, including figure of speech, paradox, and
expression of great magnitude; (4) quotation and paraphrase of
quotation; (5) question; (6) direct address, particularly in imperative
form; (7) alliteration; (8) rhyme; (9) balance.
The label title is a simple, direct statement of the subject. It has
only as much interest and attractiveness as the subject itself
possesses. Such titles are the following:
(1)
RAISING GUINEA PIGS FOR A LIVING
One Missouri Man Finds a Ready Market for All He Can Sell
(2)
HUMAN NATURE AS SEEN BY A PULLMAN PORTER
(3)
THE FINANCIAL SIDE OF FOOTBALL
(4)
CONFESSIONS OF AN UNDERGRADUATE
(5)
BEE-KEEPING ON SHARES
(6)
A COMMUNITY WOOD-CHOPPING DAY
(7)
WHAT A WOMAN ON THE FARM THINKS OF PRICE FIXING
The "how-to-do-something" article may be given a "how" title that
indicates the character of the contents; for example:
(1)
HOW I FOUND HEALTH IN THE DENTIST'S CHAIR
(2)
HOW TO STORE YOUR CAR IN WINTER
(3)
HOW A FARMER'S WIFE MADE $55 EXTRA
(4)
HOW TO SUCCEED AS A WRITER
Woman Who "Knew She Could Write" Tells How She Began and
Finally Got on the Right Road
The "how" title may also be used for an article that explains some
phenomenon or process. Examples of such titles are these:
(1)
HOW A NETTLE STINGS
(2)
HOW RIPE OLIVES ARE MADE
(3)
HOW THE FREIGHT CAR GETS HOME
Articles that undertake to give causes and reasons are appropriately
given "why" titles like the following:
(1)
WHY CAVIAR COSTS SO MUCH
(2)
WHY I LIKE A ROUND BARN
(3)
WHY THE COAL SUPPLY IS SHORT
A title may attract attention because of the striking character of the
idea it expresses; for example:
(1)
WANTED: $50,000 MEN
(2)
200 BUSHELS OF CORN PER ACRE
(3)
FIRE WRITES A HEART'S RECORD
(4)
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SECOND HELPINGS
The paradoxical form of title piques curiosity by seeming to make a
self-contradictory statement, as, for example, the following:
(1)
SHIPS OF STONE
Seaworthy Concrete Vessels an Accomplished Fact
(2)
CHRISTIAN PAGANS
(3)
A TELESCOPE THAT POINTS DOWNWARD
(4)
SEEING WITH YOUR EARS
(5)
MAKING SAILORS WITHOUT SHIPS
(6)
HOW TO BE AT HOME WHILE TRAVELING
(7)
CANAL-BOATS THAT CLIMB HILLS
A striking figure of speech in a title stimulates the reader's
imagination and arouses his interest; for example:
(1)
PULLING THE RIVER'S TEETH
(2)
THE OLD HOUSE WITH TWO FACES
(3)
THE HONEY-BEE SAVINGS BANK
(4)
RIDING ON BUBBLES
(5)
THE ROMANCE OF NITROGEN
A familiar quotation may be used for the title and may stand alone, but
often a sub-title is desirable to show the application of the quotation
to the subject, thus:
(1)
THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD
America's First Victory in France
(2)
"ALL WOOL AND A YARD WIDE"
What "All Wool" Really Means and Why Shoddy is Necessary
(3)
THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE
And Why She Won't Stay in the House
A well-known quotation or common saying may be paraphrased in a novel
way to attract attention; for example:
(1)
FORWARD! THE TRACTOR BRIGADE
(2)
IT'S LO, THE RICH INDIAN
(3)
LEARNING BY UNDOING
(4)
THE GUILELESS SPIDER AND THE WILY FLY
Entomology Modifies our Ideas of the Famous Parlor
Since every question is like a riddle, a title in question form
naturally leads the reader to seek the answer in the article itself. The
directness of appeal may be heightened by addressing the question to the
reader with "you," "your," or by presenting it from the reader's point
of view with the use of "I," "we," or "ours." The sub-title may be
another question or an affirmation, but should not attempt to answer the
question. The following are typical question titles and sub-titles:
(1)
WHAT IS A FAIR PRICE FOR MILK?
(2)
HOW MUCH HEAT IS THERE IN YOUR COAL?
(3)
WHO'S THE BEST BOSS?
Would You Rather Work For a Man or For a Machine?
(4)
"SHE SANK BY THE BOW"--BUT WHY?
(5)
HOW SHALL WE KEEP WARM THIS WINTER?
(6)
DOES DEEP PLOWING PAY?
What Some Recent Tests Have Demonstrated
(7)
SHALL I START A CANNING BUSINESS?
The reader may be addressed in an imperative form of title, as well as
in a question, as the following titles show:
(1)
BLAME THE SUN SPOTS
Solar Upheavals That Make Mischief on the Earth
(2)
EAT SHARKS AND TAN THEIR SKINS
(3)
HOE! HOE! FOR UNCLE SAM
(4)
DON'T JUMP OUT OF BED
Give Your Subconscious Self a Chance to Awake Gradually
(5)
RAISE FISH ON YOUR FARM
(6)
BETTER STOP! LOOK! AND LISTEN!
The attractiveness of titles may be heightened by such combinations of
sounds as alliteration and rhyme, or by rhythm such as is produced by
balanced elements. The following examples illustrate the use of
alliteration, rhyme, and balance:
(1)
THE LURE OF THE LATCH
(2)
THE DIMINISHING DOLLAR
(3)
TRACING TELEPHONE TROUBLES
(4)
BOY CULTURE AND AGRICULTURE
(5)
A LITTLE BILL AGAINST BILLBOARDS
(6)
EVERY CAMPUS A CAMP
(7)
LABOR-LIGHTENERS AND HOME-BRIGHTENERS
(8)
THE ARTILLERY MILL AT OLD FORT SILL
How Uncle Sam is Training His Field Artillery Officers
(9)
SCHOLARS VS. DOLLARS
(10)
WAR ON PESTS
When the Spray Gun's Away, Crop Enemies Play
(11)
MORE HEAT AND LESS COAL
(12)
GRAIN ALCOHOL FROM GREEN GARBAGE
HOW TO FRAME A TITLE. The application of the general principles
governing titles may best be shown by means of an article for which a
title is desired. A writer, for example, has prepared a popular article
on soil analysis as a means of determining what chemical elements
different kinds of farm land need to be most productive. A simple label
title like "The Value of Soil Analysis," obviously would not attract the
average person, and probably would interest only the more enterprising
of farmers. The analysis of soil not unnaturally suggests the diagnosis
of human disease; and the remedying of worn-out, run-down farm land by
applying such chemicals as phosphorus and lime, is analogous to the
physician's prescription of tonics for a run-down, anæmic person. These
ideas may readily be worked out as the following titles show:
(1)
PRESCRIBING FOR RUN-DOWN LAND
What the Soil Doctor is Doing to Improve Our Farms
(2)
THE SOIL DOCTOR AND HIS TONICS
Prescribing Remedies for Worn-Out Farm Land
(3)
DIAGNOSING ILLS OF THE SOIL
Science Offers Remedies for Depleted Farms
Other figurative titles like the following may be developed without much
effort from the ideas that soil "gets tired," "wears out," and "needs to
be fed":
(1)
WHEN FARM LAND GETS TIRED
Scientists Find Causes of Exhausted Fields
(2)
FIELDS WON'T WEAR OUT
If the Warnings of Soil Experts Are Heeded
(3)
BALANCED RATIONS FOR THE SOIL
Why the Feeding of Farm Land is Necessary for Good Crops
CHAPTER X
PREPARING AND SELLING THE MANUSCRIPT
IMPORTANCE OF GOOD MANUSCRIPT. After an article has been carefully
revised, it is ready to be copied in the form in which it will be
submitted to editors. Because hundreds of contributions are examined
every day in editorial offices of large publications, manuscripts should
be submitted in such form that their merits can be ascertained as easily
and as quickly as possible. A neatly and carefully prepared manuscript
is likely to receive more favorable consideration than a badly typed
one. The impression produced by the external appearance of a manuscript
as it comes to an editor's table is comparable to that made by the
personal appearance of an applicant for a position as he enters an
office seeking employment. In copying his article, therefore, a writer
should keep in mind the impression that it will make in the editorial
office.
FORM FOR MANUSCRIPTS. Editors expect all manuscripts to be submitted in
typewritten form. Every person who aspires to write for publication
should learn to use a typewriter. Until he has learned to type his work
accurately, he must have a good typist copy it for him.
A good typewriter with clean type and a fresh, black, non-copying ribbon
produces the best results. The following elementary directions apply to
the preparation of all manuscripts: (1) write on only one side of the
paper; (2) allow a margin of about three quarters of an inch on all
sides of the page; (3) double space the lines in order to leave room for
changes, sub-heads, and other editing.
Unruled white bond paper of good quality in standard letter size, 8½
by 11 inches, is the most satisfactory. A high grade of paper not only
gives the manuscript a good appearance but stands more handling and
saves the recopying of returned manuscripts. A carbon copy should be
made of every manuscript so that, if the original copy goes astray in
the mail or in an editorial office, the writer's work will not have been
in vain. The carbon copy can also be used later for comparison with the
printed article. Such a comparison will show the writer the amount and
character of the editing that was deemed necessary to adapt the material
to the publication in which it appears.
A cover sheet of the same paper is a convenient device. It not only
gives the editorial reader some information in regard to the article,
but it protects the manuscript itself. Frequently, for purposes of
record, manuscripts are stamped or marked in editorial offices, but if a
cover page is attached, the manuscript itself is not defaced. When an
article is returned, the writer needs to recopy only the cover page
before starting the manuscript on its next journey. The form for such a
cover page is given on page 184.
The upper half of the first page of the manuscript should be left blank,
so that the editor may write a new title and sub-title if he is not
satisfied with those supplied by the author. The title, the sub-title,
and the author's name should be repeated at the beginning of the article
in the middle of the first page, even though they have been given on the
cover page. At the left-hand side, close to the top of each page after
the first, should be placed the writer's last name followed by a dash
and the title of the article, thus:
Milton--Confessions of a Freshman.
The pages should be numbered in the upper right-hand corner. By these
simple means the danger of losing a page in the editorial offices is
reduced to a minimum.
To be paid for at usual Written for The Outlook
rates, or to be returned
with the ten (10) cents
in stamps enclosed, to
Arthur W. Milton,
582 Wilson Street,
Des Moines, Iowa.
CONFESSIONS OF A FRESHMAN
Why I Was Dropped From College at the End of My
First Year
By Arthur W. Milton
(Note. This article is based on the writer's own experience in a
large Middle Western state university, and the statistics have been
obtained from the registrars of four state universities. It contains
2,750 words.)
Four (4) Photographs are Enclosed, as follows:
1. How I Decorated My Room
2. I Spent Hours Learning to Play My Ukelele
3. When I Made the Freshman Team
4. Cramming For My Final Exams
TYPOGRAPHICAL STYLE. Every newspaper and magazine has its own distinct
typographical style in capitalization, abbreviation, punctuation,
hyphenation, and the use of numerical figures. Some newspapers and
periodicals have a style book giving rules for the preparation and
editing of copy. A careful reading of several issues of a publication
will show a writer the salient features of its typographical style. It
is less important, however, to conform to the typographical
peculiarities of any one publication than it is to follow consistently
the commonly accepted rules of capitalization, punctuation,
abbreviation, and "unreformed" spelling. Printers prefer to have each
page end with a complete sentence. At the close of the article it is
well to put the end mark (#).
When a special feature story for newspaper publication must be prepared
so hastily that there is no time to copy the first draft, it may be
desirable to revise the manuscript by using the marks commonly employed
in editing copy. These are as follows:
american Three short lines under a letter or a
= word indicate that it is to be set in
- capital letters; thus, American.
New York Times Two short lines under a letter or a
= = = word indicate that it is to be set in
- - - small capital letters; thus, NEW
YORK TIMES.
sine qua non One line under a word or words indicates
---- --- --- that it is to be set in italics;
thus, _sine qua non_.
He is a /Sophomore An oblique line drawn from right to
left through a capital letter indicates
that it is to be set in lower
case; thus, He is a sophomore.
____ _____
There are |10| in a |bu.| A circle around numerical figures or
---- ----- abbreviations indicates that they
are to be spelled out; thus, There
are ten in a bushel.
___________ _______
|Professor| A.B.Smith is |sixty|. A circle around words or figures
----------- ------- spelled out indicates that they are
to be abbreviated or that numerical
figures are to be used; thus,
Prof. A.B. Smith is 60.
not a
It is complimentry to him A caret is placed at the point in the
^ ^ line where the letters or words written
above the line are to be inserted;
thus, It is not complimentary
to him.
__________ ______
to |carefullyXstudy| A line encircling two or more words
---------- ------ like an elongated figure "8" indicates
that the words are to be transposed;
thus, to study carefully.
to[=()]morrow Half circles connecting words or
letters indicate that they are to be
brought together; thus, tomorrow.
all/right A vertical line between parts of a
word shows that the parts are to be
separated; thus, all right.
U S 4 per cent. bonds A small cross or a period in a circle
x x may be used to show that a period
is to be used; thus, U.S. 4 per cent.
bonds.
")Yes, ')Love laughs at lock- Quotation marks are often enclosed
smiths(', you know(", he replied. in half circles to indicate
whether they are beginning or end
marks.
"How old are you?" he asked. The paragraph mark () or the
_|"Sixteen", she said. sign [_|] may be used to call attention
to the beginning of a new paragraph.
MAILING MANUSCRIPTS. Since manuscripts are written matter, they must be
sent sealed as first-class mail at letter rates of postage. For the
return of rejected articles stamps may be attached to the cover page by
means of a clip, or a self-addressed envelope with stamps affixed may be
enclosed. The writer's name and address should always be given on the
envelope in which the manuscript is sent to the publishers.
The envelope containing the article should be addressed to the "Editor"
of a magazine or to the "Sunday Editor" of a newspaper, as nothing is
gained by addressing him or her by name. If a writer knows an editor
personally or has had correspondence with him in regard to a particular
article, it may be desirable to send the manuscript to him personally.
An accompanying letter is not necessary, for the cover page of the
manuscript gives the editor and his assistants all the information that
they need.
Articles consisting of only a few pages may be folded twice and mailed
in a long envelope; bulkier manuscripts should be folded once and sent
in a manila manuscript envelope. Photographs of sizes up to 5 x 7 inches
may be placed in a manuscript that is folded once, with a single piece
of stout cardboard for protection. When larger photographs, up to 8 x 10
inches, accompany the article, the manuscript must be sent unfolded,
with two pieces of cardboard to protect the pictures. Manuscripts should
never be rolled.
HOW MANUSCRIPTS ARE HANDLED. In order to handle hundreds of manuscripts
as expeditiously as possible, most large editorial offices have worked
out systems that, though differing slightly, are essentially the same.
When a manuscript is received, a record is made of it on a card or in a
book, with the name and address of the author, the title and character
of the contribution, and the time of its receipt. The same data are
entered on a blank that is attached to the manuscript by a clip. On this
blank are left spaces for comments by each of the editorial assistants
who read and pass upon the article.
After these records have been made, the manuscript is given to the first
editorial reader. He can determine by glancing at the first page or two
whether or not the article is worth further consideration. Of the
thousands of contributions of all kinds submitted, a considerable
proportion are not in the least adapted to the periodical to which they
have been sent. The first reader, accordingly, is scarcely more than a
skilled sorter who separates the possible from the impossible. All
manuscripts that are clearly unacceptable are turned over to a clerk to
be returned with a rejection slip.
When an article appears to have merit, the first reader looks over it a
second time and adds a brief comment, which he signs with his initials.
The manuscript is then read and commented on by other editorial readers
before it reaches the assistant editor. The best of the contributions
are submitted to the editor for a final decision. By such a system every
meritorious contribution is considered carefully by several critics
before it is finally accepted or rejected. Moreover, the editor and the
assistant editor have before them the comments of several readers with
which to compare their own impressions.
In newspaper offices manuscripts are usually sorted by the assistant
Sunday editor, or assistant magazine editor, and are finally accepted or
rejected by the Sunday or magazine editor.
REJECTED MANUSCRIPTS. In rejecting contributions, editorial offices
follow various methods. The commonest one is to send the author a
printed slip expressing regret that the manuscript is not acceptable and
encouraging him to submit something else. Some ingenious editors have
prepared a number of form letters to explain to contributors the various
reasons why their manuscripts are unacceptable. The editorial assistant
who rejects an unsuitable article indicates by number which of these
form letters is to be sent to the author. A few editors send a personal
letter to every contributor. Sometimes an editor in rejecting a
contribution will suggest some publication to which it might be
acceptable. If a manuscript has merit but is not entirely satisfactory,
he may suggest that it be revised and submitted to him again.
KEEPING A MANUSCRIPT RECORD. Every writer who intends to carry on his
work in a systematic manner should keep a manuscript record, to assist
him in marketing his articles to the best advantage. Either a book or a
card index may be used. The purpose of such a record is to show (1) the
length of time required by various publications to make a decision on
contributions; (2) the rate and the time of payment of each periodical;
(3) the present whereabouts of his manuscript and the periodicals to
which it has already been submitted.
It is important for a writer to know how soon he may expect a decision
on his contributions. If he has prepared an article that depends on
timeliness for its interest, he cannot afford to send it to an editor
who normally takes three or four weeks to make a decision. Another
publication to which his article is equally well adapted, he may find
from his manuscript record, accepts or rejects contributions within a
week or ten days. Naturally he will send his timely article to the
publication that makes the quickest decision. If that publication
rejects it, he will still have time enough to try it elsewhere. His
experience with different editors, as recorded in his manuscript record,
often assists him materially in placing his work to the best advantage.
The rate and the time of payment for contributions are also worth
recording. When an article is equally well suited to two or more
periodicals, a writer will naturally be inclined to send it first to the
publication that pays the highest price and that pays on acceptance.
A manuscript record also indicates where each one of a writer's articles
is at a given moment, and by what publications it has been rejected. For
such data he cannot afford to trust his memory.
A writer may purchase a manuscript record book or may prepare his own
book or card index. At the top of each page or card is placed the title
of the article, followed by the number of words that it contains, the
number of illustrations that accompany it, and the date on which it was
completed. On the lines under the title are written in turn the names of
the periodicals to which the manuscript is submitted, with (1) the dates
on which it was submitted and returned or rejected; (2) the rate and the
time of payment; and (3) any remarks that may prove helpful. A
convenient form for such a page or card is shown on the next page:
___________________________________________________________________________
|Confessions of a Freshman. 2,750 Words. 4 Photos. Written, Jan. 18, 1919.|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |Sent |Returned|Accepted|Paid |Amount|Remarks |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|The Outlook |1/18/19 |1/30/19 | | | | |
|The Independent |1/31/19 |2/10/19 | | | | |
|The Kansas City Star|2/12/19 | |2/18/19 |3/12/19 |$9.50 |$4 a col.|
| | | | | | | |
|____________________|________|________|________|________|______|_________|
ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTS. Contributions accepted for publication are paid
for at the time of their acceptance, at the time of their publication,
or at some fixed date in the month following their acceptance or
publication. Nearly all well-established periodicals pay for articles
when they are accepted. Some publications do not pay until the article
is printed, a method obviously less satisfactory to a writer than prompt
payment, since he may have to wait a year or more for his money.
Newspapers pay either on acceptance or before the tenth day of the month
following publication. The latter arrangement grows out of the practice
of paying correspondents between the first and the tenth of each month
for the work of the preceding month.
After a manuscript has been accepted, a writer usually has no further
responsibility concerning it. Some magazines submit galley proofs to the
author for correction and for any changes that he cares to make. It is
desirable to make as few alterations as possible to avoid the delay and
expense of resetting the type. Corrected proofs should be returned
promptly.
Unless specific stipulations are made to the contrary by the author, an
article on being accepted by a periodical becomes its property and
cannot be republished without its consent. Usually an editor will grant
an author permission to reprint an article in book or pamphlet form. By
copyrighting each issue, as most magazines and some newspapers do, the
publishers establish fully their rights to an author's work.
SYNDICATING ARTICLES. By sending copies of his articles to a number of
newspapers for simultaneous publication, a writer of special feature
stories for newspapers may add to his earnings. This method is known as
syndicating. It is made possible by the fact that the circulation of
newspapers is largely local. Since, for example, Chicago papers are not
read in New York, or Minneapolis papers in St. Louis, these papers may
well publish the same articles on the same day. Organized newspaper
syndicates furnish many papers with reading matter of all kinds.
The same article must not, however, be sent to more than one magazine,
but a single subject may be used for two entirely different articles
intended for two magazines. If two articles are written on the same
subject, different pictures should be secured, so that it will not be
necessary to send copies of the same illustrations to two magazines.
Agricultural journals with a distinctly sectional circulation do not
object to using syndicated articles, provided that the journals to which
the article is sent do not circulate in the same territory.
If a writer desires to syndicate his work, he must conform to several
requirements. First, he must make as many good copies as he intends to
send out and must secure separate sets of photographs to accompany each
one. Second, he must indicate clearly on each copy the fact that he is
syndicating the article and that he is sending it to only one paper in a
city. A special feature story, for instance, sent to the _Kansas City
Star_ for publication in its Sunday edition, he would mark, "Exclusive
for Kansas City. Release for Publication, Sunday, January 19." Third, he
must send out the copies sufficiently far in advance of the release date
to enable all of the papers to arrange for the publication of the
article on that day. For papers with magazine sections that are made up
a week or more before the day of publication, articles should be in the
office of the editor at least two weeks before the release date. For
papers that make up their Sunday issues only a few days in advance,
articles need be submitted only a week before the publication day.
SELLING ARTICLES TO SYNDICATES. The syndicates that supply newspapers
with various kinds of material, including special feature stories, are
operated on the same principle that governs the syndicating of articles
by the writer himself. That is, they furnish their features to a number
of different papers for simultaneous publication. Since, however, they
sell the same material to many papers, they can afford to do so at a
comparatively low price and still make a fair profit. To protect their
literary property, they often copyright their features, and a line of
print announcing this fact is often the only indication in a newspaper
that the matter was furnished by a syndicate. Among the best-known
newspaper syndicates are the Newspaper Enterprise Association,
Cleveland, Ohio; the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, New York; and the
Newspaper Feature Service, New York. A number of large newspapers, like
the _New York Evening Post_, the _Philadelphia Ledger_, and the _New
York Tribune_, syndicate their popular features to papers in other
cities.
A writer may submit his special feature stories to one of the newspaper
syndicates just as he would send it to a newspaper or magazine. These
organizations usually pay well for acceptable manuscripts. It is not as
easy, however, to discover the needs and general policy of each
syndicate as it is those of papers and magazines, because frequently
there is no means of identifying their articles when they are printed in
newspapers.
CHAPTER XI
PHOTOGRAPHS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
VALUE OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The perfecting of photo-engraving processes for
making illustrations has been one of the most important factors in the
development of popular magazines and of magazine sections of newspapers,
for good pictures have contributed largely to their success. With the
advent of the half-tone process a generation ago, and with the more
recent application of the rotogravure process to periodical
publications, comparatively cheap and rapid methods of illustration were
provided. Newspapers and magazines have made extensive use of both these
processes.
The chief value of illustrations for special articles lies in the fact
that they present graphically what would require hundreds of words to
describe. Ideas expressed in pictures can be grasped much more readily
than ideas expressed in words. As an aid to rapid reading illustrations
are unexcelled. In fact, so effective are pictures as a means of
conveying facts that whole sections of magazines and Sunday newspapers
are given over to them exclusively.
Illustrations constitute a particularly valuable adjunct to special
articles. Good reproductions of photographs printed in connection with
the articles assist readers to visualize and to understand what a writer
is undertaking to explain. So fully do editors realize the great
attractiveness of illustrations, that they will buy articles accompanied
by satisfactory photographs more readily than they will those without
illustrations. Excellent photographs will sometimes sell mediocre
articles, and meritorious articles may even be rejected because they
lack good illustrations. In preparing his special feature stories, a
writer will do well to consider carefully the number and character of
the illustrations necessary to give his work the strongest possible
appeal.
SECURING PHOTOGRAPHS. Inexperienced writers are often at a loss to know
how to secure good photographs. Professional photographers will, as a
rule, produce the best results, but amateur writers often hesitate to
incur the expense involved, especially when they feel uncertain about
selling their articles. If prints can be obtained from negatives that
photographers have taken for other purposes, the cost is so small that a
writer can afford to risk the expenditure. Money spent for good
photographs is usually money well spent.
Every writer of special articles should become adept in the use of a
camera. With a little study and practice, any one can take photographs
that will reproduce well for illustrations. One advantage to a writer of
operating his own camera is that he can take pictures on the spur of the
moment when he happens to see just what he needs. Unconventional
pictures caught at the right instant often make the best illustrations.
The charges for developing films and for making prints and enlargements
are now so reasonable that a writer need not master these technicalities
in order to use a camera of his own. If he has time and interest,
however, he may secure the desired results more nearly by developing and
printing his own pictures.
Satisfactory pictures can be obtained with almost any camera, but one
with a high-grade lens and shutter is the best for all kinds of work. A
pocket camera so equipped is very convenient. If a writer can afford to
make a somewhat larger initial investment, he will do well to buy a
camera of the so-called "reflex" type. Despite its greater weight and
bulk, as compared with pocket cameras, it has the advantage of showing
the picture full size, right side up, on the top of the camera, until
the very moment that the button is pressed. These reflex cameras are
equipped with the fastest types of lens and shutter, and thus are
particularly well adapted to poorly lighted and rapidly moving objects.
A tripod should be used whenever possible. A hastily taken snap shot
often proves unsatisfactory, whereas, if the camera had rested on a
tripod, and if a slightly longer exposure had been given, a good
negative would doubtless have resulted.
REQUIREMENTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHS. All photographs intended for reproduction
by the half-tone or the rotogravure process should conform to certain
requirements.
First: The standard size of photographic prints to be used for
illustrations is 5 x 7 inches, but two smaller sizes, 4 x 5 and 3½ x
5½, as well as larger sizes such as 6½ x 8½ and 8 x 10, are
also acceptable. Professional photographers generally make their
negatives for illustrations in the sizes, 5 x 7, 6½ x 8½, and 8 x
10. If a writer uses a pocket camera taking pictures smaller than
post-card size (3½ x 5½), he must have his negatives enlarged to
one of the above standard sizes.
Second: Photographic prints for illustrations should have a glossy
surface; that is, they should be what is known as "gloss prints." Prints
on rough paper seldom reproduce satisfactorily; they usually result in
"muddy" illustrations. Prints may be mounted or unmounted; unmounted
ones cost less and require less postage, but are more easily broken in
handling.
Third: Objects in the photograph should be clear and well defined; this
requires a sharp negative. For newspaper illustrations it is desirable
to have prints with a stronger contrast between the dark and the light
parts of the picture than is necessary for the finer half-tones and
rotogravures used in magazines.
Fourth: Photographs must have life and action. Pictures of inanimate
objects in which neither persons nor animals appear, seem "dead" and
unattractive to the average reader. It is necessary, therefore, to have
at least one person in every photograph. Informal, unconventional
pictures in which the subjects seem to have been "caught" unawares, are
far better than those that appear to have been posed. Good snap-shots of
persons in characteristic surroundings are always preferable to cabinet
photographs. "Action pictures" are what all editors and all readers
want.
Fifth: Pictures must "tell the story"; that is, they should illustrate
the phase of the subject that they are designed to make clear. Unless a
photograph has illustrative value it fails to accomplish the purpose for
which it is intended.
CAPTIONS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS. On the back of a photograph intended for
reproduction the author should write or type a brief explanation of what
it represents. If he is skillful in phrasing this explanation, or
"caption," as it is called, the editor will probably use all or part of
it just as it stands. If his caption is unsatisfactory, the editor will
have to write one based on the writer's explanation. A clever caption
adds much to the attractiveness of an illustration.
A caption should not be a mere label, but, like a photograph, should
have life and action. It either should contain a verb of action or
should imply one. In this and other respects, it is not unlike the
newspaper headline. Instead, for example, of the label title, "A Large
Gold Dredge in Alaska," a photograph was given the caption, "Digs Out a
Fortune Daily." A picture of a young woman feeding chickens in a
backyard poultry run that accompanied an article entitled "Did You Ever
Think of a Meat Garden?" was given the caption "Fresh Eggs and Chicken
Dinners Reward Her Labor." To illustrate an article on the danger of the
pet cat as a carrier of disease germs, a photograph of a child playing
with a cat was used with the caption, "How Epidemics Start." A portrait
of a housewife who uses a number of labor-saving devices in her home
bore the legend, "She is Reducing Housekeeping to a Science." "A Smoking
Chimney is a Bad Sign" was the caption under a photograph of a chimney
pouring out smoke, which was used to illustrate an article on how to
save coal.
Longer captions describing in detail the subject illustrated by the
photograph, are not uncommon; in fact, as more and more pictures are
being used, there is a growing tendency to place a short statement, or
"overline," above the illustration and to add to the amount of
descriptive matter in the caption below it. This is doubtless due to two
causes: the increasing use of illustrations unaccompanied by any text
except the caption, and the effort to attract the casual reader by
giving him a taste, as it were, of what the article contains.
DRAWINGS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS. Diagrams, working drawings, floor plans,
maps, or pen-and-ink sketches are necessary to illustrate some articles.
Articles of practical guidance often need diagrams. Trade papers like to
have their articles illustrated with reproductions of record sheets and
blanks designed to develop greater efficiency in office or store
management. If a writer has a little skill in drawing, he may prepare in
rough form the material that he considers desirable for illustration,
leaving to the artists employed by the publication the work of making
drawings suitable for reproduction. A writer who has had training in
pen-and-ink drawing may prepare his own illustrations. Such drawings
should be made on bristol board with black drawing ink, and should be
drawn two or three times as large as they are intended to appear when
printed. If record sheets are to be used for illustration, the ruling
should be done with black drawing ink, and the figures and other data
should be written in with the same kind of ink. Typewriting on blanks
intended for reproduction should be done with a fresh record black
ribbon. Captions are necessary on the back of drawings as well as on
photographs.
MAILING PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS. It is best to mail flat all
photographs and drawings up to 8 x 10 in size, in the envelope with the
manuscript, protecting them with pieces of stout cardboard. Only very
large photographs or long, narrow panoramic ones should be rolled and
mailed in a heavy cardboard tube, separate from the manuscript. The
writer's name and address, as well as the title of the article to be
illustrated, should be written on the back of every photograph and
drawing.
As photographs and drawings are not ordinarily returned when they are
used with an article that is accepted, writers should not promise to
return such material to the persons from whom they secure it. Copies can
almost always be made from the originals when persons furnishing writers
with photographs and drawings desire to have the originals kept in good
condition.
PART II
AN OUTLINE FOR THE ANALYSIS OF SPECIAL
FEATURE ARTICLES
I. SOURCES OF MATERIAL
1. What appears to have suggested the subject to the writer?
2. How much of the article was based on his personal experience?
3. How much of it was based on his personal observations?
4. Was any of the material obtained from newspapers or periodicals?
5. What portions of the article were evidently obtained by interviews?
6. What reports, documents, technical periodicals, and books of
reference were used as sources in preparing the article?
7. Does the article suggest to you some sources from which you might
obtain material for your own articles?
II. INTEREST AND APPEAL
1. Is there any evidence that the article was timely when it was
published?
2. Is the article of general or of local interest?
3. Does it seem to be particularly well adapted to the readers of
the publication in which it was printed? Why?
4. What, for the average reader, is the source of interest in the
article?
5. Does it have more than one appeal?
6. Is the subject so presented that the average reader is led to
see its application to himself and to his own affairs?
7. Could an article on the same subject, or on a similar one, be
written for a newspaper in your section of the country?
8. What possible subjects does the article suggest to you?
III. PURPOSE
1. Did the writer aim to entertain, to inform, or to give practical
guidance?
2. Does the writer seem to have had a definitely formulated
purpose?
3. How would you state this apparent purpose in one sentence?
4. Is the purpose a worthy one?
5. Did the writer accomplish his purpose?
6. Does the article contain any material that seems unnecessary
to the accomplishment of the purpose?
IV. TYPE OF ARTICLE
1. To which type does this article conform?
2. Is there any other type better adapted to the subject and
material?
3. How far did the character of the subject determine the
methods of treatment?
4. What other methods might have been used to advantage in
presenting this subject?
5. Is the article predominantly narrative, descriptive, or expository?
6. To what extent are narration and description used for expository
purposes?
7. Are concrete examples and specific instances employed
effectively?
8. By what means are the narrative passages made interesting?
9. Do the descriptive parts of the article portray the impressions
vividly?
V. STRUCTURE
1. What main topics are taken up in the article?
2. Could any parts of the article be omitted without serious
loss?
3. Could the parts be rearranged with gain in clearness, interest,
or progress?
4. Does the article march on steadily from beginning to end?
5. Is the material so arranged that the average reader will
reach the conclusion that the writer intended to have him reach?
6. Is there variety in the methods of presentation?
7. Is the length of the article proportionate to the subject?
8. What type of beginning is used?
9. Is the type of beginning well adapted to the subject and the
material?
10. Would the beginning attract the attention and hold the interest
of the average reader?
11. Is the beginning an integral part of the article?
12. Is the length of the beginning proportionate to the length of
the whole article?
13. Is the beginning skillfully connected with the body of the article?
VI. STYLE
1. Is the article easy to read? Why?
2. Is the diction literary or colloquial, specific or general, original
or trite, connotative or denotative?
3. Are figures of speech used effectively?
4. Do the sentences yield their meaning easily when read rapidly?
5. Is there variety in sentence length and structure?
6. Are important ideas placed at the beginning of sentences?
7. Are the paragraphs long or short?
8. Are they well-organized units?
9. Do the paragraphs begin with important ideas?
10. Is there variety in paragraph beginnings?
11. Is the tone well suited to the subject?
12. Do the words, figures of speech, sentences, and paragraphs
in this article suggest to you possible means of improving
your own style?
VII. TITLES AND HEADLINES
1. Is the title attractive, accurate, concise, and concrete?
2. To what type does it conform?
3. What is the character of the sub-title, and what relation
does it bear to the title?
(_Boston Herald_)
TEACH CHILDREN LOVE OF ART THROUGH STORY-TELLING
"----And so," ended the story, "St. George slew the dragon."
A great sigh, long drawn and sibilant, which for the last five minutes
had been swelling 57 little thoraxes, burst out and filled the space of
the lecture hall at the Museum of Fine Arts.
"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!" said 27 little girls.
"Aw-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w, gosh!" said 30 little boys. "Say, Mis' Cronan,
there wasn't no real dragon, was they?" A shock-headed youngster pushed
his way to the platform where Mrs. Mary C. Cronan, professional story
teller, stood smiling and wistfully looked up at her. "They wasn't no
really dragon, was they?"
"'Course they was a dragon! Whadd'ye think the man wanted to paint the
picture for if there wasn't a dragon? Certn'y there was a dragon. I
leave it to Mis' Cronan if there wasn't."
Steering a narrow course between fiction and truth, Mrs. Cronan told her
class that she thought there certainly must have been a dragon or the
picture wouldn't have been painted.
It was at one of the regular morning story hours at the Museum of Fine
Arts, a department opened three years ago at the museum by Mrs. Cronan
and Mrs. Laura Scales, a department which has become so popular that now
hundreds of children a week are entertained, children from the public
playgrounds and from the settlement houses.
On this particular day it was children from the Bickford street
playground under the guidance of two teachers from the Lucretia Crocker
School, Miss Roche and Miss Hayes, who had, in some mysterious manner,
convoyed these 57 atoms to the museum by car without mishap and who
apparently did not dread the necessity of getting them back again,
although to the uninitiated it appeared a task beside which grasping a
comet by the tail was a pleasant afternoon's amusement.
For the most part the story of St. George and the Dragon was a new thing
to these children. They might stand for St. George, although his
costume was a little out of the regular form at Jamaica Plain, but the
Dragon was another thing.
"I don't believe it," insisted an 8-year-old. "I seen every animal in
the Zoo in the park and I don't see any of them things." But the wistful
little boy kept insisting that there must be such an animal or Mrs.
Cronan wouldn't say so.
"That is the way they nearly always take it at first," said Mrs. Cronan.
"Nearly all of these children are here for the first time. Later they
will bring their fathers and mothers on Sunday and you might hear them
explaining the pictures upstairs as if they were the docents of the
museum.
"The object of the story hour is to familiarize the children with as
many as possible of the pictures of the Museum and to get them into the
way of coming here of themselves. When they go away they are given cards
bearing a reproduction of the picture about which the story of the day
has been told, and on these cards is always an invitation to them to
bring their families to the Museum on Saturday and Sunday, when there is
no entrance fee."
The idea of the story hour was broached several years ago and at first
it was taken up as an experiment. Stereopticon slides were made of
several of the more famous pictures in the Museum, and Mrs. Cronan, who
was at the time achieving a well earned success at the Public Library,
was asked to take charge of the story telling. The plan became a success
at once.
Later Mrs. Scales was called in to take afternoon classes, and now more
than 1000 children go to the Museum each week during July and August and
hear stories told entertainingly that fix in their minds the best
pictures of the world. Following the stories they are taken through the
halls of the Museum and are given short talks on some art subject. One
day it may be some interesting thing on Thibetan amulets, or on
tapestries or on some picture, Stuart's Washington or Turner's Slave
Ship, or a colorful canvas of Claude Monet.
It is hoped that the movement may result in greater familiarity with and
love for the Museum, for it is intended by the officials that these
children shall come to love the Museum and to care for the collection
and not to think of it, as many do, as a cold, unresponsive building
containing dark mysteries, or haughty officials, or an atmosphere of
"highbrow" iciness.
"I believe," says Mrs. Cronan, "that our little talks are doing just
this thing. And although some of them, of course, can't get the idea
quite all at once, most of these children will have a soft spot
hereafter for Donatello's St. George."
At least some of them were not forgetting it, for as they filed out the
wistful little boy was still talking about it.
"Ya," he said to the scoffer, "you mightn't a seen him at the Zoo.
That's all right, but you never went over to the 'quarium. Probably they
got one over there. Gee! I wish I could see a dragon. What color are
they?"
But the smallest boy of all, who had hold of Miss Hayes's hand and who
had been an interested listener to all this, branched out mentally into
other and further fields.
"Aw," said he, "I know a feller what's got a ginny pig wit' yeller spots
on 'im and he--" And they all trailed out the door.
* * * * *
(_Christian Science Monitor_)
One illustration, a half-tone reproduction of a photograph showing the
interior of the greenhouse with girls at work.
WHERE GIRLS LEARN TO WIELD SPADE AND HOE
To go to school in a potato patch; to say one's lessons to a farmer; to
study in an orchard and do laboratory work in a greenhouse--this is the
pleasant lot of the modern girl who goes to a school of horticulture
instead of going to college, or perhaps after going to college.
If ever there was a vocation that seemed specially adapted to many
women, gardening would at first glance be the one. From the time of
"Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?"
down to the busy city woman who to-day takes her recreation by digging
in her flowerbeds, gardens have seemed a natural habitat for womankind,
and garden activities have belonged to her by right.
In various parts of the country there have now been established schools
where young women may learn the ways of trees and shrubs, vegetables and
flowers, and may do experimental work among the growing things
themselves. Some of these schools are merely adjuncts of the state
agricultural colleges, with more or less limited courses of
instruction; but, just out of Philadelphia, there is a school, to which
women only are admitted, that is located on a real farm, and covers a
wide range of outdoor study.
One begins to feel the homely charm of the place the moment instructions
are given as to how to reach it.
"Out the old Lime-kiln road," you are told. And out the old Lime-kiln
road you go, until you come to a farm which spells the perfection of
care in every clump of trees and every row of vegetables. Some girls in
broad-brimmed hats are working in the Strawberry bed--if you go in
strawberry time--and farther on a group of women have gathered, with an
overalled instructor, under an apple tree the needs of which are being
studied.
Under some sedate shade trees, you are led to an old Pennsylvania stone
farmhouse--the administration building, if you please. Beyond are the
barns, poultry houses, nurseries and greenhouses, and a cottage which is
used as a dormitory for the girls--as unlike the usual dormitory as the
school is unlike the usual school. A bee colony has its own little white
village near by.
Then the director, a trained woman landscape gardener, tells you all
that this school of horticulture has accomplished since its founding
five years ago.
"Women are naturally fitted for gardening, and for some years past there
have been many calls for women to be teachers in school gardens,
planners of private gardens, or landscape gardeners in institutions for
women. Very few women, however, have had the practical training to
enable them to fill such positions, and five years ago there was little
opportunity for them to obtain such training. At that time a number of
women in and about Philadelphia, who realized the need for thorough
teaching in all the branches of horticulture, not merely in theory but
in practice, organized this school. The course is planned to equip women
with the practical knowledge that will enable them to manage private and
commercial gardens, greenhouses or orchards. Some women wish to learn
how to care for their own well-loved gardens; some young girls study
with the idea of establishing their own greenhouses and raising flowers
as a means of livelihood; still others want to go in for fruit farming,
and even for poultry raising or bee culture.
"In other countries, schools of gardening for women are holding a
recognized place in the educational world. In England, Belgium,
Germany, Italy, Denmark and Russia, such institutions have long passed
the experimental stage; graduates from their schools are managing large
estates or holding responsible positions as directors of public or
private gardens, as managers of commercial greenhouses, or as consulting
horticulturists and lecturers. In this country there is a growing demand
for supervisors of home and school gardens, for work on plantations and
model farms, and for landscape gardeners. Such positions command large
salaries, and the comparatively few women available for them are almost
certain to attain success."
Already one of the graduates has issued a modest brown circular stating
that she is equipped to supply ideas for gardens and personally to plant
them; to expend limited sums of money to the best advantage for beauty
and service; to take entire charge of gardens and orchards for the
season and personally to supervise gardens during the owners' absence;
to spray ornamental trees and shrubs, and prune them; and to care for
indoor plants and window boxes.
"She is making a success of it, too. She has all she can do," comments
one of the women directors, who is standing by.
A smiling strawberry student, who is passing, readily tells all that
going to a garden school means.
"Each one of us has her own small plot of ground for which she is
responsible. We have to plant it, care for it, and be marked on it. We
all have special care of certain parts of the greenhouse, too, and each
has a part of the nursery, the orchard and the vineyard. Even the work
that is too heavy for us we have to study about, so that we can direct
helpers when the time comes. We have to understand every detail of it
all. We have to keep a daily record of our work. This is the way to
learn how long it takes for different seeds to germinate, and thus we
watch the development of the fruits and flowers and vegetables. You see,
the attendance at the school is limited to a small number; so each one
of us receives a great deal of individual attention and help.
"We learn simple carpentry, as part of the course, so that we shall be
able to make window boxes, flats, cold frames and other articles that we
need. We could even make a greenhouse, if we had to. We are taught the
care and raising of poultry, we learn bee culture, and we have a course
in landscape gardening. There is a course in canning and preserving,
too, so that our fruits and berries can be disposed of in that way, if
we should not be able to sell them outright, when we have the gardens
of our own that we are all looking forward to."
In the cozy cottage that serves as a dormitory, there is a large
classroom, where the lectures in botany, entomology, soils and
horticultural chemistry are given. There is a staff of instructors, all
from well-known universities, and a master farmer to impart the
practical everyday process of managing fields and orchards. Special
lectures are given frequently by experts in various subjects. In the
cottage is a big, homelike living-room, where the girls read and sing
and dance in the evening. Each girl takes care of her own bedroom.
The costumes worn by these garden students are durable, appropriate and
most becoming. The school colors are the woodsy ones of brown and green,
and the working garb is carried out in these colors. Brown khaki or
corduroy skirts, eight inches from the ground, with two large pockets,
are worn under soft green smocks smocked in brown. The sweaters are
brown or green, and there is a soft hat for winter and a large shade hat
for summer. Heavy working gloves and boots are provided, and a large
apron with pockets goes with the outfit.
All in all, you feel sure, as you go back down the "old Lime-Kiln road,"
that the motto of the school will be fulfilled in the life of each of
its students: "So enter that daily thou mayst become more thoughtful and
more learned. So depart that daily thou mayst become more useful to
thyself and to all mankind."
* * * * *
(_Boston Transcript_)
BOYS IN SEARCH OF JOBS
BY RAYMOND G. FULLER
One morning lately, if you had stood on Kneeland street in sight of the
entrance of the State Free Employment Office, you would have seen a long
line of boys--a hundred of them--waiting for the doors to open. They
were of all sorts of racial extraction and of ages ranging through most
of the teens. Some you would have called ragamuffins, street urchins,
but some were too well washed, combed and laundered for such a
designation. Some were eagerly waiting, some anxiously, some
indifferently. Some wore sober faces; some were standing soldierly
stiff; but others were bubbling over with the spirits of their age,
gossiping, shouting, indulging in colt-play. When they came out, some
hustled away to prospective employers and others loitered in the street.
Disappointment was written all over some of them, from face to feet; on
others the inscription was, "I don't care."
Two hundred boys applied for "jobs" at the employment office that day.
Half the number were looking for summer positions. Others were of the
vast army of boys who quit school for keeps at the eighth or ninth grade
or thereabouts. Several weeks before school closed the office had more
than enough boy "jobs" to go around. With the coming of vacation time
the ratio was reversed. The boy applicants were a hundred or two hundred
daily. For the two hundred on the day mentioned there were fifty places.
Says Mr. Deady, who has charge of the department for male minors:
"Ranging from fourteen to nineteen years of age, of all nationalities
and beliefs, fresh from the influence of questionable home environment,
boisterous and brimful of animation, without ideas and thoughtless to a
marked degree--this is the picture of the ordinary boy who is in search
of employment. He is without a care and his only thought, if he has one,
is to obtain as high a wage as possible. It is safe to say that of the
thousands of boys who apply annually at the employment office,
two-thirds are between sixteen and eighteen years of age. Before going
further, we can safely say that twenty per cent of the youngest lads
have left school only a few weeks before applying for work.
Approximately sixty per cent have not completed a course in the
elementary grammar schools."
The boy of foreign parentage seems to be more in earnest, more
ambitious, than the American boy (not to quibble over the definition of
the adjective "American"). Walter L. Sears, superintendent of the office
in Kneeland street, tells this story:
An American youngster came in.
"Gotta job?" he asked.
"Yes, here is one"--referring to the card records--"in a printing
office; four dollars a week."
"'Taint enough money. Got anything else?"
"Here's a place in a grocery store--six dollars a week."
"What time d'ye have to get to work in the morning?"
"Seven o'clock."
"Got anything else?"
"Here's something--errand boy--six a week, mornings at eight."
"Saturday afternoons off?"
"Nothing is said about it."
"W-ell-l, maybe I'll drop around and look at it."
American independence!
An Italian boy came in, looking for work. He was told of the printing
office job.
"All right. I'll take it."
For what it is worth, it may be set down that a large proportion of the
boy applicants carefully scrutinize the dollar sign when they talk
wages. Moreover, they are not unacquainted with that phrase concocted by
those higher up, "the high cost of living." The compulsion of the thing,
or the appeal of the phrase--which?
The youthful unemployed, those who seek employment, would cast a
good-sized vote in favor of "shoffer." A youngster comes to Mr. Sears.
He wants to be a "shoffer."
"Why do you want to be a chauffeur?"
"I don't know."
"Haven't you any reasons at all?"
"No, sir."
"Isn't it because you have many times seen the man at the wheel rounding
a corner in an automobile at a 2.40 clip and sailing down the boulevard
at sixty miles an hour?"
The boy's eyes light up with the picture.
"Isn't that it?"
And the boy's eyes light up with discovery.
"Yes, I guess so."
"Well, have you ever seen the chauffeur at night, after being out all
day with the car? Overalls on, sleeves rolled up, face streaming with
perspiration? Repairing the mechanism, polishing the brass? Tired to
death?"
"No, sir."
The boy applicants seldom have any clear idea of the ultimate prospects
in any line of work they may have in mind--as to the salary limit for
the most expert, or the opportunities for promotion and the securing of
an independent position. Many of them have no preconceived idea even of
what they want to do, to say nothing of what they ought to do.
Here is an instance.
"I want a position," says a boy.
"What kind of a position?"
"I don't know."
"Haven't you ever thought about it?"
"No."
"Haven't you ever talked it over at home or at school?"
"No."
"Would you like to be a machinist?"
"I don't know."
"Would you like to be a plumber?"
"I don't know."
Similar questions, with similar answers, continue. Finally:
"Would you like to be a doctor?"
"I don't know--is that a good position?"
Sometimes a boy is accompanied to the office by his father.
"My son is a natural-born electrician," the father boasts.
"What has he done to show that?"
"Why, he's wired the whole house from top to bottom."
It is found by further questions that the lad has installed a push-bell
button at the front door and another at the back door. He had bought dry
batteries, wire and buttons at a hardware store in a box containing full
directions. It is nevertheless hard to convince the father that the boy
may not be a natural-born electrician, after all.
In frequent cases the father has not considered the limitations and
opportunities in the occupation which he chooses for his son.
Mr. Deady has this to say on the subject of the father's relation to the
boy's "job": "The average boy while seeking employment in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred is unaccompanied by either parent. Such a
condition is deplorable. It not only shows a lack of interest in the
boy's welfare on the part of the parents, but also places the youthful
applicant in an unfair position. Oftentimes, owing to inexperience, a
boy accepts a position without inquiring into the details and nature of
the same. His main thought is the amount of the wage to be received.
Consequently there is but one obvious result. The hours are excessive,
the work is beyond the boy's strength or is hazardous, and finally the
lad withdraws without notice. It is this general apathy on the part of
the parents of a boy, combined with over-zealousness on the part of an
ordinary employer to secure boy labor for a mere trifle, that accounts
for the instability of juvenile labor."
The coming of vacation invariably brings a great influx of boys to the
State employment office, some looking for summer work, others for
permanent employment. Most of them show lack of intelligent
constructive thought on the matter in hand. Few of them have had any
counsel, or any valuable counsel from their parents or others. To Mr.
Sears and his assistants--and they have become very proficient at it--is
left the task of vocational guidance, within such limitations as those
of time and equipment. What can be done to get the boy and his sponsors
to thinking intelligently about the question of an occupation for the
boy, with proper regard to their mutual fitness?
Superintendent Sears has some suggestions to offer. In his opinion the
subject of occupational choice should be debated thoroughly in the
public schools. He favors the introduction of some plan embodying this
idea in the upper grades of the grammar school, under conditions that
would give each boy an opportunity to talk, and that would encourage him
to consult his parents and teachers. The debates might be held monthly,
and preparation should be required. Experts or successful men in various
occupations might be called in to address the pupils and furnish
authoritative information. The questions debated should involve the
advisability of learning a trade and the choice of a trade, and the same
considerations with respect to the professions, the mercantile pursuits,
and so on. The pupils should be allowed to vote on the merits of each
question debated. By such a method, thinks Mr. Sears, the boys would
gain the valuable training which debating gives, would devote
considerable thought to the question of their future employment, would
acquire much information, and would get their parents more interested in
the matter than many of them are.
* * * * *
(_New York Evening Post_)
GIRLS AND A CAMP
NOW IT IS THAT MANY COVEYS OF STUDENTS ARE HEADED TOWARD LAKE AND
MOUNTAIN--JUST HOW IT PAYS
With the sudden plunge into a muggy heat, more suggestive of July than
of the rare June weather of poets, there has begun the exodus of summer
camp folk, those men and women who add to the slender salary of the
teaching profession the additional income made by running camps for boys
and girls during the long vacation. They stretch, these camps, in
rapidly extending area from Canada through Maine and northern New
England, into the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies, and then across
toward the Northwest and the Rockies. It is quite safe to assert that
there is not a private school of importance that does not take under its
protection and support at least one such institution, while large
numbers of teachers either own camps or assist in their management as
instructors.
One group, unmistakably the advance guard of a girls' camp, assembled at
the Grand Central Station on Wednesday. There were two alert, dignified
women, evidently the co-principals; a younger woman, who, at least so
the tired suburban shopper decided, was probably the athletic
instructor; two neat colored women, and a small girl of twelve, on
tiptoe with excitement, talking volubly about the fun she would have
when they got to the lake and when all the other girls arrived. Her
excited chatter also revealed the fact that father and mother had just
sailed for Europe, and, while she thought of them with regret, there was
only pleasure in prospect as she started northward. There was much
baggage to be attended to, and consultation over express and freight
bills, with interesting references to tents, canoes, and tennis nets.
Success is an excellent testimonial, and there is no longer any need to
point out the advantages of such camps for boys and girls. They fill a
real place for the delicate, the lazy, or the backward, who must needs
do extra work to keep up with their school grade, for those who
otherwise would be condemned to hotel life, or for the children whose
parents, because of circumstances, are compelled to spend the summer in
cities. Even the most jealously anxious of mothers are among the
converts to the movement. As one said the other day of her only son,
"Yes, David will go to Mr. D.'s camp again this summer. It will be his
third year. I thought the first time that I simply could not part with
him. I pictured him drowned or ill from poor food or severe colds.
Indeed, there wasn't a single terror I didn't imagine. But he enjoyed it
so, and came home so well and happy, that I've never worried since."
From the child's point of view, summer camps are a blessing, and, as
such, they have come to stay. But there are those who doubt their
benefits, even the financial ones, for the teachers, who mortgage their
vacations to conduct them. Unfortunately, as every one knows, almost
every teacher has to mortgage her spare time in one way or another in
order to make a more than bare living. Call the roll of those whom you
may know, and you will be surprised--no, scarcely surprised; merely
interested--to find that nine-tenths of them do some additional work. It
may be extra tutoring, hack writing, translating, the editing of school
texts or the writing of text-books, taking agencies for this, that, or
the other commodity, conducting travel parties, lecturing at educational
institutes, running women's clubs, or organizing nature classes. Some
outside vocation is necessary if the teacher is to enjoy the advantages
her training makes almost imperative, or the comforts her tired, nervous
organism demands. So, as one philosopher was heard to remark, it is
perhaps best to run a summer camp, since in the doing of it there is at
least the advantage of being in the open and of leading a wholesomely
sane existence.
Two good friends and fellow-teachers who have conducted a camp in
northern Maine for the last five years have been extremely frank in
setting forth their experiences for the benefit of those who are
standing on the brink of a similar venture. And their story is worth
while, because from every point of view they have been successful. Any
pessimistic touches in their narrative cannot be laid at the door of
failure. Indeed, in their first year they cleared expenses, and that is
rare; and their clientèle has steadily increased until now they have a
camp of forty or more girls, at the very topmost of camp prices. Again,
as there were two of them and they are both versatile, they have needed
little assistance; the mother of one has been house mother and general
camp counsellor. With all this as optimistic preamble, let us hear their
story.
Perhaps their first doubt arises with regard to the wear and tear of
camp life upon those most directly responsible for its conduct. "For
years we even refused to consider it," said the senior partner,
"although urged by friends and would-be patrons, because we realized the
unwisdom of working the year around and living continuously with school
girls--but the inevitable happened. Our income did not keep pace with
our expenses, and it was start a camp or do something less agreeable.
Just at the psychological moment one of our insistent friends found the
right spot, we concluded negotiations, and, behold, we are camp
proprietors, not altogether sure, in our most uncompromisingly frank
moments, that we have done the best thing."
That a girls' camp is a far more difficult proposition than one for boys
is evident on the face of it. Mother may shed tears over parting with
Johnny, but, after all, he's a boy, and sooner or later must depend
upon himself. But Sister Sue is another matter. Can she trust any one
else to watch over her in the matter of flannels and dry stockings? Do
these well-meaning but spinster teachers know the symptoms of
tonsilitis, the first signs of a bilious attack, or the peculiarities of
a spoiled girl's diet? And will not Sue lose, possibly, some of the
gentle manners and dainty ways inculcated at home, by close contact with
divers other ways and manners? She is inclined to be skeptical, is
mother. "And so," acknowledged the senior partner, "the first summer we
were deluged by visits long and short from anxious ladies who could not
believe on hearsay evidence that we knew how to care for their delicate
daughters. They not only came, but they stayed, and as the nearest hotel
was distant many devious miles of mountain road, we were forced to put
them up; finally the maids had to sleep in the old barn, and we were
camping on cots in the hall of the farmhouse which is our headquarters.
Naturally we had to be polite, for we were under the necessity of making
a good impression that first year, but it was most distracting, for
while they stayed they were unconsciously but selfishly demanding a
little more than a fair share of time and attention for their
daughters."
And, indeed, all this maternal anxiety is not entirely misplaced. Sue is
a good deal harder to take care of than Johnny. She needs a few more
comforts, although camp life aims at eliminating all but the essentials
of simple living. Her clothes, even at a minimum, are more elaborate,
which increases the difficulty of laundering, always a problem in
camping. She is infinitely more dependent upon her elders for direction
in the veriest A B C's of daily existence. "Even the matter of tying a
hair-ribbon or cleaning a pair of white canvas shoes is a mountain to a
good many of my girls," said the successful camp counsellor.
Homesickness is "a malady most incident to maids." Boys may suffer from
it, but they suffer alone. If tears are shed they are shed in secret,
lest the other fellows find it out. Except in the case of the very
little chaps, the masters are not disturbed. But girls have no such
reserves; and the teachers in charge of twenty-five strange girls, many
in the throes of this really distressing ailment, are not to be envied.
"Frankly speaking," went on the confession, "there isn't a moment of the
day when we can dismiss them from our thoughts. Are they swimming in
charge of the director of athletics, a most capable girl, one of us must
be there, too, because, should anything happen, we, and not she, are
directly responsible. When the lesson hour is on, we not only teach,
but must see that each girl's work is adapted to her needs, as they come
from a dozen different schools. There are disputes to settle, plans for
outings and entertainments to be made, games to direct, letters to the
home folks to be superintended, or half the girls would never write at
all, to say nothing of the marketing and housekeeping, and our own
business correspondence, that has to be tucked into the siesta hour
after luncheon. Indeed, in the nine weeks of camp last summer I never
once had an hour that I could call my very own."
"And that is only the day's anxiety," sighed her colleague reflectively.
"My specialty is prowling about at night to see that everybody is
properly covered. Not a girl among them would have sense enough to get
up and close windows in case of rain, so I sleep with one ear pricked
for the first patter on the roof. Occasionally there are two or three
who walk in their sleep, and I'm on pins and needles lest harm come to
them, so I make my rounds to see that they're safe. Oh, it is a
peacefully placid existence, I assure you, having charge of forty
darling daughters. Some of them have done nothing for themselves in
their entire lives, and what a splendid place camp is for such girls.
But while they're learning we must be looking out for their sins of
omission, such, for instance, as throwing a soaking wet bathing suit
upon a bed instead of hanging it upon the line."
These are some of the few worries that attach to the care of sensitive
and delicately brought up girls that the boys' camp never knows. But if
the financial return is adequate there will naturally be some
compensation for all these pinpricks. Here again the Senior Partner is
inclined to hem and haw. "Given a popular head of camp," says she, "who
has been fortunate enough to secure a desirable site and a paying
clientèle, and she will certainly not lose money. Her summer will be
paid for. However, that is not enough to reward her for the additional
work and worry. Camp work does not confine itself to the nine weeks of
residence. There are the hours and days spent in planning and purchasing
equipment, the getting out of circulars, the correspondence entailed and
the subsequent keeping in touch with patrons."
Her own venture has so far paid its own way, and after the first year
has left a neat margin of profit. But this profit, because of expansion,
has immediately been invested in new equipment. This year, for example,
there has been erected a bungalow for general living purposes. A dozen
new tents and four canoes were bought, and two dirt tennis courts made.
Then each year there must be a general replenishing of dishes, table and
bed linen, athletic goods, and furniture. The garden has been so
enlarged that the semi-occasional man-of-all-work has been replaced by a
permanent gardener.
Naturally, such extension does mean ultimate profit, and, given a few
more years of continued prosperity, the summer will yield a goodly
additional income. But the teacher who undertakes a camp with the idea
that such money is easily made, is mistaken. One successful woman has
cleared large sums, so large, indeed, that she has about decided to
sever her direct connection with the private school where she has taught
for years, and trust to her camp for a living. She has been so
fortunate, it is but fair to explain, because her camp is upon a
government reserve tract in Canada, and she has had to make no large
investment in land; nor does she pay taxes. Desirable locations are
harder to find nowadays and much more expensive to purchase. A fortunate
pioneer in the movement bought seven acres, with five hundred feet of
lake frontage, for three hundred dollars six years ago. That same land
is worth ten times as much to-day.
And the kind of woman who should attempt the summer camp for girls as a
means of additional income? First of all, the one who really loves
outdoor life, who can find in woods and water compensation for the wear
and tear of summering with schoolgirls. Again, she who can minimize the
petty worries of existence to the vanishing point. And, last of all, she
who has business acumen. For what does it profit a tired teacher if she
fill her camp list and have no margin of profit for her weeks of hard
labor?
* * * * *
_(Saturday Evening Post)_
Two half-tone reproductions of wash-drawings by a staff artist.
YOUR PORTER
BY EDWARD HUNGERFORD
He stands there at the door of his car, dusky, grinning,
immaculate--awaiting your pleasure. He steps forward as you near him
and, with a quick, intuitive movement born of long experience and
careful training, inquires:
"What space you got, guv'nor?"
"Lower five," you reply. "Are you full-up, George?"
"Jus' toler'bul, guv'nor."
He has your grips, is already slipping down the aisle toward section
five. And, after he has stowed the big one under the facing bench and
placed the smaller one by your side, he asks again:
"Shake out a pillow for you, guv'nor?"
That "guv'nor," though not a part of his official training, is a part of
his unofficial--his subtlety, if you please. Another passenger might be
the "kunnel"; still another, the "jedge." But there can be no other
guv'nor save you on this car and trip. And George, of the Pullmans, is
going to watch over you this night as a mother hen might watch over her
solitary chick. The car is well filled and he is going to have a hard
night of it; but he is going to take good care of you. He tells you so;
and, before you are off the car, you are going to have good reason to
believe it.
Before we consider the sable-skinned George of to-day, give a passing
thought to the Pullman itself. The first George of the Pullmans--George
M. Pullman--was a shrewd-headed carpenter who migrated from a western
New York village out into Illinois more than half a century ago and gave
birth to the idea of railroad luxury at half a cent a mile. There had
been sleeping cars before Pullman built the Pioneer, as he called his
maiden effort. There was a night car, equipped with rough bunks for the
comfort of passengers, on the Cumberland Valley Railroad along about
1840.
Other early railroads had made similar experiments, but they were all
makeshifts and crude. Pullman set out to build a sleeping car that would
combine a degree of comfort with a degree of luxury. The Pioneer, viewed
in the eyes of 1864, was really a luxurious car. It was as wide as the
sleeping car of to-day and nearly as high; in fact, so high and so wide
was it that there were no railroads on which it might run, and when
Pullman pleaded with the old-time railroad officers to widen the
clearances, so as to permit the Pioneer to run over their lines, they
laughed at him.
"It is ridiculous, Mr. Pullman," they told him smilingly in refusal.
"People are never going to pay their good money to ride in any such
fancy contraption as that car of yours."
Then suddenly they ceased smiling. All America ceased smiling. Morse's
telegraph was sobering an exultant land by telling how its great
magistrate lay dead within the White House, at Washington. And men were
demanding a funeral car, dignified and handsome enough to carry the body
of Abraham Lincoln from Washington to Springfield. Suddenly somebody
thought of the Pioneer, which rested, a virtual prisoner, in a railroad
yard not far from Chicago.
The Pioneer was quickly released. There was no hesitation now about
making clearances for her. Almost in the passing of a night, station
platforms and other obstructions were being cut away, and the first of
all the Pullman cars made a triumphant though melancholy journey to New
York, to Washington, and back again to Illinois. Abraham Lincoln, in the
hour of death--fifty years ago this blossoming spring of 1915--had given
birth to the Pullman idea. The other day, while one of the brisk Federal
commissions down at Washington was extending consideration to the
Pullman porter and his wage, it called to the witness stand the
executive head of the Pullman Company. And the man who answered the call
was Robert T. Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln.
When Pullman built the Pioneer he designated it A, little dreaming that
eventually he might build enough cars to exhaust the letters of the
alphabet. To-day the Pullman Company has more than six thousand cars in
constant use. It operates the entire sleeping-car service and by far the
larger part of the parlor-car service on all but half a dozen of the
railroads of the United States and Canada, with a goodly sprinkling of
routes south into Mexico. On an average night sixty thousand persons--a
community equal in size to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or South Bend,
Indiana--sleep within its cars.
And one of the chief excuses for its existence is the flexibility of its
service. A railroad in the South, with a large passenger traffic in the
winter, or a railroad in the North, with conditions reversed and travel
running at high tide throughout the hot summer months, could hardly
afford to place the investment in sleeping and parlor cars to meet its
high-tide needs, and have those cars grow rusty throughout the long,
dull months. The Pullman Company, by moving its extra cars backward and
forward over the face of the land in regiments and in battalions, keeps
them all earning money. It meets unusual traffic demands with all the
resources of its great fleet of traveling hotels.
Last summer, when the Knights Templars held their convention in Denver,
it sent four hundred and fifty extra cars out to the capital of
Colorado. And this year it is bending its resources toward finding
sufficient cars to meet the demands for the long overland trek to the
expositions on the Pacific Coast.
The transition from the Pioneer to the steel sleeping car of today
was not accomplished in a single step. A man does not have to be so
very old or so very much traveled to recall the day when the Pullman
was called a palace ear and did its enterprising best to justify that
title. It was almost an apotheosis of architectural bad taste. Disfigured
by all manner of moldings, cornices, grilles and dinky plush
curtains--head-bumping, dust-catching, useless--it was a decorative
orgy, as well as one of the very foundations of the newspaper school of
humor.
Suddenly the Pullman Company awoke to the absurdity of it all. More than
ten years ago it came to the decision that architecture was all right in
its way, but that it was not a fundamental part of car building. It
separated the two. It began to throw out the grilles and the other
knickknacks, even before it had committed itself definitely to the use
of the steel car.
Recently it has done much more. It has banished all but the very
simplest of the moldings, and all the hangings save those that are
absolutely necessary to the operation of the car. It has studied and it
has experimented until it has produced in the sleeping car of to-day
what is probably the most efficient railroad vehicle in the world. Our
foreign cousins scoff at it and call it immodest; but we may reserve our
own opinion as to the relative modesty of some of their institutions.
* * * * *
This, however, is not the story of the Pullman car. It is the story of
that ebony autocrat who presides so genially and yet so firmly over it.
It is the story of George the porter--the six thousand Georges standing
to-night to greet you and the other traveling folk at the doors of the
waiting cars. And George is worthy of a passing thought. He was born in
the day when the negro servant was the pride of America--when the black
man stood at your elbow in the dining rooms of the greatest of our
hotels; when a colored butler was the joy of the finest of the homes
along Fifth Avenue or round Rittenhouse Square. Transplanted, he quickly
became an American institution. And there is many a man who avers that
never elsewhere has there been such a servant as a good negro servant.
Fashions change, and in the transplanting of other social ideas the
black man has been shoved aside. It is only in the Pullman service that
he retains his old-time pride and prestige. That company to-day might
almost be fairly called his salvation, despite the vexing questions of
the wages and tips of the sleeping-car porters that have recently come
to the fore. Yet it is almost equally true that the black man has been
the salvation of the sleeping-car service. Experiments have been made in
using others. One or two of the Canadian roads, which operate their own
sleeping cars, have placed white men as porters; down in the Southwest
the inevitable Mexicano has been placed in the familiar blue uniform.
None of them has been satisfactory; and, indeed, it is not every negro
who is capable of taking charge of a sleeping car.
The Pullman Company passes by the West Indians--the type so familiar to
every man who has ridden many times in the elevators of the apartment
houses of upper New York. It prefers to recruit its porters from certain
of the states of the Old South--Georgia and the Carolinas. It almost
limits its choice to certain counties within those states. It shows a
decided preference for the sons of its employees; in fact, it might
almost be said that to-day there are black boys growing up down there in
the cotton country who have come into the world with the hope and
expectation of being made Pullman car porters. The company that operates
those cars prefers to discriminate--and it does discriminate.
That is its first step toward service--the careful selection of the
human factor. The next step lies in the proper training of that factor;
and as soon as a young man enters the service of the Pullmans he goes to
school--in some one of the large railroad centers that act as hubs for
that system. Sometimes the school is held in one of the division
offices, but more often it goes forward in the familiar aisle of a
sleeping car, sidetracked for the purpose.
Its curriculum is unusual but it is valuable. One moment it considers
the best methods to "swat the fly"--to drive him from the vehicle in
which he is an unwelcome passenger; the next moment the class is being
shown the proper handling of the linen closet, the proper methods of
folding and putting away clean linen and blankets, the correct way of
stacking in the laundry bags the dirty and discarded bedding. The porter
is taught that a sheet once unfolded cannot be used again. Though it may
be really spotless, yet technically it is dirty; and it must make a
round trip to the laundry before it can reenter the service.
All these things are taught the sophomore porters by a wrinkled veteran
of the service; and they are minutely prescribed in the voluminous rule
book issued by the Pullman Company, which believes that the first
foundation of service is discipline. So the school and the rule book do
not hesitate at details. They teach the immature porter not merely the
routine of making up and taking down beds, and the proper maintenance of
the car, but they go into such finer things as the calling of a
passenger, for instance. Noise is tabooed, and so even a soft knocking
on the top of the berth is forbidden. The porter must gently shake the
curtains or the bedding from without.
When the would-be porter is through in this schoolroom his education
goes forward out on the line. Under the direction of one of the grizzled
autocrats he first comes in contact with actual patrons--comes to know
their personalities and their peculiarities. Also, he comes to know the
full meaning of that overused and abused word--service. After all, here
is the full measure of the job. He is a servant. He must realize that.
And as a servant he must perfect himself. He must rise to the countless
opportunities that will come to him each night he is on the run. He must
do better--he must anticipate them.
Take such a man as Eugene Roundtree, who has been running a smoking car
on one of the limited trains between New York and Boston for two
decades--save for that brief transcendent hour when Charles S. Mellen
saw himself destined to become transportation overlord of New England
and appropriated Roundtree for a personal servant and porter of his
private car. Roundtree is a negro of the very finest type. He is a man
who commands respect and dignity--and receives it. And Roundtree, as
porter of the Pullman smoker on the Merchants' Limited, has learned to
anticipate.
He knows at least five hundred of the big bankers and business men of
both New York and Boston--though he knows the Boston crowd best. He
knows the men who belong to the Somerset and the Algonquin Clubs--the
men who are Boston enough to pronounce Peabody "Pebbuddy." And they know
him. Some of them have a habit of dropping in at the New Haven ticket
offices and demanding: "Is Eugene running up on the Merchants'
to-night?"
"It isn't just knowing them and being able to call them by their names,"
he will tell you if you can catch him in one of his rarely idle moments.
"I've got to remember what they smoke and what they drink. When Mr.
Blank tells me he wants a cigar it's my job to remember what he smokes
and to put it before him. I don't ask him what he wants. I anticipate."
And by anticipating Roundtree approaches a sort of _n_th degree of
service and receives one of the "fattest" of all the Pullman runs.
George Sylvester is another man of the Roundtree type--only his run
trends to the west from New York instead of to the east, which means
that he has a somewhat different type of patron with which to deal.
Sylvester is a porter on the Twentieth Century Limited; and, like
Roundtree, he is a colored man of far more than ordinary force and
character. He had opportunity to show both on a winter night, when his
train was stopped and a drunken man--a man who was making life hideous
for other passengers on Sylvester's car--was taken from the train. The
fact that the man was a powerful politician, a man who raved the direst
threats when arrested, made the porter's job the more difficult.
The Pullman Company, in this instance alone, had good cause to remember
Sylvester's force and courage--and consummate tact--just as it has good
cause in many such episodes to be thankful for the cool-headedness of
its black man in a blue uniform who stands in immediate control of its
property.
Sylvester prefers to forget that episode. He likes to think of the nice
part of the Century's runs--the passengers who are quiet, and kind, and
thoughtful, and remembering. They are a sort whom it is a pleasure for a
porter to serve. They are the people who make an excess-fare train a
"fat run." There are other fat runs, of course: the Overland, the
Olympian, the Congressional--and of General Henry Forrest, of the
Congressional, more in a moment--fat trains that follow the route of the
Century.
It was on one of these, coming east from Cleveland on a snowy night in
February last, that a resourceful porter had full use for his store of
tact; for there is, in the community that has begun to stamp Sixth City
on its shirts and its shoe tabs, a bank president who--to put the matter
lightly--is a particular traveler. More than one black man, rising high
in porter service, has had his vanity come to grief when this crotchety
personage has come on his car.
And the man himself was one of those who are marked up and down the
Pullman trails. An unwritten code was being transmitted between the
black brethren of the sleeping cars as to his whims and peculiarities.
It was well that every brother in service in the Cleveland district
should know the code. When Mr. X entered his drawing-room--he never
rides elsewhere in the car--shades were to be drawn, a pillow beaten and
ready by the window, and matches on the window sill. X would never ask
for these things; but God help the poor porter who forgot them!
So you yourself can imagine the emotions of Whittlesey Warren, porter of
the car Thanatopsis, bound east on Number Six on the snowy February
night when X came through the portals of that scarabic antique, the
Union Depot at Cleveland, a redcap with his grips in the wake. Warren
recognized his man. The code took good care as to that. He followed the
banker down the aisle, tucked away the bags, pulled down the shades,
fixed the pillow and placed the matches on the window sill.
The banker merely grunted approval, lighted a big black cigar and went
into the smoker, while Warren gave some passing attention to the other
patrons of his car. It was passing attention at the best; for after a
time the little bell annunciator began to sing merrily and persistently
at him--and invariably its commanding needle pointed to D.R. And on the
drawing-room Whittlesey Warren danced a constant attention.
"Here, you nigger!" X shouted at the first response. "How many times
have I got to tell all of you to put the head of my bed toward the
engine?"
Whittlesey Warren looked at the bed. He knew the make-up of the train.
The code had been met. The banker's pillows were toward the locomotive.
But his job was not to argue and dispute. He merely said:
"Yas-suh. Scuse me!" And he remade the bed while X lit a stogy and went
back to the smoker.
That was at Erie--Erie, and the snow was falling more briskly than at
Cleveland. Slowing into Dunkirk, the banker returned and glanced through
the car window. He could see by the snow against the street lamps that
the train was apparently running in the opposite direction. His chubby
finger went against the push button. Whittlesey Warren appeared at the
door. The language that followed cannot be reproduced in THE SATURDAY
EVENING POST. Suffice it to say that the porter remembered who he was
and what he was, and merely remade the bed.
The banker bit off the end of another cigar and retired once again to
the club car. When he returned, the train was backing into the Buffalo
station. At that unfortunate moment he raised his car shade--and Porter
Whittlesey Warren again reversed the bed, to the accompaniment of the
most violent abuse that had ever been heaped on his defenseless head.
Yet not once did he complain--he remembered that a servant a servant
always is. And in the morning X must have remembered; for a folded bill
went into Warren's palm--a bill of a denomination large enough to buy
that fancy vest which hung in a haberdasher's shop over on San Juan
Hill.
If you have been asking yourself all this while just what a fat run is,
here is your answer: Tips; a fine train filled with fine ladies and fine
gentlemen, not all of them so cranky as X, of Cleveland--thank heaven
for that!--though a good many of them have their peculiarities and are
willing to pay generously for the privilege of indulging those
peculiarities.
Despite the rigid discipline of the Pullman Company the porter's leeway
is a very considerable one. His instructions are never to say "Against
the rules!" but rather "I do not know what can be done about it"--and
then to make a quick reference to the Pullman conductor, who is his
arbiter and his court of last resort. His own initiative, however, is
not small.
Two newspaper men in New York know that. They had gone over to Boston
for a week-end, had separated momentarily at its end, to meet at the
last of the afternoon trains for Gotham. A had the joint finances and
tickets for the trip; but B, hurrying through the traffic tangle of
South Station, just ninety seconds before the moment of departure, knew
that he would find him already in the big Pullman observation car. He
was not asked to show his ticket at the train gate. Boston, with the
fine spirit of the Tea Party still flowing in its blue veins, has always
resented that as a sort of railroad impertinence.
B did not find A. He did not really search for him until Back Bay was
passed and the train was on the first leg of its journey, with the next
stop at Providence. Then it was that A was not to be found. Then B
realized that his side partner had missed the train. He dropped into a
corner and searched his own pockets. A battered quarter and three
pennies came to view--and the fare from Boston to Providence is ninety
cents!
Then it was that the initiative of a well-trained Pullman porter came
into play. He had stood over the distressed B while he was making an
inventory of his resources.
"Done los' something, boss?" said the autocrat of the car.
B told the black man his story in a quick, straightforward manner; and
the black man looked into his eyes. B returned the glance. Perhaps he
saw in that honest ebony face something of the expression of the
faithful servants of wartime who refused to leave their masters even
after utter ruin had come upon them. The porter drew forth a fat roll of
bills.
"Ah guess dat, ef you-all'll give meh yo' business cyard, Ah'll be able
to fee-nance yo' trip dis time."
To initiative the black man was adding intuition. He had studied his
man. He was forever using his countless opportunities to study men. It
was not so much of a gamble as one might suppose.
A pretty well-known editor was saved from a mighty embarrassing time;
and some other people have been saved from similarly embarrassing
situations through the intuition and the resources of the Pullman
porter. The conductor--both of the train and of the sleeping-car
service--is not permitted to exercise such initiative or intuition; but
the porter can do and frequently does things of this very sort. His
recompense for them, however, is hardly to be classed as a tip.
The tip is the nub of the whole situation. Almost since the very day
when the Pioneer began to blaze the trail of luxury over the railroads
of the land, and the autocrat of the Pullman car created his servile but
entirely honorable calling, it has been a mooted point. Recently a great
Federal commission has blazed the strong light of publicity on it.
Robert T. Lincoln, son of the Emancipator, and, as we have already said,
the head and front of the Pullman Company, sat in a witness chair at
Washington and answered some pretty pointed questions as to the division
of the porter's income between the company and the passenger who
employed him. Wages, it appeared, are twenty-seven dollars and a half a
month for the first fifteen years of the porter's service, increasing
thereafter to thirty dollars a month, slightly augmented by bonuses for
good records.
The porter also receives his uniforms free after ten years of service,
and in some cases of long service his pay may reach forty-two dollars a
month. The rest of his income is in the form of tips. And Mr. Lincoln
testified that during the past year the total of these tips, to the best
knowledge and belief of his company, had exceeded two million three
hundred thousand dollars.
The Pullman Company is not an eleemosynary institution. Though it has
made distinct advances in the establishment of pension funds and death
benefits, it is hardly to be classed as a philanthropy. It is a large
organization; and it generally is what it chooses to consider itself.
Sometimes it avers that it is a transportation company, at other times
it prefers to regard itself as a hotel organization; but at all times it
is a business proposition. It is not in business for its health. Its
dividend record is proof of that. All of which is a preface to the
statement that the Pullman Company, like any other large user of labor,
regulates its wage scale by supply and demand. If it can find enough of
the colored brethren competent and willing and anxious to man its cars
at twenty-seven dollars and a half a month--with the fair gamble of two
or three or four times that amount to come in the form of tips--it is
hardly apt to pay more.
No wonder, then, the tip forms the nub of the situation. To-day all
America tips. You tip the chauffeur in the taxi, the redcap in the
station, the barber, the bootblack, the manicure, the boy or girl who
holds your coat for you in the barber's shop or hotel. In the modern
hotel tipping becomes a vast and complex thing--waiters, doormen, hat
boys, chambermaids, bell boys, porters--the list seems almost unending.
The system may be abominable, but it has certainly fastened itself on
us--sternly and securely. And it may be said for the Pullman car that
there, at least, the tip comes to a single servitor--the black autocrat
who smiles genially no matter how suspiciously he may, at heart, view
the quarter you have placed within his palm.
A quarter seems to be the standard Pullman tip--for one person, each
night he may be on the car. Some men give more; some men--alas for poor
George!--less. A quarter is not only average but fairly standard. It is
given a certain official status by the auditing officers of many large
railroads and industrial corporations, who recognize it as a chargeable
item in the expense accounts of their men on the road.
A man with a fat run--lower berths all occupied, with at least a
smattering of riders in the uppers, night after night--ought to be able
easily to put aside a hundred and fifty dollars a month as his income
from this item. There are hundreds of porters who are doing this very
thing; and there are at least dozens of porters who own real estate,
automobiles, and other such material evidences of prosperity.
A tip is not necessarily a humiliation, either to the giver or to the
taker. On the contrary, it is a token of meritorious service. And the
smart porter is going to take good care that he gives such service. But
how about the porter who is not so smart--the man who has the lean run?
As every butcher and every transportation man knows, there is lean with
the fat. And it does the lean man little good to know that his fat
brother is preparing to buy a secondhand automobile. On the contrary, it
creates an anarchist--or at least a socialist--down under that black
skin.
Here is Lemuel--cursed with a lean run and yet trying to maintain at
least an appearance of geniality. Lemuel runs on a "differential"
between New York, Chicago and St. Louis. Every passenger-traffic man
knows that most of the differentials--as the roads that take longer
hours, and so are permitted to charge a slightly lower through fare
between those cities, are called--have had a hard time of it in recent
years. It is the excess-fare trains, the highest-priced carriers--which
charge you a premium of a dollar for every hour they save in placing you
in the terminal--that are the crowded trains. And the differentials have
had increasing difficulty getting through passengers.
It seems that in this day and land a man who goes from New York to
Chicago or St. Louis is generally so well paid as to make it worth
dollars to him to save hours in the journey. It is modern efficiency
showing itself in railroad-passenger travel. But the differentials,
having local territory to serve, as well as on account of some other
reasons, must maintain a sleeping-car service--even at a loss. There is
little or no loss to the Pullman Company--you may be sure of that! The
railroad pays it a mileage fee for hauling a half or three-quarter empty
car over its own line--in addition to permitting the Pullman system to
take all the revenue from the car; but Lemuel sees his end of the
business as a dead loss.
He leaves New York at two-thirty o'clock on Monday afternoon, having
reported at his car nearly three hours before so as to make sure that it
is properly stocked and cleaned for its long trip. He is due at St.
Louis at ten-fifteen on Tuesday evening--though it will be nearly two
hours later before he has checked the contents of the car and slipped
off to the bunking quarters maintained there by his company.
On Wednesday evening at seven o'clock he starts east and is due in New
York about dawn on Friday morning. He cleans up his car and himself, and
gets to his little home on the West Side of Manhattan Island sometime
before noon; but by noon on Saturday he must be back at his car, making
sure that it is fit and ready by two-thirty o'clock--the moment the
conductor's arm falls--and they are headed west again.
This time the destination is Chicago, which is not reached until about
six o'clock Sunday night. He bunks that night in the Windy City and then
spends thirty-two hours going back again to New York. He sees his home
one more night; then he is off to St. Louis again--started on a fresh
round of his eternal schedule.
Talk of tips to Lemuel! His face lengthens. You may not believe it,
white man, but Lemuel made fifty-three cents in tips on the last trip
from New York to Chicago. You can understand the man who gave him the
Columbian antique; but Lemuel believes there can be no future too warm
for that skinny man who gave him the three pennies! He thinks the
gentleman might at least have come across with a Subway ticket. It is
all legal tender to him.
All that saves this porter's bacon is the fact that he is in charge of
the car--for some three hundred miles of its eastbound run he is acting
as sleeping-car conductor, for which consolidated job he draws down a
proportionate share of forty-two dollars a month. This is a small sop,
however, to Lemuel. He turns and tells you how, on the last trip, he
came all the way from St. Louis to New York--two nights on the
road--without ever a "make-down," as he calls preparing a berth. No
wonder then that he has difficulty in making fifty dollars a month, with
his miserable tips on the lean run.
Nor is that all. Though Lemuel is permitted three hours' sleep--on the
bunk in the washroom on the long runs--from midnight to three o'clock in
the morning, there may come other times when his head begins to nod. And
those are sure to be the times when some lynx-eyed inspector comes
slipping aboard. Biff! Bang! Pullman discipline is strict. Something has
happened to Lemuel's pay envelope, and his coffee-colored wife in West
Twenty-ninth Street will not be able to get those gray spats until they
are clean gone out of style.
What can be done for Lemuel? He must bide his time and constantly make
himself a better servant--a better porter, if you please. It will not go
unnoticed. The Pullman system has a method for noticing those very
things--inconsequential in themselves but all going to raise the
standard of its service.
Then some fine day something will happen. A big sleeping-car autocrat,
in the smugness and false security of a fat run, is going to err. He is
going to step on the feet of some important citizen--perhaps a railroad
director--and the important citizen is going to make a fuss. After which
Lemuel, hard-schooled in adversity, in faithfulness and in courtesy,
will be asked in the passing of a night to change places with the old
autocrat.
And the old autocrat, riding in the poverty of a lean run, will have
plenty of opportunity to count the telegraph poles and reflect on the
mutability of men and things. The Pullman Company denies that this is
part of its system; but it does happen--time and time and time again.
George, or Lemuel, or Alexander--whatever the name may be--has no easy
job. If you do not believe that, go upstairs some hot summer night to
the rear bedroom--that little room under the blazing tin roof which you
reserve for your relatives--and make up the bed fifteen or twenty times,
carefully unmaking it between times and placing the clothes away in a
regular position. Let your family nag at you and criticize you during
each moment of the job--while somebody plays an obbligato on the
electric bell and places shoes and leather grips underneath your feet.
Imagine the house is bumping and rocking--and keep a smiling face and a
courteous tongue throughout all of it!
Or do this on a bitter night in midwinter; and between every two or
three makings of the bed in the overheated room slip out of a linen coat
and into a fairly thin serge one and go and stand outside the door from
three to ten minutes in the snow and cold. In some ways this is one of
the hardest parts of George's job. Racially the negro is peculiarly
sensitive to pneumonia and other pulmonary diseases; yet the rules of a
porter's job require that at stopping stations he must be outside of the
car--no matter what the hour or condition of the climate--smiling and
ready to say:
"What space you got, guv'nor?"
However, the porter's job, like nearly every other job, has its glories
as well as its hardships--triumphs that can be told and retold for many
a day to fascinated colored audiences; because there are special
trains--filled with pursy and prosperous bankers from Hartford and
Rochester and Terre Haute--making the trip from coast to coast and back
again, and never forgetting the porter at the last hour of the last day.
There are many men in the Pullman service like Roger Pryor, who has
ridden with every recent President of the land and enjoyed his
confidence and respect. And then there is General Henry Forrest, of the
Congressional Limited, for twenty-four years in charge of one of its
broiler cars, who stops not at Presidents but enjoys the acquaintance
of senators and ambassadors almost without number.
The General comes to know these dignitaries by their feet. When he is
standing at the door of his train under the Pennsylvania Terminal, in
New York, he recognizes the feet as they come poking down the long
stairs from the concourse. And he can make his smile senatorial or
ambassadorial--a long time in advance.
Once Forrest journeyed in a private car to San Francisco, caring for a
Certain Big Man. He took good care of the Certain Big Man--that was part
of his job. He took extra good care of the Certain Big Man--that was his
opportunity. And when the Certain Big Man reached the Golden Gate he
told Henry Forrest that he had understood and appreciated the countless
attentions. The black face of the porter wrinkled into smiles. He dared
to venture an observation.
"Ah thank you, Jedge!" said he. "An' ef it wouldn't be trespassin' Ah'd
lak to say dat when yo' comes home you's gwine to be President of dese
United States."
The Certain Big Man shook his head negatively; but he was flattered
nevertheless. He leaned over and spoke to Henry Forrest.
"If ever I am President," said he, "I will make you a general."
And so it came to pass that on the blizzardy Dakota-made day when
William Howard Taft was inaugurated President of these United States
there was a parade--a parade in which many men rode in panoply and
pride; but none was prouder there than he who, mounted on a magnificent
bay horse, headed the Philippine Band.
A promise was being kept. The bay horse started three times to bolt from
the line of march, and this was probably because its rider was better
used to the Pompeian-red broiler car than to a Pompeian-red bay mare.
But these were mere trifles. Despite them--partly because of them
perhaps--the younger brethren at the terminals were no longer to address
the veteran from the Congressional merely as Mr. Forrest. He was General
Forrest now--a title he bears proudly and which he will carry with him
all the long years of his life.
What becomes of the older porters?
Sometimes, when the rush of the fast trains, the broken nights, the
exposure and the hard, hard work begin to be too much for even sturdy
Afric frames, they go to the "super" and beg for the "sick man's run"--a
leisurely sixty or a hundred miles a day on a parlor car, perhaps on a
side line where travel is light and the parlor car is a sort of
sentimental frippery; probably one of the old wooden cars: the Alicia,
or the Lucille, or the Celeste, still vain in bay windows and grilles,
and abundant in carvings. For a sentimental frippery may be given a
feminine name and may bear her years gracefully--even though she does
creak in all her hundred joints when the track is the least bit uneven.
As to the sick man's tips, the gratuity is no less a matter of keen
interest and doubt at sixty than it is at twenty-six. And though there
is a smile under that clean mat of kinky white hair, it is not all
habit--some of it is still anticipation. But quarters and half dollars
do not come so easily to the old man in the parlor car as to his younger
brother on the sleepers, or those elect who have the smokers on the fat
runs. To the old men come dimes instead--some of them miserable affairs
bearing on their worn faces the faint presentments of the ruler on the
north side of Lake Erie and hardly redeemable in Baltimore or
Cincinnati. Yet even these are hardly to be scorned--when one is sixty.
After the sick man's job? Perhaps a sandy farm on a Carolina
hillside, where an old man may sit and nod in the warm sun, and dream
of the days when steel cars were new--perhaps of the days when the
platform-vestibule first went bounding over the rails--may dream and
nod; and then, in his waking moments, stir the pickaninnies to the
glories of a career on a fast train and a fat run. For if it is true
that any white boy has the potential opportunity of becoming President
of the United States, it is equally true that any black boy may become
the Autocrat of the Pullman Car.
* * * * *
_(The Independent)_
THE GENTLE ART OF BLOWING BOTTLES
And the Story of How Sand is Melted into Glass
BY F. GREGORY HARTSWICK
Remedies for our manifold ills; the refreshment that our infant lips
craved; coolness in time of heat; yes--even tho July 1st has come and
gone--drafts to assuage our thirst; the divers stays and supports of our
declining years--all these things come in bottles. From the time of its
purchase to the moment of its consignment to the barrel in the cellar or
the rapacious wagon of the rag-and-bone man the bottle plays a vital
part in our lives. And as with most inconspicuous necessities, but
little is known of its history. We assume vaguely that it is blown--ever
since we saw the Bohemian Glass Blowers at the World's Fair we have
known that glass is blown into whatever shape fancy may dictate--but
that is as far as our knowledge of its manufacture extends.
As a matter of fact the production of bottles in bulk is one of the most
important features of the glass industry of this country today. The
manufacture of window glass fades into insignficance before the hugeness
of the bottle-making business; and even the advent of prohibition, while
it lessens materially the demand for glass containers of liquids, does
not do so in such degree as to warrant very active uneasiness on the
part of the proprietors of bottle factories.
The process of manufacture of the humble bottle is a surprizingly
involved one. It includes the transportation and preparation of raw
material, the reduction of the material to a proper state of
workability, and the shaping of the material according to design, before
the bottle is ready to go forth on its mission.
The basic material of which all glass is made is, of course, sand. Not
the brown sand of the river-bed, the well remembered "sandy bottom" of
the swimmin' hole of our childhood, but the finest of white sand from
the prehistoric ocean-beds of our country. This sand is brought to the
factory and there mixed by experts with coloring matter and a flux to
aid the melting. On the tint of the finished product depends the sort of
coloring agent used. For clear white glass, called flint glass, no color
is added. The mixing of a copper salt with the sand gives a greenish
tinge to the glass; amber glass is obtained by the addition of an iron
compound; and a little cobalt in the mixture gives the finished bottle
the clear blue tone that used to greet the waking eye as it searched the
room for something to allay that morning's morning feeling. The flux
used is old glass--bits of shattered bottles, scraps from the floor of
the factory. This broken glass is called "cullet," and is carefully
swept into piles and kept in bins for use in the furnaces.
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