to accomplish; and this is what men of real genius, like Mr. Henry Ford, do skilfully and systematically for themselves.

The "Saturday Evening Post" observes with some bitterness that one reason why Mr. Ford is richer than anybody else is because he gets his expensive advertising for nothing. His method is simple, natural, and seemingly without guile. Everything works into his scheme from the royal family of England to Mary's little lamb. Somebody is forever asking him questions about the study of history, the education of children, the religion of atheists, the desirability of wealth, the morality of the movies; and his answers, properly head-lined, are printed in the morning papers. When a new car is to be put upon the market, the attention of the public is directed to this fact, not in a vulgar business way, but unobtrusively, as a matter of national interest. There is no need to engage prominent women and men to ride blindfolded in the car, and recognize it by the smoothness of its motion, which is a recklessly extravagant thing to do. There is no need to issue costly booklets, showing that it derives its perfection from the arts of the Renaissance. A man who can tell thousands of readers that he is selling a product below cost, and can get this word over as news without paying a penny for it, is bound to be the richest, as he is certainly the smartest maker of motors in the world.

23

A year or two ago a candid writer in the "Survey" who wanted free advertising space for the charities she had most at heart, told us to

what lengths she had gone in framing material which the editor could be induced to mistake for news. Her field of labor was a humble one. The ramifications of the system extend to great commercial enterprises, and to propaganda on a colossal scale. Adroit workers can place an article on the market, an island on the map, a theory in the minds of the public. We see their hand in periodical suggestions of France's unfriendliness, of Japan's military spirit, of Great Britain's fast-growing fervor for prohibition. A well-written book on Soviet Russia, cheerily optimistic and suavely persuasive, is more than likely to be a stunt, ordered and paid for by an American corporation disposed to risk business with Moscow.

This is serious labor with serious ends in view. The motives, if not the methods, are comprehensible. But publicity has its pleasures as well as its uses, and these pleasures are of an amazing simplicity. Reduced to their least common denominator, they consist in seeing our names in the newspapers. What a sure instinct it was which told the youthful Edward Bok that the halfgrown boys and girls at a children's party would relish this experience as keenly as did their elders. What acumen to guess at a subconscious aspiration in minds "yet fresh with childhood." Edward "wrote up' that party and many others for the "Brooklyn Eagle," taking pains always to mention the names of even the youngest guests. He was paid at the rate of four dollars a column, and it takes a good many names to make any impression on a column of newspaper print, so he

was not likely to leave any out. The parents of the children were apparently as well pleased as were their offspring, for we are assured by the adult and Americanized Mr. Bok that "Everybody was happy."

There are reputable journals in the United States which look more like photograph albums than newssheets. The dozen or so of pictures they present every day are mostly women-not women in public life, but "popular society matrons," "popular débutantes,' "popular members of the younger set." Some of them are giving teas, some of them are being entertained at teas, some of them are visiting, some of them are sailing for Europe, some of them are returning to college or to school. There are no corresponding photographs of popular undergraduates of Yale, lads returning to Groton, or young men who are entering the Harvard law school in the autumn. Fashionable intelligence is recruited exclusively from feminine ranks. There are good reasons for this. What could the most adroit reporter make of the costumes worn by men at the opera?

England, unobserved by Mr. Wells, does not lag far behind us in the exploitation of rank and fashion. We have Mr. Mallock's word for it-and presumably Mr. Mallock knew that the guests a London hostess desires and welcomes are those whose names have a proper ring when her entertainments are reported in the press. This statement cannot of course refer to the supremely exalted circles that seek nothing-least of all recognitionfrom less highly placed humanity. Every center of civilization, London,

Paris, Rome or New York, possesses a group of men and women who combine birth, affluence, some intellectual or artistic distinction, and

in London-some political interests. These men and women are understood by the seasoned reporter and the astute press-agent to belong to the pursued, not the pursuers. They are quarry, not hunters. No photographs of their infant sons or of their school-girl daughters are attainable. Whatever romance precedes their formally announced engagements is known only to the romantic couple. The gospel of push and shove does not enter into their philosophy of life. Their forefathers pushed and shoved themselves long ago into the seats of the mighty.

22

The interview is said to be an exclusively American institution. It is occasionally disconcerting to distinguished foreigners who visit our shores, and who are asked when they step reeling from the ship what they think of New York Harbor, of sky-scrapers, of the coming election, of prohibition, and the outlawry of war. Their polite evasions are transformed into resounding truismsso at least says Mr. Guedalla-when the interview is published; and they find themselves in the unpleasant position of counseling a country of which they know little, about matters of which they know nothing at all.

This, however, is only one insignificant aspect of a game which Americans play with adroitness. Reporters have given us to understand that the pressure is not all on their side. They do not invade the privacy of the office or the sanctity

of the home. They receive the freedom of both. A man who has a communication to make to the public, and who makes it through the medium of a news-column, is not victimized by curiosity. A woman who shows a reporter a dress, and says, "You can describe me as wearing this," should refrain from regretting the unwarranted personalities of the press. A cynical writer in the "New Republic" is of the opinion that it is easier for an officeholder to be a hero to his valet, if he has one, than to the City Desk of a newspaper, where every move he has made toward the shining goal of publicity, every vista opened where the view is good, every Chinese wall built to hide a rubbish heap, are as familiar as the letters of his name. When Colonel Charles Lindbergh astounded and delighted the world by doing, in a singularly unobtrusive manner, something which had never been done before, he won for himself undying renown, and what the newspapers called "the deafening plaudits of the American nation.' His modesty was as unconquerable as his courage, and was more severely tried. It was not his fault that the "Baltimore Sun" said, "Lindbergh has exalted the race of men." He did not say it, and he could not help the "Sun" saying it. His gaiety and good-temper veiled his personal reticence. He actually refused to sponsor a cigarette, giving the inadequate reason that he did not smoke, and rejecting a bribe that has proved irresistible to the great ones of the earth. Five months after his flight it was computed that the news and comment in American newspapers alone would have filled four

volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica (a good deal of guesswork goes into this kind of calculation); yet to the appalling mass of printfor the most part irrelevant-the composed figure of the aviator lent dignity and decorum.

By way of contrast the press announced Miss Ruth Elder's attempted flight across the Atlantic in head-lines fit for fashionable intelligence: "Ruth Elder Brave but Truly Feminine." "Powdered Her Nose and Arranged Her Curls as Plane Roared for the Take-off." Whole columns were devoted to her personal appearance, her "vivid headdress," her "gay-colored sweater,' her laudable ambition "to fly to Paris and buy an evening gown,' and the pertinent fact that she was "undeniably the prettiest of airpilots." Had she succeeded in doing what the less expansive Miss Earhart did later on, she would have eclipsed the Queen of Rumania. Even after failure all was not lost. Solacing paragraphs appeared in the papers: "Ruth Elder to Get $100,000 in One Hundred Days." "Flier Signs to Appear in Vaudeville."

novel. They will devote to the comic strips in newspapers the same sober, sorrowful attention attention that that women give to the columns of society news. Somebody must be interested in hearing that a hostess at Palm Beach "whose staff of servants numbers forty-nine," was compelled to borrow eight butlers from her friends before she could give an entertainment. This stimulating story would never have been told had it not been sure of a hearing. People without servants want to read about other people's butlers and kitchen-maids just as people without incomes want to read about other people's tax returns. Perhaps a smoke-screen would be as advisable in one instance as in the other. Contrasts have never been safe things to consider closely.

A simple and innocuous pastime is afforded by Galveston, Texas, where "the most beautiful woman in the world" is yearly crowned, and notices of the event wired over the country. How Galveston becomes aware of the far-flung beauty of the world-the light-haired, half-grown Danish girl, the flawless Sicilian peasant, the "shawled colleen of Galway," is not apparent; but pic

tures of "Miss Universe" (the stars in their courses compete) are reproduced in American papers, and startle us, less by their loveliness than by their amazing nudity. A year ago an astute purveyor of news explained that while a coveted publicity could be gained by eliminating a woman's clothing "as far as the law allowed," this minimum was unfortunately reached at a bound, and competition ceased.

The Hon. Bertrand Russell, who delivers his lightest and least soughtfor opinion as if he were sitting on the Supreme Bench, is disposed to be hard on the press. He appears to hold it responsible for the circumstances it reports, the qualities it mirrors, the publicity which it is required to give. He says that "only self-respect can make journalists cease to be lackeys," which is true because only self-respect can make any of us (even radicals and pacifists) decent human beings, and fit for the society of our kind. The office of American journalism is not to teach reticence and dignity to the public. The most it can do is to defer to these highly civilized qualities whenever they come its way.

R

IGHT after dinner I'd taken the clippers and set to work on the box-hedge around our dooryard. June is a busy time on a truck-farm, but that hedge had been the pride of Pa's life. When Pa died that left just my brother Pete and me at the old place, and Pete didn't hold with clipping hedges or planting flower-beds or cutting the lawn. So those things usually fell to me to do.

I'd clipped just from the corner to the gate when Jim McAulay came along. Jim had bought the eighty acres south of us on the shore of Lake Michigan; he was one of those city fellows who didn't feel like going back to a city job after the war. He lived alone, with nobody to do for him in the house or around the place, but he always seemed to have plenty of time to go visiting his neighbors. I suppose he got lonesome being by himself all the time. Anyhow an Irishman always likes somebody to talk to.

"We need rain, don't we?" said Jim. He took the clippers out of my hand. "Let me cut this for you. You sit in the shade and rest awhile."

"Oh," I said, "I'll get the other pair of clippers and work along with you.'

Jim grinned. He was a red-haired fellow with big freckles, but when

he grinned he was quite good-looking. "Better watch me work. It's more of a treat," he said. "Your flowerbeds look nice."

"These beds in the dooryard are always a good deal the same. I try my experiments out where the neighbors can't see 'em. Pete says I'd plant the whole farm to flowers if he'd let me. But even Pete can't deny I've got the nicest field of straw-flowers in Wisconsin."

"Straw-flowers?" repeated Jim. "What's the connection between straw and flowers?"

I laughed. "Straw-flowers are what they call those flowers you dry to use in bouquets that will last all winter. Last year I took five hundred bunches down to the State Fair at Milwaukee and sold 'em for a quarter a bunch. I could have sold more if I'd had 'em. This year I'm going to have more."

"Your flowers make you a lot of extra work," said Jim, setting the clippers going at last. Jim was the kind of fellow that thinks he's hoeing when he has a hoe in his hand.

"They do. But there's nothing I like so much as to see things growing and know it was I made 'em grow.'

"Well, if that's your idea of farming!" said a voice close behind us.

Jim and I both jumped. Pete had