You can't win if you breathe under water.

Read that again.

Read it backward.

It may sound simple to you now. You may say to yourself, "What do you take me for, a baby boy?"

Well, you paid good money for this book, didn't you?

LV

THE CATALOGUE SCHOOL

Without wishing in the least to detract from the praise due to Sinclair Lewis for the remarkable accuracy with which he reports details in his "Main Street," it is interesting to speculate on how other books might have read had their authors had Mr. Lewis's flair for minutiae and their publishers enough paper to print the result.

For instance, Carol Kennicott, the heroine, whenever she is overtaken by an emotional scene, is given to looking out at the nearest window to hide her feelings, whereupon the author goes to great lengths to describe just exactly what came within her range of vision. Nothing escapes him, even to shreds of excelsior lying on the ground in back of Howland & Gould's grocery store.

Let us suppose that Harriet Beecher Stowe had been endowed with Mr.

Lewis's gift for reporting and had indulged herself in it to the extent of the following in "Uncle Tom's Cabin:"

"Slowly Simon Legree raised his whip-arm to strike the prostrate body of the old negro. As he did so his eye wandered across the plantation to the slaves' quarters which crouched blistering in the sun. Cowed as they were, as only ramshackle buildings can be cowed, they presented their gray boards, each eaten with four or five knot-holes, to the elements in abject submission. The door of one hung loose by a rust-encased hinge, of which only one screw remained on duty, and that by sheer willpower of two or three threads. Legree could not quite make out how many threads there were on the screw, but he guessed, and Simon Legree's guess was nearly always right. On the ground at the threshold lay a banjo G string, curled like a blond snake ready to strike at the reddish, brown inner husk of a nut of some sort which was blowing about within reach.

There were also several crumbs of corn-pone, well-done, a shred of tobacco which had fallen from the pipe of some negro slave before the fire had consumed more than its very tip, an old shoe which had, Legree noticed by the maker's name, been bought in Boston in its palmier days, doubtless by a Yankee cousin of one of Uncle Tom's former owners, and an indiscriminate pile of old second editions of a Richmond newspaper, sweet-potato peelings and seeds of unripe watermelons.

"Swish! The blow descended on the crouching form of Uncle Tom."

Or Sir Walter Scott:

"Sadly Rowena turned from her lover's side and looked out over the courtyard of the castle. Beneath her she saw the cobble-stones all scratched and marred with gray bruises from the horses' hoofs, a faded purple ribbon dropped from the mandolin of a minstrel, three slightly imperfect wa.s.sails and a trencher with a nick on the rim, all that had not been used of the wild boar at last night's feast, a peach-stone like a wrinkled almond nestling in a sardine tin. Slowly she faced her knight:

"'Prithee,' she said."

And I am not at all sure that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Ivanhoe" wouldn't have made better reading if they had lapsed into the photographic at times. Mr. Lewis may overdo it, but I expect to re-read "Main Street"

some day, and that is more encouragement than I can hold out to Mrs.

Stowe or Sir Walter Scott.

LVI

"EFFECTIVE HOUSE ORGANS"

To the hurrying commuter as he waits for his two cents change at the news stand it looks as if all the periodicals in the United States were on display there, none of which he ever has quite time enough to buy. It seems incredible that there should be presses enough in the country to print all the matter that he sees hanging from wires, piled on the counter and dangling from clips over the edge, to say nothing of his conceiving of there being other periodicals in circulation which he never even hears about. But any one knowing the commuter well enough to call him "dearie" might tell him in slightly worn vernacular that he doesn't know the half of it.

One cannot get a true idea of the amount of sideline printing that is done in this country without reading "Effective House Organs," written by Robert E. Ramsay. The ma.s.s effect of this book is appalling. Page after page of clear-cut ill.u.s.trations show reproductions of hundreds and hundreds of house-organ covers and give the reader a hopeless sensation of going down for the third time. Such names as "Gas Logic,"

"Crane-ing," "Hidden's Hints," "The Y. and E. Idea," "Vim," "Tick Talk"

and "The Smileage" show that Yankee ingenuity has invaded the publishing field, which means that the literature of business is on its way to becoming the literature of the land.

For those who are so illiterate as not to be familiar with the literature of business, I quote a definition of the word "house organ":

"A house magazine or bulletin to dealers, customers or employees, designed to promote goodwill, increase sales, induce better salesmanship or develop better profits."

In spite of Mr. Ramsay's exceedingly thorough treatment of his subject, there is one type of house organ to which he devotes much too little s.p.a.ce. This is the so-called "employee or internal house organ" and is designed to keep the help happy and contented with their lot and to spur them on to extra effort in making it a banner year for the stockholders.

The possibilities of this sort of house organ in the solution of the problem of industrial unrest are limitless.

Publications for light reading among employees are usually called by such t.i.tles as "Diblee Doings," "Tinkham Topics," "The Mooney and Carmiechal Machine Lather" or "Better Belting News."

First of all, they carry news notes of happenings among the employees, so that a real spirit of cooperation and team-play may be fostered.

These news notes include such as the following:

"Eddie Lingard of the Screen Room force, was observed last Sat.u.r.day evening between the mystic hours of six-thirty with a certain party from the Shipping Room, said party in a tan knit sweater, on their way to Ollie's. Come, 'fess up, Eddie!"

"Everyone is wondering who the person is who put chocolate peppermints in some of the girls' pockets while they were hanging in the Girls' Rest Room Thursday afternoon, it being so hot that they melted and practically ruined some of their clothing. Some folks have a funny sense of humor."

Then there are excerpts from speeches made by the Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton and young Mr. Rockefeller or by the President and Treasurer of the Diamond Motor Sales Corporation, saying, in part:

"The man who makes good in any line of work is the man who gives the best there is in him. He doesn't watch the clock. He doesn't kick when he fails to get that raise that he may have expected. He just digs into the job harder and makes the dust fly. And when some one comes along waving a red flag and tries to make him stop work and strike for more money, he turns on the agitator and says: 'You get the h---- out of here. I know my job better than you do. I know my boss better than you do, and I know that he is going to give me the square deal just as soon as he can see his way clear to do it. And in the mean time I am going to WORK!'

"That is the kind of man who makes good."

And then there are efficiency contests, with the force divided into teams trying to see which one can wrap the most containers or stamp the largest number of covers in the week. The winning team gets a felt banner and their names are printed in full in that week's issue of "Pep"

or "Nosey News."

And biographies of employees who have been with the company for more than fifty years, with photographs, and a little notice written by the Superintendent saying that this will show the company's appreciation of Mr. Gomble's loyal and unswerving allegiance to his duty, implying that any one else who does his duty for fifty years will also get his picture in the paper and a notice by the Superintendent.

It will easily be seen how this sort of house organ can be made to promote good feeling and esprit de corps among the help. If only more concerns could be prevailed upon to bring this message of weekly or monthly good cheer to their employees, who knows but what the whole caldron of industrial unrest might not suddenly simmer down to mere nothingness? It has been said that all that is necessary is for capital and labor to understand each other. Certainly such a house organ helps the employees to understand their employers.

Perhaps some one will start a house organ edited by the employees for circulation among the bosses, containing newsy notes about the owners'

families, quotations from Karl Marx and the results of the profit-sharing contest between the various mills of the district.

This would complete the circle of understanding.