mined, I find but 2 per cent. with organic defects or of
an incurable nature. In other words, 98 per cent. can be completely and
permanently cured.

CHAPTER IV

CAN STAMMERING BE CURED BY MAIL?

In the years past there have been attempts from time to time to induce
the stammerer to seek a cure for his impediment in mail order
treatments. As has already been told, I was the victim of one of these
so-called "correspondence-cures" and know something about them from
personal experience.

In the first place, the sufferer usually takes up with the mail order
specialist because this man retails his "profound" knowledge at a low
rate, a rate so low that even a single thought on the subject would
convince anyone that his money was buying a few sheets of paper but no
professional knowledge or experience.

The very best correspondence course I have ever known anything about
was not as good as a number of books on elocution that are available in
any good library. Usually these courses are written by some charlatan
who is in business as a mail-order-man selling trinkets and stammering
cures or running a general correspondence school, teaching not only how
to cure stammering by correspondence but giving courses in
"Hair-Waving" and "How to Become a Detective." It is needless for me to
say that such as these are in the business, not for the good of the
stammerer nor even for the purpose of helping him, but simply for the
money that can be extracted from the stammerer or stutterer.

THE DIFFERENCE: There are two main differences, however, between the
books which the stammerer may read without cost and the correspondence
course for which he pays out his good money--many dollars of it. The
correspondence course has been written by a man who knew little or
nothing of the subject, and who put out a course for stammerers only
because he knew something of the number of stammerers in his territory
and said to himself, "My, but I ought to be able to sell them a
mail-order cure." Forthwith he sits down and writes a course--it isn't
necessary to have anything in it at all. Often these men do not even
take the trouble to consult reliable books on the subject. They do not
profess to know anything about stammering or stuttering, their cause or
their cure. They simply sit down and write--and when they have it
written, they send it to the printer, have it printed and then split
these printed sheets up into ten, or twenty, or fifty, or