ng to help a fellow-toiler is far more common
than cynics will allow. It prevails among engineers, factory hands, and
miners. With the exception of a few cads, it is doubtful if authors have
sunk so low in the scale of humanity as to be unwilling to assist each
other, when by so doing they will help themselves.

Some authors have been dreaming of a time when they could control the
entire literary output of the United States in the same way that the
Standard Oil Company controls kerosene, or the chief of the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers directs his men. He can tie up any railroad with
a snap of his finger if his men are not treated squarely. In such a
literary dreamland an author might do one-third of his present work and
get far more pay than now. Publishers and editors would not then have a
superfluity of matter. They would then have to bow to the authors' trust
before the desired material could be obtained.

It might be claimed that if writers would pool their issues, put their
manuscripts into a common stock, allow the publisher to select from them
at a good round figure, and after a certain lapse of time burn all the
rejected ones,--there would be less work and more money for all authors.
Of course, it would be necessary to have a committee to decide when an
author wrote well enough to be admitted to the pool, and also to
determine what greater portion of the common fund the authors of
specially meritorious work should receive.

Such a scheme certainly does work with sugar, kerosene, starch, and
numberless other articles; but it is more than doubtful if it would
prevail in literature. Some authors would be too desirous of seeing
themselves constantly before the public. They could not be prevailed
upon to limit the output of their brain, and they would be conceited
enough to demand that everything appear in print.

It is well to lay aside thoughts of such a Utopia until we have secured
an authors' protective association of wide membership, with permanent
headquarters, legal counsel, and agents to learn the publishing business
and expose unfair methods.

Let writers remember that Greece, in spite of her AEschylus, Sophocles,
Xenophon, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle, perished
because her independent states would not combine against a common foe.

_John Braincraft._

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

NEWSPAPER COOKERY.

In a late number of a popular periodical, Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, while
tell