Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of the
author's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work and
inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in
common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its
effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the
writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for a
certain kind of work, produces as good quality as when he works
independently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The question
is a serious one for the future of literature.

The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its
advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output
of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and
machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The
capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and
usable material is not forthcoming, the "standards" and the best
literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best
literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even
the leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness of
competition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harm
and not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral and
intellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in the
phrase it has invented--"the spawn of the press." The author who writes
simply to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certain
to deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied if
he can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Is
it extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely an
adjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publications
in books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war. How
many of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how many of them
were the spontaneous and natural productions of writers who had something
to say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the newspapers who do this
sort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of what we have been
accustomed to call literature to take on the transient and hasty
character of the newspaper.

In another respect, in method if not in quality, this literature
approaches the newspaper. It is the habit of some publishing houses,