large concern that sends its pneumatic wares all over the earth to tell me something about the part played by compressed air in the contemporary business of living, and he responded with some of his own experiences as follows:

"I rise in the morning and run my bath, the water for which has been aerated by being shot in the sky by a geyser-like stream so that each of its minute particles is exposed to the purifying air and sunlight. The meat in the sausage on my breakfast-table has been forced into the skin by means of compressed air. I glance at my watch. The gold for its case, the steel for its works, and its ruby bearings have been won from the earth by means of compressed

air drills. I drop a letter in the box at the street corner. It is soon transported from the postal sub-station to the main station through compressed-air tubes. Automobiles are passing by on compressed-air cushions. Their frames have been riveted with compressed-air tools and their bodies painted and enameled by means of compressed-air sprays. enter the subway and drop a nickel in the turnstile. Compressed air releases the lock, permitting me to pass through. The subway train comes thundering to the station at the rate of forty miles an hour and is stopped within its length by means of air-brakes. Compressed air throws numerous switches for my train as it proceeds downtown. I enter a large

office building whose foundation has been excavated by means of compressed-air machinery, whose steel ribs have been joined together by compressed-air riveters, and the stone for whose exterior has been quarried by compressed-air drills." It would be easy to expand this story ad lib.

Until a few years ago the use of compressed-air appliances was narrowly limited by the immobility of compressor plants, since it is not economical to pipe compressed air over long distances. Today a majority of such plants are on wheels. The portable air-compressor, with its light gasoline or electric motor, is one of the most notable contributions recently made to human welfare.

H

Guttersniping

By DON C. SEITZ

EADLINE journalism grew out

of the war with Spain. It was invented by Foster Coates, then on the "Evening World," and improved upon by Arthur Brisbane in the "Evening Journal," who elevated it to a point where a tub at the bottom of his first page caught the dripping gore of a victim bleeding at the top. This form of journalism proving popular, it expanded to most newspapers, regulated by various degrees of taste or the lack of it. In defense, it might be said it brought large circulation among the rudimentary, who would, perhaps, in time learn to read below the headlines and have taken to better journals if they had been given the chance. The success of some few papers that preferred not to get rattled. would seem to prove this, but, on the whole, most became much alike—that is to say, bad. To the reflecting it would. appear that these were edited on a low enough intellectual scale to have satisfied the weakest of minds. This proved to be a mistaken notion.

Soon after the London "Daily Mail" had become a success Lord Northcliffe started a tabloid illustrated sheet called the "Daily Mirror." He had long cherished the idea, and, indeed, in editing the "World" for one evening (De

cember 31, 1897) had accepted a suggestion made by Henry N. Cary, then a member of the staff, to employ a tabloid form for the experiment. The novelty sold well, but was not followed up, smallsized papers not being adapted to the prevailing style of advertising in New York.

London had an illustrated daily in the "Graphic," a solemn sheet of quarto size mainly devoted to the doings of the royal family and sold at a price above the popular purse. Northcliffe's "Mirror" cost a halfpenny. It soon began to circulate. Arthur C. Kenealy, son of the famous attorney for Arthur Orton, the Tichborne claimant, who, though English born, had been trained on the New York "World," became its editor. He was a placid soul, who did most of his editing with a shears.

THE charwomen liked the little paper,

which began to have an all-day sale. Northcliffe told me its best edition was around nine o'clock in the morning, when the scrub ladies, having finished their toil, received their half-crowns, took an hour for refreshment, the items including tea, a crumpet, and the "Mirror." New York journalists who looked at the scraggy sheet sniffed at it with contempt,

but it added much to the Northcliffe millions, and under Lord Rothmere (Harold Harmsworth) was capitalized into a great property.

Finally, in 1921, Arthur Clarke, a member of the "Evening World" staff, and George Von Utassey, a Hearst graduate, proposed to Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert R. McCormick, that a similar sheet be tried in New York. The pair consented to back it, but without much enthusiasm. To save investment, the plant of the "Evening Mail," unused at night, was hired, and publication began as a morning paper, under the name of the "Daily News." New York newspaper men generally doubted if there was a grade of New Yorkers enough below the "Evening Journal's" constituency in intelligence to give the paper a following. They were mistaken. It went slowly for a year. Clarke and Von Utassey were shaken out, and the tone of the sheet lowered until it became acceptable to a hitherto undiscovered mass. It then grew like Jonah's gourd, belying the saying that there is always room at the top. In newspaper circulation the room appears to be at the bottom.

As the "News" grew and invaded the Sunday field, the Publishers' Association of New York City undertook to curb its

advance by compelling the American News Company to refuse its transport to dealers. The result was the final breaking of a most advantageous contract with the News Company, and the establishment of more or less expensive independent deliveries, such as the "News" had triumphantly inaugurated when compelled to go it alone. When the News Company came to check up, it found it was saving about $400,000 a year by giving up newspaper delivery. Instead of stopping the "News," its speed was accelerated until it now sells more than 1,100,000 copies on Sunday, and close to a million on week days.

That Joseph Medill Patterson, whose first appearance was that of a resolute radical, strong for the uplift of the lowly, and his cousin should have engaged in such journalism remains a mystery.

A

LARMED by the "News's" success, Mr. Hearst tried to head it off with a pictorial tabloid inserted in his rejected "Morning American." It did not work. He then started a "Morning Mirror," competing further, and somewhat unsuccessfully, with himself. Into the field then came Bernarr Macfadden, who had made much circulation out of "Physical Culture" and flashy fiction magazines. He took the afternoon for his efforts, buying the "Evening Mail" plant from Mr. Munsey. For a time he ventured into the Sunday competition, but gave it up after a few issues. A fivecent Saturday edition, with rotogravure covers, is its specialty. All the week-day tabloids sell for two cents. Like the London "Mirror," the "News" sells all day, and the "Mirror" to a much less extent. It has about one-quarter of the "News's" circulation, even though Mr. Brisbane blows hard into its editorial page. Perhaps his breath has become heavier than air!

Posing girls form a large part of its stock in trade. It used to be the rule in the old "Police Gazette" office under Richard K. Fox when Tom Hyde drew beauties for the front page that no skirt should be lifted above the garter. The puzzle in the modern tabloid is to find the skirt. Naturally, the "Police Gazette" has lost much of its following. Perhaps its modesty was enhanced by the fact that for something like thirty years its presses printed the "Christian at Work." No such restraint exists in the office of the "News" or the "Graphic."

page is a page. We find them filled, therefore, with the announcements of those merchants to whom the press of the past owed so much-the beauty doctors, lotion makers, and figure menders. The press has become most unjust to these worthy persons, with the era of advertising reform that followed the opening of advertising men's conventions with prayers. They and their patentmedicine colleagues were ruthlessly kicked out to make way for sealskin coats marked down from $350 to $75, and other moral mercantile announcements. In the tabloids they have found a friend, and are making the same excellent return that their ancestors did to the London "Morning Post" and its brothers from 1777 on, or to the religious press of the 'sixties and 'seventies. The standard newspapers have been ungrateful to the supporters of their forebears. Whether this sort of business can support the outlay involved remains to be seen. Outside of delivery cost and white paper, the tabloid is far cheaper to produce than a real newspaper, and it does not even require as much white paper as the standard sheet. These advantages are offset by the limitation on advertising space and the buying power of their constituencies.

THE "News" is the only unqualified

success. Not a little of this is due to convenience of form, which makes the paper handy in crowded subways. Front and back pages are both "firsts" in make-up, and the inside pages are accessible in a crush. This counts for much beyond the character of the readers, who are largely of the light-minded classshop-girls, petty clerks, laborers, and the like, together with many women curious to peek into the seamy side.

Mr. Hearst some time ago turned the ancient Boston "Advertiser" into a tabloid picture-book. The shades of Edward Everett Hale and his ancestors must have said anathema over it, for failure has been its lot. Boston turns up its nose at the tabloid, and prefers her familiar misshapen sheets with their strange typographical orgies and news from Squantum and Agawam, coupled with much baseball and a flood of second-hand automobile advertising.

The Scripps-Howard syndicate, with something like thirty papers, includes a number of tabloids. One in Washington appears to be a success, appealing powerfully to the colored population. Mr. C. H. K. Curtis has added a tabioid "Sun" to the sins of Philadelphia, taking the field of the once powerful and independent "North American." It has so

far created no excitement. The Vare family of contractors has launched an evening "tab" in the same tepid town. It is reported to be growing. In Buffalo a college-bred scion of Fingy Connors edits another. It is one of the best in contents and make-up. Buffalo is pretty well newspapered and its field is small.

Out on the Pacific coast the youngest Cornelius Vanderbilt has begun a chain of tabloids, with the parent paper in Los Angeles, where it is doing well against the acres of wood pulp blackened each day by the Los Angeles "Times." Again one wonders why a man of presumable taste and undoubted means does not try to do something worth while. How his great-grandfather, the first Cornelius, of ferry, steamship, and railroad fame, would have snorted at this performance on the part of his descendant, though he might have approved of his industry. without indorsing the enterprise!

THE journalistic problem involved in

the new form and fashion is how long it will satisfy, and whether it will breed a desire for better things, as so much that is bad in the daily output has done, and so supply feeders for the higher-class papers, if any exist when the new appetite develops. The odds. are against it. Mere visualizing is apt to remain rudimentary. It would be a bold man who could aver that the movies have afforded any lasting instruction. Like the tabloids, they are simply cheap time-killers.

There may be some who will argue that it is but a step from the tabloid to the radio, and in the universal use of the latter they see the doom of the press. Of this there is little fear. In the first place, there are but twenty-four hours in the day. The radio can carry but two

hundred words to the minute at the utmost. The broadcasting stations have no means of collecting remuneration for their squeaks and screeches. They are backed now by the sellers of supplies, eked out with some advertising at $10 per minute. The "fan" does not have to listen to the business announcements, and seldom does. Dreary exploitations of wares that come through the atmosphere can be readily shut off until relief comes in jazz form.

The radio people expect to see saturation in about two years, and are wondering what will happen then. Most of the entertainment afforded now is wretched -worse than that of the silliest newspaper. It is a pity that radio cannot be organized intelligently, for it is a boon to the distant shut-ins of the farms and

the waste places of the great Northland. The Edmonton, Alberta, "Journal" maintains a broadcasting station for the Hudson Bay posts beyond the Arctic Circle, along Hudson Bay, and for the whaling rendezvous at Point Barrow, formerly six months away from news of the rest of the world. This great benefaction cannot be too highly praised, but it is non-competitive with the paper.

With the limitations of time for listen ing in, the lack of support for newsgathering expenses, and the need of throwing in much music, it is hard to see how the radio can imperil journalism.

knowing. The Japanese are credited with visualizing everything and being insensible to text and tone. We are fast approaching that state in America.

In this matter of visualized news the movies have impinged upon the newspaper. The celerity with which current events are transferred to the screen is a lesson to editors, if it is heeded. It is also notable that the movie audiences appreciate them. They are roundly applauded and are often strikingly good, affording far more satisfaction than the mangled bulletins that come over the radio.

Certainly there is no suffering from lack of publicity for the tragedies and comedies of life. The weakness is on the thoughtful and constructive side of things in general. There is so much amusement that it leaves little time for thinking or reading. Before prohibition the movie had emptied the "poor man's club"-otherwise the back room of the saloon. Then the entertainments were lower-priced and less elaborate. They were also more moral, showing novelties rather than stage inventions. Audiences

enjoyed views of waterfalls, roaring surf, fast-moving trains, running horses, and the like. The sordid and shameful have come too largely in their stead, with results that are appalling. More than two-thirds of this year's crop of convicts at Sing Sing are first offenders. It is not saying too much to express the belief that the movie is the high school of the bandit, burglar, and hold-up man. For proof note the astounding number of young boys and girls involved in the commission of high crimes. These amateurs of the revolver and automobile, with its quick getaway, have had their lessons from the movies, well supplemented by the tabloids. The New York "Graphic," for example, exerted itself for days to save the bank messenger murderers (the Diamond brothers) from the chair. Its sobs were heartrending. They were amateur villains who killed in their first emprise. The movies make heroes out of murderers, and the tabloids proclaim their glories. What wonder that the crop continues to grow? The police have discovered the only remedy, and that is to kill them as fast as they can.

Old Stormy was a fine old man,

To me way, O, Stormalong! Old Stormy was a fine old man, Way, aye, aye, Mister Stormalong!

Old Stormy he is dead and gone,

To me way, O, Stormalong! Oh, poor old Stormy's dead and gone, Way, aye, aye, Mister Stormalong!

W

HEN first I saw Stormy it was blowing a gale. Within the lee door of the chartroom some one struck a match. It was Stormy lighting a cigar, and he saw me by the match flare.

"How d'ye like the sea, boy?" he asked.

"Pretty well, sir," I answered.

"I guess so," grunts Stormy. It is my first night at sea. It is coal black. I am wet to the bone. It is winter.

When dawn comes, we are running for shelter, every sail ripped to ribbons. The fo'c's'le is gutted. Not a man has a rag left save what he stands in. Bedding, sea-chests, and donkey breakfasts are all gone over the side. A donkey breakfast is a sailor's mattress.

How we hate Stormy! Not that he ever takes any notice of us. We might

Old Stormy

By BILL ADAMS

be ropes, deck buckets, things without souls. We are boys in our 'teens, learning the profession of the sea. It is him we blame for our rotten pork, our weevily hardtack, and all sea misery. "Old devil," we call him, and lots worse names. Doubtless he knows.

Next time Stormy speaks to me is in the tropics. I am fumblingly tucking my first eye splice. He comes from his chart-house and stares at me. I might be a swab or a paint-pot. But presently a quizzical grin o'erspreads his face, and he steps up and takes the marlinespike from my hand.

"If you're going to do a thing, do it right," he says. Suddenly I, somehow, like old Stormy.

I see Stormy standing on his bridgehead. He is leaning against the wind. Lightning illumines him. Thunder rumbles. Little cakes of ice are clittering by. There are three thousand tons of cargo down below, and he is taking it to 'Frisco. We've been off the Horn for forty days. We damn his hungry ship, him, and the sea. He lives in the cabin, and eats bacon for breakfast, doughnuts made by Lady Stormy in the steward's

pantry. There are sugar and milk in his coffee. His bed is dry. We have rotten pork and weevily hardtack, and our bunks are soaking. He does not even know that we are here!

It is a black night up in the Pacific. Stormy is on his bridgehead. There is a lantern in the mizzen rigging. We've just hoisted a lifeboat back to her chocks. Water drips from her, and the sea laps mournfully. Somewhere astern the big fish are nosing a drowned sailor whom we could not save. Stormy leans from his bridgehead.

"Is there anything more you want me to do, men?"

Some one says, "No, sir. There's nothing more to do."

We sail on, for 'Frisco. so bad. He's one of us. us the sea's.

Stormy's not

We are all of

We lie at anchor in 'Frisco Bay. Stormy and Lady Stormy are going ashore. They'll have fine food, and see the sights. They'll meet with other Stormys and their wives, and talk of ships and cargoes. But they'll say no word of us. We are ropes, buckets, gear

of the deck. Lady Stormy is all dressed up, her hands hidden in a sealskin muff, sealskin at her neck and on her shoulders. We turn contemptuous eyes on Lady Stormy. "Old devils!" we say, and wonder how long the ship will lie at anchor, how long ere we too can step upon the shore.

Four such years I spent with Stormy.

It was a dozen years and more after the sea had broken me that I heard that Stormy was living within three hundred miles. I'll go and see Stormy! I can't help it. I am down in the valley where no cool winds blow, where dust chokes, and the sun is torrid.

They take me by the hand and call me by name. Stormy gives me a cigar. Lady Stormy goes for cakes and coffee. They give me their son's room. When Stormy hears that I am farming, he leans back in his chair and bellows like a sea lion.

I sit at Stormy's side in his big car, old Lady Stormy in the seat behind. "Show him what she'll do," says Lady Stormy, and Stormy, seventy-four years old, opens the throttle. We are making forty an hour-five above the speed limit.

We are making forty-five, fifty,

fifty-five-we who, when the old ship rambled through the southeast trades, with the little dark Magellan clouds. above her, making her fifteen an hour, thought we were "booming"!

We are making sixty miles an hour on the concrete highway. Stormy turns to

me,

"Scared, boy?" he asks, and I answer, "What'll she do, sir?"

"Seventy," says Stormy, and closes the throttle a little. "Better not go too fast. There ain't enough sea room." The years pass by, with a little visit now and then to Stormy.

"So you're writing sea stories, eh? Well, what d'ye know about that! Don't you get writing anything about me, young feller!"

Lady Stormy is asleep, flowers heaped high about her. I'm by old Stormy's side. The room is full of friends, and to them turns old Stormy.

"One of my boys has come three hundred miles to be with me to-day."

And I'd have come a thousand gladly. There is salt not of our sea in Stormy's eyes.

A host of friends outside, we turn away together, he and I alone, and leave

old Lady Stormy to her rest, my hand on Stormy's arm. Stormy is leaning on

me.

The landsman's flowers are left behind. But on Lady Stormy's coffin lies a great white spray-"From the boys of the old ship."

I'm home again, and on the morrow comes a package to the kid. We open it, and find within the sealskin muff and stoles old Lady Stormy went ashore in thirty years ago. Good old Stormy!

In April Stormalong went east. We'd have another ride together when he came home in fall. But Stormy lay upon a couch one sunny afternoon, and fanned himself to sleep. He has not awakened. We'll not ride together, here, again. Maybe some day.

We'll dig his grave with a silver spade, To me way, O, Stormalong! We'll lower him down with a golden chain,

Way, aye, aye, Mister Stormalong! O, Stormy's dead and gone to rest,

To me way, O, Stormalong! Of all the sailors he was best, Way, aye, aye, Mister Stormalong!

Edited by EDMUND PEARSON

Y primary interest is in things

"M

1

and not in men. . . . I love my fellow-men and like to serve them, but a human crowd attracts me far less than a crowd of trees, or a flock of birds, or a herd of sheep or cows." These quotations from a page of self-analysis are keys to the character of John Burroughs revealing words, but scarcely hinting the wide sympathies, the sweet reasonableness of a man one might so easily imagine imbued with pantheistic fanaticism. Rarely does a biographer have the advantages Dr. Clara Barrus enjoyed in over twenty years of friendly association with her subject, acting as amanuensis, typing many of his essays, relieving him of a large part of the mechanical drudgery incident to a literary career. It was understood that Dr. Barrus would write the biography, and Mr. Burroughs aided her in every way to secure essential data. How masterly has been her treatment! One cannot turn these leaves coldly, for they seem lambent with a fine devotion. They have the apostolic touch, though one sees reflected here a personality, not an idealization -one of the human breed, stubborn, easy-going, often unheroic in the conventional sense, and yet possessed of certain qualities that so far surpass the norm that no one could deny this was a remarkable man.

Dr. Barrus is an enthusiast. She has not-thank the Lord!-acquired the new style of biographical exposition in which. the narrator seems more concerned over demonstrating his own superior wit and intelligence than the depicting of a personality. This author is a physician endowed with all the practitioner's healthy curiosity, as interested in the cause as in the condition, seeking first principles. which to know and explain give meaning and unity to factors apparently unrelated. The honesty of intention is manifest to tell the truth, paint the man as he was, "wart and all," yet not in the way of a clinical record. This is no callous appraisal.

The world will remember John Burroughs, not as poet or philosopher, certainly not as Treasury clerk and rural

1 The Life and Letters of John Burroughs. By Clara Barrus. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

his guides. Thoreau, with whom he is often compared, made little impression on him. Dr. Barrus devotes an illuminating chapter to a comparison of the two nature lovers. On the human side the difference could not have been more marked. Burroughs, frequently though he reiterates his preference of nature to man, was eminently a social animal. The hermit life had no charms for him, even

bank examiner, not as the devoted friend, defender, and first biographer of Walt Whitman, nor as Roosevelt's comrade. His place is among the very small band who have exalted nature by revealing secrets of field and forest apprehended by a delicate and finely tuned sensory system, untinged by the hyper-ciety of a most unsympathetic better

though it would have spared him the so

half. Though both men fell under the benignant spell of Emerson, their temperamental dissimilarity was obvious. Nothing like Thoreau's stoical contempt for humanity appears in Burroughs.

In a passage too long to quote in full Burroughs is his own interpreter and critic:

"As a writer, especially on literary themes, I suffer much from want of a certain manly or masculine quality-the quality of self-assertion-strength and firmness of outline. I am not easy and steady in my shoes. The common and vulgar form of the quality I speak of is 'cheek.' But in the master writer it is firmness, dignity, composure-a steady, unconscious assertion of his own personality. . . . I lack the firm moral fiber of such men as Emerson and Carlyle. I am more tender and sympathetic than either, perhaps because there is a plebeian streak in me not in them. This again helps me with Nature, but hinders with men."

The very lack of assertion he deplores contributed largely to the charm of his personality. In fact, he had a veritable genius for friendship, as his correspondence with the famous and the obscure attests. The authentic virtue of the man appears in his wise advice to friends and strangers, in the devoted championship of Whitman, a friend of thirty years' standing, in his tender love for his only child. Born and bred in the Calvinistic burst the spiritual shackles of dogmatic tenets of the old school Baptists, he early

religion. Hearing of the death of Cardinal Manning, he wrote in his journal:

"A good man and worthy of remembrance. His last conscious hours of life were spent in imploring God to have mercy upon him. He was firmly possessed with the Christian idea that he was about to go from a place where God was not, to a place where God is and abides. And that there was great danger that his God would be displeased with him, and