CHEAP AND NASTY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7948, 25 January 1906, Page 3

CHEAP AND NASTY.

Mr James L. Ford, writing in the '.'Reader," an American newspaper of some considerable vogue, makes some very frank remarks on the literary conditions and tbe profession of letters as they exist in London to-day. He compares the state of things to "Chinese cheap labour." Every year, he says a vast number of young men graduate from the Universities who are finely educated, capable of writing the purest English, and possessed of incomes almost large enough to maintain them in a style "befitting their birth. For the most part they are younger sons of good families, the scions of tbe minor branches of aristocratic roots, and others who go to make up the great army of the well-bred, well dressed, well-con-nected, well-fed, and well-eduoated young men who' know chat if they can add to the allowance or inheritance that is theirs a sum of one or two hundred pounds a year, they can live comfortably in London and enjoy the best that the town has to offer to its army of idlers. The only problem that confronts them ia how to make this addition to their recognised inoomes with the least labour and the least social degradation. Naturally enough, sSys Mr Ford, nine-tentbs of them decide upon tbe profession of letters. "As they are veritable Chinamen in their willingness to underbid legitimate craftsmen," he writes, "as well as ijf their habits of not spending any of their own money, they dispose of their service for much less than the regular'market price, and there are even some of them "who offer one or two social introductions as a sort of bonns to those editors or publishers who are willing to purchase their wares. Reaiiising, as they do, the necessity for reaching, a ciass -that they regard as beneath their own, they attempt to'write down' to their reKders, and they are apt to do this with an insolence and a tactless condescension that are a positive insult to those whom they address. x The result of this is that the English magazines are filled with matter that, although admirably written, is not only wholly unsuited to tne tastes of those who are ex peoted to read it, but also in many instances reeking with boorish and impertinent affability." This is a very strong indictment, but so far as some of the cheaper magazines are concerned it seems to have a fairly strong foundation in fact. In the case of the more important magazines, fortunately their literary reputations make them superior to suob considerations as those quoted by-Mr Ford.