Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-01-31
CASE OF EARLY BIRD
Demand for and Production
of Hustle Books"
NOT A FEW WINNERS
WRECK IN NEW JERSEY THIS
WEEK A FAIR SAMPLE.
Twenty-Four Hours After First Mont
Pelee Eruption Book Was
on the Market.

Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star.
NEW YORK, January 90. 1903.
Whatever else may be said of certain
class of New York publishers, it cannot be
denied that, chronologically, they are right
| down to the minute. Within less than
twenty-four hours after the appalling rail-.
road accident in New Jersey few days
ago hoarse-voiced hawkers all over down.
town New York were crying a flaming req
paper volume, Horrible Railroad Accidents
of Recent Years. which contained as a
final chapter a most horrifyingly exagger-
ated account Of the holocaust in New Jer-
sey, with regard to which the yellow news
papers of New York were still issuing sto-
ries with eight-inch red-letter head lines.
The hawkers purveyed the book at 10 cents,
and. curiously enough, the cheap, ragged
looking volumes went like hot cakes. One
observed that an exceedingly inferior class
of individuals gave up their dimes for the
lookout the class of his readers doesn't
make any difference to the class OF pub
fishers who keep their paper-book presses
open for something big to happen
1t is remarkable how this extraordinary
hash of stuff, by courtesy called reading
matter. is slammed together-slammed
seems really to be the only fitting word to
use in such a connection-when the pub
fishers who do the majority of their selling
through the medium Of the street hawkerS
decide, after some notable occurrence or
death, to hustle out quick seller The
matter, of course, is cheap and tawdry in
treatment and style, showing from the first
to the last page the haste, not to say the
velocity, with which it is put into shape;
but, for all that, there is often certain
consecutiveneSs about such books that
causes the curious person who buys to
marvel.
For example, just twenty-four hours after
the first news of the Mont Pelee cataciysm
was printed in New York there appeared
on the streets of the town, in the hands of
the hawkers, volume of something like
80 pages. bound in paper, called Tire
mendous Volcanic Eruptions All Over the
World During the Past Three Hundred
Years"
Almost Wet From the Press.
The book was almost wet from the press
when the street men got hold of it. 1t con-
tanned, as a final chapter, all Of the news
that had been printed with regard to the
ST. Pierre disaster, and a first-rate account
of the general topography of Martinique.
There was, Of course, no attempt whatever
at literary style, and the lapses in the mat
ter of grammar and form were frequent and
many; yet there was an astonishing array
Of exact facts about volcanic disturbances
in every quarter Of the earth-facts which
were capable Of verification for the most
part from the most authentic sources.
This book, however, was an exception to
the ordinary run Of hustle books" in that
good deal Of it's matter had been put into
the form Of manuscript some years before.
Your correspondent took the pains to in
quire of the publisher of the volcano book
how he could possibly have showed the
volume upon the world quickly after the
receipt Of the news of the Mont Pelee af-
fair. He replied that he had become con-
WINGED in his own mind, after certain stimuli
taneous threatenings and rumblings and
smoke fSSuinRS of Mama lama in
wall and Vesuvius few years previously,
that the world was about due for another
tremendous volcanic disaster.
So he had employed a caStaWay of a New
York literary hack-the New York woods
surge with the poor wretches-who had
knocked about the world good bit, to
throw large mass Of STUFF about vol
canoes into shape.
The publisher did the best he could to
keep down the manifestations Of his en-
joyment and self-approval over the terrible
Mont Pelee eventuation which justified his
judgment, but he did not entirely succeed.
The paper book sold something like 800, 900
copies in this and other large cities at a
quarter copy, and, as 1t cost little or
nothing to produce it. the publisher made
lot of money out of it,
Ever on the Alert.
These alert chaps who get out the books
Of the sort described are ever awake to the
possibilities of big incident or big
death. When that extraordinary chase af-
ter the fugitive outlaw, Tracy, up in Wash
ington and Oregon began few months
back, every one Of these publishers got his
forces to work Tracy book
There was not much material accessible
with regard to Tracy himself, but all of the
books teemed with matter regarding the
hunts for famous desperadoes of other
days. They were, Of course, lurid to the
very last degree. But the publishers were
sagely alive to the fact that the whole
country. high and low, was tremendously
interested in the outcome Of the Tracy
hunt-that the imagination of the whole
people had been captured by the run which
the northwestern bad man was giving his
pursuers.
All Of these publishers had the precedence
to know that the Tracy books would be no
good as sellers until the incident was closed,
and so not one of them appeared until the
final moment But within one hour after
the news was flashed to New York that
Tracy had been rounded up and done to
death five Tracy books were being howled
in the highways and byways Of New York,
and they all contained the story, too, of
how Tracy had taken his final stand. 1t
Is said that these Tracy volumes sold
million copies inside Of three or four days
in New York and other nearby large cities.
These same publishers who get out the
'hustle" paper books for street selling are
thoroughly alive to the advantages to them
Of big deaths. One Of them, for example,
had huge cloth and leather bound
UloSTdpHy OF the tate LIT. IalmaSe on the
market just two days after the latter's de-
mise. and he "cleaned up" the market with
his book, his competitors not having been
In quite his state of readiness when the pull
pit preacher passed away.
Another publisher had the German quar-
tiers Of New York, Philadelphia, Boston and
other large cities flooded with quite passa-
BILE biography, cloth-bound, $1.25. Of Bis
marck within less than a day after the
death Of the German statesman. This pub
Usher made large amount Of money out of
this venture, and the money was all made
in a short space of time-the publishers of
this sort Of material fully understand how
| quickly public interest in any sort Of
great event subsidies In this country.
Rapid Subsistence Of Public Interest.
An instance Of this rapid subsistence of
public interest in the United States in events
to which for period the newspapers devote
pages Of matter, and the effect of such
lapsed interest upon the hustle books, was
the failure of the Biddle books-the street
volumes that appeared following the escape
of the Biddle boys from the Pennsylvania
jail through the connivance of the jailers
wife and the tragedy that followed. The
whole incident happened within the space
Of twenty-four hours-the escape and death
of the Biddles. Consequently, the publish