The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-24
From the New York Times.

HE Harvard man who is devoting (OD himself to the composition of the
 cheapest melodramas is not the only college man who makes his living writing "thrillers.'' According to the statement of the largest publishers of the "Dme Novel" the mantle of Nick Carter and "old King Brady has fallen on young and active staff made up entirely of college graduates. who turn out penny dreadfuls quite as lurid as those of the original "Old Sleuth" himself.
 The demands made upon the writers have gone up. Literary finish has never been required, but speed is essential. The best of the college men are now expected to compose 60,O00 words a week, provid- ing new plot every seven days. This is a rate of 40 newspaper columns in each weekly installment, making daily allow ance of nearly seven columns, which is more than a newspaper page.
 "Compose' is the proper word for this sort of work, for the tremendous rate of speed makes it impossible for any man to actually write with his own hand that amount of copy. The writer dictates to a stenosrapher, on whose rapidity depends the success of the purveyor of dime novels to the people.
 It is this tremendous speed which is knocking out the older men and causing the authors of the "nickel-shockers'' to be recruited from the ranks of the young
 fio nf these can stand the strain only about five years. This is change from the days of the "Old sleuth" who kept at the work for 2osyears.
 "Old Sleuth" was the nom de plume of Harlan P. Halsey, the first man to intro duce the detective story as the main ele- ment of the dime novel. This was so sue cessful that the term dime novel has be- come almost synonymous with some Sherlock Holmes" mystery story
 The dime novel began as far back as 1860. under the guidance of H. H. Beadle and was story of lurid adventure, either on the western plains or built around some incident of colonial life. On the covers of these weekly publications was the wood cut of a. dime, hence the name for this class of literature. But the credit of making the sleuth the center of the dime novel belongs entirely to Harlan P. Halsey, who received his literary training as a chicken seller and butcher in Wash ington market. and his total amount of book education would not have carried him into the grammar school.
 Even after he had broken into" the writing business he always dictated and never handled the pen himself because Of a fundamental lack in the line of gram mar and spelling. Despite this slight draw back for literary achievement Halsey be- came an author for one of the weeklies then aboundng, of which the Ledger ana the Preside Companion were the leaders.
 Halseys. first genuine hit was The Fastest Boy in New York" This title was adapted from Oliver Dyer's one suc- cess, 'The Wckedest Man in New York tale of John Aliens dance hall. The plot, however, was Halsey's own. -After this ten-strike he branched out into the detective story, as a result of reading translation of Du Boisgobey's 'The Crime of the Opera House.
 A detective into American literature is the fact that an American took him to France. and the French writers sent him hack to the land of his birth. Poe's inn mortal mystery tales made almost no impression on his own countrymen, but they were received with applause in France, and under the influence of Poe's "Purloined Letter Gaboriau wrote his "Le 13me Hussards.' This first of the French detective stories did not reach America. but it was the book of riabor- iau's follower Du, Boisgobey, which was the literary parent of the "Old Sleuth' tales.
 An interesting story is told of Du Bois- | gobey's beginning as an author. Alexan- | der Dumas, the younger, after writing "Camille," was at the height of his fames but his profits, or rather his publishers,