The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-08
THE GREAT ExPuoITER.

The St. Louis Republic is not very greatly enthused over the prospect of Roosevelt as a magazine writer. Hear it:
 The fact that Mir. Roosevelt has al- ready entered into contract with a magazine for his literary output, de- scriptive of his coming African expe- editors for great names rather than great performances. It is not that MT. Roosevelt is a great author that his sought but that it is a. novel thing to have hunting yarns from an eXPresi- dent. They will be written not with a view to accuracy. interest or literary in it's turn, will command attention through the magic of a name.
 The leveling influence of the lo-cent ett mass of people to the plane of fairly intelligent reading public, but what 1t has done in the way of construction 1t of the reliefs and elevations constituted by masterful personalities, isolated gen. uineness and great individual achieve ment in the world of letters; Suder,, mann, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Gorlcy. Wilde and Bjornson are the compelling geniuses of recent years. William Dean How writer of perfect fiction. The others. living and dead. are the masters in their craft during the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. But none of them Is American. and none. unless 1t be the dlscredited Gorky. ever came within the baneful and deading In fluence of the 10-cent magazine. No sooner does a new literary mes senger burst into light than his titful but promising flame is discovered by the cheap magazine and exploited in satIate the public taste with his pe- culiar output and sap the fiber of the new authors ambition. The lO-cent magazine induces overproduction. Its message is ephemeral and it's appetite voracious. Imagine how cheap and tawdry Ibsen would have become had a hundred periodicals clamored for his output at so much per line. Tolstoi a fevered contributor to the monthly magazines, would soon he Tolstoi. a writer down to the mob. an artisan, not an artist. Wilde as a constant name on the title page of ten monthltes, would soon become a Wilde rank in artistic performances IS well as In atmosphere.
 But what would you have? Roose-
 welt wants notoriety-at $1 a word and the magazines think there's money in getting him to write about the great | things he sees and does, or imagines that he sees and does. It would be a great strain on the imagination to try to picture one of his dignified prede- cessors resorting to such a method to
 keep himself in the public eye and at
 the same time put money in his purse.
 It would be a still greater strain to
 try to imagine one of those Presidents.
 while yet In office. dick ering with the
 magazines for a sale of the products
 of his vivid imagination a year in the
 future.
 | But something had to be done.
 Roosevelt could not bear the thought
 of setting down in comparative ob-
 scurity as a mere ex-President. He
 must keep himself before the public
 and fell on the project of exploiting himself as the Mighty Hunter and the
 Mayne Reid of the twentieth century. | On the other hand, the magazines
 wanted something that would add to their sales. This they think will be
 assured by the publication of Roose-
 velt's self f-laudatory accounts of how
 he Invaded the wilds of darkest Africa shot or throttled tigers and Hons and
 elephants. tanned savages and did