Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-05-05

he happen to run across some of these
 stories printed twenty or thirty years ago. In the case of most men this out
 put would be considered enough for one
 ordinary lifetime, but, incredible as it
 may seem, he has, in addition to all this,
 nearly sixty novels, aggregating s0,O00
 words apiece, credited to his pen, to
 which catalogue of the firm, reprinting
 his works, gives veritable affirmation With such a record for activity, is it
 any wonder he seeks his present posi-
 tion as a refuge from pen and type. writerl
 Of the younger men who, coming to
 the dime novel mill and grinding out
 their weekly stint of thirty or forty | thousand words for awhile have then departed, some have since applied their
 pens to more ambitious work and with
 success. Only yesterday one of them published a novel on tho extravagance
 of New York society Not two years
 ago volume coming from him stirred up public sentiment against the meat
 packers of~Chicago. While q young
 man this author depended upon dime
 novels for funds to pay hls college cx
 penscs.
 Enjoying the rural delights of a small Michigan town is another man who, for
 saking the literature of thousand
 thrills, furnishes monthly serials to publisher who counts that day lost when he forgets to start new magazine. On one of the morning papers is a
 star reporter who not long ago gradu-
 ated from this form of hack work
 Still another young man, possessing two
 talents instead of one, labored at this
 for q while, but when he got the chance
 to take charge of the art department
 connected with a large advertising agency he lost no time in the changing.
 Cheap fiction proved stepping stone in the ease of another writer who went to purchaser with an idea for new series of stories. He was told to go ahead and for while the small boy took kindly to his yarns. But the can ny author did not intend to leave him self at the mercy of his fickle young readers and in the meantime kept his eyes open for something more stable. Before his stock of bright ideas had i, chance to run out he secured berth as managing editor of a magazine
 The most versatile of all dime novel authors is q man who turns his hand or rather his typewriter--to short sto- ries and special articles with equal fa- cility. Several melodramas and vaude- i vile sketches are now on the road and bringing in money for him. He has qualified as an advertisement writer.
 For year he wrote entertaining dra- matic criticism for magazine This was case of net letting his right hand know what the left was doing, for at the same time he was writing weekly "blood and thunder" and acting as the New York correspondent for Pitts burg paper. He did not stop here, for in his spare moments he composed top \ ical songs for musical comedies and wrote for months all the notices of Broadway theater, whose press agent, a friend of the busy author, was suffer ing from a nervous trouble and unable to write them himself.
 Recently he said: CT have taken a whack at everything except philosoph- ieal treatment and six best sellers, and, which is the important thing, sold my stuff. I'm no millionaire, but l we fed . large family from typewriter for some years and have managed to buy 2 house on few feet of that famous red clay over in Jersey. Not so bad For scribe whose name never gets nto the book reviews.''
 Free circulating libraries have given lime novels solar plexus blow. In he days of $5 membership to public ibraries, the small boy, not being plu- .ocrat, was unable to draw out books md had to content himself with cents worth of Tenderfoot Pete's Last Ieap," taken surreptitiously in small loses in the first vacant lot beyond the ange of the parental eye.
 But now all this has changed. Libra .ies are free. The small reader saves lis 5 cents for candy, and instead of the corner news stand goes o the nearest library for his reading natter.
 Naturally he comes in touch with a better class of literature, which cannot 'ail to improve his taste. The next gen. 'ration of youngsters will probably xnow dime novels only b yname, and he "last of the dime-novel writers" whoever he may be, will mark the ex-