Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1914-09-17

THE success of a play is due to it's love
story, it's stage pictures and its underlying
theme. Take rs per cent. stage pictures a
plot and a good love theme and success Is
assured" said Belasco, and then he added:
Anybody can write some sort of a play
but it takes a genius to sell one"
GONE ten years ago last summer there
~ came word across the wires that the
General Slocum had burned in the East River
and that 1000 human beings, the vast ma
jority women and children, had lost their
lives. On the staff of a Philadelphia paper
was young reporter who had given indica-
tions of ability in the line of descriptive
writing, and he was rushed to New York to
linn pen picture of the horror as he saw 1t.
At o'clock that night he returned, went
to the office of the managing editor and sat
down and-cried. Completely unnerved, he
could not write line and so an Unconditional
copy reader wrote the pen picture. Since
then, the former cub reporter has blossomed
out until now the world of readers knows
him as Reginald Wright Kaufman, whose
income from the moving picture rights OF
THE House of Bondage" runs into hundreds
a week.
ONLY those familiar with newspaper work
the Slocum disaster the Titanic tragedy
means. Real newspapermen do not get ex-
cited, no matter what the provocation.
few hurried orders to reporters and pho
tographers-a brief wire to a correspondent
an order on the cashier for necessary funds
and apparently, the thing Is done. But the
collecting of a great news story-one, TWO
three pages--is not accomplished in an
hour or day, The foundation has been laid
months and years before in the upbuiding
of an organization The managing editor,
the news editor, the city editor know their
men-they need simply start the machine
going
Take the Titanic disaster as an example.
For fully As hours the newspapers had known
intuitively that something was wrong with
the shlp-that news had been suppressed.
But what?
Then came the bare outline Of tragedy
hints of awful things as yet untold-whispers
of appalling loss of life. The machinery was
put to work-the wires cicked-the type
writer's buzzed-the story was printed and
the world shuddered
And yet, simple as this seems, there were
stretches Of As hours when newspapermen
stuck to their desks-when wearied eyes and
strained nerves were on the point of capitu-
lation. Still it was all in the days work
and as such, done!
TRANCIS B. REEVES, of the Girard Ma
i tional Bank, visited Russia in days gone
by and, as a matter of course, made flying
trip to the estate Of Leo Tolstoy-altruist,
materialst dreamer-the bette nor Of the
Russian reactionares. The free American
and the free Russian struck up friendship
and discussed themes nearest their respective
hearts. Then came the day of parting. Toll
stoy asked the banker to defer his departure.
In America" explained Mr.. Reeves time
is money"
What low value you put on your time"
retorted Tostoy
TVEN a our own Liberty Bell is cracked.
Z so has a similar mishap overtaken the
famous Roelandt bell in Client, next to its
prototype in the Kremlin, Moscow the most
noted Of European bells. Roelandt is the
oldest bell in Belgium, having been cast in
1874 and forms one of A chimes. On its
face it bears the following inscription in
Flemish:
My name is Roelandt; when toll, there
is a fire: when I peal, there is a victory In
Flanders"
When the Due d'Alva proposed to Charles
V that he should destroy the city, the sover-
eign took him atop the belfry and, pointing
to Roelandt, asked;
"Combien faudrat-il de peauX d'Espagne
pour faire un Cant de cette grandeur"
CHow many Spanish skins are needed to
make a glove Of this sizeo
The phrase was play on words Gand be-
ing the French for Ghent and being pro-
nounced as his CANT (glove).
PHILADELPHIA travelling through
n the South, came upon one of the largest
manufactures of smoking tobacco in the
world. Impelled by curiosity he visited the
place At the railroad siding stood freight
car. Curiosity again caused investigation.
The freight car was loaded to the brim
with-alfalfa!
And not so long ago a freight car, filled
with peanut shells, was wrecked In West
Virginia The bill Of lading showed that 1t
was consigned to a Western breakfast food
foundry.