The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-03-24
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

This is day when every business has its paper There are trade jour nals, farm journals, mercantile jour nals. banking journals. and a medium to represent the various differentia- lions of all commercial organizations.
 The music world is we'll represent ed by number of publications. as areN art interests. The movies have their own periodicals, the theatres number quite few, automotive concerns abound in them, and even the airplane people have interesting papers.
 I have merely outlined just few of them with hardly a mention of the ones devoted to the special professions. It is perfectly proper. then, that the liter ary craft should have mouthpiece of their own, filled with things of mo- ment oth eme anndhm rftaihmtaaaa ment to the men and women engaged in the production of literature.
 For number of years "The Writer" a monthly magazine for literary work CTS. has been published by the Writer Publishing Company. and ably edited by William H. Hills, a Harvard graduate and trained newspaper worker, who has given his entire life to the writing profession. and who numbers among his friends many of the literary celebrities of the past forty years.
 It has been coming to me for nearly a score of years, and in that time I have gleaned from it's pages not only many intimate sidelights on authors and their methods of labor, but had a chance to get in touch with many worth while articles of interest to writers that do not find their way into | the average popular magazine or even the higher type ones with a distinctive literary flavor.
 The Writer purposes to be helpful not only in the way of inspiration, but | devotes much space to treating ques- tions of grammar. style, punctuation and the other mechanics of the craft; | the beauty about the matter found being that it always bears the name of some well recognized authority in the line treated The articles are scholarly and not mere patchwork of amateurs.
 But do not get the idea from this that The Writer is a stilted publica- tion and out of touch with the tastes I of the average man, for 1t is very human, and seeks practical articles on | topics connected with literary work in order to make it medium of mutual help. Its pages are open to any one of it's readers who has anything helpful to offer, provided that the articles do not run much beyond thousand words.
 l Authorship Is both a trade and an the value of words and how to place them properly, and yet the masterpieces have behind them ideas for which the world Is greedy. Too many get the idea that they can win fame without paying the price which the great liter ary lights had to pay in order that their works might become immortal. l
 l The leading article in a recent mum l Der of The Writer is on plagiarism, a thing we are all guilty of who live by | our pens sometimes consciously and at others unconsciously I am, how 1 ever, in agreement with the author, La Touche Hancock, who says: ITO | borrow facts from every accessible source does not make a man a pla- | glarist" Some one has said that an Idea belongs to the person who knows how to handle it.
 He makes the very interesting state
 ment that fin nine hundred and nine- ty-nine cases one learns his trade only by initiating" The confessions along this line of Robert Louis Stevenson, the stylist and master of words, Is an instance in point. He says: Shake )speare started out in humble imitation of several specific predecessors. He played their games and beat them at | it." And when a professor told Kip ling that he had pointed out to his
 class at college several masters of story telling in whose footsteps Kip Hing had trod. and by whose examples he had obviously profited, Kipling
 smiled and then slowly drawled out,
 according to La Touche Hancock: "But
 why did you give it away? Why not
 let them think it was just genius?"
 I cite these instances to. show the
 need of such a publication as The
 Writer. It has valuable departments
 under the heads of Literary shor
 Talk" "The Manuscript Market,
 "writers of Today" Current Literary
 Topics" Literary Articles in Periodi-
 calls" Reviews and Notes" and Book
 Reviews" Under each head there is
 sure to be found something of more
 than passing interest.
 am sure "The Manuscript Market
 makes it's appeal to the professions
 writers for in it are definite tips con . corning the publishers in the market for certain classes of material. But the thing which struck me most forci- ply was the number of prizes offered by reputable houses. civic bodies. and lcomrnercial enterprises for names. es- i, I .,ao;at articlao rar, iv