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  For those who are so illiterate as not to be familiar with the literature of business, I quote a definition of the word “house organ”:

  “A house magazine or bulletin to dealers, customers or employees, designed to promote goodwill, increase sales, induce better salesmanship or develop better profits.”

  In spite of Mr. Ramsay’s exceedingly thorough treatment of his subject, there is one type of house organ to which he devotes much too little space. This is the so-called “employee or internal house organ” and is designed to keep the help happy and contented with their lot and to spur them on to extra effort in making it a banner year for the stockholders. The possibilities of this sort of house organ in the solution of the problem of industrial unrest are limitless.

  Publications for light reading among employees are usually called by such titles as “Diblee Doings,” “Tinkham Topics,” “The Mooney and Carmiechal Machine Lather” or “Better Belting News.”

  First of all, they carry news notes of happenings among the employees, so that a real spirit of cooperation and team-play may be fostered. These news notes include such as the following:

  “Eddie Lingard of the Screen Room force, was observed last Saturday evening between the mystic hours of six-thirty with a certain party from the Shipping Room, said party in a tan knit sweater, on their way to Ollie’s. Come, ’fess up, Eddie!”

  “Everyone is wondering who the person is who put chocolate peppermints in some of the girls’ pockets while they were hanging in the Girls’ Rest Room Thursday afternoon, it being so hot that they melted and practically ruined some of their clothing. Some folks have a funny sense of humor.”

  Then there are excerpts from speeches made by the Rev. Charles Aubrey Eaton and young Mr. Rockefeller or by the President and Treasurer of the Diamond Motor Sales Corporation, saying, in part:

  “The man who makes good in any line of work is the man who gives the best there is in him. He doesn’t watch the clock. He doesn’t kick when he fails to get that raise that he may have expected. He just digs into the job harder and makes the dust fly. And when someone comes along waving a red flag and tries to make him stop work and strike for more money, he turns on the agitator and says: ‘You get the h*** out of here. I know my job better than you do. I know my boss better than you do, and I know that he is going to give me the square deal just as soon as he can see his way clear to do it. And in the mean time I am going to WORK!’

  “That is the kind of man who makes good.”

  And then there are efficiency contests, with the force divided into teams trying to see which one can wrap the most containers or stamp the largest number of covers in the week. The winning team gets a felt banner and their names are printed in full in that week’s issue of “Pep” or “Nosey News.”

  And biographies of employees who have been with the company for more than fifty years, with photographs, and a little notice written by the Superintendent saying that this will show the company’s appreciation of Mr. Gomble’s loyal and unswerving allegiance to his duty, implying that anyone else who does his duty for fifty years will also get his picture in the paper and a notice by the Superintendent.

  It will easily be seen how this sort of house organ can be made to promote good feeling and esprit de corps among the help. If only more concerns could be prevailed upon to bring this message of weekly or monthly good cheer to their employees, who knows but what the whole caldron of industrial unrest might not suddenly simmer down to mere nothingness? It has been said that all that is necessary is for capital and labor to understand each other. Certainly such a house organ helps the employees to understand their employers.

  Perhaps someone will start a house organ edited by the employees for circulation among the bosses, containing newsy notes about the owners’ families, quotations from Karl Marx and the results of the profit-sharing contest between the various mills of the district.

  This would complete the circle of understanding.

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  Advice to Writers

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  Two books have emerged from the hundreds that are being published on the art of writing. One of them is “The Lure of the Pen,” by Flora Klickmann, and the other is “Learning to Write,” a collection of Stevenson’s meditations on the subject, issued by Scribners. At first glance one might say that the betting would be at least eight to one on Stevenson. But for real, solid, sensible advice in the matter of writing and selling stories in the modern market, Miss Klickmann romps in an easy winner.

  It must be admitted that John William Rogers Jr., who collected the Stevenson material, warns the reader in his introduction that the book is not intended to serve as “a macadamized, mile-posted road to the secret of writing,” but simply as a help to those who want to write and who are interested to know how Stevenson did it. So we mustn’t compare it too closely with Miss Klickmann’s book, which is quite frankly a mile-posted road, with little sub-headings along the side of the page such as we used to have in Fiske’s Elementary American History. But Miss Klickmann will save the editors of the country a great deal more trouble than Stevenson’s advice ever will. She is the editor of an English magazine herself, and has suffered.

  Where Miss Klickmann enumerates the pitfalls which the candidate must avoid and points out qualities which every good piece of writing should have, Stevenson writes a delightful essay on “The Profession of Letters” or “A Gossip on Romance.” These essays are very inspiring. They are too inspiring. They make the reader feel that he can go out and write like Stevenson. And then a lot of two-cent stamps are wasted and a lot more editors are cross when they get home at night.

  On the other hand, the result of Miss Klickmann’s book is to make the reader who feels a writing spell coming on stop and give pause. He finds enumerated among the horrors of manuscript-reading several items which he was on the point of injecting into his own manuscript with considerable pride. He may decide that the old job in the shipping-room isn’t so bad after all, with its little envelope coming in regularly every week. As a former member of the local manuscript-readers’ union, I will give one of three rousing cheers for any good work that Miss Klickmann may do in this field. One writer kept very busy at work in the shipping-room every day is a victory for literature. I used to have a job in a shipping-room myself, so I know.

  If, for instance, the subject under discussion were that of learning to skate, Miss Klickmann might advise as follows:

  1. Don’t try to skate if your ankles are weak.

  2. Get skates that fit you. A skate which can’t be put on when you get to the pond, or one which drags behind your foot by the strap, is worse than no skate at all.

  3. If you are sure that you are ready, get on your feet and skate.

  On the same subject, Scribners might bring to light something that Stevenson had written to a young friend about to take his first lesson in skating, reading as follows:

  “To know the secret of skating is, indeed, I have always thought, the beginning of winter-long pleasance. It comes as sweet deliverance from the tedium of indoor isolation and brings exhilaration, now with a swift glide to the right, now with a deft swerve to the left, now with a deep breath of healthy air, now with a long exhalation of ozone, which the lungs, like greedy misers, have cast aside after draining it of its treasure. But it is not health that we love nor exhilaration that we seek, though we may think so; our design and our sufficient reward is to verify our own existence, say what you will.

  “And so, my dear young friend, I would say to you: Open up your heart; sing as you skate; sing inharmoniously if you will, but sing! A man may skate with all the skill in the world; he may glide forward with incredible deftness and curve backward with divine grace, and yet if he be not master of his emotions as well as of his feet, I would say – and here Fate steps in – that he has failed.”

  There is, of course, plenty of good advice in the Stevenson book. But it is much better as pure reading matt
er than as advice to the young idea or even the middle-aged idea. It may have been all right for Stevenson to “play the sedulous ape” and consciously imitate the style of Hazlitt, Lamb, Montaigne and the rest, but if the rest of us were to try it there would result a terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors, all playing the sedulous ape and all looking the part.

  On the whole, the Stevenson book makes good reading and Miss Klickmann gives good advice.

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  “The Effective

  Speaking Voice”

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  Joseph A. Mosher begins his book on “The Effective Speaking Voice” by saying:

  “Among the many developments of the great war was a widespread activity in public speaking.”

  Mr. Mosher, to adopt a technical term of elocution, has said a mouthful. Whatever else the war did for us, it raised overnight an army of public speakers among the civilian population, many of whom seem not yet to have received their discharge. It is the aim of Mr. Mosher’s book to keep this Landwehr in fighting trim and aid in recruiting its ranks, possibly against the next war. Until every nation on earth has subjected its public speakers to a devastating operation on the larynx no true disarmament can be said to have taken place.

  In the first place there are exercises which must be performed by the man who would have an effective speaking voice, exercises similar to Walter Camp’s Daily Dozen. You stand erect, with the chest held moderately high. (Moderation in all things is the best rule to follow, no matter what you are doing.) Place the thumbs just above the hips, with the fingers forward over the waist to note the muscular action. Then you inhale and exhale and make the sound of “ah” and the sound of “ah-oo-oh,” and, if you aren’t self-conscious, you say “wah-we-wi-wa,” slowly, ten or a dozen times.

  “The student should stop at once if signs of dizziness appear,” says the book, but it does not say whether the symptoms are to be looked for in the student himself or in the rest of the family.

  The author does the public a rather bad turn when he suggests to student speakers that, under stress, they might use what is known as the “orotund.” The orotund quality in public speaking is saved for passages containing grandeur of thought, when the orator feels the need of a larger, fuller, more resonant and sounding voice to be in keeping with the sentiment. Its effect is somewhat that of a chant, and here is how you do it:

  The chest is raised and tensed, the cavities of the mouth and pharynx are enlarged, more breath is directed into the nasal chambers and the lips are opened more widely to give free passage to the increased volume of voice.

  The effectiveness of the orotund might be somewhat reduced if the audience knew the conscious mechanical processes which went to make it up. Or if, in the Congressional Record, instead of (laughter and applause) the vocal technique of the orator could be indicated, how few would be the wars into which impassioned Senators could plunge us! For example, Mr. Thurston’s plea for intervention in Cuba:

  “The time for action has come. (Tensing the chest.) No greater reason for it can exist tomorrow than exists today. (Enlarging the cavities of the mouth.) Every hour’s delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. (Enlarging the cavities of the pharynx.) Only one power can intervene – the United States of America. (Directing more breath into the nasal chambers.) Ours is the one great nation of the New World – the mother of republics. (Elevating the diaphragm.) We cannot refuse to accept this responsibility which the God of the Universe has placed upon us as the one great power of the New World. We must act! (Raising the tongue and thrusting it forward so that the edges of the blade are pressed against the upper grinders.) What shall our action be? (Lifting the voice-box very high and the edges of the tongue blade against the soft palate, leaving only a small central groove for the passage of air.)”

  The aspirate quality, or whisper, is very effective when well handled, and the book gives a few exercises for practice’s sake. Try whispering a few of them, if you are sure that you are alone in the room. You will sound very silly if you are overheard.

  a. “I can’t tell just how it happened; I think the beam fell on me.”

  b. “Keep back; wait till I see if the coast is clear.”

  c. “Ask the man next to you if he’ll let me see his programme.”

  d. “Hark! What was that?”

  e. “It’s too steep – he’ll never make it – oh, this is terrible!”

  For the cheery evening’s reading, if you happen to be feeling low in your mind, let me recommend that section of “The Effective Speaking Voice” which deals with “the Subdued Range.” The selections for the practice-reading include the following well-known nuggets in lighter vein:

  “The Wounded Soldier,” “The Death of Molly Cass,” “The Little Cripple’s Garden,” “The Burial of Little Nell,” “The Light of Other Days,” “The Baby is Dead,” “King David Mourns for Absalom,” and “The Days That Are No More.”

  After all, a good laugh never does anyone any harm.

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  Those Dangerously Dynamic

  British Girls

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  It is difficult to get into Rose Macaulay’s “Dangerous Ages” once you discover that it is going to be about another one of those offensively healthy English families. Ever since “Mr. Britling” we have been deluged with accounts from overseas of whole droves of British brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who all get out at six in the morning and play hockey all over the place. Each has some strange, intimate name like “Bim,” or “Pleda,” or “Goots,” and you can never tell which are the brothers and which the sisters until they begin to have children along in the tenth or eleventh chapter.

  In “Dangerous Ages” they swim. Dozens of them, all in the same family, go splashing in at once and persist in calling out health slogans to one another across the waves. There are Neville and Rodney and Gerda and Kay, and one or two very old ladies whose relationship to the rest of the clan is never very definitely established. Grandma, for some reason or other, doesn’t go in swimming that day, doubtless because she had already been in before breakfast and her suit wasn’t dry.

  These dynamic British girls are always full of ruddy health and current information. They go about kidding each other on the second reading of the Home Rule bill or fooling in their girlish way about the chances of the Labor candidate in the coming Duncastershire elections. It is getting so that no novel of British life will be complete without somewhere in its pages a scene like the following:

  “A chance visitor at The Beetles some autumn morning along about five o’clock might have been surprised to see a trail of dog-trotting figures winding their way heatedly across the meadow. No one but a chance visitor would be surprised, however, for it was well known to invited guests that the entire Willetts family ran cross-country down to the outskirts of London and back every morning before breakfast, a matter of fourteen miles. In the lead was, of course, Dungeon in running costume, followed closely by the flaxen-haired Mid and snub-nosed Boola, then Arlix and Linny, striving valiantly for fourth place but not reckoning on the fleet-footed Meeda, who was no longer content to hobble in the vanguard with Grandpa Willetts and Grandpa’s old mother, who still insisted on cross-country running, although she had long since been put on the retired list at the Club.

  “‘Oh, Linny,’ called out Dungeon over her shoulder, ‘you young minx! Why didn’t you tell us that you were reading a paper on Birth Control at the next meeting of the Spiddix? Twiller just told me today. It’s too ripping of you!’

  “‘Silly goose,’ panted Linny, stumbling over a hedgerow, ‘how about what the vicar said the other night about your inferiority complex? It was toppo, and you know it.’

  “‘It won’t be long now before we’ll have disenfranchisement through, anyway,’ muttered Grandpa Willetts, crashing down into a stone quarry, at which e
xhibition of reaction a loud chorus of laughter went up from the entire family, who by this time had reached Nogroton and were bursting with health.”

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  Books

  and Other Things

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  For those to whom the purple-and-gold filigreed covers of Florence L. Barclay’s books bring a stirring of the sap and a fluttering of the susceptible heart, “Returned Empty” comes as a languorous relief from the stolid realism of most present-day writing. One reads it and swoons. And on opening one’s eyes again, one hears old family retainers murmuring in soft retentive accents: “Here, sip some of this, my lord; ’twill bring the roses back to those cheeks and the strength to those poor limbs.” It’s elegant, that’s all there is to it, elegant.

  “Returned Empty” was the inscription on the wrappings which enfolded the tiny but aristocratic form of a man-child left on the steps of the Foundlings Institution one moonless October night. There was also some reference to Luke, xii., 6, which in return refers to five sparrows sold for two farthings. What more natural, then, than for the matron to name the little one Luke Sparrow?

  Luke was an odd boy but refined. So odd that he used to go about looking in at people’s windows when they forgot to pull down the shades, and so refined that he never wished to be inside with them.

  But one night, when he was thirty years old, he looked in at the window of a very refined and elegant mansion and saw a woman. In the simple words of the author, “in court or cottage alike she would be queen.” That’s the kind of woman she was.

  And what do you think? She saw Luke looking in. Not only saw him but came over to the window and told him that she had been expecting him. Well, you could have knocked Luke over with a feather. However, he allowed himself to be ushered in by the butler (everything in the house was elegant like that) and up to a room where he found evening clothes, bath-salts and grand things of that nature. On passing a box of books which stood in the hall he read the name on it “before he realized what he was doing.” Of course the minute he thought what an unrefined thing it was to do he stopped, but it was too late. He had already seen that his hostess’s name was “Lady Tintagel.”