MANY ARE CALLED BUT FEW ARE CHOSEN.
ROBERT BONNER told a reporter three or four years ago that the Ledger could be run for five years on the manuscripts then paid for and stowed away in his safes, without the purchase of another line. Still, he was constantly buying, and by this time is doubtless eight or ten years ahead. The Century and Harper's Magazine, it is claimed, could be published for fifteen years on matter already accepted. A sensational story paper inferior to the Ledger claims to have on hand "serials" enough for ten years to come. And the story is the same in periodical publication offices where matter is allowed to accumulate. Yet the avalanche of words poured forth by the victims of cacoethes scribendi continues with seemingly ever-increasing volume. The editor of a magazine said recently: "We receive on an average about twenty prose and as many poetical manuscripts per day. They vary in lengths and subjects greatly, but have a harmonious style—that of utter badness. Not one in a hundred is worth passing to a second reader for consideration. The writers generally send along letters trying to influence publication through sympathy with their ambition or their misery, or by giving fictitious ideas of their social, political, or literary prominence. Of course no attention is paid to such letters. Each manuscript has to go on its own merit—or demerit. Many of them can be sufficiently judged on their first two pages, and sometimes a story is rejected without any reading at all, simply because its length unfits it for our use. I do not think we could keep up with the constantly inflowing mass, if we did not adopt such 'short cuts' in reading and judging manuscript. No, instead of getting 'more than our share,' I have no doubt there are other offices where much more matter is offered than in ours. One that I know of gets from fifty to sixty manuscripts a day. All sorts of people send in stuff, but the most prolific and persistent are those who have absolutely no qualifications as writers."