Low Taste

In Manhattan, it is to the New York American (Hearst) and the Daily News (Chicago Tribune Co.) that sensation-mongers, scandal-gluttons and other addicts of "the pandering press" turn to gratify their low tastes. To The New York World and other papers, a higher class of reader turns for "legitimate" news, vigorous editorials, tasteful "quality" advertising. Many were the readers of the World on June 29 who, beholding the following advertisement in its columns, turned startled eyes to their paper's title-line to discover if their newsdealer had not made some mistake: P:Just Published! "THE PRICE OF THINGS" by Elinor Glyn, author of "Three Weeks" Here is a novel that will open your eyes! Each succeeding chapter grows more daring. From the Magic Pen of Elinor Glyn flows a throbbing tale of audacious characters, startling incidents, sensational situations, daring scenes, thrill after thrill! So realistic is the charm, the fire, and the passion of this fiercely-sweet romance, that the hot breath of the hero seems to fan your face. Your blood races madly at the unconditional surrender of the delicious heroine. You kiss her madly and seem to draw her very soul through her lips! And then comes the big scene! Midnight has struck--and the heroine, sleeping peacefully, dreams of her husband. . . . The door squeaks. . . . Breathless silence. . . . Then "Sweetheart," a voice whispers in the darkness. . . . "Oh, dearest," she murmurs, as, but half awakened, she feels herself being drawn into a pair of strong arms. . . . "Oh! --you know I ." But we must not tell you any more. Hurry to the nearest bookstore without a moment's delay. Price $1.97 wherever books are sold, or direct from The Authors' Press, Publishers, Auburn, N. Y.

Cobb Collected

When Frank I. Cobb, Editor of The New York World, died last December, TIME printed excerpts from some of his most noteworthy editorials. His editorials were the kind that did not lose their flavor with their timeliness. Now they have been collected in a book, Cobb of the World.* Laurence Stallings, his assistant, told apropos of the appearance of the volume some of the facts of Cobb's last days : "The last memory I shall have of Frank Cobb was on the day following Harding's death. He was propped up on his bed, for he was in steady, enduring pain. For a lifetime he had surveyed the forces at play about him with a vigor almost unprecedented in journalism, a profession wherein only the vigorous survive. I had gone to his house that he might dictate to me a few notes to his colleagues on the succession of Mr. Coolidge to the Presidency. "Cobb of The World was dying, and he knew it. He sat there among his pillows, wracked, without a thought of himself. It was literally true, Cobb of The World was thinking of the world. He said to me : "Theodore Roosevelt, succeeding to William McKinley as President, fell heir to an almost perfect party machine, which never in his time failed to function. Today Republican leadership is bankrupt, rent by volt.' " faction, oppressed by mutterings of revolt".

Press Agentry

Press agents are the product of ethics in journalism, just as criminals are the product of law in government.

When newspapers were in infancy, in infancy which knows no morals, they made no distinction between advertising and news. For pay or for influence, they advertised in the form of news whatever they chose. Now the larger papers, having acquired a sense of responsibility to their readers, sedulously rule out of their news columns all advertisements. This led to the development of press agents, who manufactured news that would render incidental advertisement. With a detective eye the best newspapers watch and reject this stuff.

Last week, however, several leading editors were apparently outwitted by a press agent. A man, who signed himself "John Cromartie," wrote to the Director of the Bronx Zoo,'New York City, and suggested that the Zoo was incomplete without a specimen of the human race, and offered himself for exhibit in the monkey house. The New York Times printed this information and reported what the Zoo-Director said he had replied to the offer:

"As an honest and upright citizen, with no police record and with no axe to grind at some other man's expense, you would be a perfectly legitimate exhibit here alongside our upright apes and bounding baboons from the African outdoors. But it will not do to install you here, as your presence would be denounced as a reproach to the majority of the proletariat and an insult to predatory man.

"The minority is too weak to defend you, even on the basis of a harmless, but necessary, educational exhibit. It can not now defend itself. The times, and possibly the world and sun also, are out of joint."

A similar offer was received by a Zoo-Direptor in Boston. Arthur Brisbane, Hearst editor and omnivorous reader, saw this and of course commented. It remained for Franklin P. Adams (F. P. A.), of The New York World, to remark: 'Here's one original thought,' writes Mr. Brisbane in The American. 'John Cromartie, citizen of New York, writes to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, saying he'd like to be exhibited in the monkey house with the other primates, to show how much man resembles the ape." It is, as Mr. Brisbane so well puts it, an original thought. Original, it must be added, with Mr. David Garnett, author of the just-published A Man in the Zoo.* By a strange coincidence Mr. Garnett hit upon the name John Cromartie also. And Mr. Cromartie had himself exhibited in a cage in the Royal Zoological Gardens, London, with this card on it: 'Homo Sapiens, MAN. This specimen, born in Scotland, was presented to the Society by John Cromartie, Esq. Visitors are requested not to irritate the man by personal remarks.' Oh, well, even Mr. Brisbane can't read everything. The press agent, if such he was, had succeeded in outwitting the combined intelligences of two Zoo-Directors, the City Editor of The New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, an editorial-writer on the New York Herald-Tribune, and doubtless several others.

*COBB OF THE WORLD--Edited by John L. Heaton (his colleague)--Button ($3.50); limited edition ($10.00). *A MAN IN THE Zoo--David Garnett-- Knopf ($1.75) was reviewed in TIME, June 30.