Imitation

Alert magazine readers could have played a neat joke on friends and family last week. "Go over there and shut your eyes," they could have said, "and listen while I read you something. Listen carefully because you'll have to answer a question when I finish."

The alert questioner could then have read this excerpt:

"Symphonic recreation in the short-grass country, as related by the Kinsley correspondent of the Kansas City Times:

"The members of the Kansas City Little Symphony and the soloist, Mrs. George R. Cowden, motored from Hays yesterday almost at the risk of their lives, because of slippery roads. The orchestra arrived at two o'clock, with one hour to unload piano, harp, trunks and instrument books from the trunks, and for luncheon. At three o'clock an audience of twelve hundred was in the gymnasium, one thousand of whom were school children. Tonight an audience of eight hundred brought the number to two thousand who heard the orchestra in spite of rain and muddy roads. Busses with school children came from twenty-five miles away."

If the shut-eyed one had not already scornfully interrupted, the questioner would have asked: "Now, what U. S. magazine do you think that appeared in?"

Bursting with confidence, Shut-Eye would have cried: "That's from 'Americana' in the American Mercury,"

"Oh, no, it isn't," says Questioner.

"Listen again, carefully now. Try to think about this one.

"Inspiration and self-help in the Bible Belt, as reported by the Atlanta Constitution :

"With prospects of more than $4,000 raised toward the Warner Hill Educational Foundation, recently organized by the Judge W. H. Hill Bible Class of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, preparations to aid students through Methodist schools by means of repayable loans are scheduled to be completed this fall, it was announced by George E. Knott, president of the class of more than 250 men. The educational fund was instituted at the inspirational meeting held at the church recently."

Stubborn Shut-Eye would surely have insisted that no U. S. magazine save Editor H. L. Mencken's kraut-liveried American Mercury would make fun of the Bible Belt. Why, Editor Mencken virtually invented that damning phrase. No month passes without its appearance, many times repeated, on that page of the American Mercury dedicated to exposing the mental fumbles and spiritual solecisms of Mr. Mencken's "booboisie" to his admiring acolytes.

But little by little, by reading more excerpts, Questioner might have brought Shut-Eye to suspect that though the style was Mr. Mencken's the viewpoint was far from his. The page Questioner read from contained 19 press clippings prefaced with Menckenian facetiousness, but the solemnity implied was not, as with Mr. Mencken, mock solemnity. There were two clippings about Rotary Clubs, one about Kiwanis, one about a Chamber of Commerce. These organizations had been detected, not in a grammatical error or blatant bit of boosting, but in the act of saving children's lives, sponsoring a bank reform, being approved by European potentates. There were two items showing missionaries at their best; one recording a glass manufacturer's bequest to Art; another, a farm-machinery man's bequest to Medicine, etc.

Picture Shut-Eye's surprise when Questioner turned him around and showed him that Editor Mencken's most famed, ludicrous and cruel sideshow had been copied in title and style and completely reformed in temper by Editor George Horace Lorimer's enormous Saturday Evening Post.

Editor Lorimer did not say where he got the idea of copying Editor Mencken and laying before three million U. S. readers the retort courteous to the hilarious cynicism with which Mr. Mencken monthly impregnates his readers, who number only 75,000 but are said to be "the intelligentsia."

But whether Editor Lorimer had been inspired by a bright young subordinate or conceived the imitation himself, his editorial compliment to Editor Mencken remained the same.* Not more than one Lorimer reader in three would recognize that the Post's new department was an answer to Menckenism. Therefore the "Americana" formula must have been judged on its own merit as a method by which Mr. Lorimer could "sell" the U. S. to its citizens.

Whether or not the American Mercury would, or could, cry "Piracy!" and go to court, remained to be seen. If it should, the resultant publicity would be well worth the cost of an unsuccessful suit. From Mr. Lorimer's standpoint, no damages that the American Mercury might ask and win could greatly upset the Post's finances. If the Post had to pay for its new feature, Mr. Lorimer was doubtless cheerfully ready to do so. For 28 years he has conducted his magazine on the theory that literary laborers are worthy of their hire.

Before Mr. Lorimer became the Post's first and only literary editor, in 1899, the magazine was an obscure eclectic weekly, with 1,800 circulation, which politely "lifted" most of its material from other journals, often British ones. Mr. Lorimer, who had worked eight years in his friend Philip D. Armour's Chicago packing plant without sensational progress, and had then started a new career as reporter on the Boston Post, saw in the press that Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis had bought the Saturday Evening Post. He telegraphed Mr. Curtis, asking an interview in Philadelphia. Mr. Curtis surprisingly answered that he would meet Mr. Lorimer in Boston. On a divan in the Touraine Hotel, Mr. Lorimer sketched his theory that a magazine could be edited to interest men quite as readily as Mr. Curtis's other editor, Edward W. Bok, was interesting women in the Ladies' Home Journal. Mr. Curtis was impressed and soon George Horace Lorimer was engaged on his 28-year job of building out of a 16-page nonentity a 200-odd-page U. S. institution so full of costly advertising that the publisher could afford to give it away but for the fact that the public would rather pay him a nominal nickel per copy.

No Hats?

Impelled by Signor Mussolini, the newspapers of Rome began, last week, a concerted campaign urging men to go hatless. "A bare head is more hygienic, more comfortable, and more ROMAN," declared Italian editors, recalling that the sturdy citizens of ancient Rome went bareheaded.

In the U. S. what paper would thus dare to flout rich, potent, organized hat makers? Yet hat making (especially straw hat making) is a leading Italian industry.

Is it really better to go hatless? Is a windblown, dust-swept, rain-soaked, hail-battered or snow-covered hatless head best? Is it better than a head simmering in its own heat under a piece of felt that may have been worn for months?

The choice is not easy; but the New York World, courageous, once went so far as to say editorially: "The cult of hatless men, which had few devotees . . . has many now. . . ." Further than this U. S. journalism has preferred not to go in raising an issue, perhaps some day to take its place beside such questions as: "Was Adam an ape-man?"; or "What per cent of alcohol makes a beverage 'intoxicating'?"

*As a matter of fact, the "Americana" formula is no invention of H. L. Mencken's, though he it is who made its fame. The New Republic (liberal weekly) has long had a department called "The Bandwagon" wherein are reprinted, without sarcastic blurbs, excerpted blatancies and stupidities from public orations, sermons, editorials, church bulletins, interviews, etc.