Clarificators

In a plainly furnished Manhattan office one day last week sat bushy-browed Fred Eugene Baer punching a typewriter with great deliberation. Over his shoulder looked bald-domed Henry Fitzwilliam Woods, counting the words. When the keys spelled out "wonderful" both men cheered, put on their hats, went out to the nearest bar. There they toasted themselves, for from their assembly line had come the 5,000,000th word they had written for which somebody else took credit. Their business is producing and selling written matter at so much a word under the name of Ghostwriters Bureau, which they founded in February, 1933. The word "wonderful" was part of a speech they were writing for a Rotary Club luncheon in Kansas.

Ghostwriters Bureau will tackle almost any topic. "We write it--YOU sign it" is their slogan. Ghosts Baer & Woods ex-newspaper reporters, do only the simpler forms of ghost writing: goodwill speeches, letters-to-the-editor, sales letters, etc. Other work they farm out on a fee basis to 200 writers on their list. Forty of these are professors at Columbia, Fordham, New York University. The rest are working newspapermen and assorted specialists. Rates range from 1 1/2-c- a word for routine editing to 8-c- a word for articles on technical subjects requiring considerable research. They handle about 20 jobs a week and expect to gross about $100,000 this year. Their largest fee so far was $1,900 for the annual report of a corporation. Smallest was from a man in Panama who sent in a check for $5 asking for a brief and suitable expression for his daughter's wedding breakfast.

Recently they wrote 40 speeches for inarticulate businessmen who wanted to sound off against President Roosevelt's Supreme Court plan. Inflation was another gold-mine subject for Ghostwriters Bureau. When Messrs. Baer & Woods first set up shop, businessmen were chary about hiring their services, usually conducted negotiations from home or on private stationery. Now Business has accepted ghostwriting as established practice, so long as names of clients are not made public. For the benefit of the more fastidious of these, Baer & Woods describe themselves as "clarificators."

Competitors in the field are Farrell-Lees Associates in New York and the Public Speakers Society of Harrisburg, Pa. The latter has a catalog of speeches in stock on subjects ranging from "Is Poverty a Curse?" to "Address at Opening of New Morgue."

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