Canada and the Wood Pulp
Situation

THE American Pulp and Paper Associa

tion has filed with Secretary of State Hughes a protest against the resolution which was passed by the House of Commons at Ottawa authorizing the Dominion Government to make resolutions prohibiting the exportation of freehold pulpwood, which is the raw material used by the paper mills of the United States.

They claim this is the legislative culmination of an inspired movement which started in Canada about four years ago, as a threat to the paper manufacturers of the United States, who, by means of the Underwood Resolution, so-called, were seeking a restoration of their rights in certain Crown Land leases, which were arbitrarily, if not illegally, taken from them by the Province of Ontario in 1900, by the Province of Quebec in 1910 and by the Province of New Brunswick in 1912.

This high-handed annulment of the rights of American paper manufacturers to the pulpwood reserves they had acquired and paid for in the Crown Lands of the Provinces aforesaid, brought the growth of the newsprint industry of the United States to a virtual standstill in 1910, and, together with the removal of all tariff protection to the United States product by the Reciprocity Act of 1911, and the Underwood Tariff Law of 1913, stimulated the Canadian paper industry into abnormal activity.

The protest further claims it is impossible too strongly to emphasize the disastrous results to the paper industry of the United States, to the publishing interests of the country and to the general reading public, that would follow the exercise of the power granted to the Government of the Dominion of Canada by the House of Commons to make regulations prohibiting the exportation of pulpwood from freehold lands in Canada.

The increased cost of pulpwood would find instant reflection in a large increase in the

price of paper. Estimating conservatively, newsprint paper would have to be sold for $10 a ton more than the present price, thus placing an added charge of $25,000,000 a year on the publishers of the United States, and this estimate is for newsprint paper alone and does not cover the tremendous increase in the cost of magazine and book papers, the manufacture of which requires a larger proportion of pulpwood.

Latest advices from Ottawa state that the resolution was passed by Parliament in its clos

Fortunes from Publishing

A RECENT article in the PUBLISHERS'

WEEKLY on the publishing career of Walter M. Jackson has found echo in the London papers, and has brought to the columns of the Publishers' Circular some details about the fortunes that have been made in English publishing.

"Will the new army of booksellers and publishers," says the article, "do better than those of the past generation?" The list of estates that have gone to large figures is given as follows:

George Routledge, £941,774.

George M. Smith, of Smith, Elder & Co., £761,965 (not all earned in publishing). Thomas Nelson, of T. Nelson & Sons, £630,867.

George William Petter, of Cassell, Peter & Galpin, £520,561..

Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, widow of George M. Smith, £215,773.

Sir Thomas Clark, £210,566.

Alexander Macmillan, of Macmillan & Co., £179,011.

Sir George Newnes, £174,153.

Adam Black, of A. & C. Black, £147,261. George Lock, of Ward, Lock & Co., £179,011.

George Bentley, of Richard Bentley & Son, £85,845.

Francis Black, £72,000. John Murray, £71,000. George Bell, £35,596.

Further particulars about the success of the "Britannica" sale are quoted from Hugh Chisholm, who says that in six years 1,500,000 volumes were sold in England, that the largest day's sale was £30,000 and the largest day's shipments 503 sets.

OHE streets which lead to the oldest Russian

THE streets, which lead to the oldest Russian

ture of a fantastic fair. It is a veritable kingdom of street vendors. Shoes and clothing are sold in the open from pushcarts, along with hardware, fruit, antiques, hats, cushions, pictures, hosiery and what-not. Halvha, the delicacy of the Near East can be had here in bulk, at a nickel a lump. People buy raisins and figs lavishly, consuming them on the spot. "Real Russian kwas," a beverage made from rye, flows freely here.

And in many a cellar kashniki, a millet dumpling, is consumed together with a glass or two of kwas, a hot baked sweet potato or a pickled cucumber.

In this setting, at 424 Grand street, we come upon Max Maisel's Shop, the oldest Russian bookshop in America. A glance at the show windows gives a fair idea of its business. In the central window American and European books are displayed-"A Book about Myself," by Dreiser, Hyndman's "The Evolution of Revolution," Romain Rolland, D. H. Lawrence, - James Branch Cabell. The literary treasures of Russia, available in English, are all here-Dos

toievsky, Tolstoy, Turgeniev, Gogol, Tchekov. For those who are under the spell of the Moscow Art Theater's presentation there are books on the Russian theater and drama. Another window features Russian books in Russian, and a third displays the latest art magazines, Russian, English and Jewish.

There are several customers in the shop, examining books, while a clerk lingers near. The proprietor is busy at his desk, leaning over his ledger. It is near the closing hour.

"I should like to get some information about your bookshop." A man with thick eye-glasses raises his head from the ledger.

"I guess you will have to see the clerk. I have very little time. In three-quarters of an hour the curtain will rise at the theater of the 'chudejestvenniki,' (a nickname for the Moscow Art Theater). What did you want to know, anyhow?"

As I answer his question, he resolutely closes the ledger. The telephone rings. He orders the clerk to answer the bell. "I will be busy with this gentleman. I am not in to anyone." With unexpected fervor he draws his questioner nearer. "The bookshops of the East Side?

Why, man, they are an inseparable part of America's growth in the realm of letters.

"We started on this corner in 1893. We were selling 'books for immigrants.' Intellectuals from Russia were our original customers. They demanded the best in literature. We introduced that best here. It was an unnatural thing, this concentration of book lovers, of truth seekers in the slums of the East Side. But the spirit was replanted. It spread. All over New York, all over America. A few days ago a young school teacher visited the store and bought some of the latest volumes by Cabell and Lawrence, Merejkovsky's "The Menace of the Mob" and several other books. 'You do not know me,' she remarked, 'but I used to come here often with my father.'

"I recalled her father. He was a Russian intellectual, struggling along on the East Side, a great book lover. He instilled that love for better literature into his children; only while he demanded books in Russian, his daughter was consuming them in English. That's why we are selling now more books in English than in Russian. But the spirit is the same. It is the same search for the eternal truth."

The Russian bookshop serves not only the intellectuals. The bulk of Russian immigration during the last decade has consisted of peasants and laborers. At best, they were graduates of the village church schools. They could read and write, but had slight interest in newspapers or books. The most striking fact about the mass of Russian immigrants is that their literary tastes have been developed in this country. Their literary progress is reflected in the book. shops which are conducted by every Russian newspaper. These shops have undergone a decided change. A decade ago their best sellers were "The Oracle," "The Prognosticator of Dreams" and the "Epistolary Manual." The demand for these books was so great that enterprising booksellers republished them in this country. Worthless fiction by unknown authors like "The Tale of Prince Bowa" or "How a Lioness Raised a Czar's Son" had a large sale. Reading was only a pastime. There was little demand for books that teach, that require thought on the part of the reader.

Then the war came. The supply of Russian books was cut off. Several publishing houses made their appearance. They started to publish the old "books for the people," but these found no market. They tried the better books, and the response was beyond their expectations. Books by Tolstoy, Gorky, Andreyev, translations of Jack London, books on popular science, books on economics and political science replaced the old trash. "The Oracle" and "The Tale of Prince Bowa" were put in the back room, and soon disappeared altogether. Of the old favorites only the collections of songs survived, for

the Russian, no matter what his intellectual development, retains a sentimental attachment to his old homeland songs- to the unnamed "songs and poems of freedom," "songs of the prison," songs and odes dedicated to the Volga River, song-poems of Lermontov, Koltzov and Nekrasov. But the trashy fiction has vanished.

One Russian bookshop states that it is unable to fill all the orders for Jack London's stories in Russian translation. O. Henry finds a great number of Russian readers, and a collection of American short stories in Russian is contemplated by one publisher. Booklets on popular science by two Russian authors, Rubakin and Lunkewitz, were named the best sellers by two Russian bookshops. Manuals of all kinds have a large sale. A great number of books on technical science are distributed. A text-book on the automobile and the tractor has proved to be a fine seller, despite the high retail price of $6.50 a copy.

"I remember well one laborer," said a Russian editor. "He used to visit our bookshop and our office with endless inquiries. He came here an illiterate, grown-up peasant. The newspaper was his First Reader. In two years' time he brought in a story which we were glad to publish. Now I have seen his story in a volume published in Russian by a Circle of Laborer-Authors. Most of them learned to read and write in this country." The second volume of these self-made authors mentioned by the Russian editor appeared recently. It included verses as well as stories.

While no statistical data is available, it is alleged that the Russians spend freely on books. To own a small carefully selected library of his own is the aim of every Russian whose interest in literature has been awakened. Public library facilities are out of reach for the tens of thousands of Russians who labor in the mines and mills of Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, or Indiana. But wherever a Russian organization is in existence, libraries are at once organized. And woe to the member of such a library who fails to return a book-his name is published in a newspaper and the organization does not hesitate to brand him "an enemy of the working class."

The rise of the Russian bookshop and the Russian library in this country is the best testimony to the mental development and progress of the Russian immigrant. The natural growth of the Russian bookshop into an American book business, with sales of American books predominating, is another striking demonstration of the gradual absorption of the immigrant by American civilization. Appreciation of his home literature leads the Russian immigrant to an interest in American letters which is bringing him into closer contact with American spiritual and intellectual life.

W

HEN Mr. Brown opened the meeting he departed from his customary procedure of fingering his little black book. Instead he held in his hands a small cardboard box in the top of which a slit had been

cut.

"This week," he said in opening the meeting, "we are to have the question box. As you all know, the box has been available to you all week and you have no doubt written a number of questions for me to answer. I have not as yet opened the box nor have I the slightest idea what any of the questions may be. We will take them up one at a time and discuss them."

འ་་"་་་

being right ever since I read of a little incident. It seems that the proprietor of a certain store noticed one of his employees in a violent dispute with a patron. Coming to the scene, he reprimanded the clerk, saying 'never dispute with a customer. Haven't I told you

returned books

7 magazine

17

QUESTION

Box

So saying, Mr. Brown took the cover from the box, disclosing quite a number of slips within. The day had been warm and sales a little slow and the class with its question-box feature offered a suggestion of novelty. Mr. Brown fingered one of the slips.

"Let us start with this one,” he said. "Is the customer always right?' Now, for myself, I think that there has been a great deal of nonsense said and written on that subject. One can avoid the extreme of constantly arguing with customers and on the other hand never putting a customer right when in error. Of course, the latter must be very carefully done, as it is very easy to offend, but, for one, I don't think we should say that the customer is always right. If he should happen to ask for 'Pickwick Papers' by Thackeray he's not right. Of course, if you assume a superior air, raise your eye-brows and say, 'you mean by Dickens' he isn't going to like it any too well, but anybody with any tact or diplomacy can so easily carry to the customer the impression that he misspoke, even if he really didn't and really thought that Thackeray was the author of 'Pickwick Papers.' I have been a little skeptical about this customer always

that the customer is always right?' The clerk replied: 'Maybe so, sir. This gentleman just said that

whoever ran this business didn't know

anything.' So the customer being always right, I should say, is largely a mythical presumption. No one is always right. I know very well that I'm not and I think all of you will admit that you are not. So. when I become a customer at some store, does that necessarily change me from a man who makes numerous mistakes to one who is always right? I think not. The basic presumption is false. But the real question is this: is it policy to assume to the customer that he is right? In a great many cases, yes. Certainly we can set it down as axomatic that we are never justified in argument or dispute with a customer. I remember years ago, we lost a good customer and thru an argument, worse still an argument that had nothing to do with business. We had a salesman at the time named Pilkins, and this customer always let Pilkins wait on him. But one day the customer told me that he was thru-and sure enough he never came back. I guess he still buys up at Crandall's. And what do you suppose it was all about? Why, the thing he and Pilkins got so excited over that they refused to speak to each other was whether Eddie Collins was a better ball player than Yes, but that is. Hans Wagner. Foolish? what argument gets you into. So, remember, that in Partland's Bookstore, there is no contentious argument with customers. As for the rest, I leave it to your own good sense to pursue a sane, reasonable policy of tact

and diplomacy that will give the public a favorable impression of this institution." Mr. Brown picked up a second slip.

"Would we sell more books if there were no public libraries?' I am going to answer that categorically by saying, 'no, we would not.' The time is too short for me to go into all the reasons for my opinion, but I firmly believe that a city with a good library system buys more books than one with an inadequate one. If our library here closed its doors, we might sell a few more books for a short time, due to the stimulus for good reading already developed, but in the long run we would suffer greatly if this builder of book reading were eliminated. The question is interesting, but of little practical value. We face a condition, not a theory, and we must operate under the conditions as they exist, but I believe that we sell more books than we would without the libraries. Further, I believe that in the long run, we would not be greatly benefited if Crandall's were to go out of business. But that's a long story and we must get on." He unfolded another slip.

""Should we let a customer return a book which we recommend?' If the book has been purchased on our recommendation and if in the customer's mind, it does not measure up to what we said of it, or if it fails to serve the particular purpose he wanted it for, surely we should let him return it. We must make our word good and it isn't good unless the customer concedes that it is.

"Do magazines hurt the sale of books?" " Mr. Brown read. "No, I don't think so except that possibly the sale of cheap magazines of little literary quality prevent the development of the reading taste that comes to demand good books. I think it wise for bookstores to place on their magazine stands only publications making some pretense of merit. On second thought I should sum it up by saying that the sale of high quality magazines does not hurt book sales, but that the large circulation of trashy stuff vitiates public taste and makes the sale of books more difficult.

"Next question, 'What is the best advertising?' Service, that much misused term, is the best advertising for a bookstore or any other business. It is the only advertising that keeps them coming. Big spread advertising brings them once; service brings them back. I venture to say that a business can be successfully started on the foundation of one satisfied customer. You remember the old Mellen's Food slogan (I think it was Mellen's Food) 'We are advertised by our loving friends.' So are we advertised by our patrons-advertised favorably or the reverse as the case may be. I remember once Kokum's opened a new candy store and spent a lot of money advertising.

I bought a pound of their candy-advertising did that. But Mrs. Brown didn't like Kokum's chocolates as well as Swinton's, so as far as I am concerned their advertising is unfruitful and a whole page in the newspaper or a battery of bill-boards would be of no avail. This is too big a subject for tonight, but to summarize let me say that the way you handle your customers' requirements is the best advertising."

"Are books of today as good as those of years ago?' With your permission, I will try to get that question answered at our dinner next week." Mr. Brown glanced at his watch. "There are still a number of questions," he said, "but our time is up and I think that I will postpone their consideration. Here is one question that is hardly germane to our discussion of this evening and I will turn it over to Mr. Gordon for his personal attention." Mr. Brown folded the slip and passing it to Gordon said: "Put it in your pocket for the present."

"Our next meeting," said Mr. Brown, "as you all know, will be our first annual dinner party, and I am sure that we are all looking forward to having a very good time. I have noticed that the committees are very much on the job and I am sure that the arrangements will be in perfect running order. That is all for tonight."

"I wonder what the question Mr. Brown turned over to me can be," Gordon said to Miss Temple as they left the store together, as usual. He took it from his pocket and glanced at it and then hastily concealed it again.

"What is it?" said Miss Temple. Never you mind," said Gordon. "But I want to know," persisted Miss Temple.

"So do I," said Gordon. "Read it and give me an answer tomorrow night. Put it in your bag without reading it."

The little slip said: "When will Mr. Gordon marry Miss Temple?"

[Series to be concluded next week.]

An Omission

BY a very unfortunate oversight, the name

of the Abingdon Press was omitted from the list of publishers who will be represented at the Chicago Book Fair, in July. The Abingdon Press representative, Harold J. Northcott will be at the Palmer House.

How can one read all the books one ought to, when one hasn't even time to read the ones one ought not to?—Life.