I know you are as much in touch with the young printers and publishers as any one in New York, and I humbly petition you to present to them this idea, with as many Golden Book modifications as occur to you.

The present condition of the New York publishing world may occur again, and I take it that many publishers are moving west on conviction. I humbly petition that they make the home of Lincoln their rallying center, and the interpreting of the neighborly character of Lincoln, even in his non-political hours, their rallying cry and the center of their new editorial policy. So many new waves come in from Europe the poor American people have not time or strength left to become established in the understanding of their own faith and method, and it will always be so in New York. But if a circle of young or restored magazines be established in Springfield, Illinois, with their business as well as their edtorial policy based upon the same character as Abraham Lincoln, the publishers will have a winning battle ground forever. The very act of establishing their plants here will rally the American people around them.

Moreover, the Lincoln Pilgrimage, which takes two days, here and at New Salem, should be established as the unwritten law for every first voter before he or she casts his or her first ballot. And there should be great institutions of publicity here, calling them all to this spot, and showing their faith by coming here first, and setting this town in order for the world's guests.

And I suggest that all those interested in the practical end of this idea write to the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, to find out what Springfield is like to-day as a center of manufacturing and the like, or to Logan Hay, 5142 East Monroe, or Frank Macpherson, Room 404 Illinois National Bank Building-two entirely responsible citizens who can aid most efficiently in any such project.

Most earnestly your friend, and devastated with proper sentiments, VACHEL LINDSAY.

Foreign Exchange Affects Trade
With Europe

The rates of foreign exchange have suffered still further depreciation during the past month and according to the figures printed by The Guaranty Trust Co. on November 28th were as follows: Discount

Unit Ex. rate Ex. rate from Value Oct. 27 Nov. 28 mint par .9637 .9525 4.75%

Canada Germany Italy

1.00

.2382 .0350 .0230

90.3%

.1930 .0962 .0825

57.3%

Belgium

.1930 .1163 .1075

44.3%

France

.1930 .1156 .1026

46.8%

England

4.8665 4.1800 4.0300

17.2%

Switzerland

.1930 .1770 .1818

5.8%

Norway Sweden Spain Argentine Japan *Premium.

.4885 .5075 .5075 3.9%*

The effect of such exchanges is, of course, to hinder foreign export, yet so far there has been no diminution of the export totals.

Only in the case of Canada is the United States a large exporter of books and with the exchange as it is Canadian merchants have to pay about 5 per cent increase on all purchases.

From England and France we are heavy importers of books and with exchange as it is the American buyer gets the equivalent of a 17 per cent discount in paying bills to England and a 46 per cent discount in paying bills to France. These extraordinary rates do not promise to remedy themselves until more goods begin to flow from Europe to United States or our government or bankers make huge loans abroad.

25 Years ago in "Publishers' Weekly"

R. H. Russell & Son issue a collection of drawings by Charles Dana Gibson.

Wm. Heinemann and J. M. Dent, John Lane and others take up the cudgels for the "net" system of book prices.

Putnam's announce the publication of a serial to be entitled "Little Journeys" by Mr. Elbert Hubbard.

Posters of books and magazines are attracting the attention of collectors and some are bringing high prices.

W. B. Clarke Co. announces the publication of the Aeronautical Annual, devoted to the encouragement of experiment with aerial machines and to the advancement of aerodynamics.

Members of the Booksellers and Stationers Provident Association start agitation for a booksellers' league and over one hundred people have signified their interest. A meeting for formal organization is to be called early in 1895.

High Organization in the Second-
Hand Book Business

The firm of W. & G. Foyle, booksellers, London, has been converted into a Limited. Company, with W. A. Foyle, and G. S. Foyle, the original partners, as directors. By this conversion the firm hopes to extend its business, and to give even better book service.

Twelve years ago, the brothers Foyle started operations with a few shorthand books in a soap box in a London suburb, now they have built up one of the largest second-hand bookstores in the world. They have a stock of over 1,000,000 volumes, classified and arranged, and each department is in charge of an expert; thus, a doctor of divinity presides over the theological department, an educator is in charge of the school book department, and so on. Another interesting department is the music room, with a piano, where musicians are invited to inspect the stock, and try over the pieces.

The Foyles claim to buy over 10,000 volumes weekly, and as these have to be shelved, priced and cataloged, before they can be offered to prospective buyers, one realizes the enormous amount of work that bookselling on such a scale entails, and can understand the necessity for the staff of over 100 that the firm employs.

The Foyles have also an elaborate system of recording customers wants and reporting books on the subjects on which they are interested, as well as a record of the stocks of other booksellers, so that they are able to supply almost any book asked for, if by chance it happens not to be in their own stock at the time.

Germany Proposes to Subsidize Her Writers

The new board of directors of the German Schillerstiftung ("Schiller Institute," somewhat similar to our Rockefeller Foundation in its general plan) which now has a capital of 2,500,000 marks, is planning to use the income, 91,000 marks annually, to subsidize living writers rather than support relatives after the writer's decease. There is much to be said in favor of the change. In this regard Scandinavia is possibly in the lead. The government votes a certain amount of money each year to writers, scientific or imaginative, who are not engaged in a gainful occupation. Georg Brandes draws the salary of a professor at the University of Copenhagen. Norway nays particular attention to her creative writers. Had Ibsen not been cared for by the Storthing it is probable that he would have gone down under economic pressure. The difficulty in deciding who shall be so helped is obvious. Germany wishes to place the matter in charge of "older poets who have arrived."

Big Business is Getting Further into Retail Fields

That the retail field is more and more attracting the attention of big business is shown by the announcement that Montgomery, Ward & Co., the world's second largest mail-order house, is soon to be under the control of the United Retail Stores Corporation of New York, the largest retail chain store system in the world.

Montgomery Ward & Co., with some five million customers now on its list, was the first organization to engage extensively in catalog and mail-order business, being established in Chicago in 1872 by A. Montgomery Ward. An idea of how the business has steadily prospered is seen by figures indicating that in 1915 the sales amounted to $49,308,587, while the sales reported for 1918 were $76,166,848. The profits for this latter year were $6,390,181.

The United Retail Stores Corporation, which takes over Montgomery, Ward & Co., was organized in Delaware with an authorized capital stock of 100,000 shares of 8 per cent cumulative preferred stock of $100 par value and 1,160,000 shares of common stock with no par value. On June 10, 1919 the corporation acquired all of the issued shares with a par value of $100 and the common stock of the United Cigar Stores Company, thus making that organization a branch of the United Retail Stores Corporation. It also was behind the plans for carrying American products into every corner of the globe and was responsible for the formation of the Tobacco Products Export Corporation which has taken over the foreign business of the Tobacco Products Corporation and intends to establish factories in China, Australia and India. The United Retail Candy Company was later formed as an adjunct to the United Retail Stores Corporation and now the Loft chain of stores in New York also comes under the management of the United Retail Stores Corporation.

Thus, step by step, the organization has grown and the business increased until now it looks as if the next move toward the completion of this gigantic commercial undertaking would be the formation of an International Trade-Mark Corporation, a project which has been suggested many times.

The Atlantic's Bookshelf

Small, but extremely varied in subject matter the Atlantic's "bookshelf" for December is given over to

Reynard the Fox, by John Masefield. Macmillan.

After-War Atlas and Gazeteer of the World, edited by Francis J. Reynolds. Reynolds. Deep Water, by W. W. Jacobs. Scribner. Complete Works of Leonard Merrick.

Dutton.

Travel Books to the Fore Again

With routes for travelers and sightseers again open and personally conducted tours to the battlefields of Europe now advertised, it is safe to predict that travel books will again be in demand. In fact they are already com.. ing to the front, and after an absence of five years when they were found relegated to an obscure corner of the most remote shelf, books on sightseeing in Belgium, Southern France and Italy are again taking their place beside travel books of the East and South America. At this particular season when tourists everywhere are making plans for mid-winter trips, the keen bookseller anticipates the demand and shows a full line.

Recent Motion Pictures based on Books

His Official Fiancee, Famous Players-Lasky: Paramount. Star-Vivian Martin. English society romance adapted from the story by Berta Ruck.

Back to God's Country, First National Exhibitors'. Star-Nell Shipman. Outdoor melodrama adapted from the James Oliver Curwood story, "Wapi, the Walrus." Guardian of the Accolade, The, Vitagraph, O. Henry southern drama. Oakdale Affair, The, World. Star-Evelyn Greeley. Melodrama of adventure from the story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Every Woman, Famous Players-Lasky. StarViolet Heming. Mortality play picturized from Walter Browne.

The Wings of the Morning, Fox. Star-Wm. Farnum. Drama of England and India based on the novel by Louis Tracy. Witness for the Defense, Famuos PlayersLasky. Star-Elsie Ferguson. Problem drama adapted from A. E. W. Mason's story.

Cressy, Pathe Hampton. Star-Blanche Sweet.
Mountain feud drama adapted from Bret
Harte.

Dawn, Pathe Blackton. Star-Sylvia Breamer.
From the story by Eleanor H. Porter.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Realart.
Star-Ethel Terry. From Gaston Leroux's
novel.

Talking Just Enough

In retail salesmanship it is not always the quantity but the quality of your clerk's talk which closes sales. Also it is not how long your clerk talks, but when he leaves off. Some persons who sell goods have the impression that a rapid-fire conversation lands the sale. The closer mouthed a prospect is, the more they talk. Of course it's a fallacy to remain semi-silent, but it is a greater error to chatter away till the tentative purchaser is bored beyond endurance. Just how long a clerk should talk is a matter no one can state, as salespeople must possess the tact of being able to adapt their conversation to suit the temperament of the prospect.

Roosevelt's Pigskin Library

The prominence of Roosevelt in the public mind makes it worth while to reprint the list of titles in his famous Pigskin Library-that shelf-full of books which he selected to take with him on his hunting trip to Africa and had bound in the most durable of leathers to withstand hard usage. As an index for those cherishing good reading, this list, sponsored by a discriminating reader, is valuable. Every bookstore can supply some edition of the titles included in it, so why not make the most of a golden opportunity and display them as "Roosevelt's choice"?

Barrow "Bible in Spain," "Zincali," "Lavengro," "Wild Wales," "The Romany Rye." Shakespeare.

Spenser "Faerie Queene."

Marlowe Plays.

Mahan-"Sea Power."

Macaulay "History of England." Essays. Poems.
Homer "Iliad," "Odyssey.'
Chanson de Roland.
Nibelungenlied.

Carlyle "Frederick the Great."
Shelley-Poems.

the Argonauts,"

Crothers "Gentle Reader," "Pardoner's Wallet." Mark Twain-"Huckleberry Finn," "Tom Sawyer." Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."

Euripedes (Murray's translation)-"Hippolytus," "Bacchae."

Scott-"Legend of Montrose," "Guy Mannering."
"Waverley," "Rob Roy," "Antiquary."
Cooper-"Pilot," "Two Admirals."
Froissart-"Chronicles."

Thackeray "Vanity Fair," "Pendennis."

Dickens "Our Mutual Friend," "Pickwick."

E. P. DUTTON & Co. have their standard little "Church Calendar for 1920" ready in time for the holiday sales.

FORSAKING Tarzan for the moment, Edgar Rice Burroughs has a new story of weird adventure called "The Warlord of Mars" which A. C. McClurg is to bring out this month.

HOUGHTON, MIIFFLIN is playing up Maud Diver's "The Strong Hours" with big advertising and, judging from recent comments in book review sections, the book is well worth it.

THOSE who read "The Great Hunger" by the Norwegian writer, Johan Bojer, whom Blasco Ibáñez called "a de Maupassant of the North," will be anxious to read his "The Face of the World," published by Moffat, Yard & Co.

JOHN SPARGO has written a book about "The Psychology of Bolshevism" which Harper & Bros. are publishing as a successor to the widely discussed "Bolshevism," by the same author which appeared early last

summer.

BOLSHEVISM also forms the subject of a new Robert W. Chambers' novel which Appleton announces for early publication under the title of "The Crimson Tide."

ENGLISH novelists continue in popularity on this side of the water. Two of the fiction leaders on Dodd, Mead & Co.'s holiday list are Mrs. Humphry Ward's "Helena"-described as an after-the-war romance-and Archibald Marshall's latest novel, "Sir Harry."

AS A GIFT for the person who loves New York but knows only a limited section of it, Konrad Bercovici's new book, with its vivid little sketches of life in the foreign quarters of the great city ought to prove just the thing. The volume has just been published bv Boni & Liveright under the intriguing title "Dust of New York."

"NECESSITY is the mother of invention." Following the example of several progressive periodicals which resorted to setting by hand on typewriters during the printing strike the house of Appleton has succeeded in bringing out an interesting and unique book-the first of its kind, for it was typewritten and printed without the aid of a single regular printing press or pressman. The book is "Piggie" by Eleanor Gates, author of "The Poor Little Rich Girl," and it is rumored to be quite as unique in subject matter as it is in form.

"WADE IN SANITARY!"-a surgeon's story of the great war by Dr. Richard H. Derby, Roosevelt's son-in-law, is a prominent book of the month from the house of Putnam, giving a record of human achievements quite apart from those generally depicted in a war book.

"FROM MUD TO MUFTI"-a book dealing little with war, but a great deal with adventures behind the front lines is Bruce Bairnsfather's latest contribution to literature which comes to us via Putnam's. It brings "Old Bill" before us again and is described by the author as a mélange from the mud—so judge for yourself!

A LECTURE by Walter de la Mare on "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination" will shortly be published for the Woodberry Society by Harcourt, Brace & Howe. The lecture was delivered before the society on Mr. de la Mare's recent visit to America, and summarizes Brooke's position as an artist.

THE Burgess Bird Book (Little Brown) has now reached a sale of twenty thousand copies in three months, an almost unprecedented figure for a two dollar and a half children's book. Volland's re-issue of "Mother Goose" with plates by Richardson has also gone over the 20,000 mark in this

one season.

THREE new volumes are scheduled for publication this fall in McClurg's National Social Science Series. Titles and authors are "National Evolution," by Professor George R. Davies of Princeton University; "The Monroe Doctrine and the Great War," by Professor A. B. Hall of the University of Wisconsin, and "Housing and the Housing Problem," by Professor Carol Aronovici of the University of Minnesota.

IN "The American Red Cross in the Great War" (Macmillan), Henry P. Davison, its chief executive, gives the official story of the organization's war activities and tells it in such a way that every reader will glow with pride at the splendid record of American service. All the author's royalties_on the book, it is announced, go to the Red Cross.

BOOK SHELVES are crowded with books discussing the war on the western front, but thus far few volumes have told the story of the conflict in the east. Kermit Roosevelt's description of "War in the Garden of Eden" is an addition to the small group and by its intimate glimpses of men like Generals Maude and Allenby and its vivid record of a soldier's life, it has won a distinguished place in war literature. The book is published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

FRANK W. BURDETT of Silver, Burdett & Co. died in Brookline, Mass., on November 5. For many years Mr. Burdett had been associated with the house, first as a member of the firm and then continuously as its secretary from the date of its incorporation. In every relation he proved unswervingly loyal and highly efficient and retained the respect and affection of his co-workers.

Commercial Travelers Hold Annual Meeting

The annual meeting of the Brotherhood of Commercial Travelers was held at the Waldorf-Astoria December 3rd, and the following officers were duly elected and installed: C. B. Nourse, president; S. C. Britton, vice-president; J. Hovendon, secretarytreasurer.

The following new members were proposed, nominated and elected: John J. Mullin, of Small, Maynard Co. of Boston; J. H. Lange, and Watson M. French, both of Barse & Hopkins; L. C. Greene, PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY.

The thirty-fifth annual banquet of the association will be held in the WaldorfAstoria, Monday evening, December the 29th.

Committees Announced for the May Convention

The following committees have been appointed by President Butler for the next Booksellers' Convention in Philadelphia, May 13, 14, 15, 16, 1920. Begin now to plan to be there.

Program Committee-Walter S. Lewis, Chairman, Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, Pa.; E. W. Mumford, Penn. Pub. Co., Philadelphia, Pa.; Eugene L. Herr, L. B. Herr & Sons, Lancaster, Pa.; J. C. Kemp, Jos. Horne & Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.; H. V. Meyer, American Baptist Pub. Socy., Philadelphia, Pa.

Membership Committee-J. G. Kidd, Chairman, Stewart & Kidd Co., Cincinnati, Ohio; Harry V. Korner, The Korner & Wood Co., Cleveland, Ohio; W. V. McKee, J. V. Sheehan, Detroit, Michigan.

Committee on drafting a Uniform Constitution for the state organizations and the National A. B. A. and the relation to each other-Eugene L. Herr, Chairman, L. B. Herr & Sons, Lancaster, Pa.; Whitney Darrow, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York; L. A. Keating, Frederick Loeser & Co., Brooklyn, N. Y.

D. B. Updike and the Merry-
mount Press

In an article in our issue of November 8, a carelessness in proof reading made it read as tho Mr. Updike, the founder of Merrymount Press, had retired from management which, very fortunately for the cause of good book making is far from being the case and not the meaning the text was intended to convey.

The imprint of the Merrymount Press means as much to the history of printing as that of Charles Whittingham and will be so esteemed by collectors of the future as well as by connoisseurs of printing to-day.

SINCE ITS foundation in 1890, President Butler of Columbia has been editor of the Educational Review. He now surrenders this responsibility, and the publication-which was originally brought out by Holt-will be taken over with the new year by the Doran Company. Dr. Butler recalls in the current issue of the Educational Review some of the educational movement which it has assisted to success, and he pays a notable tribute to William T. Harris-"the one really philo sophic mind that the new world has produced since Jonathan Edwards."

A. D. MACMULLEN, formerly with the Dodge Publishing Co., is now connected with the E. M. Leavens Co. He will represent his new firm in the principal cities of the East and Middle West, covering the same territory as he did when traveling for the Dodge Co. In connection with the line of the E. M. Leavens Co. he will sell the Frank Hall line of calendars.

EL PASO, TEX.-P. H. Curran has sold his book and stationery business to Bond's, Inc.

NEW YORK CITY.-F. T. J. Nunan has resigned from the Britton Publishing Co. His address is 59 Park Place, Brooklyn.

SHANGHAI, CHINA.--Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Runyan of Chicago have left for China, where their address will be 30 North Szechuen Road, Shanghai. They expect to develop a children's book department in one of the large publishing houses there.

The new address of Patrick F. Madigan's rare book-shop is 8 West 47th St., just off Fifth Avenue-not 12 West 47th St., as was stated in the November 8th issue of the WEEKLY.