prestige of long service, and even they are not always free from the
encroachments of the new method. The proprietor still feels the irksome
necessity of treating their editorial policies with respect, though
secretly chafing for the moment when they shall give place to more
manageable, modern tools.

The "new" editor, in fact, is little more than a clerk doing the bidding
of his proprietor, and the proprietor's idea of editing is slavishly to
truckle to the public taste--or rather to his crude conception of the
public taste. The only real editors of today are the capitalist and the
public. The nominal editor is merely an office-boy of larger growth, and
slightly larger salary.

Innocent souls still, of course, imagine him clothed with divine powers,
and letters of introduction to him are still sought after by the
superstitious beginner. Alas! the chances are that the better he thinks
of your MS. the less likely is it to be accepted by--the proprietor; for
Mr. Snooks, the proprietor, has decided tastes of his own, and a
peculiar distaste for anything remotely savouring of the "literary." His
broad editorial axiom is that a popular magazine should be everything
and anything but--"literature." For any signs of the literary taint he
keeps open a stern and ever-watchful eye, and the "editor" or "editorial
assistant"--to make a distinction without a difference--whom he should
suspect of literary leanings has but a short shrift. Mr. Snooks is
seldom much of a reader himself. His activities have been exclusively
financial, and he has drifted into the magazine business as he might
have drifted into pork or theatres--from purely financial reasons. His
literary needs are bounded on the north by a detective story, and on the
south by a scientific article. The old masters of literature are as much
foolishness to him as the old masters of painting. In short, he is just