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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 7

A Guessing Mania

page 6

A Guessing Mania.

At a time not far distant, literary work was understood to have a definite purpose. A new book or periodical was expected to embody some information of practical use, to possess certain scientific or literary qualities, or at the least to afford relaxation for hours of leisure, or occupation for those who, fond of reading, had no higher purpose in the pursuit than their own amusement. All this has changed. The curious mixture of text and process-blocks constituting the modern cheap weekly may be anything but what its style and title would suggest. It may be an advertisement for a soap firm or an insurance office; it may be a lottery-ticket or an accident-insurance policy. Punch satirized the man who, being in want of a watch and a pair of trousers, was in doubt whether to go to a tailor who gave watches in, or to a watchmaker who presented a pair of trousers with each watch. Manifestly such a system is fatal to the production either of good watches or good suits; and the obnoxious premium principle now so intimately associated with periodical literature, can only tend to rapid deterioration of quality.

Not long since the inland revenue authorities at home took measures to put a stop to the irregular insurance business carried on by certain cheap periodicals. They adopted the simple method of demanding the stamp duty for a policy of insurance on every paper so issued. The position taken by the department was unassailable. If the paper guaranteeing the payment was not a policy it was worthless; no claim could be enforced, and it was entirely at the publisher's discretion whether or not he completed his contract with the purchaser. If it could be legally enforced, it was undeniably a policy, and as such should bear a stamp. Whether any authoritative decision was ever given, we know not—we have never seen any recorded in the trade journals; but the insurance coupon nuisance is more rampant than ever. It is a grave wrong to the regular insurance companies, to whom the penny-paper insurer stands in the same position as the illicit liquor-retailer to the licensed victualler.

Most remarkable of all these adventitious schemes, from the magnitude it suddenly assumed, is that particular form of gambling known as the « missing word » mania. Introduced about a year ago, it languished until brought into prominent notice by the payment of a large premium. Then the sums received, in shilling orders, swelled so largely as to embarrass the publishers. In one case the receipts increased weekly in the following order: £500, £900, £1,300, £2,500, and so on up to nearly £7,000. The daily mails were brought to the office in a procession of cabs; a staff of over one hundred people were constantly occupied in the work of opening, sorting, and counting the letters, and the cost to the office was £150 per week. The stock of shilling money orders ran out in the post-offices throughout the kingdom. It is scarcely necessary to describe the scheme. A short paragraph was printed weekly, the place of the last word, usually a verb or adjective, left blank. No skill would avail to supply the precise word, hundreds in some cases applying equally well; and as a rule, a very far-fetched and unsuitable term was the one required. Each guess had to be accompanied by a shilling money order and a « coupon » cut from the paper; and the entire pool—amounting at the height of the craze to thousands of pounds weekly—was equally divided among those who guessed the word. The scheme appears in all cases to have been fairly conducted, and it was maintained by the promoters that it was a competition of skill—the courts rightly held that it was a pure game of chance, and therefore illegal. It was put down; but owing to the laxity of the authorities, it has appeared in the colonies, where, however, it has attracted very little interest, the prizes being contemptibly small.

In carrying out a scheme in which hundreds of thousands of people weekly took part, it was inevitable that very strange developments should occur. For instance, a well-known London publisher dreamed a word, backed his dream to the extent of £5, buying a hundred penny papers for the purpose, and won over £800. More striking still is the case of the office-boy, weak in his spelling, who sent in two tickets with the word « unacountable. » The guesses were disallowed, there being no such word. The two missing letters cost him £1,300. Next to winning such a sum, perhaps the greatest misfortune that could have befallen the lad was his cruel disappointment.

Before the State took action, the chambers of commerce were discussing the subject. The thing was actually paralyzing business. Clerks and book-keepers, persons in all kinds of responsible positions, were neglecting their duties and perpetrating costly blunders through allowing their thoughts to run on the problem. Lads robbed tills and filched their employers' stamps in the hope of becoming suddenly rich; and for the time being every other form of gambling lost its fascination. Our concern is not with the social mischief of the scheme—evident enough to all who are not wilfully blind—but with its demoralizing effect on literature.

First, it will be noted that what is called the circulation of the papers vastly increased. A cheap popular weekly from an issue of something over 100,000, rose at a few bounds to close on a million. Two or three printing offices strained their resources to the utmost to keep pace with the increased demand—yet all this extra work was absolutely wasted—nay, more than wasted. When a private individual buys a penny paper in parcels of a dozen, a hundred, or by the gross of copies, it is not to read. For all useful purposes, the gambling coupons, feverishly clipped out, the rest of the paper being thrown aside, would have answered just as well. The paper, ink, and presswork, the toil of hundreds of skilled and unskilled workmen, was as absolutely wasted and lost to the community as the labor of prisoners on the treadmill. It was worse than wasted—for it was devoted to turning good blank paper into worthless material. The million copies were even less read than the hundred thousand had been. This was proved by the testimony of the great advertisers, who found their returns from advertising in these particular sheets fall off in inverse ratio to the increasing circulation—a fact of great significance in connexion not only with this particular scheme, but with all other adventitious methods of inflating the issue (miscalled the circulation) of any periodical.

For after all, it is quality only that tells in the end. The appeal to covetousness, to the gambling instinct, to any of the lower propensities of the public, is a tacit confession on the part of the publisher that his journal is unworthy of support on its own merits. If a purchaser pays a penny for an insurance policy, for a lottery ticket, or for a staring chromo, the accompanying periodical is a mere superfluity, and must in time be so regarded by all concerned. Respectable journals will continue to leave insurance policies to insurance offices, and gambling schemes to their own appropriate hells.