oes before he sets
pen to paper. A classic anecdote of New York's Fleet Street may
illustrate the point:

The publisher of a national weekly was hiring a newspaper man as editor.

"Is this a writing job?" the applicant inquired.

"No!" growled the publisher, "a thinkin' job!"

The writer of non-fiction is in the same boat with the editor who buys
his articles; he calls himself a writer, but primarily he is up against
a thinking job. The actual writing of his material is secondary to good
judgment in selecting what is known as a "compelling" theme. If he can
produce a "real story" and get it onto paper in some sort of intelligent
fashion, what remains to be done in the way of craftsmanship can be
handled inside the magazine office by a "re-write man." Make sure, first
of all, that what you have to say is something that ought to interest
the large audience to which you address it.

Nobody with a grain of common sense would attempt to discuss "The Style
of Walter Pater" to fifty thousand restless and croupy auditors in the
vast San Diego stadium, but the average free lance sees nothing of equal
absurdity about attempting to cram an essay on Pater down the throats of
a miscellaneous crowd in a stadium which is from a hundred to two
hundred times as large--the forum into which throng the thousands who
read one of our large popular magazines.

Much as we may regret to acknowledge it, there is no way to get around
the fact that the larger and more general the circulation of a
periodical, the more universal must be the appeal of the material
printed and the fewer the mainstays of interest, until in a magazine
with a circulation of more than a million copies the chief
classifications of non-fiction material required can easily be counted
upon the fingers. The editor of such a publication necessarily is
limited to handling rather elemental topics; so it is not to be wondered
at when we hear that the largest publication of them all makes its
mainstays two such universally interesting and world-old themes as
business and "the way of a man with a maid."

Examine any popular magazine which has a circulation of general readers,
speaking to a forum of anywhere from a quarter of a million to ten
million assorted readers, and you will find that the non-fiction
material which it is most eager to buy may easily be classified into
half a dozen types of articles, all concerned with the ruling passions
of the average American, as: