that gives either writer positive value is
his acceptance with the reader; but the acceptance is from month to
month wholly uncertain. Authors are largely matters of fashion, like
this style of bonnet, or that shape of gown. Last spring the dresses
were all made with lace berthas, and Smith was read; this year the
butterfly capes are worn, and Jones is the favorite author. Who shall
forecast the fall and winter modes?

XII.

In this inquiry it is always the author rather than the publisher,
always the contributor rather than the editor, whom I am concerned for.
I study the difficulties of the publisher and editor only because they
involve the author and the contributor; if they did not, I will not say
with how hard a heart I should turn from them; my only pang now in
scrutinizing the business conditions of literature is for the makers of
literature, not the purveyors of it.

After all, and in spite of my vaunting title, is the man of letters
ever a business man? I suppose that, strictly speaking, he never is,
except in those rare instances where, through need or choice, he is the
publisher as well as the author of his books. Then he puts something
on the market and tries to sell it there, and is a man of business.
But otherwise he is an artist merely, and is allied to the great mass
of wage-workers who are paid for the labor they have put into the thing
done or the thing made; who live by doing or making a thing, and not by
marketing a thing after some other man has done it or made it. The
quality of the thing has nothing to do with the economic nature of the
case; the author is, in the last analysis, merely a workingman, and is
under the rule that governs the workingman's life. If he is sick or
sad, and cannot work, if he is lazy or tipsy and will not, then he
earns nothing. He cannot delegate his business to a clerk or a
manager; it will not go on while he is sleeping. The wage he can
command depends strictly upon his skill and diligence.

I myself am neither sorry nor ashamed for this; I am glad and proud to
be of those who eat their bread in the sweat of their own brows, and
not the sweat of other men's brows; I think my bread is the sweeter for
it. In the meantime I have no blame for business men; they are no more
of the condition of things than we workingmen are; they did no more to
cause it or create it; but I would rather be in my place than in
theirs, and I wish that I could make all my fellow