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November-December, 1949
tives of the government who are too busy to do their own research and writing. But, duplicated or not, the buyer does expect his material to be accurate.
Ghosting, particularly in Washington, has become a profession, a far cry from its lowly beginning which, legend has it, was in the sports department of a New York City newspaper one long-gone day. It is said that a circulation-minded editor hit upon the idea of signed personal articles by the baseball heroes of the day. He assigned a reporter to write the stories, then get the signatures of the sports stars as by-lines. "You needn't tell them," the editor cautioned, "what they're supposed to have written."
Today, at least a dozen agencies flourish along the banks of the Potomac. At fees of five to ten dollars for a five to ten-minute speech, these agencies offer a mass-produced, stereotyped oration prepared in advance on popular topics for which the agency anticipates a demand. Orders on such subjects are quickly, and too often identically, filled.
Late in 1948, three Army generals were invited to address a convention being held in New York. The three officers, each unaware of the others, sought the same ghost-writing service. They turned up with identical speeches, and warlike wrath pervaded that meeting!
However, for fees in excess of ten dollars, the ghost digs into his subject and produces a fairly decent arrangement of words for the average speaker. The 15-, 20-, or 25-dollar fee covers, in general, the immediate
topics that are popular and timely, such as atomic energy and un-American activities, and the speaker gets an address of from 15 minutes' to an hour's duration. Congressmen, representatives of various government departments and agencies, even businessmen scheduled to appear before club meetings, can get satisfactory speeches in this price class.
Popular subjects are the ghostwriter's delight. He does not have to do a great deal of research to earn his fee, for information on timely subjects is readily available in the daily papers and current magazines. The ghost, for example, delving into the daily news stories on atomic energy, the pamphlets and reports issued by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, easily comes up with a speech that sounds as fine as one written by any scholarly nuclear physicist.
But while the agency business is flourishing and lucrative, it is only a small part of the ghosting profession. A large percentage of Senators and Representatives employ an executive secretary or administrative assistant, whose duty it is to prepare the employer's written and spoken word, to incorporate his tricks of phrasing, expression and mannerisms. In a number of cases this is done so skillfully that the personality of client and ghost become as one. The late Congressman Gerlach of Pennsylvania once delivered an address before a home-district gathering and was told that he sounded like his newspaperman-secretary. And the secretary, called upon for some remarks at a meeting in Washington, was after