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CHAPTER II 7 5. A few of the studios maintain a clerk whose duty it is to record all scripts received and to make entry of their acceptance or rejection, but such a mass of material is received by the larger companies that it does not pay to go to the expense of recording scripts, many of which are immediately returned. In this case note is made only of those retained for action. 6. The scripts are first gone over by an assistant who is com- petent to discard the manifestly unfit. If the scripts come in addressed to the Editor, he passes them over to the assistant unless they are from authors known to him. The assistant rejects all scripts that are written by hand. It is not possible to spare the time to go through a pen-written script, and long experience has proven the correctness of the theory that an author who does not yet use a typewriter does not yet write a story worth looking at. In the same class are manuscripts improperly prepared. Some come with one side stitched into a "book." Others have one edge or top glued, or they are tied with a ribbon or bound with several permanent fasteners. Long before he knows how to write, the novice learns how to prepare manuscript, and so it follows that these freak forms are all the work of beginners so new as not to deserve consideration. Either carelessness or an excess of care has the same result. The story is returned unread to save time for reading the manuscripts that give more promise. 7. Another and different class of immediate returns comprises the stories that are manifestly out of the style of the company. A studio may make no Indian stories. It would only waste time to read the synopsis of such a play. It is immediately returned. Also returned are the plays with plots so hackneyed that they may be expected in every mail. There are some plots that come in so regularly that their absence would be noted. These are the more elemental stories that every beginner writes because he has not yet learned that they are old. The assistant knows and returns them without reading more than enough to be certain that no new twist is offered. Probably eighty per cent of the scripts do not pass the first reader. The remainder are sent along to the Editor. 8. Here the scripts receive a second reading and the number is ^ again materially reduced. Of those which are in accordance with the company's production standards the best are retained for further consideration and action. There are three methods of ulti- mate disposal. They may be purchased on the word of the Editor or by him with the approval of the head of the concern; they may be purchased on the approval of some director who wishes to make the story, or they may be passed upon in conference. 9. The first method of procedure is the simplest and the quickest. The story is purchased and given some director to produce. Here it is simply a question of getting the time to read and pass upon the merits of the script. 10. The second method is followed in studios where the prop-