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CHAPTER LXX SCHOOLS AND AGENCIES WHERE there is graft there will always be grafters. It seems fitting here to offer a few words of advice as to certain forms of graft. These are chiefly schools and agencies. 2. To anticipate the replies that these institutions will offer, this writer begs a moment of the reader's time for a brief explanation. The schools argue that they are attacked because this writer has a book to sell. This is not so. The writer has a book because he be- lieves that only through a text book can information be cheaply and intelligently conveyed. He has refused to accept a connection with one established correspondence school and any number of offers to finance a school of his own. It has been said that he has revised manuscripts. This was in the nature of an experiment lasting less than two months, and was abandoned when it was found that it could not be done profitably and at the same time with honesty. For several years he criticised manuscripts for a nominal fee, con- ducting operations at an immediate loss but with a gain in a knowl- edge of the matters that puzzle the beginners. 3. The fake correspondence school is the most vicious form of graft because it harms not alone those who take the course but also those who merely read the advertising with its specious and mislead- ing statements that "anyone" can learn to write plays, that no lit- erary ability is required, that an income of fifty dollars weekly is at least insured and one glaring offender even advertised (just as the public schools were closing) that any schoolboy of fourteen or over could learn to write plays "in a few hours," and spend a profitable as well as pleasant vacation by giving a small part of each day to the writing and selling of plays. This all appears in newspaper adver- tising. The literature sent in response to inquiries and to what is inelegantly termed the "sucker list" is even more misleadingly glow- ing in its assurances, but these assurances are so worded that there is no positive guarantee and therefore the Post Office officials can only wait. One man, now a fligitive from justice, made the mistake of saying that certain Editors were "asking for" instead of being willing to read the scripts of his pupils. One Editor said this was not so. The indictment followed. 4. This sort of advertising spreads broadcast the belief that any- one can write plays and is very largely responsible for the number of illiterates who engage in the work and whose misspelled scripts litter the editorial desks to the detriment of real writers. But not all are illiterate. Many who might, with proper advice, develop into writers, approach the work so carelessly and with such a spirit of contempt that they make no progress. When they fail to make sales they abandon what might have been a profitable career if approached with the proper resolution to persist and win. 351