We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
352 SCHOOLS AND AGENXIES 5. Most of these schools are frankly fraudulent. The earliest one was started about 1910, and its course, which is .being used with slight changes today, was based upon material appearing in some of the magazines devoted to writers and on the instruction sheets then issued by the Vitagraph, Lubin and Essanay companies. This was supplemented by extracts from letters written by Editors in the belief, that they were giving aid to some aspirant for fame and with no idea that the matter was to be used for swindling purposes. All of this was made into a semblance of lessons and offered at thirty dollars for the course. It was so immediately successful in a financial way that others took the course and thei> opened schools of their own, with the same lesson papers. The man referred to in the third paragraph of this chapter even sought to argue with the Post Office Inspector that he was within the law since he was using the course and methods of a Chicago school, and a comparison of the two courses showed that not a line had been changed. It is interesting to note that he had previously served two years in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta for engaging in the music publishing swindle. 6. These schools accept as pupils any person who has some money. Generally they will follow up their first letters with an offer of a re- duction and the course that started off at thirty dollars, in the height of competition, would drop by degrees to as little as two dollars, though most schools held out for four dollars: two dollars down and two payments of one dollar each as progress was made. ' 7. Almost all pupils were taken on installment payments, largely because few could offer the complete sum in one remittance. For this reason the letters of criticism were invariably favorable, leading the pupil along, through flattery, to complete the payments. Gen- erally the letters were written from sheets in which paragraphs or sentences were framed that could apply to almost any broad general condition. These paragraphs were numbered and cheap typists wrote the letters from these forms in accordance with the numbers marked. No very close criticism could be given by such methods, but the letters read well, though they were not helpful. At the end of two or three months, in the course of which four or five scripts might have been criticised, the pupil was graduated, sometimes with a di- ploma, and was turned loose upon the defenseless Editors. 8. One school offered to guarantee the sale of a first manuscript by putting up the price ten dollars and then buying the script for that sum. It was a legal guarantee, but "I positively guarantee that by my method you will sell your first script" did not convey any assurance that succeeding scripts could be sold. 9. In all cases the writer was told he was competent and well qualified. He accepted the assurance, because it was in harmony with his own wishes, and he made no further studies. 10. It is not to be argued that all schools teaching by correspond- ence are swindles. Some make an effort to give a complete course of ir-struction and take pains to advise their graduates that further