Conditions Reversed

I he Tyranny of the Pictorial" is a therae that moves with well-grounded Indignatlon a writer of the June Lippencotfs. He is greatly annoyed by the nt craze for pictures that is converting our Uterary magazines into plcture i: -ííKtizines, and he gives the followng: striking illustration of thls degenerate tendency: "At least one of the magazines published in New Ynrli ia aims w-n.. produced, as to its text, by three or four of its office men, who work over pennames now more or less famiüar frum repetition on the title-page, and who 'write around' the pictures; that is, they supply the reading matter for somebody's photographs. Very few of the readers of this mag-aztne are clever anoujrh to detect this little trlck In magazine-maklng; they fancy that whatever i.i published in a magazine, on calündered paper with an illuminated cover and with half-tones Judlciously sprinklfd In to make the best showing, is nec'ssarlly higrh-class reading matter. And, whi'e we may deplore this cheap-John liteïature masquerading in disguise of the best and highest, we cannot but admire the business intuition of those publishers who recognize the selling value of mere pictures=. Of course this suboriljnation of what Is literary to what is factorial is partieularly hard on the man flependent on h!s pen, now more numerous than ever before; but he Is rapldly to tak? hls medicine uncomplalnlngly, and he either has a camera or is facile enough with pen or pencll to produce a rough sketch whlch some professional sketch-artist can make over .nto a grenutne masterpiece and afflx hls Jvn name to with fitting artlstic indistinctncss."