278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Nevertheless to make use of a picture where a verbal description can be 

 given is to fall back upon a more primitive mode of representing experi- 

 ence, and the tendency to do so marks a degeneration either in the men- 

 tal habits of those who employ such methods or on the part of the readers 

 to whom they are addressed. 



The function of the picture, in a certain large class of writings, has 

 recently been undergoing change, and the direction of this modification 

 seems to indicate a loss of intellectual fiber in the commonalty of readers. 

 The present day is marked by an enormous increase in the amount of 

 illustration which accompanies the text we read. In our books no less 

 than in the daily press, in what is written for adults equally with what 

 is prepared for children, in technical journals and scientific monographs 

 as well as in popular magazines, this progressive encroachment of 

 picture upon text is apparent. The newspaper strives for illustration in 

 connection with all classes of news, and its staff of photographers rivals 

 the corps of reporters in numbers and importance. Every page has its 

 pictures, and even the gist of editorial comment is sometimes indicated 

 by thumb-nail sketches used as paragraph-spacing. 



It is probably materially true — and if so it is a significant fact — that 

 the cheaper the journal the greater the amount of space given to pictorial 

 matter. In such cases the aim seems often to make the story intelligible 

 by means of pictures alone, with only secondary dependence upon the 

 text. The appeal to pictorial representation in this way includes an im- 

 mensely greater range of cases than newspaper and magazine illustra- 

 tion; and in this larger field its uses are of course legitimate as well as 

 vicious. When we advertise, everything which can be represented is 

 pictured within a frame of type or spread upon the poster, the fences 

 and the farm-buildings. When we go abroad, our correspondence no 

 longer takes the form of twelve-page letters, but that of a dozen picture 

 post-cards. Our records of travel do not consist in a description of 

 places and people or a dramatic recital of events, but in a gallery of rep- 

 resentations of cities and buildings, of landscapes and portraits. We 

 never describe a thing if we can procure a photograph of it ; for writing 

 an account of any occurrence — though it presents phases of the event 

 which no picture can ever convey — is difficult and time-consuming. 



Our popular magazines no longer depend upon the excellence of their 

 literary contributions as their sole claim upon attention, but are filled 

 with varied and mechanically admirable pictures. With the increasing 

 dependence upon illustration the value of the text has correspondingly 

 declined. In cheaper periodicals the contents are not uncommonly re- 

 duced to a group of departments — travel and places, the drama, celebri- 

 ties, oddities, jokes — in each of which the substance is largely composed 

 of detached pictures with minor explanatory comment. How far this 

 demoralization has gone is indicated by the character of the text in such 

 periodicals; for where it is not a mere commentary on the illustrations 



