THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



August, 1914 



To business that we love we rise betime 

 And go to 't with delight." — Antony and Cleopatra. 



A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



FROM Garden City to Berlin and Leip- 

 zig is not so great a distance, but such 

 a journey may put one in touch with 

 many interesting people and things. 



To speak of the farthest point first — The 

 present chronicler journeyed to the great 

 book exhibition in Leipzig which rejoices in 

 the fragile name of Internationalen Aus- 

 stellung fiir Buchgewerbe und Graphik. Here 

 the publishers of the world (excepting Amer- 

 ica) combined to give a great show of books 

 of all kinds, of pictures and magazines, of 

 machines for printing and binding, and kindred 

 things. The number and size of the build- 

 ings would be, we should guess, about equal 

 to those of the Buffalo exhibition in 1901, 

 some of them a thousand feet long or more, 

 and many, like the English, the French, the 

 Austrian and the Italian, not to forget the 

 little Japanese building, displaying the na- 

 tional characteristics of the architecture of 

 each country. 



What perhaps surprises one more than 

 anything else is the fact that some thirty or 

 forty thousand people a day flock to this great 

 book show — people really interested in 

 books. No such crowd could probably be 

 brought together for such a purpose in any 

 other country in the world. Certainly the 

 Germans have the science of bookselling 

 developed to the highest efficiency, and one 

 authority estimates that about three times 

 as many titles are issued in Germany each 

 year (about 30,000 to our 10,000), and in 

 quantity about twice as many books as we 

 print in this country. 



It is interesting, too, to find that the Ger- 

 man law is exactly opposite to the American. 

 In that country the publisher having fixed a 

 retail price for selling his book, is expected to 

 give the jobber a certain discount, and the 

 retailer his discount; but the book must event- 

 ually be sold to the customer at the exact 

 price set when the book is published. If any 

 one of these persons who handles the book is 

 guilty of breaking the price, he is punished 

 by fine or in extreme case by imprisonment. 

 Of course, such a combination to preserve 

 prices in this country is against the provis- 



ions of the Sherman law. The fact is that in 

 the whole of Germany there are about ten 

 thousand good booksellers, and they adequate- 

 ly supply the demand for books to the small- 

 est community. The scholar and student has 

 been attracted to the business, and for a na- 

 tion of 65,000,000 people there are about four 

 times as many booksellers as for our own na- 

 tion of nearly 100,000,000 people. 



All of which is not new, but interest- 

 ing when encountered at first hand. The 

 book trade in Germany is apparently pros- 

 perous. 



In England there is the usual flood of new 

 books being prepared for the fall. Mrs. 

 Humphry Ward has a novel about the suf- 

 fragettes which will be issued in this country 

 by Hearst — a gentleman who has added to his 

 newspapers and magazines a book publishing 

 business, and who will no doubt show the rest 

 of us a thing or two. Rudyard Kipling is 

 completing a series of travel papers on Egypt, 

 which with other chapters will make a volume 

 of Travel Letters in the spring of 191 5. The 

 Countess von Arnim has just finished a novel 

 — the first since "The Caravaners" — called 

 "The Pastor's Wife." The Countess lives 

 on a mountain top in Switzerland, and has 

 been much delayed in finishing the book, on 

 which she has been working for two years or 

 more. Joseph Conrad has also finished a 

 novel which will come in the spring, and he 

 himself has been induced by Doubleday, Page 

 & Co. to make a visit to America in October of 

 this year. Mr. Conrad sailed the Seven Seas 

 for a score of years, but never saw New York, 

 and his friends will be glad to know of his 

 eager interest to visit us. With him will 

 come Mr. J. B. Pinker, the literary agent, 

 who has been a lifelong friend of the author 

 of "Chance." 



"run-overs" 



A reader of The Garden Magazine or Country 

 Life recently wrote us a long letter. He took 

 a large sheet of paper, folded it into sixteen 

 pages, began his letter on page one, continued 

 it on page nine, jumped to the middle of page 

 seven, then to the top of page twelve, etc., etc. 

 At the end of this quaint epistle he said, "If 

 you have read this letter, you will know how 



it feels to read your magazines, which are 

 full of 'runovers.' " 



To this gentleman and others who, like 

 him, do not approve of the words, " Continued 

 on page so and so," we stand with hands up, 

 and we have the editors' word for it that they 

 will reform as soon as a new "make-up" can be 

 devised. The temptation to "run over" 

 articles comes through the desire to make a 

 brave show of striking articles and large pic- 

 tures in the opening pages, and not, as some 

 readers have intimated, to lead people to 

 turn to the advertising section. Fortunately 

 for us, our advertisements are in themselves 

 so interesting, entertaining and beautiful, 

 that we do not have to resort to subterfuges to 

 get people to read them, and, of course, the 

 fact is that tricks of this sort accomplish 

 nothing: people read what they will, and 

 nothing can make them read what does not 

 interest them. 



the tree guide 



Miss Julia E. Rogers has made this new- 

 volume of the little Guide Series which goes 

 to hundreds of thousands of readers each year. 

 It is uniform with the Flower Guide and the 

 Bird Guides, and has hundreds of illustrations, 

 in black and white, and color. Many owners 

 of the Reed series will be glad to know of this 

 book, the price of which is $1.00 in cloth, and 

 $1.25 in leather. 



BIG BUSINESS AND PUBLICITY 



There are a great many substantial con- 

 cerns who would be glad to get before an im- 

 partial public the interesting facts about their 

 great businesses, consisting, as the clerk of 

 the court so eloquently puts it, of "the truth, 

 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." 

 A book on these frank and aboveboard lines 

 has just been published by us describing the 

 beginning and development of a great organ- 

 ization, The United Fruit Company — under 

 the title, "The Conquest of the Tropics." If 

 you are interested in that subject or that 

 company, you might like a copy of the book, 

 which can be purchased through any book- 

 seller or from Doubleday, Page & Company 

 and we hope that there may be other interest- 

 ing books in this series telling a frank and in- 

 teresting story of achievement. 



