The Fiction Factory / Being the experience of a writer who, for twenty-two years, has kept a story-mill grinding successfully

by William Wallace Cook

In a story, the poverty stricken hero and his wife may exist for a week on a loaf of bread, ten cents' worth of potatoes and a twenty-cent soup-bone; but let the man who creates such a hero attempt to emulate his fictional fancies and stark realism plays havoc with the equation. The wolf at our own door is one sort of animal, and the wolf at our neighbor's is of an altogether different breed.

The thermometer in Southern Arizona was "eighty in the shade" when Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, during the Christmas holidays, set their faces eastward. New York City, the shrine of so many pilgrims seeking prosperity, was their goal; and the metropolis, on that bleak New Year's Day that witnessed their arrival, was shivering in the grip of real, old-fashioned winter. The change from a balmy climate to blizzards and ice and a below-zero temperature brought Edwards to his bed with a vicious attack of rheumatism. For days while the little fund of $100 melted steadily away, he lay helpless.

The great city, in its dealings with impecunious strangers, has been painted in cruel colors. Edwards found this to be a mistake. On the occasion of their first visit to New York he and his wife had found quarters in a boarding house in Forty-fourth street. A pleasant landlady was in charge and the Edwards had won her friendship.

Here, forming one happy family, were actors and actresses, a salesman in a down-town department store, a stenographer, a travelling man for a bicycle house, and others. All were cheerful and kindly, and took occasion to drop in at the Edwards' third floor front and beguile the tedious hours for the invalid.

Fourteen years have brought many changes to Forty-fourth street between Broadway and Sixth avenue. The row of high-stoop brownstone "fronts" has that air of neglect which precedes demolition and the giving way of the old order to the new. The basement, where the pleasant landlady sat at her long table and smiled at the raillery and wit of "Beaney," and Sam, and "Smithy," and Ruth, and Ina and the rest, has fallen sadly from its high estate. A laundry has taken possession of the place. And "Beaney," the light-hearted one who laughed at his own misfortunes and sympathized with the misfortunes of others, "Beaney" has gone to his long account. A veil as impenetrable has fallen over the pleasant landlady, Sam, "Smithy," Ruth and Ina; and where-ever they may be, Edwards, remembering their kindness to him in his darkest days, murmurs for each and all of them a fervent "God bless you!"....

Before he was compelled to take to his bed Edwards had called at the offices of Harte & Perkins. His interview with Mr. Perkins impressed upon him the fact that, once a place upon the contributors' staff of a big publishing house is relinquished it is difficult to regain. Others had been given the work which Edwards had had for three years. These others were turning in acceptable manuscripts and, in justice to them, Harte & Perkins could not take the work out of their hands. Mr. Perkins, however, did give Edwards an order for four Five-Cent Libraries—stories to be held in reserve in case manuscripts from regular contributors failed to arrive in time. On Feb. 11 he received a letter from the firm to the following effect:

"When we wrote you day before yesterday asking you to turn in four Five-Cent Libraries before doing anything else in the Library line for us, we were under the impression that the gentleman who has been engaged upon this work for some time would not be able to turn the material in with usual regularity on account of illness, but we hear from him today that he is now in better health, and will be able to keep up with the work, which he is very anxious to do, and somewhat jealous of having any other material in the series so long as he can fill the bill. On this account it will be well for you to stop work on the Library. When you have completed the story on which you are now engaged, turn your attention to the Ten-Cent Library work, which we think you will be able to do to our satisfaction."

This will illustrate the attitude which some authors assume toward the "butter-in." All of a certain grist that comes to a publisher's mill must be their grist. If the mill ground for another, and found the product better than ordinary, the other might secure a "stand-in" that would threaten the prestige of the regular contributor.

In seeking to keep his head above water financially, Edwards attempted to sell book rights of "The Astrologer," the serial published in 1891 in The Detroit Free Press. He had written, also, 66 pages of a present-tense Gunteresque story which he hoped would win favor as had his other stories in that style. This yarn he called "Croesus, Jr." Both manuscripts were submitted to Harte & Perkins.