Adventure Magazine Cover — page 158: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

z = 148 more than I do.) Going back over OF maga- zine we couldn’t notice any marked change but there did seem to be fewer of the rough- and-ready kind than before and, whatever hap- pens, we want to keep Adventure primarily a man’s magazine. Stories have a tricky way with them. No one has ever been able to explain why they run in streaks and bunches. Why, do you- suppose, do Latin-American stories, for ex- ample, come in in large number for a year or two, then stop suddenly and come scarcely at all for a year or two? For several years we scoured around hard for snow country stories and could get almost none. Then for three or four years more came than we could use. For. the past year or two they’ve been scarce again. Same kind of thing holds for sea stories, de- tective stories, mining stories, all kinds of stories except bad stories. And every time some particular kind of story gets plentiful or scarce in the magazine, somebody writes in and cusses the editor and accuses him of taking bribes, being a fool, cutting throats, or some- thing like that. .Take my advice, consider a long time before you become an editor! \ , 7 ELL, we office people mean well enough in spite of the fact that there are thousands and thousands of readers who can do the job a whole lot better than we can. ‘All right,” said we, “if there are even symptoms of: the stories running too much to the love-interest, we'll get right on the job of changing things. It'll take quite a while before the change can show in the magazine, but we’re now on our way : Ole of the things we did was to take out of Adventure’s inventory a few stories with strong women-interest or love interest and transfer them to Romance, which has no objection to them. Among them was Talbot Mundy’s story, though the time element also figured here, for reasons over which we had no control, and Romance could use it sooner that Adventure. And now comes along comrade Irwin and clubs me over the head for doing it. Some of you fellows who kicked about too many love-in- terest stories. in Adventure, it’s really up to you to step forward and take care of comrade Here’s his letter: Philadelphia. You are now going to hear some ‘‘Honest to God” criticism. - You have been disloyal to your trust. You have been absolutely dishonest with the many old, tried and true friends of Adventure. You have robbed the readers and subscribers of Adventure of that which belonged to them just as much and as sure as though you sneaked in the night and stole their birthright. Adventure does not belong to you or the manage- Pa er Se a ee ee OA ae ae pg es eles bg i> : —— —_ 3 A * S.. »~ ae . : “ Adventure ment of the Ridgwa thousands of subscribers, old and new. When you announced the coming of Romance we rejoiced with*you and wished you success. Yes, we the band of loyal friends joined with youin — pulling for the young brother, but we never im- agined for one single minute that you would rob Adventure to promote Romance. wa You stole Mundy, Conrad, Buck, Young- aiid others—deliberately stole. them. M onty and - You know it and © Oh; but you have raised —— among > his friends belong to Adventure. we know it. your friends of Adventure, and that is not all. You are numbers behind in Adventure. etc., but your Romance is on the book Stands and we old Adventure readers can go hook and wait. I dare you to publish this as it stands and invite a fair and just criticism. The shadow for the sub- : I buy and read Ro- — stance—it’s pitiable. Don’t misunderstand me. mance,.but for goodness’ sake let it stand on its own bottom, live or die on its own merit, don’t rob the readers, the ‘““Old-Timers,” the people that made’ Adventure such a success.—W. Y. IRWIN... NCIDENTALLY, I don’t see anything very “daring” in publishing his letter. I don’t think he has much of a case, amd, if he has, I’m willing to take my medicine. Only it would be a whole lot easier for me if all the doctors agreed on the same treatment instead — of contradicting one another. ’ Conrad, for example, never appeared in Adventure. Consequently I didn’t steal him from there. Nor has Buck been in Adventure since its earliest years. And Mundy, Young and “others’—does friend Irwin think we don’t “allow” our writers to appear in other magazines, even those not published by other houses? True, some of them are distinctly identified with Adventure, but I’m proud to say - that the identification is by their own free will and that not one of them has everhad any _Tessure put on him to keep him away from other markets. Hasn’t Mr. Irwin noticed that most writers appear in more than one magazine? And we’ve been giving Romance the advan- tage over Adventure in distributing it? Nope. Never once, to the best of my knowledge. Comrad@ Irwin overlooks the fact that Adven- ture, being issued twice as often, is twiee as. hard to distribute in these days when trans- - portation doesn’t transport. Same holds as to paper shortage and catching up two months . lost by strike. We cuss and do the best we can for each of them and cuss, and that’s all we can do. [ VE talked a lot but I haven’t half covered the ground. That’s the trouble, and please note it. A magazine looks like a simple matter —all the editor has to do is to get some good stories and put ’em in it and there you are. I Company; it belongs 6 the Ee = You present - difficulties, paper-shortage, strikes, transportation — Gosh, what a life an editor leads! - COMMCOXOOMKS =