A PENNY DREADFUL FACTORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XIII, 28 March 1896, Page 340

A PENNY DREADFUL FACTORY.

The factory in question consisted ot a small, low-roofed room situated in one of the many courts adjoining Fleetstreet, London. Five flights of rickety stairs had to be climbed before the workshop was reached. The room was badly ventilated and reeked of the odour of stale tobacco. A long deal table, covered with the picturesque ornamentations of various ink stains, and four more or less dilapidated chairs, comprised all the furniture. Three of the chairs were in use, and their occupants, seated at the table, were writing at full speed. In front of each writer were paper, pens and ink, while at his elbow stood a pewter pot. at which he took a pull as each page was completed and thrown quickly aside. The owner of the fourth chair, to whom the writer of the article was indebted for the introduction, took upon himself the duties of host and explained everything. ' You see, he said, ‘ there are four of us ; we rent the room among us and divide the proceeds of our work each week. How much do we make ? Well, not very much. The usual rate of pay for our stuff is from 3s 6d to 4s per 1,000 words, and a story may be anything from 20,000 to 30,000 words long. If we’could get the work to do it would be easy for us to turn out 100,000 words in a week.

‘ We divide the work up here. I myself do all the plots, such as they are ; another does the school stories ; a third the Wild West and Indian yarns, and a fourth those dealing with naval or military life. The publishers do not want high class literature ; they must have a

thrilling, blood-and-thunder story for boys, and they care not how badly it is written. Plenty of strong incidents, startling situations, hair-breadth escapes, following quickly after one another, put into language full of strong adjectives.

■ Scarcely any plot is required, merely a thread running through the story, on which we string the adventures like beads. The hero goes abroad in search of immense treasure, or else devotes his life to discovering the murderer of his father; and, chapter after chapter, he performs marvellous feats of skill and daring, until the last one, in which the villain is killed and all ends happily.

‘ I have heard it said that a man writes best about that of which he knows nothing, and mv experience proves it. For instance, the man who does our sea stories—and pretty good stories, too, of their kind—was never out of London in his life and has. therefore, never seen the sea. He possesses a dictionary of nautical phrases, and slips them in haphazard. I don’t suppose the majority of his readers know any more about a ship than he does. The same remark would apply almost equally well to the writer of our Indian stories, who has certainly never been out of the country.

‘ When the Wild West Show was over here he went to see it, and was greatly surprised. Though he had been writing stories of redskins for over three years, yet he had not the faintest idea of their real appearance. ‘ Who buys all these books ? Boys, of all sorts and conditions. There is an enormous demand for this class of publication. Personally, I think they are exceedingly

injurious, for they fill a boy’s mind with utterly wrong and pernicious views of life. Almost every day one sees in the papers cases where boys whose imaginations have been fired and aroused by these books have been led to commit crime. They run away from home with the notion of becoming a pirate captain, and generally steal the money to start them in their new career. Perhaps you may say that my practice does not agree with my opinions. That is true; but if Ido not write them some one else will, and I must live.’