etc., and solutions which have been proposed or attempted. In addition there are some special subjects which must be included, as nurse girls, masseuses, hairdressers, etc., and laundries, public kitchens, prepared foods, etc. Where comparisons are desirable or possible the facts for household workers will be compared with those of employees in stores, factories, and offices. As outlined at present the study includes twelve main groups and more than fifty distinct lines of study,all a part of the whole, but requiring different methods.

This brief outline gives some idea of the scope of such a study, - one which depends primarily upon coöperation. The

committee and the investigators start out with no theories which they wish to prove, and there are no salaried officers who might have interests other than the impartial gathering of facts. It is a simple attempt to gather the information necessary to understand the situation, by students trained in the field of research and under the direction of capable, earnest, and unprejudiced employers and employees. The object is purely educational, and not in the interest of any one class or reform. Reforms there may be, but these should be at the initiative of employers and employees if, in their judg ment, the conditions found, and honestly and fairly presented warrant them.

In every age since written language began, rhetorical forms have been to a considerable extent influenced by the writing materials and implements which were available for man's use. This is a familiar observation in studies of the past. Is it not, then, time that somebody inquired into the effects upon the form and substance of our present-day language of the veritable maze of devices which have come into widely extended use in recent years, such as the typewriter, with its invitation to the dictation practice; shorthand, and, most important of all, the telegraph? Certainly these agencies of expression cannot be without their marked and significant influences upon English style.

Were the effects of these appliances limited to the persons actually using them such an inquiry would not be worth making. Commemoration odes will never be composed by dictation, Paradise Lost to the contrary, nor will the great pulpit orator prepare his anniversary sermons, having in view their transmis

sion by submarine cable. However generally modern novelists and playwrights may avail themselves of the assistance of a stenographer, it seems certain that the saner and nobler literature of the world will always be written in more deliberate, and perhaps old-fashioned ways, by mechanical methods in which there has been little change from Chaucer to Kipling.

But, unfortunately, no man writes to himself alone. The makers of the popular vocabulary decree to a great extent the words which the recluse of the cloister must select. If the typewriter and the telegraph, for mechanical reasons purely, are encouraging certain words, certain arrangements of phrases, and a different dependence on punctuation, such an influence is a stone whose ripples, once set in motion, wash every shore of the sea of literature. Every rhetorician hastens to acknowledge that the most he can hope to do by his art is to reflect the best usage of the day, of which he is little more than an observer.

experience may not be that of all who compose in this medium, that it would be the natural tendency of a universal shorthand can hardly be doubted.

While nobody would look for Addisonian passages in the stock market reports which are telegraphed over the country, the dreary monotony of their phrases furnishes something of a foretaste of the reign of abbreviated writing. In the market code the word "Hume" means "Holders unwilling to make concession." What mortal man would ever write "holders disinclined to make concessions," when so slight a change would involve such an amount of extra work? In short, the five pages of the market code contain about all the forms of expression and varieties of language ever seen in these market reports.

Shah, for example, means "shade higher," and sog means "the stock of grain on hand."

Among the many "apostrophes to labor," the all-conqueror, there should be reserved some little recognition of what we owe in our English style to the fact that the efforts involved in written and in spoken expression run along side by side at SO even a ratio. Such exceptions as "through" with one syllable, and "deify" with three syllables, and fewer letters, are rare. In the main, product in writing corresponds with effort, and before we give favoring ear to any new system of abbreviated writing we should assure ourselves that this condition is retained.

The effects of the telegraph upon present-day literary forms are much more direct than those of shorthand, for, while only a few persons compose in the latter medium, a large share of the reading matter of the modern world is written by persons who necessarily have in view at the time its transmission over electric wires. The limitations of the telegraph thus vitally affect what the present age is reading. Nor are their relations to literary form less distinct than those of shorthand.

Textbooks in rhetoric discuss learnedly the principles which should govern our

choice as between the rugged old Saxon words, made familiar in earliest childhood, and the longer ones of classic origin. Rhetoricians explain that, while in general the simplest words are the best, we should be chiefly governed by the effect which we aim to produce. But so far as I have been able to see, they pay no heed, as a practical agency affecting choice in the modern world, to the greater adaptability of the long word for telegraphic transmission, and hence of its liability to encroach upon the field of the simpler Saxon in popular usage, and so in the mental habits of the time.

There are two reasons for preferring the big word in telegraphing,-its greater accuracy and its economy from a pecuniary point of view. The latter consideration does not amount to much, since wires are often leased by the hour, and publications which are willing to pay for an extensive telegraphic service would not bother with petty differences of cost any more than any reader would think, in sending a message to New York, of the more specific information which could be conveyed for a quarter through the medium of ten long words.

66

But errors in transmission are the constant dread of the extensive user of the telegraph. Half-unconsciously he comes to prefer those words which experience teaches him go through safely. He may not be aware that this influence is operative, when he decides to write "superintendent" instead of "head," or overseer" instead of "chief," because of the fewer chances that either of these long words will be confused at any point in the journey with something varying in perhaps a single letter. The long word throws out more life-lines. A slight mistake in its transmission does not vitiate its meaning.

The story is familiar of the New York commission merchant who telegraphed his factor: "Cranberries rising. Send at once 50 barrels, per Simmons," meaning by way of a certain Mr. Simmons who was the New Orleans agent. In a few

days a consignment arrived from the Southern factor, but with the plaintive suggestion that not another barrel of persimmons could be had for love or money in the entire state. The courts were not in this instance asked to decide whether the cost of an attempt to corner the market could be charged to the telegraph company for failing to take note of the "constructive recess" between per and Simmons.

Most jurymen would have said that the New York merchant was little less than idiotic to use a word so clearly open to error. So would the journalist be guilty of contributory negligence if he failed, after long experience, to make some selections in recognition of so obvious a danger. He will not, for example, send the word "prevision," because somebody who handles the word on its journey would be almost sure to change it to the more familiar "provision." Whenever two words are thus closely alike, one in common use and the other rare, only the former can with thorough safety be sent by telegraph. The wires are thus constantly shrinking the popular vocabulary, hastening the retirement of words of the less useful sort. Of all the pres and pros and ins and uns, the word of less familiar use is the one liable to be transformed to its already overworked rival. To the word that hath uses shall be given is a principle of the wires, applied with a vengeance. The writer who tried to be so fastidious as to describe a person by wire as "unmoral," would have as the reward of his pains at the other end of the line the ordinary term “immoral.” Subjunctive moods, implying something contrary to reality, drop out in the same way. The writer who desires to convey this notion must do it in some less delicate

way.

Only one operator among a considerable number needs to change from a less to a more familiar word, and it never gets back. Moreover, a word need fail but one time in ten to become objectionable to careful writers. So important is this

subject that the latest editions of Walker's Rhyming Dictionary contain a section on the most common telegraphic errors. The author cites the importance of unraveling this class of mistakes as one of the greatest uses of a classification of words by the groups of letters with which they end rather than by their initials.

The noun "cant," this book shows, may be made "tenant" without any change whatever except in the spaces between the dots and dashes of the first letter. How much safer the longer word "jargon," or, better still, “hypocritical speech," would in these circumstances be! It is not important to discuss these errors here, more than to allude to this recognition by the dictionary-makers of the important place in modern life of the telegrapher's eccentricities.

This agency, then, encourages big words and the overworked words. Its tendency is thus against the widening of the popular vocabulary, a misfortune too patent to need comment. It is an axiom of the rhetoricians that the power to express many and various shades of thought and feeling rests on the possession of a large and well-managed vocabulary. Many of our words already have so many meanings as to be subject to constant misinterpretation. It has been argued that half of the petty disputes of mankind may be traced in the last analysis to a different understanding of the language involved in the issue between the disputants. Examples of this are familiar.

But a greater effect of the telegraph on rhetorical forms arises from its relation to punctuation. Only the most obvious stops can be depended on; hence, one accustomed to this method of transmission learns to put sentences into such shape that they punctuate themselves, avoiding forms which could be completely overturned in sense by neglect of a period or by its conversion into a comma. The adverbial phrase at the beginning of a sentence is especially dangerous, because it so readily adapts itself to the end of the sentence before, with results that may be

experience may not be that of all who compose in this medium, that it would be the natural tendency of a universal shorthand can hardly be doubted.

While nobody would look for Addisonian passages in the stock market reports which are telegraphed over the country, the dreary monotony of their phrases furnishes something of a foretaste of the reign of abbreviated writing. In the market code the word "Hume" means "Holders unwilling to make concession." What mortal man would ever write "holders disinclined to make concessions," when so slight a change would involve such an amount of extra work? In short, the five pages of the market code contain about all the forms of expression and varieties of language ever seen in these market reports.

Shah, for example, means "shade higher," and sog means "the stock of grain on hand."

Among the many "apostrophes to labor," the all-conqueror, there should be reserved some little recognition of what we owe in our English style to the fact that the efforts involved in written and in spoken expression run along side by side at So even a ratio. Such exceptions as "through" with one syllable, and “deify" with three syllables, and fewer letters, are rare. In the main, product in writing corresponds with effort, and before we give favoring ear to any new system of abbreviated writing we should assure ourselves that this condition is retained.

The effects of the telegraph upon present-day literary forms are much more direct than those of shorthand, for, while only a few persons compose in the latter medium, a large share of the reading matter of the modern world is written by persons who necessarily have in view at the time its transmission over electric wires. The limitations of the telegraph thus vitally affect what the present age is reading. Nor are their relations to literary form less distinct than those of shorthand. Textbooks in rhetoric discuss learnedly the principles which should govern our

choice as between the rugged old Saxon words, made familiar in earliest childhood, and the longer ones of classic origin. Rhetoricians explain that, while in general the simplest words are the best, we should be chiefly governed by the effect which we aim to produce. But so far as I have been able to see, they pay no heed, as a practical agency affecting choice in the modern world, to the greater adaptability of the long word for telegraphic transmission, and hence of its liability to encroach upon the field of the simpler Saxon in popular usage, and so in the mental habits of the time.

There are two reasons for preferring the big word in telegraphing,—its greater accuracy and its economy from a pecuniary point of view. The latter consideration does not amount to much, since wires are often leased by the hour, and publications which are willing to pay for an extensive telegraphic service would not bother with petty differences of cost any more than any reader would think, in sending a message to New York, of the more specific information which could be conveyed for a quarter through the medium of ten long words.

But errors in transmission are the constant dread of the extensive user of the telegraph. Half-unconsciously he comes to prefer those words which experience teaches him go through safely. He may not be aware that this influence is operative, when he decides to write "superintendent" instead of "head," or "overseer" instead of "chief," because of the fewer chances that either of these long words will be confused at any point in the journey with something varying in perhaps a single letter. The long word throws out more life-lines. A slight mistake in its transmission does not vitiate its meaning.

The story is familiar of the New York commission merchant who telegraphed his factor: "Cranberries rising. Send at once 50 barrels, per Simmons," meaning by way of a certain Mr. Simmons who was the New Orleans agent. In a few

Most jurymen would have said that the New York merchant was little less than

idiotic to use a word so clearly open to error. So would the journalist be guilty of contributory negligence if he failed, after long experience, to make some selections in recognition of so obvious a danger. He will not, for example, send the word "prevision," because somebody who handles the word on its journey would be almost sure to change it to the more familiar "provision." Whenever two words are thus closely alike, one in common use and the other rare, only the former can with thorough safety be sent by telegraph. The wires are thus constantly shrinking the popular vocabulary, hastening the retirement of words of the less useful sort. Of all the pres and pros and ins and uns, the word of less familiar use is the one liable to be transformed to its already overworked rival. To the word that hath uses shall be given is a principle of the wires, applied with a vengeance. The writer who tried to be so fastidious as to describe a person by wire as "unmoral," would have as the reward of his pains at the other end of the line the ordinary term "immoral." Subjunctive moods, implying something contrary to reality, drop out in the same way. The writer who desires to convey this notion must do it in some less delicate

way.

Only one operator among a considerable number needs to change from a less to a more familiar word, and it never gets back. Moreover, a word need fail but one time in ten to become objectionable to careful writers. So important is this

subject that the latest editions of Walker's Rhyming Dictionary contain a section on the most common telegraphic errors. The author cites the importance of unraveling this class of mistakes as one of the greatest uses of a classification of words by the groups of letters with which they end rather than by their initials.

The noun "cant," this book shows, may be made "tenant" without any change whatever except in the spaces between the dots and dashes of the first letter. How much safer the longer word "jargon," or, better still, “hypocritical speech," would in these circumstances be! It is not important to discuss these errors here, more than to allude to this recognition by the dictionary-makers of the important place in modern life of the telegrapher's eccentricities.

This agency, then, encourages big words and the overworked words. Its tendency is thus against the widening of the popular vocabulary, a misfortune too patent to need comment. It is an axiom of the rhetoricians that the power to express many and various shades of thought and feeling rests on the possession of a large and well-managed vocabulary. Many of our words already have so many meanings as to be subject to constant misinterpretation. It has been argued that half of the petty disputes of mankind may be traced in the last analysis to a different understanding of the language involved in the issue between the disputants. Examples of this are familiar.

misinterpretation.

But a greater effect of the telegraph on rhetorical forms arises from its relation to punctuation. Only the most obvious stops can be depended on; hence, one accustomed to this method of transmission learns to put sentences into such shape that they punctuate themselves, avoiding forms which could be completely overturned in sense by neglect of a period or by its conversion into a comma. The adverbial phrase at the beginning of a sentence is especially dangerous, because it so readily adapts itself to the end of the sentence before, with results that may be