Evening and morning papers are laid at our doors with flaming head-lines of all that has happened the world over in the last twenty-four hours. Detailed descriptions of murders, scandals, elopements, court scenes, betrayals, etc. Magazines, representing every phase of life and industry, are multiplying continually. The literature of a nation is potentially its food for character building, morally and spiritually. Now what are we reading? Editors are calling for "stuff" with "human interest." The manuscript with "preaching" gets a return slip instead of a check; writers are governing themselves by this canon. The most popular writers of fiction a decade ago, who wrote books with high moral and spiritual tone, have step by step eliminated _religion_, and now deal with Socialistic questions and New Thought problems. The most popular novels are teaching false standards of life, and some of the "best sellers" are base libels on religion and the Church. This is the situation, and a close observation of the output of the high-class, reputable publishers will confirm it. Why is this the status of our book makers? Book writing and publishing, like all other branches of human endeavour, have become commercialized; writers and publishers are pandering to a vitiated taste for revenue only. It is not literature editors are seeking, but stories that will sell. A librarian of one of our large cities told the writer that seventy-five per cent. of the books called for and read were positively harmful to the highest ideals. If such is true on this plane of literature, what can be said of the publishing houses which produce nothing but books utterly vile and immoral? It is said there are two thousand publishing concerns in New York City issuing just such literature, circulated secretly in many instances. An army of writers are employed to furnish so many "thrillers" monthly. These "stories" deal with the lowest, vilest passions of humanity. What is true of New York is also true of Chicago and other cities. Enough stories have been written of the James Boys, Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, and other border heroes (?), could they have lived to take the least part in so many situations, to have required a century to pass through them all. As much blood as was shed actually at Shiloh has been shed by the writers of border outlawry during the past twenty-five years. The indirect influence of the books of the James Boys have caused more bloodshed than those Missouri bandits spilt by their unerring marksmanship.