Easily Traced

1895

"Stealing a typewriter," said a man who looks after the rental department of a large eastern typewriter house, "is grand larceny and a state prison offense, yet this and the further fact that an immense number of these culprits have already been sent to penitentiaries in different states do not deter dozens of others every month from making like thefts. We have a standing list of from 100 to 200 typewriters that have been stolen from our branch offices and agents in various sections of the country. Every typewriter has its own number, which cannot be effaced, and whenever we hear that a machine is missing we immediately communicate its number to our representatives in this country and abroad, with instructions to seize the machine when found and to prosecute the person holding it. It is only a matter of time when any typewriter will need adjusting and repairing and will be taken to a repairer, and then the thief is easily apprehended. Thus we actually lose few or no machines." — Philadelphia Ledger.

Editorial Remarks — "The Balmy Days of January"

1911

Next June we all may long for the balmy days of January.

Possibly the pet in the cat show would enjoy more keenly life in the alley.

Some people can find a typographical error who never find an idea of their own.

We have yet to discover an egg that has been improved by the cold storage treatment.

"Gaseous imbecility" has taken its place in the hall of fame beside "Innocuous desuetude."

Higher education, too, has its dangers. An Illinois girl started for college, but got married on the way.

Chicago is to have grand opera in English next season. If Chief Steward has his way it will also have it in clothing.

In the Boston high schools 3,000 girls are taking the commercial course. The boys will have to go west or south.

A Denver surgeon was stricken with appendicitis while operating on a patient for that disease. Maybe it is catching, after all.

That Jersey architect who failed to provide a stairway for a new schoolhouse must have realized that this is the age of aviation.

Three and a half billions was the value of the foreign trade of the United States last year. Pretty big country this, isn't it?

Russia affords a big market for American typewriters. To judge from the cartoons we see, Russia is not a big market for American safety razors.

Sinclair Lewis Warns Writers About Bad Temper

1937

Writers Warned Against Ill Temper By Sinclair Lewis

New London, Conn., June 1 (UP).— Sinclair Lewis thinks it's a sign of bad temper when a writer, having become dissatisfied with a paragraph, tears it off the top of his typewriter.

"When I don't like what I've started to write," said Lewis, "I unroll the entire sheet and put in a fresh one.

"I don't think it's good practice to tear a partly written sheet out of a typewriter, it's a sign of bad temper. When you write you are your own master. A display of temper means you are quarreling with yourself — quarreling with your master. It isn't good to do that."

The novelist, touring New England by motor, recalled his first writing job on a Midwestern newspaper.

"I was fired from that job," he grinned, "but not until my boss was prepared to announce that my successor was already on a train heading for town."

—The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, NY, June 1, 1937, page 19.

Use of Typewriter Still In Its Infancy, Will Definitely Grow

1901

WRITING BY MACHINE

EMPLOYMENT OF TYPEWRITER YET IN ITS INFANCY.

Use Will Increase Until Every Hotel Will Provide Them for Guests, and All Business Men Will Use Them Themselves, Not Depending Upon Others.

Bicycling was a fad, but typewriting is a fact. The typewriter it, he, or she — is in the same class as the telephone, telegraph, and linotype. As to usefulness and universality, typewriting is in its infancy. Thus far it is used only by those who cannot get along without it. The business man puts in a writing machine as a luxury, and regards it as expense. A young woman who learns to use a typewriter feels called upon to explain that she may have to earn her living, and she can equip herself more quickly in this way than in any other. A superintendent or principal who advocates the introduction of typewriting into the schools feels obliged to prove that it is due those who may have to earn a living.

The attitude of business men and school people toward typewriting must change entirely, and the time for such change is already here. Where one writing machine is used now there will be ten in use in the near future. The only trouble up to this time has been that business men, superintendents, and principals rarely use the machine personally and advantageously. The typewriter is a servant, a helper, doing what the proprietor would have it understood that he is above doing, whereas the difficulty is that he cannot do it.

As a Yankee, I venture the guess that in the not-distant future the ablest men and women in home and office, in hotel and train will use the machine. To-day, away from home, if one wishes typewriting, he pays a dollar an hour or more for the service, but soon every first-class hotel will have all the writing machines which their patronage requires in the writing room and free to all guests. Already every first-class new hotel has a long-distance telephone in each room and a man has its use at any hour of day or night at the same rate that he would pay if he went out and sought a "pay station." In the same way one will be able to say when he registers at any first-class hotel, "I would like a room with a writing machine." At first he might have to pay fifty cents a day extra, as he does for a room with bath and lavatory appointments, but that will soon pass away, as the extra charge for the bath is going. Already it is appreciated that a bath is as important as a washbowl, and so the necessity of the writing machine will be early acknowledged.

In a word, the future of typewriting is with the schools. Teach it as universally as you teach penmanship, not for the sake of the girls who are to be typewriters, but for the greater advantage of the boys and girls who are to be the leaders in social, business, and professional life; not for the purpose of helping a poor girl to be independent, but for making rich and poor alike independent. The time has come for a universal and emphatic demand for the writing machine in every upper grade of the grammar school, and in every high school, academy, seminary, college, and university. — A. E. Winship, in Normal Instructor.