FICK'E FAVOR

Dispensing with the usual preliminary publicity the latest committee of experts on public tastes has adopted the rest of the much practiced formula: it has met, debated, and agreed to disagree, and thereupon published the account of that dispute. The only concrete result of its inquiry as to what the public wants is the conclusion that the public is an unexplicable monster with unaccountable tastes and that has long been known. However, some choice bits of epigram have been devised which should drive the public's champions to inkpots and scribbled defenses.

Under the guise of Juryman Seven Fannie Hurst has pronounced the verdict that "the mental stature of a very large part of the public is that of a moron and more startling still that "the public great overgrown baby--is--clamoring for its bananas."

Inasmuch as the meaning of this last literary gem is not quite clear it is impossible to disagree entirely; and unfortunately it is impossible to disagree with the findings of the experts. Repetition to the contrary, the public does not know what it wants when it wants it. Fortunately for theatrical producers, each has faith in a fetish of his own which guides him in his guesses, and the most remarkable is George M. Cohans' requirement that a play must "hit me between the eyes," but no independent criterion has ever been set up.

In the allied field of literature their is likewise an absence of knowledge. Harold Bell Wright is more popular than Shakespere: Pilgrims Progress more widely read than Gene Stratton Porter. Unless refuge is to be taken in Barnum's dictum, author and producer, musician and dancer must apparently be resigned to the fate of pleasing some of the public some of the time, some of it all, of the time, but never all of it all of the time.