People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1892 — WHAT MEN READ. [ARTICLE]

WHAT MEN READ.

A Comparison of American and English Literary Tastes. Men are distinctly newspaper readers. I do not imply by this that they never read anything beyond the newspaper. But a busy man—and the successful man can be naught else—has little time for the careful reading of periodicals or books. And with the completeness of the modern newspaper, especially the Sunday issue, covering as It does every phase of thought, he is more satisfied to have his reading end there than he was ten or fifteen y ears ago. Undoubtedly men take up the magazines of the day, but to “leaf” the Century, or “run over" the pictures in Harper’s, or “dip” into some North American Review article is as far as hundreds of them go. This fact is substantiated by a glance at the subscription list of any of our greathnagazines. Three-fourths of the subscribers are women. Of course there are men who are assiduous readers, but they are men of leisure. But how many men of leisure have we in our modern life? The American man has still to learn the lesson long ago learned by his English brother, that a day equally divided lietween business and leisure means greater and surer wealth than a day entirely given over to business. The Englishman reads far more than does the American, and mainly for the reason outlined above. If careful statistics could be collected on the reading dons by men in this country—-not the men of literary pursuits, who read because it is to their benefit that they shall do so, but the reading done by the great average run of American men—the figures, I warrant, would be surprising. - Edward W. Bok, in Chicago Herald.