Literary racketeers

DR. WILL DURANT, the Simon and Schuster Plato, was the first to sell the American public on the profits of Philosophy. By cornering the market on Cosmic Verities, the wise Doctor is said to have realized these profits to the extent of a cool million

JOHN ERSKINE discovered, in The Private Life of Helen of Troy, the highly lucrative racket of bringing history up-to-date with the aid of sophisticated dialogue and a little middle-aged spice. He has since repeated his successful formula three times

WILLIAM LYON PHELPS, mild racketeer of Sweetness and Light, defends his virtue each month in Scribner's Magazine, where his mauve denunciations of crude realists like Hemingway send shudders down the spines of a large and sympathetic audience

WILL ROGERS' racket is to dress up in a synthetic ten-gallon hat and ill-fitting mantle (formerly worn by Mark Twain) and pass himself off to a gullible public as America's Beloved Humorist—a hoax so successful that he is still generally swallowed

EMIL LUDWIG, Baron of the Biography Racket, defends his chosen territory with a steady cannonade of sawed-ofT sentences against the feeble onslaughts of such rival professional racketeers as E. ("Bugs") Barrington, Kid Maurois, and"Dutch" Van Loon

RICHARD ("Himself") HALLIBURTON, the Little Caesar of Adventure, outstanding racketeer of Burning Youth, Hellespont swimmer, Taj Mahal-diver, Matterhorn-spitter, Ladies Club idol—explorer of the Romantic Road to Royalties

JOHN RIDDELL

JOHN RIDDELL, professional iconoclast, last but not least among our literary racketeers, crouches behind bis false beard and aims bis pop-gun of parody at the well-fed Literary Lions, who continue to graze amidst their literary royalties