Bruce Bliven Jr.

The rewards of nonpublication are sometimes greater than what a successful article, widely circulated in print, will produce. In the tale that follows, an energetic magazine writer shows how a half-dozen fees can be made to blossom where only one was expected. BRUCE BLIVEN, JR., is the author of many articles and several books; Atlantic readers will recall his account (May, 1954) of the fantastic high-speed typewriting contests which were prevalent around the turn of the century.

The advent of the typewriter on the American scene opened for the working woman the way to office employment, a field previously reserved for men. How best to operate the new gadget was hotly debated, and interest in contests between the two-finger and ten-finger factions was sufficient to fill Madison Square Garden. These droll footnotes from our social history are taken from a forthcoming book by BRUCE BLIVEN, JK., The Wonderful Writing Machine, to be published this spring by Random House.