Reading Matter and Thinking Matter

IN these days of wood pulp paper and rapid printing any one can get all the reading matter he wants at any price he is willing to pay, but to insure throughout the veara supply of nutritious food for thought at frequent and regular intervals requires some care. You cannot keep yourself in touch with current events from the monthlies and quarterlies alone, for what they publish has to be written months before. Dailies print too much about some things and too little a bout others. What you need for the formation of opinion is THE INDEPENDENT, which will give you every week an impartial narration of current events, a half-dozen or more original articles by competent authorities, critical reviews of all the important new books, and fearless editorial discussion of vital questions.

Our Continued Story

The principal thing published in THE INDEPENDENT is a continued story that has no end, the record of the world’s doings. The plot of this story, if it has one, is not known to any human being. Some periodicals offer prizes of ten of twenty-five dollars to their readers who can guess the contents of future chapters of their continued stories. We are willing to follow their example, and give ten thousand dollars to any one who will write for us now, with satisfactory accuracy, the instalment of the “Survey of the World” which we shall publish a year from date. There are a billion and a hall characters in this story, any one of whom may come to the front and play a prominent part at any time. There will be more cabinet ministers in this story of ours than in Mrs. Humphry Ward’s stories, more mysteries than in Conan Doyle’s, more fighting than in Sienkiewicz’s, more inexplicable psychology than in Henry James’s, more startling changes of fortune than in Anthony Hope’s.

“The Independent ” is Independent

It is not the organ of any party, sect, trust or individual. The editorial rooms are just as completely separated from the publishing department as is possible. When the editorial conference decides that a certain policy is right, that settles it, even though it may mean the loss of some big advertisement and a lot of subscribers. But as a matter of fact the subscribers we have now are used to having their cherished views attacked occasionally by some plain-spoken editorial, and really prefer reading a magazine which has decided views to those periodicals of a neutral tint, which a subscriber mac read for years without finding in them am thing he does not agree with and did not know before.

The Best and the Cheapest

Weekly periodicals are at a disad vantage compared with monthly, because they are not so imposing and their coming is not so infrequent as to seem an important event. But if you will take the trouble to strip off the advertisements and compare the four or five numbers of THE INDEPENDENT with the single number of a monthly, you will see how much more we give for the money than the other publishers. Last year we published 3,042 pages of reading ma tter, not counting the advertisements, although there was some good reading in them, too. The dollar monthly magazines contain only a little more than one third of that, and the fourdollar magazines less than two thirds. So much for quantity. As for quality, compare our list of contributors with that of any other periodical. THE INDEPENDENT will not suffer by the comparison, whether you count or weigh the names. At $2 a year THE INDEPENDENT is cheaper now than any other periodical of like standing, but in order to get early subscriptions, we will send it free to the end of this year to all new subscribers; that is, if you send us $2 now we will credit you with a paid up subscription to January 1st, 1907. If you have not seen it recently buy a copy and get acquainted with the new INDEPENDENT. If you do not want to risk ten cents will send a sample copy free.

With Other Magazines

Instead of attempting to force you to take periodicals von do not want in order to get one that you do, we make the following general clubbing offers: It you will make out your own list ot the periodicals vou want to take and send it us, we will give you the lowest possible terms on the group. Or, we will duplicate any clubbing offer, including THE INDEPENDENT, made by any reputable subscription agency. Address THE INDEPENDENT, 130 Pulton Street, New York.