"What we produce today in the way of reading matter is not at all in a class with what was produced by our predecessors. Their magazines were better edited. Infinitely better. Their fiction was superior. Most of the short stories today are for mushheads. Theirs had substance, style, grandeur, character. Their essays had polish, their biographical articles were not about tramps or tarts, but men and women who sang and painted and explored and invented; and they were written by WRITERS." — Herbert Mayes, editor of McCall's, addressing the Headline Club of Chicago, 1963.
The quote comes from a July 2, 1963 column in the Fort Lauderdale News by Wesley Stout. Stout, who may have especially enjoyed Mayes' comments, had been editor of The Saturday Evening Post from 1937 to 1942.
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