I paid a visit yesterday to the model village of Syndicate, founded by Mr. S. S. McClure for the benefit of the literary hands employed in his great enterprises, and I am bound to say that in point of neatness, order, and the completeness of its sanitary arrangements it is infinitely superior to the similar town of Pullman or any of the colonies established by the late Baron Hirsch.

It is situated on a bit of rising ground that overlooks the Hackensack River, the site having been chosen with a view to economy and convenience in the shipping of material by water. The village[Pg 300] has been in existence a little less than two years, but it already has a population of nearly four thousand able-bodied authors, poets and syndicate hands, together with their wives and families, most of whom do their work in the village, though fully a hundred go each day to the McClure factory, in Twenty-fifth Street, returning in the evening in time to take part in the social life of the community.

On the banks of the river Mr. McClure has built a dock and warehouse for the reception and storage of goods. Yesterday the scene on the water-front was an animated one. A bark from Palestine, manned by the swarthy children of the East, was discharging its cargo of photographs of the Holy Land, reminiscences of the Hebrew patriarchs, bales of straw garnered by Boaz especially for the McClure monthly, and other raw materials to be used in the[Pg 301] literary works. In the offing I saw the fleet canal-boat Potato Bug, hailing from Galesburg, Ill., and laden with hitherto unpublished photographs of Ulysses S. Grant and recollections of that warrior, and of his uncles, his aunts, his progenitors, his progeny, his man-servant, his maid-servant, his cattle, and the reporter within his gates.

At the same time a stanch schooner was receiving its cargo of serials, short stories, poems, and memoirs, destined for the New York office. I observed that the greatest care was exercised by the men in the work of stowing away the cargo, the ship having previously been ballasted with humorous articles and pungent literary reviews.

I found the village apparently deserted; only the smoke from the chimneys showed me that the place was inhabited. But very soon the noon whistle blew, and almost immediately[Pg 302] the streets swarmed with well-fed, cheerful literary toilers. I was deeply impressed with the evidences of contentment and happiness that greeted me on every side. In the bright faces that smiled into mine I saw nothing to remind me of the sullen, low-browed, haggard literary weavers that one encounters at the Authors’ Club, or that may be seen lurking in the doorways of union Square, with poems clutched in their toil-stained hands.

Some of the work is done in the shops under the supervision of foremen, but there is a great deal of piece-work given out and taken by the authors to their homes. Nearly a hundred hands are kept constantly busy on the Grant memoirs, under the careful supervision of Mr. Hamlin Garland. Near by, working under glass, I saw half a dozen pallid young men, all recent discoveries of Mr. W. D. Howells. The work of these[Pg 303] spring lambs ............