Touch typewriting is as much superior to longhand for writing purposes as the automobile is superior to the horse and wagon for transportation purposes. It is hard to understand how young workers, who realize so fully the value of the automobile in getting from place to place quickly, can be satisfied to scribble their way through school year after year, pushing a pen or pencil through miles and miles of that ancient system of writing which among professional men should long ago have been relegated to the museum with the oxcart and the spinning wheel! L-o-n-g-hand was well named, and it has made little or no improvement since John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence.
When I use the expression pushing a pencil "through miles and miles" of writing, I am not exaggerating in the least, for it has been found that the average pencil, of which people use up so many each year, is capable of making a mark thirty-five miles long!
I should think it would be distressing to the ambitious young workers of this day and age, who want to accomplish as much as possible in the shortest possible time, not to be able to write any faster than their great-greatgreat-grandparents did. I feel sorry for them, but often I feel much more sorry for the ones who have to read their writing. An editor recently stated that contributors could, by typing their articles, do a great deal to help editors keep their religion, and increase the likelihood of publication.
There are probably no subjects better suited for study by correspondence than touch typewriting. It is comparatively easy for the student to bring his speed up to at least thirty words a minute, and many have attained a much greater speed. It takes a rapid longhand writer to write twenty words a minute from copy. In what other way could a young worker spend a few hours a week for a few months that would bring such an increase in mechanical efficiency? If the world's champion typist thought he could add five words a minute to his speed by practicing four hours a day for a year, I believe he would gladly do it; but thousands of the students in our schools—prospective preachers and teachers, authors and editors, doctors and business men—could easily add 100 per cent to their speed of writing—and only their teachers know how much to the legibility of their writing—by taking a course in touch typewriting. Such a course can most satisfactorily be taken in one of our colleges or academies, under the supervision of an instructor; but if this is impossible, good results can still be achieved through a correspondence course.*
The man who made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before is called a "plant wizard." Why not become a "word wizard" by learning how to make two or three good, legible words grow in the time in which only one poor, scribbled one grows now?
I say without the least fear of successful contradiction—and thousands of successful men agree with me—that an education which does not include a thorough knowledge of touch typewriting is incomplete and short of the needs of this age.
Washington, D. C.
* The Home Study Institute offers a very acceptable course in touch typewriting, the writer of this article being the instructor for the Institute in this branch. Professor Foote informs us also that if, in connection with such a course, any one desires to secure a good "rebuilt" typewriter at a reasonable price, they have an arrangement with a local company which permits them to examine and try out machines before they are purchased.—Editors.
