Life — August 13, 1925 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE - 7 | Approve of Reading C “Yes,” said Joseph L. Gonnick one day to a visitor who happened to be visiting the Gonnick works in Olean, “I always encourage my men to read good books.” st AM often asked,” said Joseph L. Gonnick, President of the Joseph L. Gonnick Cantilever Bridge Company, in an exclusive interview which I had with him from 11:15 to 11:32 yesterday morning, “how business men of to-day, namely, the heads of our great industries, regard the modern type of fiction. “Personally I happened to be having a talk just the other day with several gentlemen representing half a dozen of our greatest industries, and the talk veered around to the things we liked most. Gerard Bruce Natt, Chairman of the Board of the Natt and Monongahela Zinc Foil Co., id he liked peanuts, the old-fashioned five-cents-a-packet ber,’ as well as anything. Governor Theodore Meat, Executive Director of the United States Chain and Link Co., said he liked riding in an automobile. Judge N. D. Wissing, President of the Wissing-Holbein Textile Group, said he had always wanted to be a professor. “M turn happened to be next. “‘T am afraid you gentlemen will think me a bit “old-fashioned,”’ I said, ‘but, frankly, I get a lot of recrea- tion in the various little stories, and occasionally some of the long ones, too, that are published in our better-class maga- zines. I believe it was either Roosevelt or J. Cleury Knox, Vice-President of Knox Products, who said that he liked to read a good detective story before retiring at night. I suppose you could put me in the same category. ““I do not care for detective stories so much, however, unless they are good ones. Some of A. K. Green's I have found excellent brain clearers during the daily fifteen- minute “rest periods” we take at the home headquarters every day between the hours of three-fifteen and threc- thirty, I have noticed other men at the office clearing their Says Joseph L Gonnick (President of the Joseph L. Gonnick Cantilever Bridge Co.) By Marc Connelly minds for the last hour’s business pressure by also reading Green's works. Then I have scen still others reading other writers’ works.’ “My remarks seemed to create quite an impression, and when the editor of the Cantilever World got wind of it he asked me to elaborate on my remarks for the benefit of other business men who might like to profit from my experience. I can only repeat what I told him. tt ANDIDLY, I like adventure stories as well as any- thing. For long reading Rex Beach and the English- men, John Galsworthy and Ethel M. Dell, I find stimulat- ing. Then, too, I like some of the types in ‘That Printer of Udell's,) which I read several years ago. For more serious reading I like Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe and, of course, Homer. “Most business men, however, do not have much time for mental refreshment from the printed page, and for them I can only suggest some of the magazines and stories that have given me excellent return for the time put in on them. The Saturday Evening Post is perhaps the ideal business man's magazine. It appears on Thursday, though I have a private arrangement with my newsdealer by which I get it on Wednesday night. “The S. E. Post gives many interesting and inspiring Pictures of the world of to-day.. The characters in its stories are frankly of a manly and womanly character, quite unlike the neurotic types one finds elsewhere, interes ing though they may be. Its general comments on world- wide affairs are also handled in fair-minded American fashion. I do not believe a man can really be a citizen of the world unless he reads a magazine like the Saturday Evening Post, It is part of the staple diet at our ‘Gonniek (Turn to page 23) comicbooks.com