It is significant that this committee had no sooner begun its round table conferences than the Society promised, through the Director, funds for two prizes.  The first was fixed at $500, the second at $250.

At a meeting in January, 1919, the Committee of Award agreed upon the further conditions that the story must be the work of an American author, and must first appear in 1919 in an American publication.  At the same time an Honorary Committee was established, composed of writers and editors, whose pleasure it might be to offer advice and propose stories for consideration.  The Honorary Committee consisted of

  Gertrude Atherton
  Edward J. O’BRIEN
  Fannie Hurst
  John Macy
  Burges Johnson
  Mrs. Edwin Markham
  Robert Morss Lovett
  John S. Phillips
  William Marion reedy
  Virginia Roderick
  Walter Roberts
  Charles G. Norris
  Edward E. Hale
  Max Eastman
  Charles Caldwell Dobie
  Margaret Sherwood
  Hamlin garland
  James branch Cabell
  Stuart P. Sherman
  William Allen white
  Stephen Leacock
  Major Rupert Hughes
  Eugene Manlove Rhodes

The Committee of Award read throughout the year, month by month, scores of stories, rejecting many, debating over others, and passing up a comparative few for final judgment.  In January, out of the hundred or more remaining, they salvaged the following: 

 1.  The Kitchen Gods, by Guglielma Alsop (Century, September).

 2.  Facing It, by Edwina Stanton Babcock (Pictorial Review, June).

 3.  The Fairest Sex, by Mary Hastings Bradley (Metropolitan, March).

 4.  Bargain Price, by Donn Byrne (Cosmopolitan, March).

 5.  Porcelain Cups, by James Branch Cabell (Century, November).

 6.  Gum Shoes, 4-B, by Forrest Crissey (Harper’s, December).

 7.  The Trial in Tom Belcher’s Store, by Samuel A. Derieux (American,
    June).

 8.  April Twenty-fifth As Usual, by Edna Ferber (Ladies Home Journal,
    July).

 9.  The Mottled Slayer, by George Gilbert (Sunset, August).

10.  Dog Eat Dog, by Ben Hecht (The Little Review, April).

11.  Blue Ice, by Joseph Hergesheimer (Saturday Evening Post, December
    13).

12.  Innocence, by Rupert Hughes (Cosmopolitan, September).

13.  Humoresque, by Fannie Hurst (Cosmopolitan, March).

14.  The Yellow Streak, by Ellen La Motte (Century, March).