Recently, Karl Van Meter, development director of the National Association of Manufacturers, telephoned us to ask for 120 copies of TIME'S Oct. 18 cover story on Historian Douglas Southall Freeman. He was about to address the graduating class of the Dale Carnegie Institute to the effect that if you keep an account of all your time, you won't waste much of it. Biographer Freeman, he figured, as set forth in TIME'S story, was a classic example of this attitude, and passing out copies of the story would serve to illustrate the point.

This example of the fact that news stories do not necessarily die with yesterday's newspaper or last week's newsmagazine is repeated--in volume --every week here at TIME. Requests for reprint rights (TIME'S editorial material is copyrighted and can be reproduced only by permission) run into the hundreds and range from a desire to use a certain TIME story or stories as examples of good English prose in a forthcoming textbook on English composition (there are four such about to be published) to a college publication that is about to use our format in a forthcoming parody of TIME.

Some of these requests are quite baffling. For instance, a Florida attorney wrote us not long ago to ask if he could reprint a story our Science editor had written about displaced rats. For reasons that seem highly emotional, the attorney figured that the story would be a perfect analogy for a treatise he was writing on "Present Tides Of Immigration From Other States Into Florida."

Permission or refusal to reprint from TIME is not always easy to give. For example, requests from scores of TIME readers who want to startle their friends with replicas of themselves on TIME'S cover pose a problem because, the trademark laws of the U.S. being what they are, we have to refuse permission for reproductions of TIME'S format and take action against unauthorized uses of it. One such was the move of an enterprising politician running for New York State assemblyman whose campaign literature featured a brochure of himself on TIME'S cover, which led some voters to think that he had our endorsement.

Although there are many exceptions, permission to reprint TIME editorial copy is frequently given to newspapers, trade papers and textbook publishers, to unsponsored radio programs, non-profit charitable organizations, to digest magazines, publishers of books and anthologies, etc. In a recent month reprint permission was granted to such varied organizations and individuals as a physician who wanted to quote from three TIME Medicine stories in a college textbook he was revising; to a newspaper chain, which wanted to run Billion-Dollar Hangover (TIME, April 5) on its editorial pages; to a University of Kansas sociology professor who wanted to use the Jackie Robinson cover story (TIME, Sept. 22, 1947) for classroom discussion; to the Military Training branch of the New York Port of Embarkation, which wanted to use various stories for its troop information programs.

Since the war, reprint requests from readers of TIME Inc.'s overseas editions have been coming in increasing volume until we now have 43 countries on our list in which TIME'S editorial material is being used frequently.

Probably the most unusual request we ever received--and a proof of TIME'S toughness--came from a group of Trinity preparatory school boys in New York City. They didn't want to reprint anything; they wanted 50 copies of TIME for their weekend soccer game. It seems that there was a shin guard shortage in town, and a sporting goods salesman had advised them to substitute magazines for the time being. They tried all shapes & sizes of them and found that TIME was just right for their purpose. They managed to rustle up enough copies for their first game, which they won with the aid of Molotov, Rita Hayworth and other TIME cover subjects festooning their shins, but they needed a supply for the entire season. We sent them sufficient copies, and at the end of the season they reported back to us that on an average TIME bruised just about up to the National Affairs section.

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