When I was twelve years old my father transferred Ali Baba to the
garden--and I did the chores around the house and barn for a dollar a
week. From that day forward I earned every dollar that ever came to me.
I fed the printing-press at four dollars a week. Then, when we purchased a
gas-engine, I was promoted to be engineer, and given a pair of long
overalls.
Two or three years later I was moved into the General Office, where I
opened mail and filled in orders.
Again, I was promoted into the Private Office and permitted to sign my
name under my Father's, on checks.
Then the responsibility of purchasing materials was given me.
One time or another I have worked in every Department of the Roycroft
Shops.
My association with Elbert Hubbard has been friendly, brotherly. I have
enjoyed his complete confidence--and I have tried to deserve it.
He believed in me, loved me, hoped for me. Whether I disappointed him at
times is not important. I know my average must have pleased him, because
the night he said Farewell to the Roycrofters he spoke well of me, very
well of me, and he left the Roycroft Institution in my charge.
He sailed away on the "Lusitania" intending to be gone several weeks. His
Little Journey has been prolonged into Eternity.
But the work of Elbert and Alice Hubbard is not done. With them one task
was scarcely under way when another was launched. Whether complete or
incomplete, there had to be an end to their effort sometime, and this is
the end.
Often Elbert Hubbard would tell the story of Tolstoy, who stopped at the
fence to question the worker in the field, "My Man, if you knew you were
to die tomorrow, what would you do today?" And the worker begrimed with
sweat would answer, "I would plow!"
That's the way Elbert Hubbard lived and died, and yet he did more--he
planned for the future. He planned the future of the Roycroft Shop. Death
did not meet him as a stranger. He came as a sometime-expected friend.
Father was not unprepared.
The plan that would have sustained us the seven weeks he was in Europe
will sustain us seven years--and another seven years.
Elbert Hubbard's work will go on.
I know of no Memorial that would please Elbert Hubbard half so well as to
broaden out the Roycroft Idea.
So we will continue to make handmade Furniture, hand-hammered Copper,
Modeled Leather. We shall still triumph in the arts of Printing and
Bookmaking.
The Roycroft Inn will continue to swing wide its welcoming door, and the
kind greeting is always here for you.
"The Fra" will not miss an issue, and you who have enjoyed it in the past
will continue to enjoy it!
"The Philistine" belonged to Elbert Hubbard. He wrote it himself for just
twenty years and one month. No one else could have done it as he did. No
one else can now do it as he did.
So, for very sentimental reasons--which overbalance the strong temptation
to continue "The Philistine"--I consider it a duty to pay him the tribute
of discontinuing the little Magazine of Protest.
The Roycrofters, Incorporated, is a band of skilled men and women. For
years they have accomplished the work that has invited your admiration.
You may expect much of them now. The support they have given me, the
confidence they have in me, is as a great mass of power and courage
pushing me on to success.
This thought I would impress upon you: It will not be the policy of The
Roycrofters to imitate or copy. This place from now on is what we make it.
The past is past, the future spreads a golden red against the eastern sky.
I have the determination to make a Roycroft Shop--that Elbert Hubbard,
leaning out over the balcony, will look down and say, "Good boy,
Bert--good boy!"