BUILDING UP A MAGAZINE
Edward Bok has often been referred to as the one "who made _The Ladies'
Home Journal_ out of nothing," who "built it from the ground up," or,
in similar terms, implying that when he became its editor in 1889 the
magazine was practically non-existent. This is far from the fact. The
magazine was begun in 1883, and had been edited by Mrs. Cyrus H. K.
Curtis, for six years, under her maiden name of Louisa Knapp, before
Bok undertook its editorship. Mrs. Curtis had laid a solid foundation
of principle and policy for the magazine: it had achieved a circulation
of 440,000 copies a month when she transferred the editorship, and it
had already acquired such a standing in the periodical world as to
attract the advertisements of Charles Scribner's Sons, which Mr.
Doubleday, and later Bok himself, gave to the Philadelphia
magazine--advertising which was never given lightly, or without the
most careful investigation of the worth of the circulation of a
periodical.
What every magazine publisher knows as the most troublous years in the
establishment of a periodical, the first half-dozen years of its
existence, had already been weathered by the editor and publisher. The
wife as editor and the husband as publisher had combined to lay a solid
basis upon which Bok had only to build: his task was simply to rear a
structure upon the foundation already laid. It is to the vision and to
the genius of the first editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_ that the
unprecedented success of the magazine is primarily due. It was the
purpose and the policy of making a magazine of authoritative service
for the womanhood of America, a service which would visualize for
womanhood its highest domestic estate, that had won success for the
periodical from its inception. It is difficult to believe, in the
multiplicity of similar magazines today, that such a purpose was new;
that _The Ladies' Home Journal_ was a path-finder; but the convincing
proof is found in the fact that all the later magazines of this class
have followed in the wake of the periodical conceived by Mrs. Curtis,
and have ever since been its imitators.
When Edward Bok succeeded Mrs. Curtis, he immediately encountered
another popular misconception of a woman's magazine--the conviction
that if a man is the editor of a periodical with a distinctly feminine
appeal, he must, as the term goes, "understand women." If Bok had
believed this to be true, he would never have assumed the position.
How deeply rooted is this belief was brought home to him on every hand
when his decision to accept the Philadelphia position was announced.
His mother, knowing her son better than did any one else, looked at him
with amazement. She could not believe that he was serious in his
decision to cater to women's needs when he knew so little about them.
His friends, too, were intensely amused, and took no pains to hide
their amusement from him. They knew him to be the very opposite of "a
lady's man," and when they were not convulsed with hilarity they were
incredulous and marvelled.
No man, perhaps, could have been chosen for the position who had a less
intimate knowledge of women. Bok had no sister, no women confidantes:
he had lived with and for his mother. She was the only woman he really
knew or who really knew him. His boyhood days had been too full of
poverty and struggle to permit him to mingle with the opposite sex.
And it is a curious fact that Edward Bok's instinctive attitude toward
women was that of avoidance. He did not dislike women, but it could
not be said that he liked them. They had never interested him. Of
women, therefore, he knew little; of their needs less. Nor had he the
slightest desire, even as an editor, to know them better or to seek to
understand them. Even at that age, he knew that, as a man, he could
not, no matter what effort he might make, and he let it go at that.
What he saw in the position was not the need to know women; he could
employ women for that purpose. He perceived clearly that the editor of
a magazine was largely an executive: his was principally the work of
direction; of studying currents and movements, watching their
formation, their tendency, their efficacy if advocated or translated
into actuality, and then selecting from the horizon those that were for
the best interests of the home. For a home was something which Edward
Bok did understand. He had always lived in one; had struggled to keep
it together, and he knew every inch of the hard road that makes for
domestic permanence amid adverse financial conditions. And at the home
he aimed rather than at the woman in it.
And with his own limited knowledge of the sex, he needed, and none knew
it better than did he, the ablest women he could obtain to help him
realize his ideals. Their personal opinions of him did not matter so
long as he could command their best work. Sooner or later, when his
purposes were better understood, they might alter those opinions. For
that he could afford to wait. But he could not wait to get their work.
By this time the editor had come to see that the power of a magazine
might lie more securely behind the printed page than in it. He had
begun to accustom his readers to writing to his editors upon all
conceivable problems.
This he decided to encourage. He employed an expert in each line of
feminine endeavor, upon the distinct understanding that the most
scrupulous attention should be given to her correspondence: that every
letter, no matter how inconsequential, should be answered quickly,
fully, and courteously, with the questioner always encouraged to come
again if any problem of whatever nature came to her. He told his
editors that ignorance on any question was a misfortune, not a crime;
and he wished their correspondence treated in the most courteous and
helpful spirit.
Step by step, the editor built up this service behind the magazine
until he had a staff of thirty-five editors on the monthly pay-roll; in
each issue, he proclaimed the willingness of these editors to answer
immediately any questions by mail, he encouraged and cajoled his
readers to form the habit of looking upon his magazine as a great
clearing-house of information. Before long, the letters streamed in by
the tens of thousands during a year. The editor still encouraged, and
the total ran into the hundreds of thousands, until during the last
year, before the service was finally stopped by the Great War in 1917,
the yearly correspondence totalled nearly a million letters.
[Illustration: The Grandmother, who counselled each of her children to
make the world a better and more beautiful place to live in--a counsel
which is now being carried on by her grandchildren, one of whom is
Edward Bok.]
The lack of opportunity for an education in Bok's own life led him to
cast about for some plan whereby an education might be obtained without
expense by any one who desired. He finally hit upon the simple plan of
substituting free scholarships for the premiums then so frequently
offered by periodicals for subscriptions secured. Free musical
education at the leading conservatories was first offered to any girl
who would secure a certain number of subscriptions to _The Ladies' Home
Journal_, the complete offer being a year's free tuition, with free
room, free board, free piano in her own room, and all travelling
expenses paid. The plan was an immediate success: the solicitation of
a subscription by a girl desirous of educating herself made an
irresistible appeal.
This plan was soon extended, so as to include all the girls' colleges,
and finally all the men's colleges, so that a free education might be
possible at any educational institution. So comprehensive it became
that to the close of 1919, one thousand four hundred and fifty-five
free scholarships had been awarded. The plan has now been in operation
long enough to have produced some of the leading singers and
instrumental artists of the day, whose names are familiar to all, as
well as instructors in colleges and scores of teachers; and to have
sent several score of men into conspicuous positions in the business
and professional world.
Edward Bok has always felt that but for his own inability to secure an
education, and his consequent desire for self-improvement, the
realization of the need in others might not have been so strongly felt
by him, and that his plan whereby thousands of others were benefited
might never have been realized.
It was this comprehensive personal service, built up back of the
magazine from the start, that gave the periodical so firm and unique a
hold on its clientele. It was not the printed word that was its chief
power: scores of editors who have tried to study and diagnose the
appeal of the magazine from the printed page, have remained baffled at
the remarkable confidence elicited from its readers. They never looked
back of the magazine, and therefore failed to discover its secret. Bok
went through three financial panics with the magazine, and while other
periodicals severely suffered from diminished circulation at such
times, _The Ladies' Home Journal_ always held its own. Thousands of
women had been directly helped by the magazine; it had not remained an
inanimate printed thing, but had become a vital need in the personal
lives of its readers.
So intimate had become this relation, so efficient was the service
rendered, that its readers could not be pried loose from it; where
women were willing and ready, when the domestic pinch came, to let go
of other reading matter, they explained to their husbands or fathers
that _The Ladies' Home Journal_ was a necessity--they did not feel that
they could do without it. The very quality for which the magazine had
been held up to ridicule by the unknowing and unthinking had become,
with hundreds of thousands of women, its source of power and the
bulwark of its success.
Bok was beginning to realize the vision which had lured him from New
York: that of putting into the field of American magazines a periodical
that should become such a clearing-house as virtually to make it an
institution.
He felt that, for the present at least, he had sufficiently established
the personal contact with his readers through the more intimate
departments, and decided to devote his efforts to the literary features
of the magazine.
The newspaper paragraphers were now having a delightful time with
Edward Bok and his woman's magazine, and he was having a delightful
time with them. The editor's publicity sense made him realize how
valuable for his purposes was all this free advertising. The
paragraphers believed, in their hearts, that they were annoying the
young editor; they tried to draw his fire through their articles. But
he kept quiet, put his tongue in his cheek, and determined to give them
some choice morsels for their wit.
He conceived the idea of making familiar to the public the women who
were back of the successful men of the day. He felt sure that his
readers wanted to know about these women. But to attract his newspaper
friends he labelled the series, "Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men" and
"Clever Daughters of Clever Men."
The alliterative titles at once attracted the paragraphers; they fell
upon them like hungry trout, and a perfect fusillade of paragraphs
began. This is exactly what the editor wanted; and he followed these
two series immediately by inducing the daughter of Charles Dickens to
write of "My Father as I Knew Him," and Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, of
"Mr. Beecher as I Knew Him." Bok now felt that he had given the
newspapers enough ammunition to last for some time; and he turned his
attention to building up a more permanent basis for his magazine.
The two authors of that day who commanded more attention than any
others were William Dean Howells and Rudyard Kipling. Bok knew that
these two would give to his magazine the literary quality that it
needed, and so he laid them both under contribution. He bought Mr.
Howells's new novel, "The Coast of Bohemia," and arranged that
Kipling's new novelette upon which he was working should come to the
magazine. Neither the public nor the magazine editors had expected Bok
to break out along these more permanent lines, and magazine publishers
began to realize that a new competitor had sprung up in Philadelphia.
Bok knew they would feel this; so before he announced Mr. Howells's new
novel, he contracted with the novelist to follow this with his
autobiography. This surprised the editors of the older magazines, for
they realized that the Philadelphia editor had completely tied up the
leading novelist of the day for his next two years' output.
Meanwhile, in order that the newspapers might be well supplied with
barbs for their shafts, he published an entire number of his magazine
written by the daughters of famous men. This unique issue presented
contributions by the daughters of Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
President Harrison, Horace Greeley, William M. Thackeray, William Dean
Howells, General Sherman, Jefferson Davis, Mr. Gladstone, and a score
of others. This issue simply filled the paragraphers with glee. Then
once more Bok turned to articles calculated to cement the foundation
for a more permanent structure.
The material that the editor was publishing and the authors that he was
laying under contribution began to have marked effect upon the
circulation of the magazine, and it was not long before the original
figures were doubled, an edition--enormous for that day--of seven
hundred and fifty thousand copies was printed and sold each month, the
magical figure of a million was in sight, and the periodical was
rapidly taking its place as one of the largest successes of the day.
Mr. Curtis's single proprietorship of the magazine had been changed
into a corporation called The Curtis Publishing Company, with a capital
of five hundred thousand dollars, with Mr. Curtis as president, and Bok
as vice-president.
The magazine had by no means an easy road to travel financially. The
doubling of the subscription price to one dollar per year had
materially checked the income for the time being; the huge advertising
bills, sometimes exceeding three hundred thousand dollars a year, were
difficult to pay; large credit had to be obtained, and the banks were
carrying a considerable quantity of Mr. Curtis's notes. But Mr. Curtis
never wavered in his faith in his proposition and his editor. In the
first he invested all he had and could borrow, and to the latter he
gave his undivided support. The two men worked together rather as
father and son--as, curiously enough, they were to be later--than as
employer and employee. To Bok, the daily experience of seeing Mr.
Curtis finance his proposition in sums that made the publishing world
of that day gasp with sceptical astonishment was a wonderful
opportunity, of which the editor took full advantage so as to learn the
intricacies of a world which up to that time he had known only in a
limited way.
What attracted Bok immensely to Mr. Curtis's methods was their perfect
simplicity and directness. He believed absolutely in the final outcome
of his proposition: where others saw mist and failure ahead, he saw
clear weather and the port of success. Never did he waver: never did
he deflect from his course. He knew no path save the direct one that
led straight to success, and, through his eyes, he made Bok see it with
equal clarity until Bok wondered why others could not see it. But they
could not. Cyrus Curtis would never be able, they said, to come out
from under the load he had piled up. Where they differed from Mr.
Curtis was in their lack of vision: they could not see what he saw!
It has been said that Mr. Curtis banished patent-medicine
advertisements from his magazine only when he could afford to do so.
That is not true, as a simple incident will show. In the early days,
he and Bok were opening the mail one Friday full of anxiety because the
pay-roll was due that evening, and there was not enough money in the
bank to meet it. From one of the letters dropped a certified check for
five figures for a contract equal to five pages in the magazine. It
was a welcome sight, for it meant an easy meeting of the pay-roll for
that week and two succeeding weeks. But the check was from a
manufacturing patent-medicine company. Without a moment's hesitation,
Mr. Curtis slipped it back into the envelope, saying: "Of course,
_that_ we can't take." He returned the check, never gave the matter a
second thought, and went out and borrowed more money to meet his
pay-roll.
With all respect to American publishers, there are very few who could
have done this--or indeed, would do it today, under similar
conditions--particularly in that day when it was the custom for all
magazines to accept patent-medicine advertising; _The Ladies' Home
Journal_ was practically the only publication of standing in the United
States refusing that class of business!
Bok now saw advertising done on a large scale by a man who believed in
plenty of white space surrounding the announcement in the
advertisement. He paid Mr. Howells $10,000 for his autobiography, and
Mr. Curtis spent $50,000 in advertising it. "It is not expense," he
would explain to Bok, "it is investment. We are investing in a
trademark. It will all come back in time." And when the first
$100,000 did not come back as Mr. Curtis figured, he would send another
$100,000 after it, and then both came back.
Bok's experience in advertisement writing was now to stand him in
excellent stead. He wrote all the advertisements, and from that day to
the day of his retirement, practically every advertisement of the
magazine was written by him.
Mr. Curtis believed that the editor should write the advertisements of
a magazine's articles. "You are the one who knows them, what is in
them and your purpose," he said to Bok, who keenly enjoyed this
advertisement writing. He put less and less in his advertisements.
Mr. Curtis made them larger and larger in the space which they occupied
in the media used. In this way _The Ladies' Home Journal_
advertisements became distinctive for their use of white space, and as
the advertising world began to say: "You can't miss them." Only one
feature was advertised at one time, but the "feature" was always
carefully selected for its wide popular appeal, and then Mr. Curtis
spared no expense to advertise it abundantly. As much as $400,000 was
spent in one year in advertising only a few features--a gigantic sum in
those days, approached by no other periodical. But Mr. Curtis believed
in showing the advertising world that he was willing to take his own
medicine.
Naturally, such a campaign of publicity announcing the most popular
attractions offered by any magazine of the day had but one effect: the
circulation leaped forward by bounds, and the advertising columns of
the magazine rapidly filled up.
The success of _The Ladies' Home Journal_ began to look like an assured
fact, even to the most sceptical.
As a matter of fact, it was only at its beginning, as both publisher
and editor knew. But they desired to fill the particular field of the
magazine so quickly and fully that there would be small room for
competition. The woman's magazine field was to belong to them!