In 1892 The Ladies' Home Journal announced that it would thereafter
accept no advertisements of patent medicines for its pages. It was a
pioneer stroke. During the following two years, seven other newspapers
and periodicals followed suit. The American people were slaves to
self-medication, and the patent-medicine makers had it all their own
way. There was little or no legal regulation as to the ingredients in
their nostrums; the mails were wide open to their circulars, and the
pages of even the most reputable periodicals welcomed their
advertisements. The patent-medicine business in the United States ran
into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The business is still
large; then it was enormous.
Into this army of deceit and spurious medicines, The Ladies' Home
Journal fired the first gun. Neither the public nor the patent-medicine
people paid much attention to the first attacks. But as they grew, and
the evidence multiplied, the public began to comment and the nostrum
makers began to get uneasy.
The magazine attacked the evil from every angle. It aroused the public
by showing the actual contents of some of their pet medicines, or the
absolute worthlessness of them. The Editor got the Women's Christian
Temperance Union into action against the periodicals for publishing
advertisements of medicines containing as high as forty per cent
alcohol. He showed that the most confidential letters written by women
with private ailments were opened by young clerks of both sexes, laughed
at and gossiped over, and that afterward their names and addresses,
which they had been told were held in the strictest confidence, were
sold to other lines of business for five cents each. He held the
religious press up to the scorn of church members for accepting
advertisements which the publishers knew and which he proved to be not
only fraudulent, but actually harmful. He called the United States Post
Office authorities to account for accepting and distributing obscene
circular matter.
He cut an advertisement out of a newspaper which ended with the
statement:
"Mrs. Pinkham, in her laboratory at Lynn, Massachusetts, is able to do
more for the ailing women of America than the family physician. Any
woman, therefore, is responsible for her own suffering who will not take
the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice."
Next to this advertisement representing Mrs. Lydia Pinkham as "in her
laboratory," Bok simply placed the photograph of Mrs. Pinkham's
tombstone in Pine Grove Cemetery, at Lynn, showing that Mrs. Pinkham had
passed away twenty-two years before!
It was one of the most effective pieces of copy that the magazine used
in the campaign. It told its story with absolute simplicity, but with
deadly force.
The proprietors of "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup" had strenuously
denied the presence of morphine in their preparation. Bok simply bought
a bottle of the syrup in London, where, under the English Pharmacy Act,
the authorities compelled the proprietors of the syrup to affix the
following declaration on each bottle: "This preparation, containing,
among other valuable ingredients, a small amount of morphine is, in
accordance with the Pharmacy Act, hereby labelled 'Poison!'" The
magazine published a photograph of the label, and it told its own
convincing story. It is only fair to say that the makers of this remedy
now publish their formula.
Bok now slipped a cog in his machinery. He published a list of
twenty-seven medicines, by name, and told what they contained. One
preparation, he said, contained alcohol, opium, and digitalis. He
believed he had been extremely careful in this list. He had consulted
the highest medical authorities, physicians, and chemists. But in the
instance of the one preparation referred to above he was wrong.
The analysis had been furnished by the secretary of the State Board of
Health of Massachusetts; a recognized expert, who had taken it from the
analysis of a famous German chemist. It was in nearly every standard
medical authority, and was accepted by the best medical authorities. Bok
accepted these authorities as final. Nevertheless, the analysis and the
experts were wrong. A suit for two hundred thousand dollars was brought
by the patent-medicine company against The Curtis Publishing Company,
and, of course, it was decided in favor of the former. But so strong a
public sentiment had been created against the whole business of patent
medicines by this time that the jury gave a verdict of only sixteen
thousand dollars, with costs, against the magazine.
Undaunted, Bok kept on. He now engaged Mark Sullivan, then a young
lawyer in downtown New York, induced him to give up his practice, and
bring his legal mind to bear upon the problem. It was the beginning of
Sullivan's subsequent journalistic career, and he justified Bok's
confidence in him. He exposed the testimonials to patent medicines from
senators and congressmen then so widely published, showed how they were
obtained by a journalist in Washington who made a business of it. He
charged seventy-five dollars for a senator's testimonial, forty dollars
for that of a congressman, and accepted no contract for less than five
thousand dollars.
Sullivan next exposed the disgraceful violation of the confidence of
women by these nostrum vendors in selling their most confidential
letters to any one who would buy them. Sullivan himself bought thousands
of these letters and names, and then wrote about them in the magazine.
One prominent firm indignantly denied the charge, asserting that
whatever others might have done, their names were always held sacred. In
answer to this declaration Sullivan published an advertisement of this
righteous concern offering fifty thousand of their names for sale.
Bok had now kept up the fight for over two years, and the results were
apparent on every hand. Reputable newspapers and magazines were closing
their pages to the advertisements of patent medicines; legislation was
appearing in several States; the public had been awakened to the fraud
practised upon it, and a Federal Pure Food and Drug Act was beginning to
be talked about.
Single-handed, The Ladies' Home Journal kept up the fight until Mark
Sullivan produced an unusually strong article, but too legalistic for
the magazine. He called the attention of Norman Hapgood, then editor of
Collier's Weekly, to it, who accepted it at once, and, with Bok's
permission, engaged Sullivan, who later succeeded Hapgood as editor of
Collier's. Robert J. Collier now brought Samuel Hopkins Adams to Bok's
attention and asked the latter if he should object if Collier's Weekly
joined him in his fight. The Philadelphia editor naturally welcomed the
help of the weekly, and Adams began his wonderfully effective campaign.
The weekly and the monthly now pounded away together; other periodicals
and newspapers, seeing success ahead, and desiring to be part of it and
share the glory, came into the conflict, and it was not long before so
strong a public sentiment had been created as to bring about the passage
of the United States Food and Drug Act, and the patent-medicine business
of the United States had received a blow from which it has never
recovered. To-day the pages of every newspaper and periodical of
recognized standing are closed to the advertisements of patent
medicines; the Drug Act regulates the ingredients, and post office
officials scan the literature sent through the United States mails.
There are distinct indications that the time has come once more to scan
the patent-medicine horizon carefully, but the conditions existing in
1920 are radically different from those prevailing in 1904.
One day when Bok was at luncheon with Doctor Lyman Abbott, the latter
expressed the wish that Bok would take up the subject of venereal
disease as he had the patent-medicine question.
"Not our question," answered Bok.
"It is most decidedly your question," was the reply.
Bok cherished the highest regard for Doctor Abbott's opinion and
judgment, and this positive declaration amazed him.
"Read up on the subject," counselled Doctor Abbott, "and you will find
that the evil has its direct roots in the home with the parents. You
will agree with me before you go very far that it is your question."
Bok began to read on the unsavory subject. It was exceedingly unpleasant
reading, but for two years Bok persisted, only to find that Doctor
Abbott was right. The root of the evil lay in the reticence of parents
with children as to the mystery of life; boys and girls were going out
into the world blind-folded as to any knowledge of their physical
selves; "the bloom must not be rubbed off the peach," was the belief of
thousands of parents, and the results were appalling. Bok pursued his
investigations from books direct into the "Homes of Refuge," "Doors of
Hope," and similar institutions, and unearthed a condition, the direct
results of the false modesty of parents, that was almost unbelievable.
Bok had now all his facts, but realized that for his magazine, of all
magazines, to take up this subject would be like a bolt from the blue in
tens of thousands of homes. But this very fact, the unquestioned
position of the magazine, the remarkable respect which its readers had
for it, and the confidence with which parents placed the periodical on
their home tables--all this was, after all, Bok thought, the more reason
why he should take up the matter and thresh it out. He consulted with
friends, who advised against it; his editors were all opposed to the
introduction of the unsavory subject into the magazine.
"But it isn't unsavory," argued Bok. "That is just it. We have made it
so by making it mysterious, by surrounding it with silence, by making it
a forbidden topic. It is the most beautiful story in life."
Mr. Curtis, alone, encouraged his editor. Was he sure he was right? If
he was, why not go ahead? Bok called his attention to the fact that a
heavy loss in circulation was a foregone conclusion; he could calculate
upon one hundred thousand subscribers, at least, stopping the magazine.
"It is a question of right," answered the publisher, "not of
circulation."
And so, in 1906, with the subject absolutely prohibited in every
periodical and newspaper of standing, never discussed at a public
gathering save at medical meetings, Bok published his first editorial.
The readers of his magazine fairly gasped; they were dumb with
astonishment! The Ladies' Home Journal, of all magazines, to discuss
such a subject! When they had recovered from their astonishment, the
parents began to write letters, and one morning Bok was confronted with
a large waste-basket full brought in by his two office boys.
"Protests," laconically explained one of his editors. "More than that,
the majority threaten to stop their subscription unless you stop."
"All right, that proves I am right," answered Bok. "Write to each one
and say that what I have written is nothing as compared in frankness to
what is coming, and that we shall be glad to refund the unfulfilled part
of their subscriptions."
Day after day, thousands of letters came in. The next issue contained
another editorial, stronger than the first. Bok explained that he would
not tell the actual story of the beginning of life in the magazine--that
was the prerogative of the parents, and he had no notion of taking it
away from either; but that he meant to insist upon putting their duty
squarely up to them, that he realized it was a long fight, hence the
articles to come would be many and continued; and that those of his
readers who did not believe in his policy had better stop the magazine
at once. But he reminded them that no solution of any question was ever
reached by running away from it. This question had to be faced some
time, and now was as good a time as any.
Thousands of subscriptions were stopped; advertisements gave notice that
they would cancel their accounts; the greatest pressure was placed upon
Mr. Curtis to order his editor to cease, and Bok had the grim experience
of seeing his magazine, hitherto proclaimed all over the land as a model
advocate of the virtues, refused admittance into thousands of homes, and
saw his own friends tear the offending pages out of the periodical
before it was allowed to find a place on their home-tables.
But The Journal kept steadily on. Number after number contained some
article on the subject, and finally such men and women as Jane Addams,
Cardinal Gibbons, Margaret Deland, Henry van Dyke, President Eliot, the
Bishop of London, braved the public storm, came to Bok's aid, and wrote
articles for his magazine heartily backing up his lonely fight.
The public, seeing this array of distinguished opinion expressing
itself, began to wonder "whether there might not be something in what
Bok was saying, after all." At the end of eighteen months, inquiries
began to take the place of protests; and Bok knew then that the fight
was won. He employed two experts, one man and one woman, to answer the
inquiries, and he had published a series of little books, each written
by a different author on a different aspect of the question.
This series was known as The Edward Bok Books. They sold for twenty-five
cents each, without profit to either editor or publisher. The series
sold into the tens of thousands. Information was, therefore, to be had,
in authoritative form, enabling every parent to tell the story to his or
her child. Bok now insisted that every parent should do this, and
announced that he intended to keep at the subject until the parents did.
He explained that the magazine had lost about seventy-five thousand
subscribers, and that it might just as well lose some more; but that the
insistence should go on.
Slowly but surely the subject became a debatable one. Where, when Bok
began, the leading prophylactic society in New York could not secure
five speaking dates for its single lecturer during a session, it was now
put to it to find open dates for over ten speakers. Mothers' clubs,
women's clubs, and organizations of all kinds clamored for authoritative
talks; here and there a much-veiled article apologetically crept into
print, and occasionally a progressive school board or educational
institution experimented with a talk or two.
The Ladies' Home Journal published a full-page editorial declaring that
seventy of every one hundred special surgical operations on women were
directly or indirectly the result of one cause; that sixty of every one
hundred new-born blinded babies were blinded soon after birth from this
same cause; and that every man knew what this cause was!
Letters from men now began to pour in by the hundreds. With an oath on
nearly every line, they told him that their wives, daughters, sisters,
or mothers had demanded to know this cause, and that they had to tell
them. Bok answered these heated men and told them that was exactly why
the Journal had published the editorial, and that in the next issue
there would be another for those women who might have missed his first.
He insisted that the time had come when women should learn the truth,
and that, so far as it lay in his power, he intended to see that they
did know.
The tide of public opinion at last turned toward The Ladies' Home
Journal and its campaign. Women began to realize that it had a case;
that it was working for their best interests and for those of their
children, and they decided that the question might as well be faced. Bok
now felt that his part in the work was done. He had started something
well on its way; the common sense of the public must do the rest. He had
taken the question of natural life, and stripped it of its false mystery
in the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people; had started their
inquiring minds; had shown parents the way; had made a forbidden topic a
debatable subject, discussed in open gatherings, by the press, an
increasing number of books, and in schools and colleges. He dropped the
subject, only to take up one that was more or less akin to it.
That was the public drinking-cup. Here was a distinct menace that actual
examples and figures showed was spreading the most loathsome diseases
among innocent children. In 1908, he opened up the subject by ruthlessly
publishing photographs that were unpleasantly but tremendously
convincing. He had now secured the confidence of his vast public, who
listened attentively to him when he spoke on an unpleasant topic; and
having learned from experience that he would simply keep on until he got
results, his readers decided that this time they would act quickly. So
quick a result was hardly ever achieved in any campaign. Within six
months legislation all over the country was introduced or enacted
prohibiting the common drinking-cup in any public gathering-place, park,
store, or theatre, and substituting the individual paper cup. Almost
over night, the germ-laden common drinking-cup, which had so widely
spread disease, disappeared; and in a number of States, the common
towel, upon Bok's insistence, met the same fate. Within a year, one of
the worst menaces to American life had been wiped out by public
sentiment.
Bok was now done with health measures for a while, and determined to see
what he could do with two or three civic questions that he felt needed
attention.