The success of The Ladies' Home Journal went steadily forward. The
circulation had passed the previously unheard-of figure for a monthly
magazine of a million and a half copies per month; it had now touched a
million and three-quarters.
And not only was the figure so high, but the circulation itself was
absolutely free from "water." The public could not obtain the magazine
through what are known as clubbing-rates, since no subscriber was
permitted to include any other magazine with it; years ago it had
abandoned the practice of offering premiums or consideration of any kind
to induce subscriptions; and the newsdealers were not allowed to return
unsold copies of the periodical. Hence every copy was either purchased
by the public at the full price at a newsstand, or subscribed for at its
stated subscription price. It was, in short, an authoritative
circulation. And on every hand the question was being asked: "How is it
done? How is such a high circulation obtained?"
Bok's invariable answer was that he gave his readers the very best of
the class of reading that he believed would interest them, and that he
spared neither effort nor expense to obtain it for them. When Mr.
Howells once asked him how he classified his audience, Bok replied: "We
appeal to the intelligent American woman rather than to the intellectual
type." And he gave her the best he could obtain. As he knew her to be
fond of the personal type of literature, he gave her in succession Jane
Addams's story of "My Fifteen Years at Hull House," and the remarkable
narration of Helen Keller's "Story of My Life"; he invited Henry Van
Dyke, who had never been in the Holy Land, to go there, camp out in a
tent, and then write a series of sketches, "Out of Doors in the Holy
Land"; he induced Lyman Abbott to tell the story of "My Fifty Years as a
Minister." He asked Gene Stratton Porter to tell of her bird-experiences
in the series: "What I Have Done with Birds"; he persuaded Dean Hodges
to turn from his work of training young clergymen at the Episcopal
Seminary, at Cambridge, and write one of the most successful series of
Bible stories for children ever printed; and then he supplemented this
feature for children by publishing Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories
and his "Puck of Pook's Hill." He induced F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the
best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the
Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church
experience of hers in "The Old Peabody Pew"; and Jean Webster her
knowledge of almshouse life in "Daddy Long Legs."
The readers of The Ladies' Home Journal realized that it searched the
whole field of endeavor in literature and art to secure what would
interest them, and they responded with their support.
Another of Bok's methods in editing was to do the common thing in an
uncommon way. He had the faculty of putting old wine in new bottles and
the public liked it. His ideas were not new; he knew there were no new
ideas, but he presented his ideas in such a way that they seemed new. It
is a significant fact, too, that a large public will respond more
quickly to an idea than it will to a name.
This The Ladies' Home Journal proved again and again. Its most
pronounced successes, from the point of view of circulation, were those
in which the idea was the sole and central appeal. For instance, when it
gave American women an opportunity to look into a hundred homes and see
how they were furnished, it added a hundred thousand copies to the
circulation. There was nothing new in publishing pictures of rooms and,
had it merely done this, it is questionable whether success would have
followed the effort. It was the way in which it was done. The note
struck entered into the feminine desire, reflected it, piqued curiosity,
and won success.
Again, when The Journal decided to show good taste and bad taste in
furniture, in comparative pictures, another hundred thousand circulation
came to it. There was certainly nothing new in the comparative idea; but
applied to a question of taste, which could not be explained so clearly
in words, it seemed new.
Had it simply presented masterpieces of art as such, the series might
have attracted little attention. But when it announced that these
masterpieces had always been kept in private galleries, and seen only by
the favored few; that the public had never been allowed to get any
closer to them than to read of the fabulous prices paid by their
millionaire owners; and that now the magazine would open the doors of
those exclusive galleries and let the public in--public curiosity was at
once piqued, and over one hundred and fifty thousand persons who had
never before bought the magazine were added to the list.
In not one of these instances, nor in the case of other successful
series, did the appeal to the public depend upon the names of
contributors; there were none: it was the idea which the public liked
and to which it responded.
The editorial Edward Bok enjoyed this hugely; the real Edward Bok did
not. The one was bottled up in the other. It was a case of absolute
self-effacement. The man behind the editor knew that if he followed his
own personal tastes and expressed them in his magazine, a limited
audience would be his instead of the enormous clientele that he was now
reaching. It was the man behind the editor who had sought expression in
the idea of Country Life, the magazine which his company sold to
Doubleday, Page & Company, and which he would personally have enjoyed
editing.
It was in 1913 that the real Edward Bok, bottled up for twenty-five
years, again came to the surface. The majority stockholders of The
Century Magazine wanted to dispose of their interest in the periodical.
Overtures were made to The Curtis Publishing Company, but its hands were
full, and the matter was presented for Bok's personal consideration. The
idea interested him, as he saw in The Century a chance for his
self-expression. He entered into negotiations, looked carefully into the
property itself and over the field which such a magazine might fill,
decided to buy it, and install an active editor while he, as a close
adviser, served as the propelling power.
Bok figured out that there was room for one of the trio of what was, and
still is, called the standard-sized magazines, namely Scribner's,
Harper's, and The Century. He believed, as he does to-day, that any one
of these magazines could be so edited as to preserve all its traditions
and yet be so ingrafted with the new progressive, modern spirit as to
dominate the field and constitute itself the leader in that particular
group. He believed that there was a field which would produce a
circulation in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million copies a month
for one of those magazines, so that it would be considered not, as now,
one of three, but the one.
What Bok saw in the possibilities of the standard illustrated magazine
has been excellently carried out by Mr. Ellery Sedgwick in The Atlantic
Monthly; every tradition has been respected, and yet the new progressive
note introduced has given it a position and a circulation never before
attained by a non-illustrated magazine of the highest class.
As Bok studied the field, his confidence in the proposition, as he saw
it, grew. For his own amusement, he made up some six issues of The
Century as he visualized it, and saw that the articles he had included
were all obtainable. He selected a business manager and publisher who
would relieve him of the manufacturing problems; but before the contract
was actually closed Bok, naturally, wanted to consult Mr. Curtis, who
was just returning from abroad, as to this proposed sharing of his
editor.
For one man to edit two magazines inevitably meant a distribution of
effort, and this Mr. Curtis counselled against. He did not believe that
any man could successfully serve two masters; it would also mean a
division of public association; it might result in Bok's physical
undoing, as already he was overworked. Mr. Curtis's arguments, of
course, prevailed; the negotiations were immediately called off, and for
the second time--for some wise reason, undoubtedly--the real Edward Bok
was subdued. He went back into the bottle!
A cardinal point in Edward Bok's code of editing was not to commit his
magazine to unwritten material, or to accept and print articles or
stories simply because they were the work of well-known persons. And as
his acquaintance with authors multiplied, he found that the greater the
man the more willing he was that his work should stand or fall on its
merit, and that the editor should retain his prerogative of
declination--if he deemed it wise to exercise it.
Rudyard Kipling was, and is, a notable example of this broad and just
policy. His work is never imposed upon an editor; it is invariably
submitted, in its completed form, for acceptance or declination. "Wait
until it's done," said Kipling once to Bok as he outlined a story to him
which the editor liked, "and see whether you want it. You can't tell
until then." (What a difference from the type of author who insists that
an editor must take his or her story before a line is written!)
"I told Watt to send you," he writes to Bok, "the first four of my child
stories (you see I hadn't forgotten my promise), and they may serve to
amuse you for a while personally, even if you don't use them for
publication. Frankly, I don't myself see how they can be used for the L.
H. J.; but they're part of a scheme of mine for trying to give children
not a notion of history, but a notion of the time sense which is at the
bottom of all knowledge of history; and history, rightly understood,
means the love of one's fellow-men and the land one lives in."
James Whitcomb Riley was another who believed that an editor should have
the privilege of saying "No" if he so elected. When Riley was writing a
series of poems for Bok, the latter, not liking a poem which the Hoosier
poet sent him, returned it to him. He wondered how Riley would receive a
declination--naturally a rare experience. But his immediate answer
settled the question:
"Thanks equally for your treatment of both poems, [he wrote], the one
accepted and the other returned. Maintain your own opinions and respect,
and my vigorous esteem for you shall remain 'deep-rooted in the fruitful
soil.' No occasion for apology whatever. In my opinion, you are wrong;
in your opinion, you are right; therefore, you are right,--at least
righter than wronger. It is seldom that I drop other work for logic, but
when I do, as my grandfather was wont to sturdily remark, 'it is to some
purpose, I can promise you.'
"Am goin' to try mighty hard to send you the dialect work you've so long
wanted; in few weeks at furthest. 'Patience and shuffle the cards.'
"I am really, just now, stark and bare of one commonsence idea. In the
writing line, I was never so involved before and see no end to the
ink-(an humorous voluntary provocative, I trust of much
merriment)-creasing pressure of it all.
"Even the hope of waking to find myself famous is denied me, since I
haven't time in which to fall asleep. Therefore, very drowsily and
yawningly indeed, I am your
"James Whitcomb Riley."
Neither did the President of the United States consider himself above a
possible declination of his material if it seemed advisable to the
editor. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson wrote to Bok:
"Sometime ago you kindly intimated to me that you would like to publish
an article from me. At first, it seemed impossible for me to undertake
anything of the kind, but I have found a little interval in which I have
written something on Mexico which I hope you will think worthy of
publication. If not, will you return it to me?"
The President, too, acted as an intermediary in turning authors in Bok's
direction, when the way opened. In a letter written not on the official
White House letterhead, but on his personal "up-stairs" stationery, as
it is called, he asks:
"Will you do me the favor of reading the enclosed to see if it is worthy
of your acceptance for the Journal, or whether you think it indicates
that the writer, with a few directions and suggestions, might be useful
to you?
"It was written by --. She is a woman of great refinement, of a very
unusually broad social experience, and of many exceptional gifts, who
thoroughly knows what she is writing about, whether she has yet
discovered the best way to set it forth or not. She is one of the most
gifted and resourceful hostesses I have known, but has now fallen upon
hard times.
"Among other things that she really knows, she really does thoroughly
know old furniture and all kinds of china worth knowing.
"Pardon me if I have been guilty of an indiscretion in sending this
direct to you. I am throwing myself upon your indulgence in my desire to
help a splendid woman.
"She has a great collection of recipes which housekeepers would like to
have. Does a serial cook-book sound like nonsense?"
A further point in his editing which Bok always kept in view was his
rule that the editor must always be given the privilege of revising or
editing a manuscript. Bok's invariable rule was, of course, to submit
his editing for approval, but here again the bigger the personality back
of the material, the more willing the author was to have his manuscript
"blue pencilled," if he were convinced that the deletions or
condensations improved or at least did not detract from his arguments.
It was the small author who ever resented the touch of the editorial
pencil upon his precious effusions.
As a matter of fact there are few authors who cannot be edited with
advantage, and it would be infinitely better for our reading if this
truth was applied to some of the literature of to-day.
Bok had once under his hand a story by Mark Twain, which he believed
contained passages that should be deleted. They represented a goodly
portion of the manuscript. They were, however, taken out, and the result
submitted to the humorist. The answer was curious. Twain evidently saw
that Bok was right, for he wrote: "Of course, I want every single line
and word of it left out," and then added: "Do me the favor to call the
next time you are again in Hartford. I want to say things which--well, I
want to argue with you." Bok never knew what those "things" were, for at
the next meeting they were not referred to.
It is, perhaps, a curious coincidence that all the Presidents of the
United States whose work Bok had occasion to publish were uniformly
liberal with regard to having their material edited.
Colonel Roosevelt was always ready to concede improvement: "Fine," he
wrote; "the changes are much for the better. I never object to my work
being improved, where it needs it, so long as the sense is not altered."
William Howard Taft wrote, after being subjected to editorial revision:
"You have done very well by my article. You have made it much more
readable by your rearrangement."
Mr. Cleveland was very likely to let his interest in a subject run
counter to the space exigencies of journalism; and Bok, in one instance,
had to reduce one of his articles considerably. He explained the reason
and enclosed the revision.
"I am entirely willing to have the article cut down as you suggest,"
wrote the former President. "I find sufficient reason for this in the
fact that the matter you suggest for elimination has been largely
exploited lately. And in looking the matter over carefully, I am
inclined to think that the article expurgated as you suggest will gain
in unity and directness. At first, I feared it would appear a little
'bobbed' off, but you are a much better judge of that than I. ... I
leave it altogether to you."
It was always interesting to Bok, as a study of mental processes, to
note how differently he and some author with whom he would talk it over
would see the method of treating some theme. He was discussing the
growing unrest among American women with Rudyard Kipling at the latter's
English home; and expressed the desire that the novelist should treat
the subject and its causes.
They talked until the early hours, when it was agreed that each should
write out a plan, suggest the best treatment, and come together the next
morning. When they did so, Kipling had mapped out the scenario of a
novel; Bok had sketched out the headings of a series of analytical
articles. Neither one could see the other's viewpoint, Kipling
contending for the greater power of fiction and Bok strongly arguing for
the value of the direct essay. In this instance, the point was never
settled, for the work failed to materialize in any form!
If the readers of The Ladies' Home Journal were quick to support its
editor when he presented an idea that appealed to them, they were
equally quick to tell him when he gave them something of which they did
not approve. An illustration of this occurred during the dance-craze
that preceded the Great War. In 1914, America was dance-mad, and the
character of the dances rapidly grew more and more offensive. Bok's
readers, by the hundreds, urged him to come out against the tendency.
The editor looked around and found that the country's terpsichorean
idols were Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle; he decided that, with their
cooperation, he might, by thus going to the fountainhead, effect an
improvement through the introduction, by the Castles, of better and more
decorous new dances. Bok could see no reason why the people should not
dance, if they wanted to, so long as they kept within the bounds of
decency.
He found the Castles willing and eager to cooperate, not only because of
the publicity it would mean for them, but because they were themselves
not in favor of the new mode. They had little sympathy for the
elimination of the graceful dance by the introduction of what they
called the "shuffle" or the "bunny-hug," "turkey-trot," and other
ungraceful and unworthy dances. It was decided that the Castles should,
through Bok's magazine and their own public exhibitions, revive the
gavotte, the polka, and finally the waltz. They would evolve these into
new forms and Bok would present them pictorially. A series of three
double-page presentations was decided upon, allowing for large
photographs so that the steps could be easily seen and learned from the
printed page.
The magazine containing the first "lesson" was no sooner published than
protests began to come in by the hundreds. Bok had not stated his
object, and the public misconstrued his effort and purpose into an
acknowledgment that he had fallen a victim to the prevailing craze. He
explained in letters, but to no purpose. Try as he might, Bok could not
rid the pages of the savor of the cabaret. He published the three dances
as agreed, but he realized he had made a mistake, and was as much
disgusted as were his readers. Nor did he, in the slightest degree,
improve the dance situation. The public refused to try the new Castle
dances, and kept on turkey-trotting and bunny-hugging.
The Ladies' Home Journal followed the Castle lessons with a series of
the most beautiful dances of Madam Pavlowa, the Russian dancer, hoping
to remove the unfavorable impression of the former series. But it was
only partially successful. Bok had made a mistake in recognizing the
craze at all; he should have ignored it, as he had so often in the past
ignored other temporary, superficial hysterics of the public. The
Journal readers knew the magazine had made a mistake and frankly said
so.
Which shows that, even after having been for over twenty-five years in
the editorial chair, Edward Bok was by no means infallible in his
judgment of what the public wanted or would accept.
No man is, for that matter.