Chapter XXI: A Signal Piece of Constructive Work (3)

So the contending forces in a bitter word-war came together and worked together, and a mutual regard sprang up between the woman and the man who had once so radically differed.

XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling, and as a Lecturer

It was in June, 1899, when Rudyard Kipling, after the loss of his daughter and his own almost fatal illness from pneumonia in America, sailed for his English home on the White Star liner, Teutonic. The party consisted of Kipling, his wife, his father J. Lockwood Kipling, Mr. and Mrs. Frank N. Doubleday, and Bok. It was only at the last moment that Bok decided to join the party, and the steamer having its full complement of passengers, he could only secure one of the officers' large rooms on the upper deck. Owing to the sensitive condition of Kipling's lungs, it was not wise for him to be out on deck except in the most favorable weather. The atmosphere of the smoking-room was forbidding, and as the rooms of the rest of the party were below deck, it was decided to make Bok's convenient room the headquarters of the party. Here they assembled for the best part of each day; the talk ranged over literary and publishing matters of mutual interest, and Kipling promptly labelled the room "The Hatchery,"--from the plans and schemes that were hatched during these discussions.

It was decided on the first day out that the party, too active-minded to remain inert for any length of time, should publish a daily newspaper to be written on large sheets of paper and to be read each evening to the group. It was called The Teuton Tonic; Mr. Doubleday was appointed publisher and advertising manager; Mr. Lockwood Kipling was made art editor to embellish the news; Rudyard Kipling was the star reporter, and Bok was editor.

Kipling, just released from his long confinement, like a boy out of school, was the life of the party--and when, one day, he found a woman aboard reading a copy of The Ladies' Home Journal his joy knew no bounds; he turned in the most inimitable "copy" to the Tonic, describing the woman's feelings as she read the different departments in the magazine. Of course, Bok, as editor of the Tonic, promptly pigeon-holed the reporter's "copy"; then relented, and, in a fine spirit of large-mindedness, "printed" Kipling's peans of rapture over Bok's subscriber. The preparation of the paper was a daily joy: it kept the different members busy, and each evening the copy was handed to "the large circle of readers"--the two women of the party--to read aloud. At the end of the sixth day, it was voted to "suspend publication," and the daily of six issues was unanimously bequeathed to the little daughter of Mr. Lockwood de Forest, a close friend of the Kipling family--a choice bit of Kiplingania.

One day it was decided by the party that Bok should be taught the game of poker, and Kipling at once offered to be the instructor! He wrote out a list of the "hands" for Bok's guidance, which was placed in the centre of the table, and the party, augmented by the women, gathered to see the game.

A baby had been born that evening in the steerage, and it was decided to inaugurate a small "jack-pot" for the benefit of the mother. All went well until about the fourth hand, when Bok began to bid higher than had been originally planned. Kipling questioned the beginner's knowledge of the game and his tactics, but Bok retorted it was his money that he was putting into the pot and that no one was compelled to follow his bets if he did not choose to do so. Finally, the jack-pot assumed altogether too large dimensions for the party, Kipling "called" and Bok, true to the old idea of "beginner's luck" in cards, laid down a royal flush! This was too much, and poker, with Bok in it, was taboo from that moment. Kipling's version of this card-playing does not agree in all particulars with the version here written. "Bok learned the game of poker," Kipling says; "had the deck stacked on him, and on hearing that there was a woman aboard who read The Ladies' Home Journal insisted on playing after that with the cabin-door carefully shut." But Kipling's art as a reporter for The Tonic was not as reliable as the art of his more careful book work.

Bok derived special pleasure on this trip from his acquaintance with Father Kipling, as the party called him. Rudyard Kipling's respect for his father was the tribute of a loyal son to a wonderful father.

"What annoys me," said Kipling, speaking of his father one day, "is when the pater comes to America to have him referred to in the newspapers as 'the father of Rudyard Kipling.' It is in India where they get the relation correct: there I am always 'the son of Lockwood Kipling.'"

Father Kipling was, in every sense, a choice spirit: gentle, kindly, and of a most remarkably even temperament. His knowledge of art, his wide reading, his extensive travel, and an interest in every phase of the world's doings, made him a rare conversationalist, when inclined to talk, and an encyclopedia of knowledge as extensive as it was accurate. It was very easy to grow fond of Father Kipling, and he won Bok's affection as few men ever did.

Father Kipling's conversation was remarkable in that he was exceedingly careful of language and wasted few words.

One day Kipling and Bok were engaged in a discussion of the Boer problem, which was then pressing. Father Kipling sat by listening, but made no comment on the divergent views, since, Kipling holding the English side of the question and Bok the Dutch side, it followed that they could not agree. Finally Father Kipling arose and said: "Well, I will take a stroll and see if I can't listen to the water and get all this din out of my ears."

Both men felt gently but firmly rebuked and the discussion was never again taken up.

Bok tried on one occasion to ascertain how the father regarded the son's work.

"You should feel pretty proud of your son," remarked Bok.

"A good sort," was the simple reply.

"I mean, rather, of his work. How does that strike you?" asked Bok.

"Which work?"

"His work as a whole," explained Bok.

"Creditable," was the succinct answer.

"No more than that?" asked Bok.

"Can there be more?" came from the father.

"Well," said Bok, "the judgment seems a little tame as applied to one who is generally regarded as a genius."

"By whom?"

"The critics, for instance," replied Bok.

"There are no such," came the answer.

"No such what, Mr. Kipling?" asked Bok.

"Critics."

"No critics?"

"No," and for the first time the pipe was removed for a moment. "A critic is one who only exists as such in his own imagination."

"But surely you must consider that Rud has done some great work?" persisted Bok.

"Creditable," came once more.

"You think him capable of great work, do you not?" asked Bok. For a moment there was silence. Then:

"He has a certain grasp of the human instinct. That, some day, I think, will lead him to write a great work."

There was the secret: the constant holding up to the son, apparently, of something still to be accomplished; of a goal to be reached; of a higher standard to be attained. Rudyard Kipling was never in danger of unintelligent laudation from his safest and most intelligent reader.

During the years which intervened until his passing away, Bok sought to keep in touch with Father Kipling, and received the most wonderful letters from him. One day he enclosed in a letter a drawing which he had made showing Sakia Muni sitting under the bo-tree with two of his disciples, a young man and a young woman, gathered at his feet. It was a piece of exquisite drawing. "I like to think of you and your work in this way," wrote Mr. Kipling, "and so I sketched it for you." Bok had the sketch enlarged, engaged John La Farge to translate it into glass, and inserted it in a window in the living-room of his home at Merion.

After Father Kipling had passed away, the express brought to Bok one day a beautiful plaque of red clay, showing the elephant's head, the lotus, and the swastika, which the father had made for the son. It was the original model of the insignia which, as a watermark, is used in the pages of Kipling's books and on the cover of the subscription edition.

"I am sending with this for your acceptance," wrote Kipling to Bok, "as some little memory of my father to whom you were so kind, the original of one of the plaques that he used to make for me. I thought it being the swastika would be appropriate for your swastika. May it bring you even more good fortune."

To those who knew Lockwood Kipling, it is easier to understand the genius and the kindliness of the son. For the sake of the public's knowledge, it is a distinct loss that there is not a better understanding of the real sweetness of character of the son. The public's only idea of the great writer is naturally one derived from writers who do not understand him, or from reporters whom he refused to see, while Kipling's own slogan is expressed in his own words: "I have always managed to keep clear of 'personal' things as much as possible."

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not grow tired by waiting
Or, being lied about don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good or talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can stand to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by Knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the work you've given your life to broken,
And stoop and build it up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one pile of all your winnings
And risk it at one game of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again from your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss,
If you can force you heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on, though there is nothing in you
Except the will that says to them, "Hold on!"

If you can talk to crowds and keep your virtue,
And walk with Kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Copied out from memory by Rudyard Kipling.
Batemons: Sept. 1913
for E.W. Bok on his 50th Birthday

It was on Bok's fiftieth birthday that Kipling sent him a copy of "If." Bok had greatly admired this poem, but knowing Kipling's distaste for writing out his own work, he had resisted the strong desire to ask him for a copy of it. It is significant of the author's remarkable memory that he wrote it, as he said, "from memory," years after its publication, and yet a comparison of the copy with the printed form, corrected by Kipling, fails to discover the difference of a single word.

The lecture bureaus now desired that Edward Bok should go on the platform. Bok had never appeared in the role of a lecturer, but he reasoned that through the medium of the rostrum he might come in closer contact with the American public, meet his readers personally, and secure some first-hand constructive criticism of his work. This last he was always encouraging. It was a naive conception of a lecture tour, but Bok believed it and he contracted for a tour beginning at Richmond, Virginia, and continuing through the South and Southwest as far as Saint Joseph, Missouri, and then back home by way of the Middle West.

Large audiences greeted him wherever he went, but he had not gone far on his tour when he realized that he was not getting what he thought he would. There was much entertaining and lionizing, but nothing to help him in his work by pointing out to him where he could better it. He shrank from the pitiless publicity that was inevitable; he became more and more self-conscious when during the first five minutes on the stage he felt the hundreds of opera-glasses levelled at him, and he and Mrs. Bok, who accompanied him, had not a moment to themselves from early morning to midnight. Yet his large correspondence was following him from the office, and the inevitable invitations in each city had at least to be acknowledged. Bok realized he had miscalculated the benefits of a lecture tour to his work, and began hopefully to wish for the ending of the circuit.

One afternoon as he was returning with his manager from a large reception, the "impresario" said to him: "I don't like these receptions. They hurt the house."

"The house?" echoed Bok.

"Yes, the attendance."

"But you told me the house for this evening was sold out?" said the lecturer.

"That is true enough. House, and even the stage. Not a seat unsold. But hundreds just come to see you and not to hear your lecture, and this exposure of a lecturer at so crowded a reception as this, before the talk, satisfies the people without their buying a ticket. My rule is that a lecturer should not be seen in public before his lecture, and I wish you would let me enforce the rule with you. It wears you out, anyway, and no receptions until afterward will give you more time for yourself and save your vitality for the talk."

Bok was entirely acquiescent. He had no personal taste for the continued round of functions, but he had accepted it as part of the game.

The idea from this talk that impressed Bok, however, with particular force, was that the people who crowded his houses came to see him and not to hear his lecture. Personal curiosity, in other words. This was a new thought. He had been too busy to think of his personality; now he realized a different angle to the situation. And, much to his manager's astonishment, two days afterwards Bok refused to sign an agreement for another tour later in the year. He had had enough of exhibiting himself as a curiosity. He continued his tour; but before its conclusion fell ill--a misfortune with a pleasant side to it, for three of his engagements had to be cancelled.

The Saint Joseph engagement could not be cancelled. The house had been oversold; it was for the benefit of a local charity which besought Bok by wire after wire to keep a postponed date. He agreed, and he went. He realized that he was not well, but he did not realize the extent of his mental and physical exhaustion until he came out on the platform and faced the crowded auditorium. Barely sufficient space had been left for him and for the speaker's desk; the people on the stage were close to him, and he felt distinctly uncomfortable.

Then, to his consternation, it suddenly dawned upon him that his tired mind had played a serious trick on him. He did not remember a line of his lecture; he could not even recall how it began! He arose, after his introduction, in a bath of cold perspiration. The applause gave him a moment to recover himself, but not a word came to his mind. He sparred for time by some informal prefatory remarks expressing regret at his illness and that he had been compelled to disappoint his audience a few days before, and then he stood helpless! In sheer desperation he looked at Mrs. Bok sitting in the stage box, who, divining her husband's plight, motioned to the inside pocket of his coat. He put his hand there and pulled out a copy of his lecture which she had placed there! The whole tragic comedy had happened so quickly that the audience was absolutely unaware of what had occurred, and Bok went on and practically read his lecture. But it was not a successful evening for his audience or for himself, and the one was doubtless as glad when it was over as the other.

When he reached home, he was convinced that he had had enough of lecturing! He had to make a second short tour, however, for which he had contracted with another manager before embarking on the first. This tour took him to Indianapolis, and after the lecture, James Whitcomb Riley gave him a supper. There were some thirty men in the party; the affair was an exceedingly happy one; the happiest that Bok had attended. He said this to Riley on the way to the hotel.

"Usually," said Bok, "men, for some reason or other, hold aloof from me on these lecture tours. They stand at a distance and eye me, and I see wonder on their faces rather than a desire to mix."

"You've noticed that, then?" smilingly asked the poet.

"Yes, and I can't quite get it. At home, my friends are men. Why should it be different in other cities?"

"I'll tell you," said Riley. "Five or six of the men you met to-night were loath to come. When I pinned them down to their reason, it was I thought: they regard you as an effeminate being, a sissy."

"Good heavens!" interrupted Bok.

"Fact," said Riley, "and you can't wonder at it nor blame them. You have been most industriously paragraphed, in countless jests, about your penchant for pink teas, your expert knowledge of tatting, crocheting, and all that sort of stuff. Look what Eugene Field has done in that direction. These paragraphs have, doubtless, been good advertising for your magazine, and, in a way, for you. But, on the other hand, they have given a false impression of you. Men have taken these paragraphs seriously and they think of you as the man pictured in them. It's a fact; I know. It's all right after they meet you and get your measure. The joke then is on them. Four of the men I fairly dragged to the dinner this evening said this to me just before I left. That is one reason why I advise you to keep on lecturing. Get around and show yourself, and correct this universal impression. Not that you can't stand when men think of you, but it's unpleasant."

It was unpleasant, but Bok decided that the solution as found in lecturing was worse than the misconception. From that day to this he never lectured again.

But the public conception of himself, especially that of men, awakened his interest and amusement. Some of his friends on the press were still busy with their paragraphs, and he promptly called a halt and asked them to desist. "Enough was as good as a feast," he told them, and explained why.

One day Bok got a distinctly amusing line on himself from a chance stranger. He was riding from Washington to Philadelphia in the smoking compartment, when the newsboy stuck his head in the door and yelled: "Ladies' Home Journal, out to-day." He had heard this many times before; but on this particular day, upon hearing the title of his own magazine yelled almost in his ears, he gave an involuntary start.

Opposite to him sat a most companionable young fellow, who, noticing Bok's start, leaned over and with a smile said: "I know, I know just how you feel. That's the way I feel whenever I hear the name of that damned magazine. Here, boy," he called to the retreating magazine-carrier, "give me a copy of that Ladies' Home Disturber: I might as well buy it here as in the station."

Then to Bok: "Honest, if I don't bring home that sheet on the day it is out, the wife is in a funk. She runs her home by it literally. Same with you?"

"The same," answered Bok. "As a matter of fact, in our family, we live by it, on it, and from it."

Bok's neighbor, of course, couldn't get the real point of this, but he thought he had it.

"Exactly," he replied. "So do we. That fellow Bok certainly has the women buffaloed for good. Ever see him?"

"Oh, yes," answered Bok.

"Live in Philadelphia?"

"Yes."

"There's where the thing is published, all right. What does Bok look like?"

"Oh," answered Bok carelessly, "just like, well, like all of us. In fact, he looks something like me."

"Does he, now?" echoed the man. "Shouldn't think it would make you very proud!"

And, the train pulling in at Baltimore, Bok's genial neighbor sent him a hearty good-bye and ran out with the much-maligned magazine under his arm!

He had an occasion or two now to find out what women thought of him!

He was leaving the publication building one evening after office hours when just as he opened the front door, a woman approached. Bok explained that the building was closed.

"Well, I am sorry," said the woman in a dejected tone, "for I don't think I can manage to come again."

"Is there anything I can do?" asked Bok. "I am employed here."

"No-o," said the woman. "I came to see Mr. Curtis on a personal matter."

"I shall see him this evening," suggested Bok, "and can give him a message for you if you like."

"Well, I don't know if you can. I came to complain to him about Mr. Bok," announced the woman.

"Oh, well," answered Bok, with a slight start at the matter-of-fact announcement, "that is serious; quite serious. If you will explain your complaint, I will surely see that it gets to Mr. Curtis."

Bok's interest grew.

"Well, you see," said the woman, "it is this way. I live in a three-family flat. Here is my name and card," and a card came out of a bag. "I subscribe to The Ladies' Home Journal. It is delivered at my house each month by Mr. Bok. Now I have told that man three times over that when he delivers the magazine, he must ring the bell twice. But he just persists in ringing once and then that cat who lives on the first floor gets my magazine, reads it, and keeps it sometimes for three days before I get it! Now, I want Mr. Curtis to tell Mr. Bok that he must do as I ask and ring the bell twice. Can you give him that message for me? There's no use talking to Mr. Bok; I've done that, as I say."

And Bok solemnly assured his subscriber that he would!

Bok's secretary told him one day that there was in the outer office the most irate woman he had ever tried to handle; that he had tried for half an hour to appease her, but it was of no use. She threatened to remain until Bok admitted her, and see him she would, and tell him exactly what she thought of him. The secretary looked as if he had been through a struggle. "It's hopeless," he said. "Will you see her?"

"Certainly," said Bok. "Show her in."

The moment the woman came in, she began a perfect torrent of abuse. Bok could not piece out, try as he might, what it was all about. But he did gather from the explosion that the woman considered him a hypocrite who wrote one thing and did another; that he was really a thief, stealing a woman's money, and so forth. There was no chance of a word for fully fifteen minutes and then, when she was almost breathless, Bok managed to ask if his caller would kindly tell him just what he had done.

Another torrent of incoherent abuse came forth, but after a while it became apparent that the woman's complaint was that she had sent a dollar for a subscription to The Ladies' Home Journal; had never had a copy of the magazine, had complained, and been told there was no record of the money being received. And as she had sent her subscription to Bok personally, he had purloined the dollar!

It was fully half an hour before Bok could explain to the irate woman that he never remembered receiving a letter from her; that subscriptions, even when personally addressed to him, did not come to his desk, etc.; that if she would leave her name and address he would have the matter investigated. Absolutely unconvinced that anything would be done, and unaltered in her opinion about Bok, the woman finally left.

Two days later a card was handed in to the editor with a note asking him to see for a moment the husband of his irate caller. When the man came in, he looked sheepish and amused in turn, and finally said:

"I hardly know what to say, because I don't know what my wife said to you. But if what she said to me is any index of her talk with you, I want to apologize for her most profoundly. She isn't well, and we shall both have to let it go at that. As for her subscription, you, of course, never received it, for, with difficulty, I finally extracted the fact from her that she pinned a dollar bill to a postal card and dropped it in a street postal box. And she doesn't yet see that she has done anything extraordinary, or that she had a faith in Uncle Sam that I call sublime."

The Journal had been calling the attention of its readers to the defacement of the landscape by billboard advertisers. One day on his way to New York he found himself sitting in a sleeping-car section opposite a woman and her daughter.

The mother was looking at the landscape when suddenly she commented:

"There are some of those ugly advertising signs that Mr. Bok says are such a defacement to the landscape. I never noticed them before, but he is right, and I am going to write and tell him so."

"Oh, mamma, don't," said the girl. "That man is pampered enough by women. Don't make him worse. Ethel says he is now the vainest man in America."

Bok's eyes must have twinkled, and just then the mother looked at him, caught his eye; she gave a little gasp, and Bok saw that she had telepathically discovered him!

He smiled, raised his hat, presented his card to the mother, and said: "Excuse me, but I do want to defend myself from that last statement, if I may. I couldn't help overhearing it."

The mother, a woman of the world, read the name on the card quickly and smiled, but the daughter's face was a study as she leaned over and glanced at the card. She turned scarlet and then white.

"Now, do tell me," asked Bok of the daughter, "who 'Ethel' is, so that I may try at least to prove that I am not what she thinks."

The daughter was completely flustered. For the rest of the journey, however, the talk was informal; the girl became more at ease, and Bok ended by dining with the mother and daughter at their hotel that evening.

But he never found out "Ethel's" other name!

There were curiously amusing sides to a man's editorship of a woman's magazine!

XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature

The strangling hold which the Paris couturiers had secured on the American woman in their absolute dictation as to her fashions in dress, had interested Edward Bok for some time. As he studied the question, he was constantly amazed at the audacity with which these French dressmakers and milliners, often themselves of little taste and scant morals, cracked the whip, and the docility with which the American woman blindly and unintelligently danced to their measure. The deeper he went into the matter, too, the more deceit and misrepresentation did he find in the situation. It was inconceivable that the American woman should submit to what was being imposed upon her if she knew the facts. He determined that she should. The process of Americanization going on within him decided him to expose the Paris conditions and advocate and present American-designed fashions for women.

The Journal engaged the best-informed woman in Paris frankly to lay open the situation to the American women; she proved that the designs sent over by the so-called Paris arbiters of fashion were never worn by the Frenchwoman of birth and good taste; that they were especially designed and specifically intended for "the bizarre American trade," as one polite Frenchman called it; and that the only women in Paris who wore these grotesque and often immoderate styles were of the demimonde.

This article was the opening gun of the campaign, and this was quickly followed by a second equally convincing--both articles being written from the inside of the gilded circles of the couturiers' shops. Madame Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the United States at the time, and Bok induced the great actress to verify the statements printed. She went farther and expressed amazement at the readiness with which the American woman had been duped; and indicated her horror on seeing American women of refined sensibilities and position dressed in the gowns of the declasse street-women of Paris. The somewhat sensational nature of the articles attracted the attention of the American newspapers, which copied and commented on them; the gist of them was cabled over to Paris, and, of course, the Paris couturiers denied the charges. But their denials were in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of the charges was furnished. The French couturier simply resorted to a shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, implying that the accusations were beneath his notice.

Bok now followed the French models of dresses and millinery to the United States, and soon found that for every genuine Parisian model sold in the large cities at least ten were copies, made in New York shops, but with the labels of the French dressmakers and milliners sewed on them. He followed the labels to their source, and discovered a firm one of whose specialties was the making of these labels bearing the names of the leading French designers. They were manufactured by the gross, and sold in bundles to the retailers. Bok secured a list of the buyers of these labels and found that they represented some of the leading merchants throughout the country. All these facts he published. The retailers now sprang up in arms and denied the charges, but again the denials were in general terms. Bok had the facts and they knew it. These facts were too specific and too convincing to be controverted.

The editor had now presented a complete case before the women of America as to the character of the Paris-designed fashions and the manner in which women were being hoodwinked in buying imitations.

Meanwhile, he had engaged the most expert designers in the world of women's dress and commissioned them to create American designs. He sent one of his editors to the West to get first-hand motifs from Indian costumes and adapt them as decorative themes for dress embroideries. Three designers searched the Metropolitan Museum for new and artistic ideas, and he induced his company to install a battery of four-color presses in order that the designs might be given in all the beauty of their original colors. For months designers and artists worked; he had the designs passed upon by a board of judges composed of New York women who knew good clothes, and then he began their publication.

The editor of The New York Times asked Bok to conduct for that newspaper a prize contest for the best American-designed dresses and hats, and edit a special supplement presenting them in full colors, the prizes to be awarded by a jury of six of the leading New York women best versed in matters of dress. Hundreds of designs were submitted, the best were selected, and the supplement issued under the most successful auspices.

In his own magazine, Bok published pages of American-designed fashions: their presence in the magazine was advertised far and wide; conventions of dressmakers were called to consider the salability of domestic-designed fashions; and a campaign with the slogan "American Fashions for American Women" was soon in full swing.

But there it ended. The women looked the designs over with interest, as they did all designs of new clothes, and paid no further attention to them. The very fact that they were of American design prejudiced the women against them. America never had designed good clothes, they argued: she never would. Argument availed naught. The Paris germ was deep-rooted in the feminine mind of America: the women acknowledged that they were, perhaps, being hoodwinked by spurious French dresses and hats; that the case presented by Bok seemed convincing enough, but the temptation to throw a coat over a sofa or a chair to expose a Parisian label to the eyes of some other woman was too great; there was always a gambling chance that her particular gown, coat, or hat was an actual Paris creation.

Bok called upon the American woman to come out from under the yoke of the French couturiers, show her patriotism, and encourage American design. But it was of no use. He talked with women on every hand; his mail was full of letters commending him for his stand; but as for actual results, there were none. One of his most intelligent woman-friends finally summed up the situation for him:

"You can rail against the Paris domination all you like; you can expose it for the fraud that it is, and we know that it is; but it is all to no purpose, take my word. When it comes to the question of her personal adornment, a woman employs no reason; she knows no logic. She knows that the adornment of her body is all that she has to match the other woman and outdo her, and to attract the male, and nothing that you can say will influence her a particle. I know this all seems incomprehensible to you as a man, but that is the feminine nature. You are trying to fight something that is unfightable."

"Has the American woman no instinct of patriotism, then?" asked Bok.

"Not the least," was the answer, "when it comes to her adornment. What Paris says, she will do, blindly and unintelligently if you will, but she will do it. She will sacrifice her patriotism; she will even justify a possible disregard of the decencies. Look at the present Parisian styles. They are absolutely indecent. Women know it, but they follow them just the same, and they will. It is all very unpleasant to say this, but it is the truth and you will find it out. Your effort, fine as it is, will bear no fruit."

Wherever Bok went, women upon whose judgment he felt he could rely, told him, in effect, the same thing. They were all regretful, in some cases ashamed of their sex, universally apologetic; but one and all declared that such is "the feminine nature," and Bok would only have his trouble for nothing.

And so it proved. For a period, the retail shops were more careful in the number of genuine French models of gowns and hats which they exhibited, and the label firm confessed that its trade had fallen off. But this was only temporary. Within a year after The Journal stopped the campaign, baffled and beaten, the trade in French labels was greater than ever, hundreds of French models were sold that had never crossed the ocean, the American woman was being hoodwinked on every hand, and the reign of the French couturier was once more supreme.

There was no disguising the fact that the case was hopeless, and Bok recognized and accepted the inevitable. He had, at least, the satisfaction of having made an intelligent effort to awaken the American woman to her unintelligent submission. But she refused to be awakened. She preferred to be a tool: to be made a fool of.

Bok's probe into the feminine nature had been keenly disappointing. He had earnestly tried to serve the American woman, and he had failed. But he was destined to receive a still greater and deeper disappointment on his next excursion into the feminine nature, although, this time, he was to win.

During his investigations into women's fashions, he had unearthed the origin of the fashionable aigrette, the most desired of all the feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel torture of the mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in her period of maternity and who was cruelly slaughtered, usually left to die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to starve while they awaited the return of the mother-bird.

Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery of the mother and the starvation of her little ones. He collected all the photographs that he could secure, had the most graphic text written to them, and began their publication. He felt certain that the mere publication of the frightfully convincing photographs would be enough to arouse the mother-instinct in every woman and stop the wearing of the so-highly prized feather. But for the second time in his attempt to reform the feminine nature he reckoned beside the mark.

He published a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which the aigrette was secured. There was no challenging the actual facts as shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and the starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's accusations. Letters poured in upon the editor from Audubon Society workers; from lovers of birds, and from women filled with the humanitarian instinct. But Bok knew that the answer was not with those few: the solution lay with the larger circle of American womanhood from which he did not hear.

He waited for results. They came. But they were not those for which he had striven. After four months of his campaign, he learned from the inside of the importing-houses which dealt in the largest stocks of aigrettes in the United States that the demand for the feather had more than quadrupled! Bok was dumbfounded! He made inquiries in certain channels from which he knew he could secure the most reliable information, and after all the importers had been interviewed, the conviction was unescapable that just in proportion as Bok had dwelt upon the desirability of the aigrette as the hallmark of wealth and fashion, upon its expense, and the fact that women regarded it as the last word in feminine adornment, he had by so much made these facts familiar to thousands of women who had never before known of them, and had created the desire to own one of the precious feathers.

Bok could not and would not accept these conclusions. It seemed to him incredible that women would go so far as this in the question of personal adornment. He caused the increased sales to be traced from wholesaler to retailer, and from retailer to customer, and was amazed at the character and standing of the latter. He had a number of those buyers who lived in adjacent cities, privately approached and interviewed, and ascertained that, save in two instances, they were all his readers, had seen the gruesome pictures he had presented, and then had deliberately purchased the coveted aigrette.

Personally again he sought the most intelligent of his woman-friends, talked with scores of others, and found himself facing the same trait in feminine nature which he had encountered in his advocacy of American fashions. But this time it seemed to Bok that the facts he had presented went so much deeper.

"It will be hard for you to believe," said one of his most trusted woman-friends. "I grant your arguments: there is no gainsaying them. But you are fighting the same thing again that you do not understand: the feminine nature that craves outer adornment will secure it at any cost, even at the cost of suffering."

"Yes," argued Bok. "But if there is one thing above everything else that we believe a woman feels and understands, it is the mother-instinct. Do you mean to tell me that it means nothing to her that these birds are killed in their period of motherhood, and that a whole nest of starving baby-birds is the price of every aigrette?"

"I won't say that this does not weigh with a woman. It does, naturally. But when it comes to her possession of an ornament of beauty, as beautiful as the aigrette, it weighs with her, but it doesn't tip the scale against her possession of it. I am sorry to have to say this to you, but it is a fact. A woman will regret that the mother-bird must be tortured and her babies starve, but she will have the aigrette. She simply trains herself to forget the origin.

"Take my own case. You will doubtless be shocked when I tell you that I was perfectly aware of the conditions under which the aigrette is obtained before you began your exposure of the method. But did it prevent my purchase of one? Not at all. Why? Because I am a woman: I realize that no head ornament will set off my hair so well as an aigrette. Say I am cruel if you like. I wish the heron-mother didn't have to be killed or the babies starve, but, Mr. Bok, I must have my beautiful aigrette!"

Bok was frankly astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it.

But Bok was determined that this time he would not fail. His sense of justice and protection to the mother-bird and her young was now fully aroused. He resolved that he would, by compulsion, bring about what he had failed to do by persuasion. He would make it impossible for women to be untrue to their most sacred instinct. He sought legal talent, had a bill drawn up making it a misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or wear an aigrette. Armed with this measure, and the photographs and articles which he had published, he sought and obtained the interest and promise of support of the most influential legislators in several States. He felt a sense of pride in his own sex that he had no trouble in winning the immediate interest of every legislator with whom he talked.

Where he had failed with women, he was succeeding with men! The outrageous butchery of the birds and the circumstances under which they were tortured appealed with direct force to the sporting instinct in every man, and aroused him. Bok explained to each that he need expect no support for such a measure from women save from the members of the Audubon Societies, and a few humanitarian women and bird-lovers. Women, as a whole, he argued from his experiences, while they would not go so far as openly to oppose such a measure, for fear of public comment, would do nothing to further its passage, for in their hearts they preferred failure to success for the legislation. They had frankly told him so: he was not speaking from theory.

In one State after another Bok got into touch with legislators. He counselled, in each case, a quiet passage for the measure instead of one that would draw public attention to it.

Meanwhile, a strong initiative had come from the Audubon Societies throughout the country, and from the National Association of Audubon Societies, at New York. This latter society also caused to be introduced bills of its own to the same and in various legislatures, and here Bok had a valuable ally. It was a curious fact that the Audubon officials encountered their strongest resistance in Bok's own State: Pennsylvania. But Bok's personal acquaintance with legislators in his Keystone State helped here materially.

The demand for the aigrette constantly increased and rose to hitherto unknown figures. In one State where Bok's measure was pending before the legislature, he heard of the coming of an unusually large shipment of aigrettes to meet this increased demand. He wired the legislator in charge of the measure apprising him of this fact, of what he intended to do, and urging speed in securing the passage of the bill. Then he caused the shipment to be seized at the dock on the ground of illegal importation.

The importing firm at once secured an injunction restraining the seizure. Bok replied by serving a writ setting the injunction aside. The lawyers of the importers got busy, of course, but meanwhile the legislator had taken advantage of a special evening session, had the bill passed, and induced the governor to sign it, the act taking effect at once.

This was exactly what Bok had been playing for. The aigrettes were now useless; they could not be reshipped to another State, they could not be offered for sale. The suit was dropped, and Bok had the satisfaction of seeing the entire shipment, valued at $160,000, destroyed. He had not saved the lives of the mother-birds, but, at least, he had prevented hundreds of American women from wearing the hallmark of torture.

State after State now passed an aigrette-prohibition law until fourteen of the principal States, including practically all the large cities, fell into line.

Later, the National Association of Audubon Societies had introduced into the United States Congress and passed a bill prohibiting the importation of bird-feathers into the country, thus bringing a Federal law into existence.

Bok had won his fight, it is true, but he derived little satisfaction from the character of his victory. His ideal of womanhood had received a severe jolt. Women had revealed their worst side to him, and he did not like the picture. He had appealed to what he had been led to believe was the most sacred instinct in a woman's nature. He received no response. Moreover, he saw the deeper love for personal vanity and finery absolutely dominate the mother-instinct. He was conscious that something had toppled off its pedestal which could never be replaced.

He was aware that his mother's words, when he accepted his editorial position, were coming terribly true: "I am sorry you are going to take this position. It will cost you the high ideal you have always held of your mother's sex. But a nature, as is the feminine nature, wholly swayed inwardly by emotion, and outwardly influenced by an insatiate love for personal adornment, will never stand the analysis you will give it."

He realized that he was paying a high price for his success. Such experiences as these--and, unfortunately, they were only two of several--were doubtless in his mind when, upon his retirement, the newspapers clamored for his opinions of women. "No, thank you," he said to one and all, "not a word."

He did not give his reasons.

He never will.

XXX. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils

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.