While Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States, Bok was sitting one evening talking with him, when suddenly Mr.Roosevelt turned to him and said with his usual emphasis: "Bok, I envy you your power with your public."The editor was frankly puzzled.
"That is a strange remark from the President of the United States," he replied.
"You may think so," was the rejoinder."But listen.When do I get the ear of the public? In its busiest moments.My messages are printed in the newspapers and read hurriedly, mostly by men in trolleys or railroad-cars.Women hardly ever read them, I should judge.Now you are read in the evening by the fireside or under the lamp, when the day's work is over and the mind is at rest from other things and receptive to what you offer.Don't you see where you have it on me?"This diagnosis was keenly interesting, and while the President talked during the balance of the evening, Bok was thinking.Finally, he said:
"Mr.President, I should like to share my power with you.""How?" asked Mr.Roosevelt.
"You recognize that women do not read your messages; and yet no President's messages ever discussed more ethical questions that women should know about and get straight in their minds.As it is, some of your ideas are not at all understood by them; your strenuous-life theory, for instance, your factory-law ideas, and particularly your race-suicide arguments.Men don't fully understand them, for that matter; women certainly do not.""I am aware of all that," said the President."What is your plan to remedy it?""Have a department in my magazine, and explain your ideas," suggested Bok.
"Haven't time for another thing.You know that," snapped back the President."Wish I had.""Not to write it, perhaps, yourself," returned Bok.
"But why couldn't you find time to do this: select the writer here in Washington in whose accuracy you have the most implicit faith; let him talk with you for one hour each month on one of those subjects; let him write out your views, and submit the manuscript to you; and we will have a department stating exactly how the material is obtained and how far it represents your own work.In that way, with only an hour's work each month, you can get your views, correctly stated, before this vast audience when it is not in trolleys or railroadcars.""But I haven't the hour," answered Roosevelt, impressed, however, as Bok saw."I have only half an hour, when I am awake, when I am really idle, and that is when I am being shaved.""Well," calmly suggested the editor, "why not two of those half-hours a month, or perhaps one?""What?" answered the President, sitting upright, his teeth flashing but his smile broadening."You Dutchman, you'd make me work while I'm getting shaved, too?""Well," was the answer, "isn't the result worth the effort?""Bok, you are absolutely relentless," said the President."But you're right.The result would be worth the effort.What writer have you in mind? You seem to have thought this thing through.""How about O'Brien? You think well of him?"(Robert L.O'Brien, now editor of the Boston Herald, was then Washington correspondent for the Boston Transcript and thoroughly in the President's confidence.)"Fine," said the President."I trust O'Brien implicitly.All right, if you can get O'Brien to add it on, I'll try it."And so the "shaving interviews" were begun; and early in 1906 there appeared in The Ladies' Home Journal a department called "The President," with the subtitle: "A Department in which will be presented the attitude of the President on those national questions which affect the vital interests of the home, by a writer intimately acquainted and in close touch with him."O'Brien talked with Mr.Roosevelt once a month, wrote out the results, the President went over the proofs carefully, and the department was conducted with great success for a year.
But Theodore Roosevelt was again to be the editor of a department in The Ladies' Home Journal; this time to be written by himself under the strictest possible anonymity, so closely adhered to that, until this revelation, only five persons have known the authorship.
Feeling that it would be an interesting experiment to see how far Theodore Roosevelt's ideas could stand unsupported by the authority of his vibrant personality, Bok suggested the plan to the colonel.It was just after he had returned from his South American trip.He was immediately interested.
"But how can we keep the authorship really anonymous?" he asked.
"Easily enough," answered Bok, "if you're willing to do the work.Our letters about it must be written in long hand addressed to each other's homes; you must write your manuscript in your own hand; I will copy it in mine, and it will go to the printer in that way.I will personally send you the proofs; you mark your corrections in pencil, and I will copy them in ink; the company will pay me for each article, and I will send you my personal check each month.By this means, the identity of the author will be concealed."Colonel Roosevelt was never averse to hard work if it was necessary to achieve a result that he felt was worth while.
"All right," wrote the colonel finally."I'll try--with you!--the experiment for a year: 12 articles...I don't know that I can give your readers satisfaction, but I shall try my very best.I am very glad to be associated with you, anyway.At first I doubted the wisdom of the plan, merely because I doubted whether I could give you just that you wished.
