A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

by Edward William Bok

He considered carefully where he would leave an institution which the public had so thoroughly associated with his personality, and he felt that at no point in its history could he so safely transfer it to other hands. The position of the magazine in the public estimation was unquestioned; it had never been so strong. Its circulation not only had outstripped that of any other monthly periodical, but it was still growing so rapidly that it was only a question of a few months when it would reach the almost incredible mark of two million copies per month. With its advertising patronage exceeding that of any other monthly, the periodical had become, probably, the most valuable and profitable piece of magazine property in the world.

The time might never come again when all conditions would be equally favorable to a change of editorship. The position of the magazine was so thoroughly assured that its progress could hardly be affected by the retirement of one editor, and the accession of another. There was a competent editorial staff, the members of which had been with the periodical from ten to thirty years each. This staff had been a very large factor in the success of the magazine. While Bok had furnished the initiative and supplied the directing power, a large part of the editorial success of the magazine was due to the staff. It could carry on the magazine without his guidance.

Moreover, Bok wished to say good-by to his public before it decided, for some reason or other, to say good-by to him. He had no desire to outstay his welcome. That public had been wonderfully indulgent toward his shortcomings, lenient with his errors, and tremendously inspiring to his best endeavor. He would not ask too much of it. Thirty years was a long tenure of office, one of the longest, in point of consecutively active editorship, in the history of American magazines.

He had helped to create and to put into the life of the American home a magazine of peculiar distinction. From its beginning it had been unlike any other periodical; it had always retained its individuality as a magazine apart from the others. It had sought to be something more than a mere assemblage of stories and articles. It had consistently stood for ideals; and, save in one or two instances, it had carried through what it undertook to achieve. It had a record of worthy accomplishment; a more fruitful record than many imagined. It had become a national institution such as no other magazine had ever been. It was indisputably accepted by the public and by business interests alike as the recognized avenue of approach to the intelligent homes of America.

Edward Bok was content to leave it at this point.

He explained all this in December, 1918, to the Board of Directors, and asked that his resignation be considered. It was understood that he was to serve out his thirty years, thus remaining with the magazine for the best part of another year.

In the material which The Journal now included in its contents, it began to point the way to the problems which would face women during the reconstruction period. Bok scanned the rather crowded field of thought very carefully, and selected for discussion in the magazine such questions as seemed to him most important for the public to understand in order to face and solve its impending problems. The outstanding question he saw which would immediately face men and women of the country was the problem of Americanization. The war and its after-effects had clearly demonstrated this to be the most vital need in the life of the nation, not only for the foreign-born but for the American as well.

The more one studied the problem the clearer it became that the vast majority of American-born needed a refreshing, and, in many cases, a new conception of American ideals as much as did the foreign-born, and that the latter could never be taught what America and its institutions stood for until they were more clearly defined in the mind of the men and women of American birth.

Bok went to Washington, consulted with Franklin K. Lane, secretary of the interior, of whose department the Government Bureau of Americanization was a part. A comprehensive series of articles was outlined; the most expert writer, Esther Everett Lape, who had several years of actual experience in Americanization work, was selected; Secretary Lane agreed personally to read and pass upon the material, and to assume the responsibility for its publication.

With the full and direct co-operation of the Federal Bureau of Americanization, the material was assembled and worked up with the result that, in the opinion of the director of the Federal Bureau, the series proved to be the most comprehensive exposition of practical Americanization adapted to city, town, and village, thus far published.