"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 railroad-cars."