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. I never know what an audience wants: I know what it ought to want: and sometimes I can give it, or make it accept what I think it needs—and sometimes I cannot. But the more I thought over your proposal, the more I liked it... Whether the wine will be good enough to attract without any bush I don't know; and besides, in such cases the fault is not in the wine, but in the fact that the consumers decline to have their attention attracted unless there is a bush!"
In the latter part of 1916 an anonymous department called "Men" was begun in the magazine.
The physical work was great. The colonel punctiliously held to the conditions, and wrote manuscript and letters with his own hand, and Bok carried out his part of the agreement. Nor was this simple, for Colonel Roosevelt's manuscript—particularly when, as in this case, it was written on yellow paper with a soft pencil and generously interlined—was anything but legible. Month after month the two men worked each at his own task. To throw the public off the scent, during the conduct of the department, an article or two by Colonel Roosevelt was published in another part of the magazine under his own name, and in the department itself the anonymous author would occasionally quote himself.
It was natural that the appearance of a department devoted to men in a woman's magazine should attract immediate attention. The department took up the various interests of a man's life, such as real efficiency; his duties as an employer and his usefulness to his employees; the employee's attitude toward his employer; the relations of men and women; a father's relations to his sons and daughters; a man's duty to his community; the public-school system; a man's relation to his church, and kindred topics.
The anonymity of the articles soon took on interest from the positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style, in not a single instance was his name connected with the department. Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various other public men had been suggested, the newspapers finally decided upon former President Eliot of Harvard University as the writer.