One of the youngest and most successful newspaper proprietors once called me a fool. I wrote and asked him why. We had an interview. He said frankly: "You are a fool, in my opinion, for producing too good an article for the money. The public does not appreciate good work, and you will never make a commercial success of your paper. Your staff is too good; your printing is too good; your paper is too good. I am a success because I know where to buy paper cheap and sell it for a profit. I have thirty publications, but their names, their contents, writing, or art I never think about, nor does the public either. We ink something on the paper, and sell it at so much a pound profit."
But I had nothing whatever to do with the commercial side of the arrangements connected with ventures associated with my name. Ah! how little the public know what goes on behind the scenes in the newspaper world! If you stop a publication with which your name is associated, everyone at once, very properly, dubs you a failure. As what? An editor, of course. That is the mistake, the injustice. How many periodicals have the most talked of publishers started and stopped? Scores of them. Yet are they therefore failures? No, no more than the manager of a theatre is who produces a piece which runs a night or two and comes off. He still has his theatre, and other plays. So is it in the publishing world.
It is the isolated editor, without the machinery of a big office, or the head of the man of commerce,—if he stops, from whatever cause, his one effort is the failure! The "successful publisher" stops a dozen new ventures in the same time, and he is still considered successful. A publisher is very much like a conjuror: he must start two or three tricks, so that if one is likely to go wrong he can draw the attention of the public off it by another, and the first is quickly dropped or reintroduced under another name. My one mistake in publishing was that having started a success, Lika Joko, I let it drop to take up another. But let my confessions on this subject be brief and in order.
Before I had any notion of leaving Punch I had conceived an idea for a monthly magazine to be called Lika Joko; Harry Furniss's Monthly, and had already had a number of drawings engraved, specimen copies printed, and had gone to great expense in the preliminary work. Of course, the Punch men were to be the chief contributors, and Mr. E.J. Milliken was writing a great deal, and Mr. Bernard Partridge was illustrating for me. Shortly afterwards I retired from the staff of Punch. I was then approached by the proprietors of an influential daily and weekly paper to edit a sixpenny high-class weekly, and they offered to put down £50,000 at once. This I would have willingly accepted, but it so happened that just at that time Mr. Astor reconstructed the Pall Mall Budget, regardless of expense—an extravagance with which no other paper could compete. In these circumstances I declined the offer. I soon found many friends to support me if I would start a paper connected solely with my name, but wishing to have the largest risk myself I took the largest share (over £5,000 in cash), and allowed a few to join me. It was decided to drop the idea of a monthly and make it a humorous weekly.
LIKA JOKO.
That name was originated some years before by Mr. Burnand and myself jointly in a chaffing conversation. It was universally connected with me, but as it has been said that I had no right to use it, I here reproduce a document that settles any doubt on that point:
"This is to certify that Harry Furniss has the sole right to use the name of 'Lika Joko.' That he is at liberty to use it in any way he wishes, and no one else can adopt or utilise the name without his permission.
"(Signed) F.C. Burnand, Editor of Punch.
"Philip Leslie Agnew,
"For the Proprietors."
Wishing to be certain that the name "Lika Joko" was a wise one, I was advised to consult the leading editor of our largest publishing house. Strange to say, when I called he had on his wall rows of titles of publications under consideration. He looked at mine, and thought the matter over, then shook hands and told me there was a fortune in the title alone.
A few years afterwards I heard to my dismay that the same great man declared the title I had selected was a fatal mistake!