Talk about me as the man who acted as if I wanted to “wreck” my namesake? What could damage the Magazine more surely and seriously than such management as this? We got a bad name among writers, because we took their MSS. and then failed to pay. We got a bad name among advertisers, because ads were inserted upon almost any terms. We got a bad name among subscribers, because DeFrance allowed business letters to go unanswered, and because Wm. Green, the Publisher, dribbled the mailing of every issue through TWO FULL WEEKS.
These were the difficulties with which I had to contend. The country is full of people who wanted to patronize us and befriend us and help us, but who became so disgusted at not getting their magazines, and not getting answers to their letters, that they simply quit us in despair.
Would DeFrance like to see a list of their names?
I can furnish him with a good long one.
***
On one occasion Col. Mann was eager to have me send a cablegram, through our State Department, to our Minister at St. Petersburg, offering a thousand dollars to Maxim Gorky—then in prison—for an article for the Magazine.
That very week I had to take the money out of my pocket to pay the girls who worked in the office.
Upon another occasion, he ordered the sale, AS JUNK, of 60,000 copies of the Magazine WHICH HAD ALREADY BEEN WRAPPED AND ADDRESSED AND MADE READY FOR MAILING AS SAMPLE COPIES. They were SOLD AS WASTE PAPER BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO FURNISH MONEY TO PAY POSTAGE.
Colonel Mann’s business was the publishing of magazines. Naturally, I assumed that he was an expert at that business. It never occurred to me that I could be of any service in the business management until his absurd mistakes forced themselves upon my attention.
The Collier trial seemed to establish the fact that his way of making money out of his other magazines was the systematic blackmailing of Society swells and Wall Street thieves.