The Americanization of Edward Bok Part 34

"No-o," said the woman. "I came to see Mr. Curtis on a personal matter."

"I shall see him this evening," suggested Bok, "and can give him a message for you if you like."

"Well, I don't know if you can. I came to complain to him about Mr.

Bok," announced the woman.

"Oh, well," answered Bok, with a slight start at the matter-of-fact announcement, "that is serious; quite serious. If you will explain your complaint, I will surely see that it gets to Mr. Curtis."

Bok's interest grew.

"Well, you see," said the woman, "it is this way. I live in a three-family flat. Here is my name and card," and a card came out of a bag. "I subscribe to The Ladies' Home Journal. It is delivered at my house each month by Mr. Bok. Now I have told that man three times over that when he delivers the magazine, he must ring the bell twice. But he just persists in ringing once and then that cat who lives on the first floor gets my magazine, reads it, and keeps it sometimes for three days before I get it! Now, I want Mr. Curtis to tell Mr. Bok that he must do as I ask and ring the bell twice. Can you give him that message for me?

There's no use talking to Mr. Bok; I've done that, as I say."

And Bok solemnly a.s.sured his subscriber that he would!

Bok's secretary told him one day that there was in the outer office the most irate woman he had ever tried to handle; that he had tried for half an hour to appease her, but it was of no use. She threatened to remain until Bok admitted her, and see him she would, and tell him exactly what she thought of him. The secretary looked as if he had been through a struggle. "It's hopeless," he said. "Will you see her?"

"Certainly," said Bok. "Show her in."

The moment the woman came in, she began a perfect torrent of abuse. Bok could not piece out, try as he might, what it was all about. But he did gather from the explosion that the woman considered him a hypocrite who wrote one thing and did another; that he was really a thief, stealing a woman's money, and so forth. There was no chance of a word for fully fifteen minutes and then, when she was almost breathless, Bok managed to ask if his caller would kindly tell him just what he had done.

Another torrent of incoherent abuse came forth, but after a while it became apparent that the woman's complaint was that she had sent a dollar for a subscription to The Ladies' Home Journal; had never had a copy of the magazine, had complained, and been told there was no record of the money being received. And as she had sent her subscription to Bok personally, he had purloined the dollar!

It was fully half an hour before Bok could explain to the irate woman that he never remembered receiving a letter from her; that subscriptions, even when personally addressed to him, did not come to his desk, etc.; that if she would leave her name and address he would have the matter investigated. Absolutely unconvinced that anything would be done, and unaltered in her opinion about Bok, the woman finally left.

Two days later a card was handed in to the editor with a note asking him to see for a moment the husband of his irate caller. When the man came in, he looked sheepish and amused in turn, and finally said:

"I hardly know what to say, because I don't know what my wife said to you. But if what she said to me is any index of her talk with you, I want to apologize for her most profoundly. She isn't well, and we shall both have to let it go at that. As for her subscription, you, of course, never received it, for, with difficulty, I finally extracted the fact from her that she pinned a dollar bill to a postal card and dropped it in a street postal box. And she doesn't yet see that she has done anything extraordinary, or that she had a faith in Uncle Sam that I call sublime."

The Journal had been calling the attention of its readers to the defacement of the landscape by billboard advertisers. One day on his way to New York he found himself sitting in a sleeping-car section opposite a woman and her daughter.

The mother was looking at the landscape when suddenly she commented:

"There are some of those ugly advertising signs that Mr. Bok says are such a defacement to the landscape. I never noticed them before, but he is right, and I am going to write and tell him so."

"Oh, mamma, don't," said the girl. "That man is pampered enough by women. Don't make him worse. Ethel says he is now the vainest man in America."

Bok's eyes must have twinkled, and just then the mother looked at him, caught his eye; she gave a little gasp, and Bok saw that she had telepathically discovered him!

He smiled, raised his hat, presented his card to the mother, and said: "Excuse me, but I do want to defend myself from that last statement, if I may. I couldn't help overhearing it."

The mother, a woman of the world, read the name on the card quickly and smiled, but the daughter's face was a study as she leaned over and glanced at the card. She turned scarlet and then white.

"Now, do tell me," asked Bok of the daughter, "who 'Ethel' is, so that I may try at least to prove that I am not what she thinks."

The daughter was completely fl.u.s.tered. For the rest of the journey, however, the talk was informal; the girl became more at ease, and Bok ended by dining with the mother and daughter at their hotel that evening.

But he never found out "Ethel's" other name!

There were curiously amusing sides to a man's editors.h.i.+p of a woman's magazine!

XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature

The strangling hold which the Paris couturiers had secured on the American woman in their absolute dictation as to her fas.h.i.+ons in dress, had interested Edward Bok for some time. As he studied the question, he was constantly amazed at the audacity with which these French dressmakers and milliners, often themselves of little taste and scant morals, cracked the whip, and the docility with which the American woman blindly and unintelligently danced to their measure. The deeper he went into the matter, too, the more deceit and misrepresentation did he find in the situation. It was inconceivable that the American woman should submit to what was being imposed upon her if she knew the facts. He determined that she should. The process of Americanization going on within him decided him to expose the Paris conditions and advocate and present American-designed fas.h.i.+ons for women.

The Journal engaged the best-informed woman in Paris frankly to lay open the situation to the American women; she proved that the designs sent over by the so-called Paris arbiters of fas.h.i.+on were never worn by the Frenchwoman of birth and good taste; that they were especially designed and specifically intended for "the bizarre American trade," as one polite Frenchman called it; and that the only women in Paris who wore these grotesque and often immoderate styles were of the demimonde.

This article was the opening gun of the campaign, and this was quickly followed by a second equally convincing--both articles being written from the inside of the gilded circles of the couturiers' shops. Madame Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the United States at the time, and Bok induced the great actress to verify the statements printed. She went farther and expressed amazement at the readiness with which the American woman had been duped; and indicated her horror on seeing American women of refined sensibilities and position dressed in the gowns of the _decla.s.se_ street-women of Paris. The somewhat sensational nature of the articles attracted the attention of the American newspapers, which copied and commented on them; the gist of them was cabled over to Paris, and, of course, the Paris couturiers denied the charges. But their denials were in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of the charges was furnished. The French couturier simply resorted to a shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, implying that the accusations were beneath his notice.

Bok now followed the French models of dresses and millinery to the United States, and soon found that for every genuine Parisian model sold in the large cities at least ten were copies, made in New York shops, but with the labels of the French dressmakers and milliners sewed on them. He followed the labels to their source, and discovered a firm one of whose specialties was the making of these labels bearing the names of the leading French designers. They were manufactured by the gross, and sold in bundles to the retailers. Bok secured a list of the buyers of these labels and found that they represented some of the leading merchants throughout the country. All these facts he published. The retailers now sprang up in arms and denied the charges, but again the denials were in general terms. Bok had the facts and they knew it. These facts were too specific and too convincing to be controverted.

The editor had now presented a complete case before the women of America as to the character of the Paris-designed fas.h.i.+ons and the manner in which women were being hoodwinked in buying imitations.

Meanwhile, he had engaged the most expert designers in the world of women's dress and commissioned them to create American designs. He sent one of his editors to the West to get first-hand motifs from Indian costumes and adapt them as decorative themes for dress embroideries.

Three designers searched the Metropolitan Museum for new and artistic ideas, and he induced his company to install a battery of four-color presses in order that the designs might be given in all the beauty of their original colors. For months designers and artists worked; he had the designs pa.s.sed upon by a board of judges composed of New York women who knew good clothes, and then he began their publication.

The editor of The New York Times asked Bok to conduct for that newspaper a prize contest for the best American-designed dresses and hats, and edit a special supplement presenting them in full colors, the prizes to be awarded by a jury of six of the leading New York women best versed in matters of dress. Hundreds of designs were submitted, the best were selected, and the supplement issued under the most successful auspices.

In his own magazine, Bok published pages of American-designed fas.h.i.+ons: their presence in the magazine was advertised far and wide; conventions of dressmakers were called to consider the salability of domestic-designed fas.h.i.+ons; and a campaign with the slogan "American Fas.h.i.+ons for American Women" was soon in full swing.

But there it ended. The women looked the designs over with interest, as they did all designs of new clothes, and paid no further attention to them. The very fact that they were of American design prejudiced the women against them. America never had designed good clothes, they argued: she never would. Argument availed naught. The Paris germ was deep-rooted in the feminine mind of America: the women acknowledged that they were, perhaps, being hoodwinked by spurious French dresses and hats; that the case presented by Bok seemed convincing enough, but the temptation to throw a coat over a sofa or a chair to expose a Parisian label to the eyes of some other woman was too great; there was always a gambling chance that her particular gown, coat, or hat was an actual Paris creation.

Bok called upon the American woman to come out from under the yoke of the French couturiers, show her patriotism, and encourage American design. But it was of no use. He talked with women on every hand; his mail was full of letters commending him for his stand; but as for actual results, there were none. One of his most intelligent woman-friends finally summed up the situation for him:

"You can rail against the Paris domination all you like; you can expose it for the fraud that it is, and we know that it is; but it is all to no purpose, take my word. When it comes to the question of her personal adornment, a woman employs no reason; she knows no logic. She knows that the adornment of her body is all that she has to match the other woman and outdo her, and to attract the male, and nothing that you can say will influence her a particle. I know this all seems incomprehensible to you as a man, but that is the feminine nature. You are trying to fight something that is unfightable."

"Has the American woman no instinct of patriotism, then?" asked Bok.

"Not the least," was the answer, "when it comes to her adornment. What Paris says, she will do, blindly and unintelligently if you will, but she will do it. She will sacrifice her patriotism; she will even justify a possible disregard of the decencies. Look at the present Parisian styles. They are absolutely indecent. Women know it, but they follow them just the same, and they will. It is all very unpleasant to say this, but it is the truth and you will find it out. Your effort, fine as it is, will bear no fruit."

Wherever Bok went, women upon whose judgment he felt he could rely, told him, in effect, the same thing. They were all regretful, in some cases ashamed of their s.e.x, universally apologetic; but one and all declared that such is "the feminine nature," and Bok would only have his trouble for nothing.

And so it proved. For a period, the retail shops were more careful in the number of genuine French models of gowns and hats which they exhibited, and the label firm confessed that its trade had fallen off.

But this was only temporary. Within a year after The Journal stopped the campaign, baffled and beaten, the trade in French labels was greater than ever, hundreds of French models were sold that had never crossed the ocean, the American woman was being hoodwinked on every hand, and the reign of the French couturier was once more supreme.

There was no disguising the fact that the case was hopeless, and Bok recognized and accepted the inevitable. He had, at least, the satisfaction of having made an intelligent effort to awaken the American woman to her unintelligent submission. But she refused to be awakened.

She preferred to be a tool: to be made a fool of.

Bok's probe into the feminine nature had been keenly disappointing. He had earnestly tried to serve the American woman, and he had failed. But he was destined to receive a still greater and deeper disappointment on his next excursion into the feminine nature, although, this time, he was to win.

During his investigations into women's fas.h.i.+ons, he had unearthed the origin of the fas.h.i.+onable aigrette, the most desired of all the feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel torture of the mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in her period of maternity and who was cruelly slaughtered, usually left to die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to starve while they awaited the return of the mother-bird.

Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery of the mother and the starvation of her little ones. He collected all the photographs that he could secure, had the most graphic text written to them, and began their publication. He felt certain that the mere publication of the frightfully convincing photographs would be enough to arouse the mother-instinct in every woman and stop the wearing of the so-highly prized feather. But for the second time in his attempt to reform the feminine nature he reckoned beside the mark.

He published a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which the aigrette was secured. There was no challenging the actual facts as shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and the starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's accusations. Letters poured in upon the editor from Audubon Society workers; from lovers of birds, and from women filled with the humanitarian instinct. But Bok knew that the answer was not with those few: the solution lay with the larger circle of American womanhood from which he did not hear.