A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After Part 21

It was the same boy who on his hospital cot the next day said: "Don't you think you could do something for the chap next to me, there on my left? He's really suffering: cried like h.e.l.l all last night. It would be a G.o.d-send if you could get Doc to do something."

A promise was given that the surgeon should be seen at once, but the boy was asked: "How about you?"

"Oh," came the cheerful answer, "I'm all right. I haven't anything to hurt. My wounded members are gone--just plain gone. But that chap has got something--he got the real thing!"

What was the real thing according to such a boy's idea?

Bok had had enough of war in all its aspects; he felt a sigh of relief when, a few days thereafter, he boarded _The Empress of Asia_ for home, after a ten-weeks' absence. He hoped never again to see, at first hand, what war meant!

CHAPTER XX

THE THIRD PERIOD

On the voyage home, Edward Bok decided that, now the war was over, he would ask his company to release him from the editors.h.i.+p of _The Ladies' Home Journal_. His original plan had been to retire at the end of a quarter of a century of editors.h.i.+p, when in his fiftieth year. He was, therefore, six years behind his schedule. In October, 1919, he would reach his thirtieth anniversary as editor, and he fixed upon this as an appropriate time for the relinquishment of his duties.

He felt he had carried out the conditions under which the editors.h.i.+p of the magazine had been transferred to him by Mrs. Curtis, that he had brought them to fruition, and that any further carrying on of the periodical by him would be of a supplementary character. He had, too, realized his hope of helping to create a national inst.i.tution of service to the American woman, and he felt that his part in the work was done.

He considered carefully where he would leave an inst.i.tution which the public had so thoroughly a.s.sociated with his personality, and he felt that at no point in its history could he so safely transfer it to other hands. The position of the magazine in the public estimation was unquestioned; it had never been so strong. Its circulation not only had outstripped that of any other monthly periodical, but it was still growing so rapidly that it was only a question of a few months when it would reach the almost incredible mark of two million copies per month.

With its advertising patronage exceeding that of any other monthly, the periodical had become, probably, the most valuable and profitable piece of magazine property in the world.

The time might never come again when all conditions would be equally favorable to a change of editors.h.i.+p. The position of the magazine was so thoroughly a.s.sured that its progress could hardly be affected by the retirement of one editor, and the accession of another. There was a competent editorial staff, the members of which had been with the periodical from ten to thirty years each. This staff had been a very large factor in the success of the magazine. While Bok had furnished the initiative and supplied the directing power, a large part of the editorial success of the magazine was due to the staff. It could carry on the magazine without his guidance.

Moreover, Bok wished to say good-by to his public before it decided, for some reason or other, to say good-by to him. He had no desire to outstay his welcome. That public had been wonderfully indulgent toward his shortcomings, lenient with his errors, and tremendously inspiring to his best endeavor. He would not ask too much of it. Thirty years was a long tenure of office, one of the longest, in point of consecutively active editors.h.i.+p, in the history of American magazines.

He had helped to create and to put into the life of the American home a magazine of peculiar distinction. From its beginning it had been unlike any other periodical; it had always retained its individuality as a magazine apart from the others. It had sought to be something more than a mere a.s.semblage of stories and articles. It had consistently stood for ideals; and, save in one or two instances, it had carried through what it undertook to achieve. It had a record of worthy accomplishment; a more fruitful record than many imagined. It had become a national inst.i.tution such as no other magazine had ever been. It was indisputably accepted by the public and by business interests alike as the recognized avenue of approach to the intelligent homes of America.

Edward Bok was content to leave it at this point.

He explained all this in December, 1918, to the Board of Directors, and asked that his resignation be considered. It was understood that he was to serve out his thirty years, thus remaining with the magazine for the best part of another year.

In the material which _The Journal_ now included in its contents, it began to point the way to the problems which would face women during the reconstruction period. Bok scanned the rather crowded field of thought very carefully, and selected for discussion in the magazine such questions as seemed to him most important for the public to understand in order to face and solve its impending problems. The outstanding question he saw which would immediately face men and women of the country was the problem of Americanization. The war and its after-effects had clearly demonstrated this to be the most vital need in the life of the nation, not only for the foreign-born but for the American as well.

The more one studied the problem the clearer it became that the vast majority of American-born needed a refres.h.i.+ng, and, in many cases, a new conception of American ideals as much as did the foreign-born, and that the latter could never be taught what America and its inst.i.tutions stood for until they were more clearly defined in the mind of the men and women of American birth.

Bok went to Was.h.i.+ngton, consulted with Franklin K. Lane, secretary of the interior, of whose department the Government Bureau of Americanization was a part. A comprehensive series of articles was outlined; the most expert writer, Esther Everett Lape, who had several years of actual experience in Americanization work, was selected; Secretary Lane agreed personally to read and pa.s.s upon the material, and to a.s.sume the responsibility for its publication.

With the full and direct co-operation of the Federal Bureau of Americanization, the material was a.s.sembled and worked up with the result that, in the opinion of the director of the Federal Bureau, the series proved to be the most comprehensive exposition of practical Americanization adapted to city, town, and village, thus far published.

The work on this series was one of the last acts of Edward Bok's editors.h.i.+p; and it was peculiarly gratifying to him that his editorial work should end with the exposition of that Americanization of which he himself was a product. It seemed a fitting close to the career of a foreign-born Americanized editor.

The scope of the reconstruction articles now published, and the clarity of vision shown in the selection of the subjects, gave a fresh impetus to the circulation of the magazine; and now that the government's embargo on the use of paper had been removed, the full editions of the periodical could again be printed. The public responded instantly.

The result reached phenomenal figures. The last number under Bok's full editorial control was the issue of October, 1919. This number was oversold with a printed edition of two million copies--a record never before achieved by any magazine. This same issue presented another record unattained in any single number of any periodical in the world.

It carried between its covers the amazing total of over one million dollars in advertis.e.m.e.nts.

This was the psychological point at which to stop. And Edward Bok did.

Although his official relation as editor did not terminate until January, 1920, when the number which contained his valedictory editorial was issued, his actual editors.h.i.+p ceased on September 22, 1919. On that day he handed over the reins to his successor.

The announcement of Edward Bok's retirement came as a great surprise to his friends. Save for one here and there, who had a clearer vision, the feeling was general that he had made a mistake. He was fifty-six, in the prime of life, never in better health, with "success lying easily upon him"--said one; "at the very summit of his career," said another--and all agreed it was "queer," "strange,"--unless, they argued, he was really ill. Even the most acute students of human affairs among his friends wondered. It seemed incomprehensible that any man should want to give up before he was, for some reason, compelled to do so. A man should go on until he "dropped in the harness," they argued.

Bok agreed that any man had a perfect right to work until he _did_ "drop in the harness." But, he argued, if he conceded this right to others, why should they not concede to him the privilege of dropping with the blinders off?

"But," continued the argument, "a man degenerates when he retires from active affairs." And then, instances were pointed out as notable examples. "A year of retirement and he was through," was the picture given of one retired man. "In two years, he was glad to come back,"

and so the examples ran on. "No big man ever retired from active business and did great work afterwards," Bok was told.

"No?" he answered. "Not even Cyrus W. Field or Herbert Hoover?"

And all this time Edward Bok's failure to be entirely Americanized was brought home to his consciousness. After fifty years, he was still not an American! He had deliberately planned, and then had carried out his plan, to retire while he still had the mental and physical capacity to enjoy the fruits of his years of labor! For foreign to the American way of thinking it certainly was: the protestations and arguments of his friends proved that to him. After all, he was still Dutch; he had held on to the lesson which his people had learned years ago; that the people of other European countries had learned; that the English had discovered: that the Great Adventure of Life was something more than material work, and that the time to go is while the going is good!

For it cannot be denied that the pathetic picture we so often see is found in American business life more frequently than in that of any other land: men unable to let go--not only for their own good, but to give the younger men behind them an opportunity. Not that a man should stop work, for man was born to work, and in work he should find his greatest refreshment. But so often it does not occur to the man in a pivotal position to question the possibility that at sixty or seventy he can keep steadily in touch with a generation whose ideas are controlled by men twenty years younger. Unconsciously he hangs on beyond his greatest usefulness and efficiency: he convinces himself that he is indispensable to his business, while, in scores of cases, the business would be distinctly benefited by his retirement and the consequent coming to the front of the younger blood.

Such a man in a position of importance seems often not to see that he has it within his power to advance the fortunes of younger men by stepping out when he has served his time, while by refusing to let go he often works dire injustice and even disaster to his younger a.s.sociates.

The sad fact is that in all too many instances the average American business man is actually afraid to let go because he realizes that out of business he should not know what to do. For years he has so excluded all other interests that at fifty or sixty or seventy he finds himself a slave to his business, with positively no inner resources.

Retirement from the one thing he does know would naturally leave such a man useless to himself and his family, and his community: worse than useless, as a matter of fact, for he would become a burden to himself, a nuisance to his family, and, when he would begin to write "letters"

to the newspapers, a bore to the community.

It is significant that a European or English business man rarely reaches middle age devoid of acquaintance with other matters; he always lets the breezes from other worlds of thought blow through his ideas, with the result that when he is ready to retire from business he has other interests to fall back upon. Fortunately it is becoming less uncommon for American men to retire from business and devote themselves to other pursuits; and their number will undoubtedly increase as time goes on, and we learn the lessons of life with a richer background.

But one cannot help feeling regretful that the custom is not growing more rapidly.

A man must unquestionably prepare years ahead for his retirement, not alone financially, but mentally as well. Bok noticed as a curious fact that nearly every business man who told him he had made a mistake in his retirement, and that the proper life for a man is to stick to the game and see it through--"hold her nozzle agin the bank" as Jim Bludso would say--was a man with no resources outside his business.

Naturally, a retirement is a mistake in the eyes of such a man; but oh, the pathos of such a position: that in a world of so much interest, in an age so fascinatingly full of things worth doing, a man should have allowed himself to become a slave to his business, and should imagine no other man happy without the same claims!

It is this lesson that the American business man has still to learn; that no man can be wholly efficient in his life, that he is not living a four-squared existence, if he concentrates every waking thought on his material affairs. He has still to learn that man cannot live by bread alone. The making of money, the acc.u.mulation of material power, is not all there is to living. Life is something more than these, and the man who misses this truth misses the greatest joy and satisfaction that can come into his life--service for others.

Some men argue that they can give this service and be in business, too.

But service with such men generally means drawing a check for some worthy cause, and nothing more. Edward Bok never belittled the giving of contributions--he solicited too much money himself for the causes in which he was interested--but it is a poor nature that can satisfy itself that it is serving humanity by merely signing checks. There is no form of service more comfortable or so cheap. Real service, however, demands that a man give himself with his check. And that the average man cannot do if he remains in affairs.

Particularly true is this to-day, when every problem of business is so engrossing, demanding a man's full time and thought. It is the rare man who can devote himself to business and be fresh for the service of others afterward. No man can, with efficiency, serve two masters so exacting as are these. Besides, if his business has seemed important enough to demand his entire attention, are not the great uplift questions equally worth his exclusive thought? Are they easier of solution than the material problems?

A man can live a life full-square only when he divides it into three periods:

First: that of education, acquiring the fullest and best within his reach and power;

Second: that of achievement: achieving for himself and his family, and discharging the first duty of any man, that in case of his incapacity those who are closest to him are provided for. But such provision does not mean an acc.u.mulation that becomes to those he leaves behind him an embarra.s.sment rather than a protection. To prevent this, the next period confronts him:

Third: Service for others. That is the acid test where many a man falls short: to know when he has enough, and to be willing not only to let well enough alone, but to give a helping hand to the other fellow; to recognize, in a practical way, that we are our brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches.

Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: acc.u.mulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course; only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have been helped by others so should they now help others: as their means have come from the public, so now they owe something in turn to that public.

No man has a right to leave the world no better than he found it. He must add something to it: either he must make its people better and happier, or he must make the face of the world fairer to look at. And the one really means the other.

"Idealism," immediately say some. Of course, it is. But what is the matter with idealism? What really is idealism? Do one-tenth of those who use the phrase so glibly know its true meaning, the part it has played in the world? The worthy interpretation of an ideal is that it embodies an idea--a conception of the imagination. All ideas are at first ideals. They must be. The producer brings forth an idea, but some dreamer has dreamed it before him either in whole or in part.

Where would the human race be were it not for the ideals of men? It is idealists, in a large sense, that this old world needs to-day. Its soil is sadly in need of new seed. Was.h.i.+ngton, in his day, was decried as an idealist. So was Jefferson. It was commonly remarked of Lincoln that he was a "rank idealist." Morse, Watt, Marconi, Edison--all were, at first, adjudged idealists. We say of the League of Nations that it is ideal, and we use the term in a derogatory sense. But that was exactly what was said of the Const.i.tution of the United States.