e magazine from the printed page, have remained baffled at
the remarkable confidence elicited from its readers. They never looked
back of the magazine, and therefore failed to discover its secret. Bok
went through three financial panics with the magazine, and while other
periodicals severely suffered from diminished circulation at such
times, _The Ladies' Home Journal_ always held its own. Thousands of
women had been directly helped by the magazine; it had not remained an
inanimate printed thing, but had become a vital need in the personal
lives of its readers.

So intimate had become this relation, so efficient was the service
rendered, that its readers could not be pried loose from it; where
women were willing and ready, when the domestic pinch came, to let go
of other reading matter, they explained to their husbands or fathers
that _The Ladies' Home Journal_ was a necessity--they did not feel that
they could do without it. The very quality for which the magazine had
been held up to ridicule by the unknowing and unthinking had become,
with hundreds of thousands of women, its source of power and the
bulwark of its success.

Bok was beginning to realize the vision which had lured him from New
York: that of putting into the field of American magazines a periodical
that should become such a clearing-house as virtually to make it an
institution.

He felt that, for the present at least, he had sufficiently established
the personal contact with his readers through the more intimate
departments, and decided to devote his efforts to the literary features
of the magazine.

The newspaper paragraphers were now having a delightful time with
Edward Bok and his woman's magazine, and he was having a delightful
time with them. The editor's publicity sense made him realize how
valuable for his purposes was all this free advertising. The
paragraphers believed, in their hearts, that they were annoying the
young editor; they tried to draw his fire through their articles. But
he kept quiet, put his tongue in his cheek, and determined to give them
some choice morsels for their wit.

He conceived the idea of making familiar to the public the women who
were back of the successful men of the day. He felt sure that his
readers wanted to know about these women. But to attract his newspaper
friends he labelled the series, "Unknown Wives of Well-Known Men" and
"Clever Daughters of Clever Men."

The alliterative titles at once attr