n name, "our orchestra."

CHAPTER XIX

A WAR MAGAZINE AND WAR ACTIVITIES

The success of _The Ladies' Home Journal_ went steadily forward. The
circulation had passed the previously unheard-of figure for a monthly
magazine of a million and a half copies per month; it had now touched a
million and three-quarters.

And not only was the figure so high, but the circulation itself was
absolutely free from "water." The public could not obtain the magazine
through what are known as clubbing-rates, since no subscriber was
permitted to include any other magazine with it; years ago it had
abandoned the practice of offering premiums or consideration of any
kind to induce subscriptions; and the newsdealers were not allowed to
return unsold copies of the periodical. Hence every copy was either
purchased by the public at the full price at a news stand, or
subscribed for at its stated subscription price. It was, in short, an
authoritative circulation. And on every hand the question was being
asked: "How is it done? How is such a high circulation obtained?"

Bok's invariable answer was that he gave his readers the very best of
the class of reading that he believed would interest them, and that he
spared neither effort nor expense to obtain it for them. When Mr.
Howells once asked him how he classified his audience, Bok replied: "We
appeal to the intelligent American woman rather than to the
intellectual type." And he gave her the best he could obtain. As he
knew her to be fond of the personal type of literature, he gave her in
succession Jane Addams's story of "My Fifteen Years at Hull House," and
the remarkable narration of Helen Keller's "Story of My Life"; he
invited Henry Van Dyke, who had never been in the Holy Land, to go
there, camp out in a tent, and then write a series of sketches, "Out of
Doors in the Holy Land"; he induced Lyman Abbott to tell the story of
"My Fifty Years as a Minister." He asked Gene Stratton Porter to tell
of her bird-experiences in the series: "What I Have Done with Birds";
he persuaded Dean Hodges to turn from his work of training young
clergymen at the Episcopal Seminary, at Cambridge, and write one of the
most successful series of Bible stories for children ever printed; and
then he supplemented this feature for children by publishing Rudyard
Kipling's "Just So" stories and his "Puck of Pook's Hill." He induced
F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the best stories he had ever heard in his
w