disasters of the Civil War. Late in the summer of 1885, he again left
for the North, which now became his permanent home.


III

And with this second sojourn in New York Page's opportunity came. The
first two years he spent in newspaper work, for the most part with the
_Evening Post_, but, one day in November, 1887, a man whom he had never
seen came into his office and unfolded a new opportunity. Two years
before a rather miscellaneous group had launched an ambitious literary
undertaking. This was a monthly periodical, which, it was hoped, would
do for the United States what such publications as the _Fortnightly_ and
the _Contemporary_ were doing for England. The magazine was to have the
highest literary quality and to be sufficiently dignified to attract the
finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose was to exercise a
profound influence in politics, literature, science, and art. The
projectors had selected for this publication a title that was almost
perfection--the _Forum_--but which, after nearly two years'
experimentation, represented about the limit of their achievement. The
_Forum_ had hardly made an impression on public thought and had
attracted very few readers, although it had lost large sums of money for
its progenitors. These public-spirited gentlemen now turned to Page as
the man who might rescue them from their dilemma and achieve their
purpose. He accepted the engagement, first as manager and presently as
editor, and remained the guiding spirit of the _Forum_ for eight years,
until the summer of 1895.

That the success of a publication is the success of its editors, and not
of its business managers and its "backers," is a truth that ought to be
generally apparent; never has this fact been so eloquently illustrated
as in the case of the _Forum_ under Page. Before his accession it had
had not the slightest importance; for the period of his editorship it is
doubtful if any review published in English exercised so great an
influence, and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From
almost nothing the _Forum_, in two or three years, attracted 30,000
subscribers--something without precedent for a publication of this
character. It had accomplished this great result simply because of the
vitality and interest of its contents. The period covered was an
important one, in the United States and Europe; it was the time of
Cleveland's second administration in this country, and of Gladstone's
fourth administration in England; it was a time of great controversy and
of a growing interest in science, education, social reform and a better
political order. All these great matters were reflected in the pages of
the _Forum_, whose list of contributors contained the most distinguished
names in all countries. Its purpose, as Page explained it, was "to
provoke discussion about subjects of contemporary interest, in which the
magazine is not a partisan, but merely the instrument." In the highest
sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; practically everything
that it printed was related to the thought and the action of the time.
So insistent was Page on this programme that his pages were not "closed"
until a week before the day of issue. Though the _Forum_ dealt
constantly in controversial subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded
spirit; it was always ready to hear both sides of a question and the
magazine "debate," in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same
theme, was a constant feature.

Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to that time this
functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible high priest; he sat
secluded in his sanctuary, and weeded out from the mass of manuscripts
dumped upon his desk the particular selections which seemed to be most
suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions would have seemed an
entirely undignified proceeding; in all cases contributors must come to
him. According to Page, however, "an editor must know men and be out
among men." His system of "making up" the magazine at first somewhat
astounded his associates. A month or two in advance of publication day
he would draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary stage,
amounted to nothing except a list of the main subjects which he aspired
to handle in that number. It was a hope, not a performance. The subjects
were commonly suggested by the happenings of the time--an especially
outrageous lynching, the trial of a clergyman for heresy, a new attack
upon the Monroe Doctrine, the discovery of a new substance such as
radium, the publication of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix
upon the inevitable men who could write most readably and most
authoritatively upon these topics, and "go after" them. Sometimes he
would write one of his matchless editorial letters; at other times he
would make a personal visit; if necessary, he would use any available
friends in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must "get" his man;
once he had fixed upon a certain contributor nothing could divert him
from the chase. Nor did the negotiations cease after he had "landed" his
quarry. He had his way of discussing the subject with his proposed
writer, and he discussed it from every possible point of view. He would
take him to lunch or to dinner; in his quiet way he would draw him out,
find whether he really knew much about the subject, learn the attitude
that he was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of his
own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview would disclose that the
much sought writer, despite appearances, was not the one who was
destined for that particular job; in this case Page would find some way
of shunting him in favour of a more promising candidate. But Page was no
mere chaser of names; there was nothing of the literary tuft-hunter
about his editorial methods. He liked to see such men as Theodore
Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William Graham Sumner, Charles W. Eliot,
Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget, and the like upon his title page--and
here these and many other similarly distinguished authors appeared--but
the greatest name could not attain a place there if the letter press
that followed were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing out the
contributions of the great, after paying a stiff price for them, caused
much perturbation in his counting room. One day he called in one of his
associates.

"Do you see that waste basket?" he asked, pointing to a large receptacle
filled to overflowing with manuscripts. "All our Cleveland articles are
there!"

He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain a series of six
articles from the most prominent publicists and political leaders of
the country on the first year of Mr. Cleveland's second administration.
It was to be the "feature" of the number then in preparation.

"There isn't one of them," he declared, "who has got the point. I have
thrown them all away and I am going to try to write something myself."

And he spent a couple of days turning out an article which aroused great
public interest. When Page commissioned an article, he meant simply that
he would pay full price for it; whether he would publish it depended
entirely upon the quality of the material itself. But Page was just as
severe upon his own writings as upon those of other men. He wrote
occasionally--always under a nom-de-plume; but he had great difficulty
in satisfying his own editorial standards. After finishing an article he
would commonly send for one of his friends and read the result.

"That is superb!" this admiring associate would sometimes say.

In response Page would take the manuscript and, holding it aloft in two
hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the scraps into the waste
basket.

"Oh, I can do better than that," he would laugh and in another minute he
was busy rewriting the article, from beginning to end.

Page retired from the editorship of the _Forum_ in 1895. The severance
of relations was half a comedy, half a tragedy. The proprietors had only
the remotest relation to literature; they had lost much money in the
enterprise before Page became editor and only the fortunate accident of
securing his services had changed their losing venture into a financial
success. In a moment of despair, before the happier period had arrived,
they offered to sell the property to Page and his friends. Page quickly
assembled a new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement
of the old owners, the _Forum_ began to make money. Instead of having a
burden on their hands, the proprietors suddenly discovered that they had
a gold mine. They therefore refused to deliver their holdings and an
inevitable struggle ensued for control. Page could edit a magazine and
turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable one; but, in a tussle of
this kind, he was no match for the shrewd business men who owned the
property. When the time came for counting noses Page and his friends
found themselves in a minority. Of course his resignation as editor
necessarily followed this little unpleasantness. And just as inevitably
the _Forum_ again began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity
from which it has never emerged.

The _Forum_ had established Page's reputation as an editor, and the
competition for his services was lively. The distinguished Boston
publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Company immediately invited him
to become a part of their organization. When Horace E. Scudder, in 1898,
resigned the editorship of the _Atlantic Monthly_, Page succeeded him.
Thus Page became the successor of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields,
William D. Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous
periodical. This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He
was now forty-three years old.

No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history. Founded in
1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England writers, its
pages had first published many of the best essays of Emerson, the second
series of the Biglow papers as well as many other of Lowell's writings,
poems of Longfellow and Whittier, such great successes as Holmes's
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn of the
Republic," and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a
literature, the _Atlantic_ was certainly its most successful periodical
exponent. Yet, in a sense, the _Atlantic_, by the time Page succeeded to
the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling past. Its recent
editors had lived too exclusively in their back numbers. They had
conducted the magazine too much for the restricted audience of Boston
and New England. There was a time, indeed, when the business office
arranged the subscribers in two classes--"Boston" and "foreign";
"Boston" representing their local adherents, and "foreign" the loyal
readers who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One
of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited a
contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer! Let the
truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance in the
_Atlantic_ office, the magazine was unquestionably on the decline. Its
literary quality was still high; the momentum that its great
contributors had given it was still keeping the publication alive;
entrance into its columns still represented the ultimate ambition of the
aspiring American writer; but it needed a new spirit to insure its
future. What it required was the kind of editing that had suddenly made
the _Forum_ one of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the
reason why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York and
grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the _Forum_ let him slip
between their fingers.

Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic aspect in his
position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine. The fact
that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat startling to the
placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the thing that really signified
its break with its past. But here was a Southerner firmly entrenched in
a headquarters that had long been sacred to the New England
abolitionists. One of the first sights that greeted Page, as he came
into the office, was the angular and spectacled countenance of William
Lloyd Garrison, gazing down from a steel engraving on the wall. One of
Garrison's sons was a colleague, and the anterooms were frequently
cluttered with dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with
this benefactor of their race. Page once was careless enough to inform
Mr. Garrison that "one of your niggers" was waiting outside for an
audience. "I very much regret, Mr. Page," came the answer, "that you
should insist on spelling 'Negro' with two 'g's'." Despite the mock
solemnity of this rebuke, perennial good-nature and raillery prevailed
between the son of Garrison and his disrespectful but ever sympathetic
Southern friend. Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to
introduce a spirit of laughter and genial coöperation into a rather
solemn and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, the head of the
house, even formally thanked Page "for the hearty human way in which you
take hold of life." Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present editor of the
_Atlantic_, has described the somewhat disconcerting descent of Page
upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell Lowell:

"Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the incarnation
of those qualities we love to call American, I should turn to a
familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living portrait that
hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it
seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy; a disposition to
underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee
common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous
self-confidence, impatience of failure--all of these were in him;
and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted to his country,
his family, his craft--a strong, bluff, tender man.

"Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and Page's
entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has taken on the
dignity of legend. There were all kinds of signs and portents, as
the older denizens will tell you. Strange breezes floated through
the office, electric emanations, and a pervasive scent of tobacco,
which--so the local historian says--had been unknown in the
vicinity since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for the literary
aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs. Page's coming
marked the end of small ways. His first requirement was, in lieu of
a desk, a table that might have served a family of twelve for
Thanksgiving dinner. No one could imagine what that vast, polished
tableland could serve for until they watched the editor at work.
Then they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned. Huge piles of
papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets, magazines,
congregated themselves as if by magic. To work in such confusion
seemed hopeless, but Page eluded the congestion by the simple
expedient of moving on. He would light a fresh cigar, give the
editorial chair a hitch, and begin his work in front of a fresh
expanse of table, with no clutter of the past to disturb the new
day's litter.

"The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was more
generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out to the
successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though I heard the
news second hand at the time, what a day it was in the office when
the first manuscript from the future author of 'To Have and To
Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and
down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp manuscript
to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler instance, I recall
the words of over generous praise with which he greeted the first
paper I ever sent to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the
monstrous effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he
would do a favoured manuscript the honour of taking it out to lunch
in his coat-pocket, and an associate vividly recalls eggs, coffee,
and pie in a near-by restaurant, while, in a voice that could be
heard by the remotest lunchers, Page read passages which many of
them were too startled to appreciate. He was not given to
overrating, but it was not in his nature to understate. 'I tell
you,' said he, grumbling over some unfortunate proof-sheets from
Manhattan, 'there isn't one man in New York who can write
English--not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.' And if the faults
were moral rather than literary, his disapproval grew in emphasis.
There is more than tradition in the tale of the Negro who,
presuming on Page's deep interest in his race, brought to his desk
a manuscript copied word for word from a published source. Page
recognized the deception, and seizing the rascal's collar with a
firm editorial grip, rejected the poem, and ejected the poet, with
an energy very invigorating to the ancient serenities of the
office.

"Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an editor who would
have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you had to cast a
dozen times before you could get a strike. He was forever in those
days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations to write.
The result was electric, and the magazine became with a suddenness
(of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder) a storehouse of
animating thoughts. He avoided the mistake common to our craft of
editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction of his
colleagues. 'Don't write for the office,' he would say. 'Write for
outside,' and so his magazine became a living thing. His phrase
suggests one special gift that Page had, for which his profession
should do him especial honour. He was able, quite beyond the powers
of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously into words the
secrets of successful editing. It was capital training just to hear
him talk. 'Never save a feature,' he used to say. 'Always work for
the next number. Forget the others. Spend everything just on that.'
And to those who know, there is divination in the principle. Again
he understood instinctively that to write well a man must not only
have something to say, but must long to say it. A highly
intelligent representative of the coloured race came to him with a
philosophic essay. Page would have none of it. 'I know what you are
thinking of,' said Page. 'You are thinking of the barriers we set
up against you, and the handicap of your lot. If you will write
what it feels like to be a Negro, I will print that.' The result
was a paper which has seemed to me the most moving expression of
the hopeless hope of the race I know of.

"Page was generous in his coöperation. He never drew a rigid line
about his share in any enterprise, but gave and took help with each
and all. A lover of good English, with an honest passion for things
tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism far above any
second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms; but many of us
will regret that he was not privileged to find some outlet for his
energies in which aspiration for real literature might have played
an ampler part. For the literature of the past Page had great
respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future.
He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the
ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he
despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and
the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not
for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the
substantial work of others was no surer than his instinct for his
own performance. He was an admirable writer of exposition,
argument, and narrative--solid and thoughtful, but never dull. . . .
I came into close relations with him and from him I learned more of
my profession than from any one I have ever known. Scores of other
men would say the same."

But the fact that a new hand had seized the _Atlantic_ was apparent in
other places than in the _Atlantic_ office itself. One of Page's
contributors of the _Forum_ days, Mr. Courtney DeKalb, happened to be in
St. Louis when the first number of the magazine under its new editor
made its appearance. Mr. DeKalb had been out of the country for some
time and knew nothing of the change. Happening accidentally to pick up
the _Atlantic_, the table of contents caught his eye. It bore the traces
of an unmistakable hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could
assemble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could give such
an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat down and wrote his old
friend congratulating him on his accession to the _Atlantic Monthly_.
The change that now took place was indeed a conspicuous, almost a
startling one. The _Atlantic_ retained all its old literary flavour, for
to its traditions Page was as much devoted as the highest caste
Bostonian; it still gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction,
poetry, and reviews of contemporary literature, but every number
contained also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing
activities of men and women in all worth-while fields of effort. There
were discussions of present-day politics, and these even became
personal dissections of presidential candidates; there were articles on
the racial characters of the American population: Theodore Roosevelt was
permitted to discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in
review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington
to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans
upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully
ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects
of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes
of American democracy; Jacob Rüs to tell about the Battle with the Slum;
and W.G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization of
the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's genius
at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky
mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect,
their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development;
that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture of their
distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation by changing a
commonplace title to this one: "Our Contemporary Ancestors."

There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to seek
inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers, for not
infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an idea that would
result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion at least this
practice had important literary consequences. One day he happened to
read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in Toronto, the account
casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning was the youngest sister
of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping to a young assistant, and
told him to take the first train to Canada. The editor could easily
divine that a sister of Carlyle, expatriated for forty-six years on
this side of the Atlantic, must have received a large number of letters
from her brother, and it was safe to assume that they had been carefully
preserved. Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle
letters, of somewhat more genial character than the other collections,
was the outcome of this visit[4]. And another fruit of this journalistic
habit was "The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," by Prince Peter Kropotkin.
In 1897 the great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page met
him, learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded him to put it in
permanent form. This willingness of Page to admit such a revolutionary
person into the pages of the _Atlantic_ caused some excitement in
conventional circles. In fact, it did take some courage, but Page never
hesitated; the man was of heroic mould, he had a great story to tell, he
wielded an engaging pen, and his purposes were high-minded. A great book
of memoirs was the result.

Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour when Miss Mary
Johnston's "Prisoners of Hope" first fell out of the blue sky into his
Boston office. Page's joy was not less keen because the young author was
a Virginia girl, and because she had discovered that the early period of
Virginia history was a field for romance. When, a few months afterward,
Page was casting about for an _Atlantic_ serial, Miss Johnston and this
Virginia field seemed to be an especially favourable prospect.
"Prisoners of Hope" had been published as a book and had made a good
success, but Miss Johnston's future still lay ahead of her. With Page to
think meant to act, and so, instead of writing a formal letter, he at
once jumped on a train for Birmingham, Alabama, where Miss Johnston was
then living. "I remember quite distinctly that first meeting," writes
Miss Johnston. "The day was rainy. Standing at my window I watched Mr.
Page--a characteristic figure, air and walk--approach the house. When a
few minutes later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness itself.
This was my first personal contact with publishers (my publishers) or
with editors of anything so great as the _Atlantic_. My heart beat! But
he was friendly and Southern. I told him what I had done upon a new
story. He was going on that night. Might he take the manuscript with him
and read it upon the train? It might--he couldn't say positively, of
course--but it might have serial possibilities. I was only too glad for
him to have the manuscript. I forget just how many chapters I had
completed. But it was not quite in order. Could I get it so in a few
hours? In that case he would send a messenger for it from the hotel.
Yes, I could. Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong
handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript and took it
with him from Birmingham that night."

Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished
manuscript of a story, "To Have and to Hold," which, when printed in the
_Atlantic_, more than doubled its circulation, and which, when made into
a book, proved one of the biggest successes since "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Page's most independent stroke in his _Atlantic_ days came with the
outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Boston was then the headquarters
of a national mood which has almost passed out of popular remembrance.
Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists. The theory back of
their protest was that the American declaration of war on Spain was not
only the wanton attack of a great bully upon a feeble little country: it
was something that was bound to have deplorable consequences. The
United States was breaking with its past and engaging in European
quarrels; as a consequence of the war it would acquire territories and
embark on a career of "imperialism." Page was impatient at this kind of
twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a "necessary act of
surgery for the health of civilization." He did not believe that a
nation, simply because it was small, should be permitted to maintain
indefinitely a human slaughter house at the door of the United States.
The _Atlantic_ for June, 1898, gave the so-called anti-imperialists a
thrill of horror. On the cover appeared the defiantly flying American
flag; the first article was a vigorous and approving presentation of the
American case against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive
style at once betrayed the author. The _Atlantic_ had printed the
American flag on its cover during the Civil War; but certain New
Englanders thought that this latest struggle, in its motives and its
proportions, was hardly entitled to the distinction. Page declared,
however, that the Spanish War marked a new period in history; and he
endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only in the war itself, but in
its consequences, particularly the annexation of the Philippine Islands.

Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. The _Atlantic_ was
rapidly growing in circulation and in influence, and the new friends
that its editor was making were especially to his taste. He now had a
family of four children, three boys and one girl--and their bringing up
and education, as he said at this time, constituted his real occupation.
So far as he could see, in the summer of 1899, he was permanently
established in life. But larger events in the publishing world now again
pulled him back to New York.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: "Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited
by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.]




CHAPTER III

"THE FORGOTTEN MAN"

I


In July, 1899, the publishing community learned that financial
difficulties were seriously embarrassing the great house of Harper. For
nearly a century this establishment had maintained a position almost of
preëminence among American publishers. Three generations of Harpers had
successively presided over its destinies; its magazines and books had
become almost a household necessity in all parts of the United States,
and its authors included many of the names most celebrated in American
letters. The average American could no more associate the idea of
bankruptcy with this great business than with the federal Treasury
itself. Yet this incredible disaster had virtually taken place. At this
time the public knew nothing of the impending ruin; the fact was,
however, that, in July, 1899, the banking house of J.P. Morgan & Company
practically controlled this property. This was the situation which again
called Page to New York.

In the preceding year Mr. S.S. McClure, whose recent success as editor
and publisher had been little less than a sensation, had joined forces
with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday, and organized the new firm of Doubleday &
McClure. This business was making rapid progress; and that it would soon
become one of the leading American publishing houses was already
apparent. It was perhaps not unnatural, therefore, that Mr. J. Pierpont
Morgan, scanning the horizon for the men who might rescue the Harper
concern from approaching disaster, should have had his attention drawn
to Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday. "The failure of Harper & Brothers,"
Mr. Morgan said in a published statement, "would be a national
calamity." One morning, therefore, a member of the Harper firm called
upon Mr. McClure. Without the slightest hesitation he unfolded the
Harper situation to his astonished contemporary. The solution proposed
was more astonishing still. This was that Mr. Doubleday and Mr. McClure
should amalgamate their young and vigorous business with the Harper
enterprise and become the active managers of the new corporation. Both
Mr. McClure and Mr. Doubleday were comparatively young men, and the
magnitude of the proposed undertaking at first rather staggered them. It
was as though a small independent steel maker should suddenly be invited
to take over the United States Steel Corporation. Mr. McClure,
characteristically impetuous and daring, wished to accept the invitation
outright; Mr. Doubleday, however, suggested a period of probation. The
outcome was that the two men offered to take charge of Harper & Brothers
for a few months, and then decide whether they wished to make the
association a permanent one. One thing was immediately apparent; Messrs.
Doubleday and McClure, able as they were, would need the help of the
best talent available in the work that lay ahead. The first man to whom
they turned was Page, who presently left Boston and took up his business
abode at Franklin Square. The rumble of the elevated road was somewhat
distracting after the four quiet years in Park Street, but the new daily
routine was not lacking in interest. The Harper experiment, however, did
not end as Mr. Morgan had hoped. After a few months Messrs. Doubleday,
Page and McClure withdrew, and left the work of rescue to be performed
by Mr. George Harvey, who, curiously enough, succeeded Page, twenty-one
years afterward, in an even more important post--that of ambassador to
the Court of St. James's. The one important outcome of the Harper
episode, so far as Page was concerned, was the forming of a close
business and personal association with Mr. Frank N. Doubleday. As soon
as the two men definitely decided not to assume the Harper
responsibility, therefore, they joined forces and founded the firm of
Doubleday, Page & Company. Page now had the opportunity which he had
long wished for; the mere editing of magazines, even magazines of such
an eminent character as the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, could
hardly satisfy his ambition; he yearned to possess something which he
could call his own, at least in part.

The life of an editor has its unsatisfactory aspect, unless the editor
himself has an influential ownership in his periodical. Page now found
his opportunity to establish a monthly magazine which he could regard as
his own in both senses. He was its untrammelled editor, and also, in
part, its proprietor. All editors and writers will sympathize with the
ideas expressed in a letter written about this time to Page's friend,
Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, already distinguished as the historian of
Italian unity and afterward to win fame as the biographer of Cavour and
John Hay. When the first number of the _World's Work_ appeared Mr.
Thayer wrote, expressing a slight disappointment that its leading
tendency was journalistic rather than literary and intellectual. "When
you edited the _Forum_," wrote Mr. Thayer, "I perceived that no such
talent for editing had been seen in America before, and when, a little
later, you rejuvenated the _Atlantic_, making it for a couple of years
the best periodical printed in English, I felt that you had a great
mission before you as evoker and editor of the best literary work and
weightiest thought on important topics of our foremost men." He had
hoped to see a magnified _Atlantic_, and the new publication, splendid
as it was, seemed to be of rather more popular character than the
publications with which Page had previously been associated. Page met
this challenge in his usual hearty fashion.

_To William Roscoe Thayer_
34 Union Square East, New York,
December 5, 1900.

My Dear Thayer:

The _World's Work_ has brought me nothing so good as your letter of
yesterday. When Mrs. Page read it, she shouted "Now that's it!" For
"it" read "truth," and you will have her meaning and mine. My
thanks you may be sure you have, in great and earnest abundance.

You surprise me in two ways--(1) that you think as well of the
magazine as you do. If it have half the force and earnestness that
you say it has, how happy I shall be, for then it will surely bring
something to pass. The other way in which you surprise me is by the
flattering things that you say about my conduct of the _Atlantic_.
Alas! it was not what you in your kind way say--no, no.

Of course the _World's Work_ is not yet by any means what I hope to
make it. But it has this incalculable advantage (to me) over every
other magazine in existence: it is mine (mine and my partners',
i.e., partly mine), and I shall not work to build up a good piece
of machinery and then be turned out to graze as an old horse is.
This of course, is selfish and personal--not wholly selfish either,
I think. I threw down the _Atlantic_ for this reason: (Consider the
history of its editors) Lowell[5] complained bitterly that he was
never rewarded properly for the time and work he did; Fields was
(in a way) one of its owners; it was sold out from under Howells,
etc., etc. I might (probably should) have been at the mercy
completely of owners some day who would have dismissed me for a
younger man. Nearly all hired editors suffer this fate. My good
friends in Boston were sincere in thinking that my day of doom
would never come; but they didn't offer me any guarantee--part
ownership, for instance; and the years go swiftly. I could afford,
of my own volition, to leave the _Atlantic_. I couldn't afford to
take permanently the risks that a hired editor must take. Nor
should I ever again have turned my hand to such a task except on a
magazine of my own. I should have sought other employment. There
are many easier and better and more influential things to do--yet;
ten years hence I might have been too old. Harry Houghton[6] has an
old horse thirty years old. I used to see him grazing sometimes and
hear his master's self-congratulatory explanation of his own
kindness to that faithful beast. In the office of Houghton, Mifflin
& Company there is an old man whom I used to see every
day--pensioned, grazing. Then I would go home and see four bright
children. Three of them are now away from home at school; and the
four cost a pretty penny to educate. My income had been the same
for ten years-or very nearly the same. If I was a "magic" editor, I
confess I didn't see the magic; and there is no power under Heaven
or in it that can prove to me that I ought to keep on making
magazines as a hired man--without the common security of permanent
service for lack of which nearly all my predecessors lost their
chance.

But this is not all, nor half. A man ought to express himself,
ought to live his own life, say his own little say, before silence
comes. The "say" may be bad--a mere yawp, and silence might be more
becoming. But the same argument would make a man dissatisfied with
his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's _his_ nose, and he
must content himself. So it's _his_ yawp and he must let it go.

I'm not going to make the new magazine my own megaphone--you may be
sure of that. It will nevertheless contain my general
interpretation of things, in which I swear I do believe! The first
thing, of course, is to establish it. Then it can be shaped more
nearly into what I wish it to become. If it seem unmannerly,
aggressive, I know no other way to make it heard. If it died, then
the game would be up. Well, we seem to have established it at once.
It promises not to cost us a penny of investment.

Now, the magazines need new topics. They have all threshed over old
straw for many years. There is _one_ new subject, to my thinking
worth all the old ones: the new impulse in American life, the new
feeling of nationality, our coming to realize ourselves. To my mind
there is greater promise in democracy than men of any preceding
period ever dared dream of--aggressive democracy--growth by action.
Our writers (the few we have) are yet in the pre-democratic era.
When men's imaginations lay hold on the things that already begin
to appear above the horizon, we shall have something worth reading.
At present I can do no more than bawl out, "See! here are new
subjects." One of these days somebody will come along who can write
about them. I have started out without a writer. Fiske is under
contract, James would give nothing more to the _Atlantic_, you were
ill (I thank Heaven you are no longer so) the second-and third-rate
essayists have been bought by mere Wall Street publishers. Beyond
these are the company of story tellers and beyond them only a
dreary waste of dead-level unimaginative men and women. I can
(soon) get all that I could ever have got in the _Atlantic_ and new
ones (I know they'll come) whom I could never have got there.

You'll see--within a year or two--by far a better magazine than I
have ever made; and you and I will differ in nothing unless you
feel despair about the breakdown of certain democratic theories,
which I think were always mere theories. Let 'em go! The real
thing, which is life and action, is better.

Heartily and always your grateful friend,
Walter H. Page

Thus the fact that Page's new magazine was intended for a popular
audience was not the result of accident, but of design. It represented a
periodical plan which had long been taking shape in Page's mind. The
things that he had been doing for the _Forum_ and the _Atlantic_ he
aspired to do for a larger audience than that to which publications of
this character could appeal. Scholar though Page was, and lover of the
finest things in literature that he had always been, yet this sympathy
and interest had always lain with the masses. Perhaps it is impossible
to make literature democratic, but Page believed that he would be
genuinely serving the great cause that was nearest his heart if he could
spread wide the facts of the modern world, especially the facts of
America, and if he could clothe the expression in language which, while
always dignified and even "literary," would still be sufficiently
touched with the vital, the picturesque, and the "human," to make his
new publication appeal to a wide audience of intelligent, everyday
Americans. It was thus part of his general programme of improving the
status of the average man, and it formed a logical part of his
philosophy of human advancement. For the only acceptable measure of any
civilization, Page believed, was the extent to which it improved the
condition of the common citizen. A few cultured and university-trained
men at the top; a few ancient families living in luxury; a few painters
and poets and statesmen and generals; these things, in Page's view, did
not constitute a satisfactory state of society; the real test was the
extent to which the masses participated in education, in the necessities
and comforts of existence, in the right of self-evolution and
self-expression, in that "equality of opportunity," which, Page never
wearied of repeating, "was the basis of social progress." The mere right
to vote and to hold office was not democracy; parliamentary majorities
and political caucuses were not democracy--at the best these things were
only details and not the most important ones; democracy was the right of
every man to enjoy, in accordance with his aptitudes of character and
mentality, the material and spiritual opportunities that nature and
science had placed at the disposition of mankind. This democratic creed
had now become the dominating interest of Page's life. From this time on
it consumed all his activities. His new magazine set itself first of all
to interpret the American panorama from this point of view; to describe
the progress that the several parts of the country were making in the
several manifestations of democracy--education, agriculture, industry,
social life, politics--and the importance that Page attached to them was
practically in the order named. Above all it concerned itself with the
men and women who were accomplishing most in the definite realization of
this great end.

And now also Page began to carry his activities far beyond mere print.
In his early residence in New York, from 1885 to 1895, he had always
taken his part in public movements; he had been a vital spirit in the
New York Reform Club, which was engaged mainly in advocating the
Cleveland tariff; he had always shown a willingness to experiment with
new ideas; at one time he had mingled with Socialists and he had been
quite captivated by the personal and literary charm of Henry George.
After 1900, however, Page became essentially a public man, though not in
the political sense. His work as editor and writer was merely one
expression of the enthusiasms that occupied his mind. From 1900 until
1913, when he left for England, life meant for him mainly an effort to
spread the democratic ideal, as he conceived it; concretely it
represented a constant campaign for improving the fundamental
opportunities and the everyday social advantages of the masses.


II

Inevitably the condition of the people in his own homeland enlisted
Page's sympathy, for he had learned of their necessities at first hand.
The need of education had powerfully impressed him even as a boy. At
twenty-three he began writing articles for the Raleigh _Observer_, and
practically all of them were pleas for the education of the Southern
child. His subsequent activities of this kind, as editor of the _State
Chronicle_, have already been described. The American from other parts
of the country is rather shocked when he first learns of the
backwardness of education in the South a generation ago. In any real
sense there was no publicly supported system for training the child. A
few wretched hovels, scattered through a sparsely settled country,
served as school houses; a few uninspiring and neglected women, earning
perhaps $50 or $75 a year, did weary duty as teachers; a few groups of
anemic and listless children, attending school for only forty days a
year--such was the preparation for life which most Southern states gave
the less fortunate of their citizens. The glaring fact that emphasized
the outcome of this official carelessness was an illiteracy, among white
men and women, of 26 per cent. Among the Negroes it was vastly larger.

The first exhortation to reform came from the Wautauga Club, which Page
had organized in Raleigh in 1884. After Page had left his native state,
other men began preaching the same crusade. Perhaps the greatest of
those advocates whom the South loves to refer to as "educational
statesmen" was Dr. Charles D. McIver, of Greensboro, N.C. McIver's
personality and career had an heroic quality all their own. Back in the
'eighties McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now President of the University
of Virginia, endured all kinds of hardships and buffetings in the cause
of popular education; they stumped the state, much like political
campaigners, preaching the strange new gospel in mountain cabin, in
village church, at the cart's tail--all in an attempt to arouse their
lethargic countrymen to the duty of laying a small tax to save their
children from illiteracy. Some day the story of McIver and Alderman will
find its historian; when it does, he will learn that, in those dark