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