verage popular magazine of 1889 failed of large
success because it wrote down to the public--a grievous mistake that so
many editors have made and still make. No one wants to be told, either
directly or indirectly, that he knows less than he does, or even that
he knows as little as he does; every one is benefited by the opposite
implication, and the public will always follow the leader who
comprehends this bit of psychology. There is always a happy medium
between shooting over the public's head and shooting too far under it.
And it is because of the latter aim that we find the modern popular
magazine the worthless thing that, in so many instances, it is to-day.

It is the rare editor who rightly gauges his public psychology.
Perhaps that is why, in the enormous growth of the modern magazine,
there have been produced so few successful editors. The average editor
is obsessed with the idea of "giving the public what it wants,"
whereas, in fact, the public, while it knows what it wants when it sees
it, cannot clearly express its wants, and never wants the thing that it
does ask for, although it thinks it does at the time. But woe to the
editor and his periodical if he heeds that siren voice!

The editor has, therefore, no means of finding it out aforehand by
putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of
psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average
editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His
mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and
all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the
results essential in these respects.

The editor is the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If
his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help
coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents
writers who have. And if the reader comes, the advertiser must come.
He must go where his largest market is: where the buyers are. The
advertiser, instead of being the most difficult factor in a magazine
proposition, as is so often mistakenly thought, is, in reality, the
simplest. He has no choice but to advertise in the successful
periodical. He must come along. The editor need never worry about
him. If the advertiser shuns the periodical's pages, the fault is
rarely that of the advertiser: the editor can generally look for the
reason nearer home.

One of Edward Bok's fir