the vision and to
the genius of the first editor of _The Ladies' Home Journal_ that the
unprecedented success of the magazine is primarily due. It was the
purpose and the policy of making a magazine of authoritative service
for the womanhood of America, a service which would visualize for
womanhood its highest domestic estate, that had won success for the
periodical from its inception. It is difficult to believe, in the
multiplicity of similar magazines today, that such a purpose was new;
that _The Ladies' Home Journal_ was a path-finder; but the convincing
proof is found in the fact that all the later magazines of this class
have followed in the wake of the periodical conceived by Mrs. Curtis,
and have ever since been its imitators.

When Edward Bok succeeded Mrs. Curtis, he immediately encountered
another popular misconception of a woman's magazine--the conviction
that if a man is the editor of a periodical with a distinctly feminine
appeal, he must, as the term goes, "understand women." If Bok had
believed this to be true, he would never have assumed the position.
How deeply rooted is this belief was brought home to him on every hand
when his decision to accept the Philadelphia position was announced.
His mother, knowing her son better than did any one else, looked at him
with amazement. She could not believe that he was serious in his
decision to cater to women's needs when he knew so little about them.
His friends, too, were intensely amused, and took no pains to hide
their amusement from him. They knew him to be the very opposite of "a
lady's man," and when they were not convulsed with hilarity they were
incredulous and marvelled.

No man, perhaps, could have been chosen for the position who had a less
intimate knowledge of women. Bok had no sister, no women confidantes:
he had lived with and for his mother. She was the only woman he really
knew or who really knew him. His boyhood days had been too full of
poverty and struggle to permit him to mingle with the opposite sex.
And it is a curious fact that Edward Bok's instinctive attitude toward
women was that of avoidance. He did not dislike women, but it could
not be said that he liked them. They had never interested him. Of
women, therefore, he knew little; of their needs less. Nor had he the
slightest desire, even as an editor, to know them better or to seek to
understand them. Even at that age, he knew that, as a man, he could
not, no matter what