"But you're
right. The result would be worth the effort. What writer have you in
mind? You seem to have thought this thing through."
"How about O'Brien? You think well of him?"
(Robert L. O'Brien, now editor of the Boston Herald, was then Washington
correspondent for the Boston Transcript and thoroughly in the
President's confidence.)
"Fine," said the President. "I trust O'Brien implicitly. All right, if
you can get O'Brien to add it on, I'll try it."
And so the "shaving interviews" were begun; and early in 1906 there
appeared in The Ladies' Home Journal a department called "The
President," with the subtitle: "A Department in which will be presented
the attitude of the President on those national questions which affect
the vital interests of the home, by a writer intimately acquainted and
in close touch with him."
O'Brien talked with Mr. Roosevelt once a month, wrote out the results,
the President went over the proofs carefully, and the department was
conducted with great success for a year.
But Theodore Roosevelt was again to be the editor of a department in The
Ladies' Home Journal; this time to be written by himself under the
strictest possible anonymity, so closely adhered to that, until this
revelation, only five persons have known the authorship.
Feeling that it would be an interesting experiment to see how far
Theodore Roosevelt's ideas could stand unsupported by the authority of
his vibrant personality, Bok suggested the plan to the colonel.
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