Sullivan himself bought thousands
of these letters and names, and then wrote about them in the magazine.
One prominent firm indignantly denied the charge, asserting that
whatever others might have done, their names were always held sacred. In
answer to this declaration Sullivan published an advertisement of this
righteous concern offering fifty thousand of their names for sale.
Bok had now kept up the fight for over two years, and the results were
apparent on every hand. Reputable newspapers and magazines were closing
their pages to the advertisements of patent medicines; legislation was
appearing in several States; the public had been awakened to the fraud
practised upon it, and a Federal Pure Food and Drug Act was beginning to
be talked about.
Single-handed, The Ladies' Home Journal kept up the fight until Mark
Sullivan produced an unusually strong article, but too legalistic for
the magazine. He called the attention of Norman Hapgood, then editor of
Collier's Weekly, to it, who accepted it at once, and, with Bok's
permission, engaged Sullivan, who later succeeded Hapgood as editor of
Collier's. Robert J. Collier now brought Samuel Hopkins Adams to Bok's
attention and asked the latter if he should object if Collier's Weekly
joined him in his fight. The Philadelphia editor naturally welcomed the
help of the weekly, and Adams began his wonderfully effective campaign.
The weekly and the monthly now pounded away together; other periodicals
and newspapers, seeing success ahead, and desiring to be part of it and
share the glory, came into the conflict, and it was not long before so
strong a public sentiment had been created as to bring about the passage
of the United States Food and Drug Act, and the patent-medicine business
of the United States had received a blow from which it has never
recovered.
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