" The public could not obtain the magazine
through what are known as clubbing-rates, since no subscriber was
permitted to include any other magazine with it; years ago it had
abandoned the practice of offering premiums or consideration of any kind
to induce subscriptions; and the newsdealers were not allowed to return
unsold copies of the periodical. Hence every copy was either purchased
by the public at the full price at a newsstand, or subscribed for at its
stated subscription price. It was, in short, an authoritative
circulation. And on every hand the question was being asked: "How is it
done? How is such a high circulation obtained?"
Bok's invariable answer was that he gave his readers the very best of
the class of reading that he believed would interest them, and that he
spared neither effort nor expense to obtain it for them. When Mr.
Howells once asked him how he classified his audience, Bok replied: "We
appeal to the intelligent American woman rather than to the intellectual
type." And he gave her the best he could obtain. As he knew her to be
fond of the personal type of literature, he gave her in succession Jane
Addams's story of "My Fifteen Years at Hull House," and the remarkable
narration of Helen Keller's "Story of My Life"; he invited Henry Van
Dyke, who had never been in the Holy Land, to go there, camp out in a
tent, and then write a series of sketches, "Out of Doors in the Holy
Land"; he induced Lyman Abbott to tell the story of "My Fifty Years as a
Minister.
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