Edward had now an opportunity to try his wings in an editorial capacity.
The periodical was, of course, essentially an organ of the society; but gradually it took on a more general character, so that its circulation might extend over a larger portion of Brooklyn.With this extension came a further broadening of its contents, which now began to take on a literary character, and it was not long before its two projectors realized that the periodical had outgrown its name.It was decided--late in 1884--to change the name to The Brooklyn Magazine.
There was a periodical called The Plymouth Pulpit, which presented verbatim reports of the sermons of Mr.Beecher, and Edward got the idea of absorbing the Pulpit in the Magazine.But that required more capital than he and his partner could command.They consulted Mr.Beecher, who, attracted by the enterprise of the two boys, sent them with letters of introduction to a few of his most influential parishioners, with the result that the pair soon had a sufficient financial backing by some of the leading men of Brooklyn, like A.A.Low, H.B.Claflin, Rufus T.
Bush, Henry W.Slocum, Seth Low, Rossiter W.Raymond, Horatio C.King, and others.
The young publishers could now go on.Understanding that Mr.Beecher's sermons might give a partial and denominational tone to the magazine, Edward arranged to publish also in its pages verbatim reports of the sermons of the Reverend T.De Witt Talmage, whose reputation was then at its zenith.The young editor now realized that he had a rather heavy cargo of sermons to carry each month; accordingly, in order that his magazine might not appear to be exclusively religious, he determined that its literary contents should be of a high order and equal in interest to the sermons.But this called for additional capital, and the capital furnished was not for that purpose.
It is here that Edward's autographic acquaintances stood him in good stead.He went in turn to each noted person he had met, explained his plight and stated his ambitions, with the result that very soon the magazine and the public were surprised at the distinction of the contributors to The Brooklyn Magazine.Each number contained a noteworthy list of them, and when an article by the President of the United States, then Rutherford B.Hayes, opened one of the numbers, the public was astonished, since up to that time the unwritten rule that a President's writings were confined to official pronouncements had scarcely been broken.William Dean Howells, General Grant, General Sherman, Phillips Brooks, General Sheridan, Canon Farrar, Cardinal Gibbons, Marion Harland, Margaret Sangster--the most prominent men and women of the day, some of whom had never written for magazines--began to appear in the young editor's contents.Editors wondered how the publishers could afford it, whereas, in fact, not a single name represented an honorarium.Each contributor had come gratuitously to the aid of the editor.
At first, the circulation of the magazine permitted the boys to wrap the copies themselves; and then they, with two other boys, would carry as huge bundles as they could lift, put them late at night on the front platform of the street-cars, and take them to the postoffice.Thus the boys absolutely knew the growth of their circulation by the weight of their bundles and the number of their front-platform trips each month.
Soon a baker's hand-cart was leased for an evening, and that was added to the capacity of the front platforms.Then one eventful month it was seen that a horse-truck would have to be employed.Within three weeks, a double horse-truck was necessary, and three trips had to be made.
By this time Edward Bok had become so intensely interested in the editorial problem, and his partner in the periodical publishing part, that they decided to sell out their theatre-programme interests and devote themselves to the magazine and its rapidly increasing circulation.All of Edward's editorial work had naturally to be done outside of his business hours, in other words, in the evenings and on Sundays; and the young editor found himself fully occupied.He now revived the old idea of selecting a subject and having ten or twenty writers express their views on it.It was the old symposium idea, but it had not been presented in American journalism for a number of years.He conceived the topic "Should America Have a Westminster Abbey?" and induced some twenty of the foremost men and women of the day to discuss it.When the discussion was presented in the magazine, the form being new and the theme novel, Edward was careful to send advance sheets to the newspapers, which treated it at length in reviews and editorials, with marked effect upon the circulation of the magazine.
All this time, while Edward Bok was an editor in his evenings he was, during the day, a stenographer and clerk of the Western Union Telegraph Company.The two occupations were hardly compatible, but each meant a source of revenue to the boy, and he felt he must hold on to both.
After his father passed away, the position of the boy's desk--next to the empty desk of his father--was a cause of constant depression to him.
This was understood by the attorney for the company, Mr.Clarence Cary, who sought the head of Edward's department, with the result that Edward was transferred to Mr.Cary's department as the attorney's private stenographer.
