Introduction
Edward Bok used to say that he edited The Ladies'Home Journal with an ideal woman in mind.He first saw her not long after he became the Journal's editor in 1889,when he and Cyrus Curtis took a trip to several small cities to“study the needs of the American people.”He saw the woman at church and later at a concert with her husband and children.He passed by her house,which had an air of“homeness”and refinement,and he concluded that the woman herself seemed,“by her dress,manner,and in every way,to be typical of the best in American womanhood.”“Thirty Years of Service,”Obiter Dicta,No.5,November-December 1913,pp.3-5.The key word in Bok's assessment was“best.”From about 1890,he and other members of the staff of Curtis Publishing Company continually tried to make the case that Curtis publications reached the elite of American society-people with culture and,most important,people with money.The company told advertisers that Curtis publications,with their“high grade”artwork and printing,appealed only to“the intelligent,the earnest and the progressive.”The Ladies'Home Journal was“designed for the home loving,”Curtis wasn't the only publication to make such claims.Good Housekeeping,for instance,portrayed itself as a“magazine whose advertising pages,as well as its editorial pages,keep clean company,wins the confidence of its readers-and,therefore,results for its advertisers.”It guaranteed the products advertised within its pages and set up the Good Housekeeping Institute to test those products starting about 1909.Like Curtis'policy of“censorship,”the Good Housekeeping stamp of approval was intended to make readers more comfortable with the magazine and its advertising and to build a trust so that readers would be more apt to buy the products advertised.“In guaranteeing its advertising pages to readers,”the magazine said,“Good Housekeeping Magazine guarantees reader-confidence to advertisers.”See“Clean Company,”Printers'Ink,July 13,1911,p.16;and“Waldo Joins New York Tribune,”PI,Aug.20,1914,p.12.while the Saturday Evening Post was“designed for the men and women who desire a wholesome,sane and entertaining treatment of modern life in fiction and in fact.”Selling Forces(Philadelphia:Curtis Publishing Company,1913),pp.217-218,241-244.The same sort of reasoning resonates in Curtis'house organ from 1913 to 1915,and in its advertising and promotional material from the 1880s into the 1920s.See,for example,various advertisements in Curtis Scrapbook,c.1880-1890.
Curtis Publishing Company Papers,Special Collections,Van Pelt Library,University of Pennsylvania(Hereafter,CP),Box 179;“The Treatment of Cuts,”Obiter Dicta 1(May 1913),pp.9-12;as well as such advertisements in Printers'Ink as“The Value of the Fittest,”PI,May 30,1912,p.23;“Natural Selection,”PI,July 11,1912,p.21;“160 Thousand Letters,”PI,May 7,1914,p.21;and“Where Trade Is Brisk,”PI,May 27,1915,pp.17-20.Likewise,in 1905,Calkins and Holden used the Journal as an example of a publication that was read by a“discriminating class.”See Earnest Elmo Calkins and Ralph Holden,Modern Advertising(New York:D.Appleton and Company,1905),pp.71-72.The Post's editor,George Horace Lorimer,said that the Post appealed“to two classes of men:Men with income,and men who are going to have incomes,and the second is quite as important as the first to the advertiser.”George Horace Lorimer,“Business Policies of the Saturday Evening Post,”contained in“Dope Book,”ca.1920-1923,CP,Box 130.The unbound pages in the box are not numbered.With its farm magazine Country Gentleman,Curtis assured advertisers“an intelligent audience,an interested hearing and a well-grounded confidence,”“A List of Authors,”PI,June 4,1914,p.21.and insisted that“the exceptional and constant increase in the wealth of these particular readers means that from season to season they will be more and more desirable customers for high-grade merchandise of many sorts.”“The Country Gentleman,”Advertising&Selling(October 1912),pp.12-13.Similarly,Curtis proclaimed its Public Ledger newspaper the publication of the“intelligent masses,”asking advertisers:“What kind of people do you wish to reach in Philadelphia?”“The Political Influence of the Public Ledger,”PI,June 5,1913,p.45;“The Public Ledger Does Not Believe...”PI,Sept.18,1913,p.30.
Even as the publisher of the two widest-circulating magazines of the 1910s and 1920s,though,Curtis Publishing couldn't escape the scrutiny of advertisers who wanted proof of its readership claims.Bok noted in 1913 that the Journal had been criticized for being taken by too many girls and not enough serious-minded women,although he discounted any such criticism as speculation.“Ninth Annual Conference of the Advertising Department of Curtis Publishing Company,”January 7-10,1911,p.336,CP,Box 16.Companies such as Peerless,Packard and Pierce-Arrow automobiles were skeptical that buyers of their products actually read Curtis publications,and they were,therefore,reluctant to buy Curtis advertising.“Tenth Annual Conference of the Advertising Department of The Curtis Publishing Company,”October.29-31,1913,pp.38-39,CP,Box 17.All three companies produced cars that were among the most-expensive sold at the time,and all three were struggling with sales at the time.See Charles Coolidge Parlin and Henry Sherwood Youker,“Automobiles,”Vol.A,1914,CP,Box 28.The advertising manager of the Thomas B.Jeffery Company,maker of Rambler Motor Cars,criticized magazines in general for crowing about their widespread circulations but failing to provide accurate information to back up their claims that their readers were really buyers.Edward S.Jordan,“A Strictly Show-Me'Basis,”PI,July 20,1911,pp.24-26.
