ask if his caller would kindly tell him just what he had done.
Another torrent of incoherent abuse came forth, but after a while it became apparent that the woman's
complaint was that she had sent a dollar for a subscription to The Ladies' Home Journal; had never had a copy
of the magazine, had complained, and been told there was no record of the money being received. And as she
had sent her subscription to Bok personally, he had purloined the dollar!
It was fully half an hour before Bok could explain to the irate woman that he never remembered receiving a
letter from her; that subscriptions, even when personally addressed to him, did not come to his desk, etc.; that
if she would leave her name and address he would have the matter investigated. Absolutely unconvinced that
anything would be done, and unaltered in her opinion about Bok, the woman finally left.
Two days later a card was handed in to the editor with a note asking him to see for a moment the husband of
his irate caller. When the man came in, he looked sheepish and amused in turn, and finally said:
"I hardly know what to say, because I don't know what my wife said to you. But if what she said to me is any
index of her talk with you, I want to apologize for her most profoundly. She isn't well, and we shall both have
to let it go at that. As for her subscription, you, of course, never received it, for, with difficulty, I finally
extracted the fact from her that she pinned a dollar bill to a postal card and dropped it in a street postal box.
And she doesn't yet see that she has done anything extraordinary, or that she had a faith in Uncle Sam that I
call sublime."
The Journal had been calling the attention of its readers to the defacement of the landscape by billboard
advertisers. One day on his way to New York he found himself sitting in a sleeping-car section opposite a
woman and her daughter.
The mother was looking at the landscape when suddenly she commented:
"There are some of those ugly advertising signs that Mr. Bok says are such a defacement to the landscape. I
never noticed them before, but he is right, and I am going to write and tell him so."
"Oh, mamma, don't," said the girl. "That man is pampered enough by women. Don't make him worse. Ethel
says he is now the vainest man in America."
Bok's eyes must have twinkled, and just then the mother looked at him, caught his eye; she gave a little gasp,
and Bok saw that she had telepathically discovered him!
He smiled, raised his hat, presented his card to the mother, and said: "Excuse me, but I do want to defend
myself from that last statement, if I may. I couldn't help overhearing it."
The mother, a woman of the world, read the name on the card quickly and smiled, but the daughter's face was
a study as she leaned over and glanced at the card. She turned scarlet and then white.

in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of the charges was furnished. The French couturier
simply resorted to a shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, implying that the accusations were beneath his notice.
Bok now followed the French models of dresses and millinery to the United States, and soon found that for
every genuine Parisian model sold in the large cities at least ten were copies, made in New York shops, but
with the labels of the French dressmakers and milliners sewed on them. He followed the labels to their source,
and discovered a firm one of whose specialties was the making of these labels bearing the names of the
leading French designers. They were manufactured by the gross, and sold in bundles to the retailers. Bok
secured a list of the buyers of these labels and found that they represented some of the leading merchants
throughout the country. All these facts he published. The retailers now sprang up in arms and denied the
charges, but again the denials were in general terms. Bok had the facts and they knew it. These facts were too
specific and too convincing to be controverted.
The editor had now presented a complete case before the women of America as to the character of the
Paris-designed fashions and the manner in which women were being hoodwinked in buying imitations.
Meanwhile, he had engaged the most expert designers in the world of women's dress and commissioned them
to create American designs. He sent one of his editors to the West to get first-hand motifs from Indian
costumes and adapt them as decorative themes for dress embroideries. Three designers searched the
Metropolitan Museum for new and artistic ideas, and he induced his company to install a battery of four-color
presses in order that the designs might be given in all the beauty of their original colors. For months designers
and artists worked; he had the designs passed upon by a board of judges composed of New York women who
knew good clothes, and then he began their publication.
The Legal Small Print 137
The editor of The New York Times asked Bok to conduct for that newspaper a prize contest for the best
American-designed dresses and hats, and edit a special supplement presenting them in full colors, the prizes to
be awarded by a jury of six of the leading New York women best versed in matters of dress. Hundreds of
designs were submitted, the best were selected, and the supplement issued under the most successful auspices.
In his own magazine, Bok published pages of American-designed fashions: their presence in the magazine
was advertised far and wide; conventions of dressmakers were called to consider the salability of
domestic-designed fashions; and a campaign with the slogan "American Fashions for American Women" was
soon in full swing.
But there it ended. The women looked the designs over with interest, as they did all designs of new clothes,

American woman was being hoodwinked on every hand, and the reign of the French couturier was once more
supreme.
There was no disguising the fact that the case was hopeless, and Bok recognized and accepted the inevitable.
He had, at least, the satisfaction of having made an intelligent effort to awaken the American woman to her
The Legal Small Print 138
unintelligent submission. But she refused to be awakened. She preferred to be a tool: to be made a fool of.
Bok's probe into the feminine nature had been keenly disappointing. He had earnestly tried to serve the
American woman, and he had failed. But he was destined to receive a still greater and deeper disappointment
on his next excursion into the feminine nature, although, this time, he was to win.
During his investigations into women's fashions, he had unearthed the origin of the fashionable aigrette, the
most desired of all the feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel torture of the
mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in her period of maternity and who was cruelly
slaughtered, usually left to die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to starve while
they awaited the return of the mother-bird.
Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery of the mother and the starvation
of her little ones. He collected all the photographs that he could secure, had the most graphic text written to
them, and began their publication. He felt certain that the mere publication of the frightfully convincing
photographs would be enough to arouse the mother-instinct in every woman and stop the wearing of the
so-highly prized feather. But for the second time in his attempt to reform the feminine nature he reckoned
beside the mark.
He published a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which the aigrette was secured. There was no
challenging the actual facts as shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and the
starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's
accusations. Letters poured in upon the editor from Audubon Society workers; from lovers of birds, and from
women filled with the humanitarian instinct. But Bok knew that the answer was not with those few: the
solution lay with the larger circle of American womanhood from which he did not hear.
He waited for results. They came. But they were not those for which he had striven. After four months of his
campaign, he learned from the inside of the importing-houses which dealt in the largest stocks of aigrettes in
the United States that the demand for the feather had more than quadrupled! Bok was dumbfounded! He made
inquiries in certain channels from which he knew he could secure the most reliable information, and after all

off my hair so well as an aigrette. Say I am cruel if you like. I wish the heron-mother didn't have to be killed
or the babies starve, but, Mr. Bok, I must have my beautiful aigrette!"
Bok was frankly astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into the feminine nature. With every desire
and instinct to disbelieve the facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled up: there was
no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it.
But Bok was determined that this time he would not fail. His sense of justice and protection to the mother-bird
and her young was now fully aroused. He resolved that he would, by compulsion, bring about what he had
failed to do by persuasion. He would make it impossible for women to be untrue to their most sacred instinct.
He sought legal talent, had a bill drawn up making it a misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or wear an
aigrette. Armed with this measure, and the photographs and articles which he had published, he sought and
obtained the interest and promise of support of the most influential legislators in several States. He felt a sense
of pride in his own sex that he had no trouble in winning the immediate interest of every legislator with whom
he talked.
Where he had failed with women, he was succeeding with men! The outrageous butchery of the birds and the
circumstances under which they were tortured appealed with direct force to the sporting instinct in every man,
and aroused him. Bok explained to each that he need expect no support for such a measure from women save
from the members of the Audubon Societies, and a few humanitarian women and bird-lovers. Women, as a
whole, he argued from his experiences, while they would not go so far as openly to oppose such a measure,
for fear of public comment, would do nothing to further its passage, for in their hearts they preferred failure to
success for the legislation. They had frankly told him so: he was not speaking from theory.
In one State after another Bok got into touch with legislators. He counselled, in each case, a quiet passage for
the measure instead of one that would draw public attention to it.
Meanwhile, a strong initiative had come from the Audubon Societies throughout the country, and from the
National Association of Audubon Societies, at New York. This latter society also caused to be introduced bills
of its own to the same and in various legislatures, and here Bok had a valuable ally. It was a curious fact that
the Audubon officials encountered their strongest resistance in Bok's own State: Pennsylvania. But Bok's
personal acquaintance with legislators in his Keystone State helped here materially.
The demand for the aigrette constantly increased and rose to hitherto unknown figures. In one State where
Bok's measure was pending before the legislature, he heard of the coming of an unusually large shipment of
aigrettes to meet this increased demand. He wired the legislator in charge of the measure apprising him of this