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[[Main Page | WWI Document Archive]] > [[Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences]] > [[The_Life_and_Letters_of_Walter_H._Page|Walter H. Page]] > '''Chapter II'''
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<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">CHAPTER II</FONT></center>


<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">JOURNALISM</FONT></center>


<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">I</FONT></center>

<br><br>THE five years from 1878 to 1883 Page spent in various places,
engaged, for the larger part of the time, in several kinds of
journalistic work. It was his period of struggle and of preparation.
Like many American public men he served a brief apprenticeship---in
his case, a very brief one---as a pedagogue. In the autumn of
1878 he went to Louisville, Kentucky, and taught English for a
year at the Boys' High School. But he presently found an occupation
in this progressive city which proved far more absorbing. A few
months before his arrival certain energetic spirits had founded
a weekly paper, the <I>Age, </I>a journal which, they hoped, would
fill the place in the Southern States which the very successful
New York <I>Nation, </I>under the editorship of Godkin, was then
occupying in the North. Page at once began contributing leading
articles on literary and political topics to this publication;
the work proved so congenial that he purchased---on notes---a
controlling interest in the new venture and became its directing
spirit. The <I>Age </I>was in every way a worthy enterprise; in
the dignity of its makeup and the high literary standards at which
it aimed it imitated the London <I>Spectator. </I>Perhaps Page
obtained a thousand dollars' worth of fun out of his investment;
if so, that represented his entire profit. He now learned a lesson
which was emphasized in his after career as editor and publisher,
and that was that the Southern States provided a poor market for
books or periodicals. The net result of the proceeding was that,
at the age of twenty-three, he found himself out of a job and
considerably in debt.

<br><br>He has himself rapidly sketched his varied activities of the
next five years:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  <br><br>&quot;After trying in vain,&quot; he writes, &quot;to get
  work to do on any newspaper in North Carolina, I advertised for
  a job in journalism---any sort of a job. By a queer accident
  ---a fortunate one for me---the owner of the St. Joseph, Missouri,
  <I>Gazelle, </I>answered the advertisement. Why he did it, I
  never found out. He was in the same sort of desperate need of
  a newspaper man as I was in desperate need of a job. I knew nothing
  about him: he knew nothing about me. I knew nothing about newspaper
  work. I had done nothing since I left the University but teach
  English in the Louisville, Kentucky, High School for boys one
  winter and lecture at the summer school at Chapel Hill one summer.
  I made up my mind to go into journalism. But journalism didn't
  seem in any hurry to make up its mind to admit me. Not only did
  all the papers in North Carolina decline my requests for work,
  but such of them in Baltimore and Louisville as I tried said
  'No.' So I borrowed $50 and set out to St. Joe, Missouri, where
  I didn't know a human being. I became a reporter. At first I
  reported the price of cattle---went to the stockyards, etc. My
  salary came near to paying my board and lodging, but it didn't
  quite do it. But I had a good time in St. Joe for somewhat more
  than a year. There were interesting people there. I came to know
  something about Western life. Kansas was across the river. I
  often went there. I came to know Kansas City, St. Louis---a good
  deal of the West. After a while I was made editor of the paper.
  What a rousing political campaign or two we had! Then---I had
  done that kind of a job as long as I cared to. Every swashbuckling
  campaign is like every other one. Why do two? Besides, I knew
  my trade. I had done everything on a daily paper from stockyard
  reports to political editorials and heavy literary articles.
  In the meantime I had written several magazine articles and done
  other such jobs. I got leave of absence for a month or two. I
  wrote to several of the principal papers in Chicago, New York,
  and Boston and told them that I was going down South to make
  political and social studies and that I was going to send them
  my letters. I hoped they'd publish them.
  <br><br>&quot;That's all I could say. I could make no engagement;
  they didn't know me. I didn't even ask for an engagement. I told
  them simply this: that I'd write letters and send them; and I
  prayed heaven that they'd print them and pay for them. Then off
  I went with my little money in my pocket---about enough to get
  to New Orleans. I travelled and I wrote. I went all over the
  South. I sent letters and letters and letters. All the papers
  published all that I sent them and I was rolling in wealth I
  had money in my pocket for the first time in my life. Then I
  went back to St. Joe and resigned; for the (old) New York <I>World</I>
  had asked me to go to the Atlanta Exposition as a correspondent.
  I went. I wrote and kept writing. How kind Henry Grady was to
  me! But at last the Exposition ended. I was out of a job. I applied
  to the <I>Constitution.</I> No,<I> </I>they wouldn't have me.
  I never got a job in my life that I asked for! But all my life
  better jobs have been given me than I dared ask for. Well---I
  was at the end of my rope in Atlanta and I was trying to make
  a living in any honest way I could when one day a telegram came
  from the New York <I>World</I> (it was the old <I>World</I>,
  which was one of the best of the dailies in its literary quality)
  asking me to come to New York. I had never seen a man on the
  paper---had never been in New York except for a day when I landed
  there on a return voyage from a European trip that I took during
  one vacation when I was in the University. Then I went to New
  York straight and quickly. I had an interesting experience on
  the old <I>World</I>, writing literary matter chiefly, an editorial
  now and then, and I was frequently sent as a correspondent on
  interesting errands. I travelled all over the country with the
  Tariff Commission. I spent one winter in Washington as a sort
  of editorial correspondent while the tariff bill was going through
  Congress. Then, one day, the <I>World</I> was sold to Mr. Pulitzer
  and all the staff resigned. The character of the paper changed.&quot;</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>What better training could a journalist ask for than this?
Page was only twenty-eight when these five years came to an end;
but his life had been a comprehensive education in human contact,
in the course of which he had picked up many things that were
not included in the routine of Johns Hopkins University. From
Athens to St. Joe, from the comedies of Aristophanes to the stockyards
and political conventions of Kansas City---the transition may
possibly have been an abrupt one, but it is not likely that Page
so regarded it. For books and the personal relation both appealed
to him, in almost equal proportions, as essentials to the fully
rounded man. Merely from the standpoint of geography, Page's achievement
had been an important one; how many Americans, at the age of twenty-eight,
have such an extensive mileage to their credit? Page had spent
his childhood---and his childhood only---in North Carolina; he
had passed his youth in Virginia and Maryland; before he was twenty-three
he had lived several months in Germany, and, on his return voyage,
he had sailed by the white cliffs of England, and, from the deck
of his steamer, had caught glimpses of that Isle of Wight which
then held his youthful favourite Tennyson. He had added to these
experiences a winter in Kentucky and a sojourn of nearly two years
in Missouri. His Southern trip, to which Page refers in the above,
had taken him through Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,
and Louisiana; he had visited the West again in 1882, spending
a considerable time in all the large cities, Chicago, Omaha, Denver,
Leadville, Salt Lake, and from the latter point he had travelled
extensively through Mormondom. The several months spent in Atlanta
had given the young correspondent a glimpse into the new South,
for this energetic city embodied a Southern spirit that was several
decades removed from the Civil War. After this came nearly two
years in New York and Washington, where Page gained his first
insight into Federal politics; in particular, as a correspondent
attached to the Tariff Commission---an assignment that again started
him on his travels to industrial centres---he came into contact,
for the first time, with the mechanism of framing the great American
tariff. And during this period Page was not only forming a first-hand
acquaintance with the passing scene, but also with important actors
in it. The mere fact that, on the St. Joseph <I>Gazelle, </I>he
succeeded Eugene Field---&quot;a good fellow named Page is going
to take my desk,&quot; said the careless poet, &quot;I hope he
will succeed to my debts too&quot;---always remained a pleasant
memory. He entered zealously into the life of this active community;
his love of talk and disputation, his interest in politics, his
hearty laugh, his vigorous handclasp, his animation of body and
of spirit, and his sunny outlook on men and events---these are
the traits that his old friends in this town, some of whom still
survive, associate with the juvenile editor. In his Southern trip
Page called---self invited---upon Jefferson Davis and was cordially
received. At Atlanta, as he records above, he made friends with
that chivalric champion of a resurrected South, Henry Grady; here
also he obtained fugitive glimpses of a struggling and briefless
lawyer, who, like Page, was interested more in books and writing
than in the humdrum of professional life, and who was then engaged
in putting together a brochure on <I>Congressional Government
</I>which immediately gave him a national standing. The name of
this sympathetic acquaintance was Woodrow Wilson.

<br><br>Another important event had taken place, for, at St. Louis,
on November 15, 1880, Page had married Miss Willia Alice Wilson.
Miss Wilson was the daughter of a Scotch physician, Dr. William
Wilson, who had settled in Michigan, near Detroit, in 1832.<I>
</I>When she was a small child she went with her sister's family---her
father had died seven years before---to North Carolina, near Cary;
and she and Page had been childhood friends and schoolmates. At
the time of the wedding, Page was editor of the St. Joseph <I>Gazelle;
</I>the fact that he had attained this position, five months after
starting at the bottom, sufficiently discloses his aptitude for
journalistic work.

<br><br>Page had now outgrown any Southern particularism with which
he may have started life. He no longer found his country exclusively
in the area south of the Potomac; he had made his own the West,
the North---New York, Chicago, Denver, as well as Atlanta and
Raleigh. It is worth while insisting on this fact, for the cultivation
of a wide-sweeping Americanism and a profound faith in democracy
became the qualities that will loom most largely in his career
from this time forward. It is necessary only to read the newspaper
letters which he wrote on his Southern trip in 1881 to understand
how early his mind seized this new point of view. Many things
which now fell under his observant eye in the Southern States
greatly irritated him and with his characteristic impulsiveness
he pictured these traits in pungent phrase. The atmosphere of
shiftlessness that too generally prevailed in some localities;
the gangs of tobacco-chewing loafers assembled around railway
stations; the listless Negroes that seemed to overhang the whole
country like a black cloud; the plantation mansions in a sad state
of disrepair; the old unoccupied slave huts overgrown with weeds;
the unpainted and broken-down fences; the rich soil that was crudely
and wastefully cultivated with a single crop---the youthful social
philosopher found himself comparing these vestigia of a half-moribund
civilization with the vibrant cities of the North, the beautiful
white and green villages of New England, and the fertile prairie
farms of the West. &quot;Even the dogs,&quot; he said, &quot;look
old-fashioned.&quot; Oh, for a change in his beloved South---a
change of almost any kind! &quot;Even a heresy, if it be bright
and fresh, would be a relief. You feel as if you wished to see
some kind of an effort put forth, a discussion, a fight, a runaway,
anything to make the blood go faster.&quot; Wherever Page saw
signs of a new spirit---and he saw many---he recorded them with
an eagerness which showed his loyalty to the section of his birth.
The splitting up of great plantations into small farms he put
down as one of the indications of a new day. A growing tendency
to educate, not only the white child, but the Negro, inspired
a similar tribute. But he rejoiced most over the decreasing bitterness
of the masses over the memories of the Civil War, and discovered,
with satisfaction, that any remaining ill-feeling was a heritage
left not by the Union soldier, but by the carpetbagger.

<br><br>And one scene is worth preserving, for it illustrates not only
the zeal of Page himself for the common country, but the changing
attitude of the Southern people. It was enacted, at Martin, Tennessee,
on the evening of July 2, 1881. Page was spending a few hours
in the village grocery, discussing things in general with the
local yeomanry, when the telegraph operator came from the post
office with rather more than his usual expedition and excitement.
He was frantically waving a yellow slip which bore the news that
President Garfield had been shot. Garfield had been an energetic
and a successful general in the war and his subsequent course
in Congress, where he had joined the radical Republicans, had
not caused the South to look upon him as a friend. But these farmers
responded to this shock, not like sectionalists, but like Americans.
&quot;Every man of them,&quot; Page records, &quot;expressed almost
a personal sorrow. Little was said of politics or of parties.
Mr. Garfield was President of the United States---that was enough.
A dozen voices spoke the great gratification that the assassin
was not a Southern man. It was an affecting scene to see weather-beaten
old countrymen so profoundly agitated---men who yesterday I should
have supposed hardly knew and certainly did not seem to care who
was President. The great centres of population, of politicians,
and of thought may be profoundly agitated to-night, but no more
patriotic sorrow and humiliation is felt anywhere by any men than
by these old backwoods ex-Confederates.&quot;

<br><br>Page himself was so stirred by the news that he ascended a
cracker barrel, and made a speech to the assembled countrymen,
preaching to responsive ears the theme of North and South, now
reunited in a common sorrow. Thus, by the time he was twenty-six,
Page, at any rate in respect to his Americanism, was a full-grown
man.<br><br>.

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">II</FONT></center>

<br><br>A few years afterward Page had an opportunity of discussing
this, his favourite topic, with the American whom he most admired.
Perhaps the finest thing in the career of Grover Cleveland was
the influence which he exerted upon young men. After the sordid
political transactions of the reconstruction period and after
the orgy of partisanship which had followed the Civil War, this
new figure, acceding to the Presidency in 1885, came as an inspiration
to millions of zealous and intelligent young college-bred Americans.
One of the first to feel the new spell was Walter Page; Mr. Cleveland
was perhaps the most important influence in forming his public
ideals. Of everything that Cleveland represented---civil service
reform; the cleansing of politics, state and national; the reduction
in the tariff; a foreign policy which, without degenerating into
truculence, manfully upheld the rights of American citizens; a
determination to curb the growing pension evil; the doctrine that
the Government was something to be served and not something to
be plundered---Page became an active and brilliant journalistic
advocate. It was therefore a great day in his life when, on a
trip to Washington in the autumn of 1885, he had an hour's private
conversation with President Cleveland, and it was entirely characteristic
of Page that he should make the conversation take the turn of
a discussion of the so-called Southern question.

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  <br><br>&quot;In the White House at Washington,&quot; Page wrote about
  this visit, &quot;is an honest, plain, strong man, a man of wonderfully
  broad information and of most uncommon industry. He has always
  been a Democrat. He is a distinguished lawyer and a scholar on
  all public questions. He is as frank and patriotic and sincere
  as any man that ever won the high place he holds. Within less
  than a year he has done so well and so wisely that he has disappointed
  his enemies and won their admiration. He is as unselfish as he
  is great. He is one of the most industrious men in the world.
  He rises early and works late and does not waste his time---all
  because his time is now not his own but the Republic's, whose
  most honoured servant he is. I count it among the most inspiring
  experiences in my life that I had the privilege, at the suggestion
  of one of his personal friends, of talking with him one morning
  about the complete reuniting of the two great sections of our
  Republic by his election. I told him, and I know I told him the
  truth, when I said that every young man in the Southern States
  who, without an opportunity to share either the glory or the
  defeat of the late Confederacy, had in spite of himself suffered
  the disadvantages of the poverty and oppression that followed
  war, took new hope for the full and speedy realization of a complete
  union, of unparalleled prosperity and of broad thinking and noble
  living from his elevation to the Presidency. I told him that
  the men of North Carolina were not only patriotic but ambitious
  as well; and that they were Democrats and proud citizens of the
  State and the Republic not because they wanted offices or favours,
  but because they loved freedom and wished the land that had been
  impoverished by war to regain more than it had lost. 'I have
  not called, Mr. President, to ask for an office for myself or
  for anybody else,' I remarked; 'but to have the pleasure of expressing
  my gratification, as a citizen of North Carolina, at the complete
  change in political methods and morals that I believe will date
  from your Administration.' He answered that he was glad to see
  all men who came in such a spirit and did not come to beg---especially
  young men of the South of to-day; and he talked and encouraged
  me to talk freely as if he had been as small a man as I am, or
  I as great a man as he is.
  <br><br>&quot;From that day to this it has been my business to watch
  every public act that he does, to read every public word he speaks,
  and it has been a pleasure and a benefit to me (like the benefit
  that a man gets from reading a great history---for he is making
  a great history) to study the progress of his Administration;
  and at every step he seems to me to warrant the trust that the
  great Democratic party put in him.&quot;</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>The period to which Page refers in this letter represented
the time when he was making a serious and harassing attempt to
establish himself in his chosen profession in his native state.
He went south for a short visit after resigning his place on the
New York <I>World, </I>and several admirers in Raleigh persuaded
him to found a new paper, which should devote itself to preaching
the Cleveland ideals, and, above all, to exerting an influence
on the development of a new Southern spirit. No task could have
been more grateful to Page and there was no place in which he
would have better liked to undertake it than in the old state
which he loved so well. The result was the <I>Stale Chronicle
</I>of Raleigh, practically a new paper, which for a year and
a half proved to be the most unconventional and refreshing influence
that North Carolina had known in many a year. Necessarily Page
found himself in conflict with his environment. He had little
interest in the things that then chiefly interested the state,
and North Carolina apparently had little interest in the things
that chiefly occupied the mind of the youthful journalist. Page
was interested in Cleveland, in the reform of the civil service;
the Democrats of North Carolina little appreciated their great
national leader and were especially hostile to his belief that
service to a party did not in itself establish a qualification
for public office. Page was interested in uplifting the common
people, in helping every farmer to own his own acres, and in teaching
the most modern and scientific way of cultivating them; he was
interested in giving every boy and girl at least an elementary
education, and in giving a university training to such as had
the aptitude and the ambition to obtain it; he believed in industrial
training ---and in these things the North Carolina of those days
had little concern. Page even went so far as to take an open stand
for the pitiably neglected black man: he insisted that he should
be taught to read and write, and instructed in agriculture and
the manual trades. A man who advocated such revolutionary things
in those days was accused---and Page was so accused---of attempting
to promote the &quot;social equality&quot; of the two races. Page
also declaimed in favour of developing the state industrially;
he called attention to the absurdity of sending Southern cotton
to New England spinning mills, and he pointed out the boundless
but unworked natural resources of the state, in minerals, forests,
waterpower, and lands.

<br><br>North Carolina, he informed his astonished compatriots, had
once been a great manufacturing colony; why could the state not
become one again? But the matter in which the buoyant editor and
his constituents found themselves most at variance was the spirit
that controlled North Carolina life. It was a spirit that found
comfort for its present poverty and lack of progress in a backward
look at the greatness of the state in the past and the achievements
of its sons in the Civil War. Though Page believed that the Confederacy
had been a ghastly error, and though he abhorred the institution
of slavery and attributed to it all the woes, economic and social,
from which his section suffered, he rendered that homage to the
soldiers of the South which is the due of brave, self-sacrificing
and conscientious men; yet he taught that progress lay in regarding
the four dreadful years of the Civil War as the closed chapter
of an unhappy and mistaken history and in hastening the day when
the South should resume its place as a living part of the great
American democracy. All manifestations of a contrary spirit he
ridiculed in language which was extremely readable but which at
times outraged the good conservative people whom he was attempting
to convert. He did not even spare the one figure which was almost
a part of the Southerner's religion, the Confederate general,
especially that particular type who used his war record as a stepping
stone to public office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid
in its celebrations of the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated,
in style and matter, to the realities of the present. The image-breaking
editor even asserted that the Daughters of the Confederacy were
not entirely a helpful influence in Southern regeneration; for
they, too, were harping always upon the old times and keeping
alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds. This he regarded as an
unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern women, and he said
so, sometimes in language that made him very unpopular in certain
circles.

<br><br>Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He found
that he had suddenly become a &quot;traitor &quot; to his country
and that his experiences in the North had completely &quot;Yankeeized&quot;
him. Even in more mature days, Page's pen had its javelin-like
quality; and in 1884, possessed as he was of all the fury of youth,
he never hesitated to return every blow that was rained upon his
head. As a matter of fact he had a highly enjoyable time. The
<I>State Chronicle </I>during his editorship is one of the most
cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. Even
those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction have
long since accepted the ideas for which Page was then contending;
&quot;the only trouble with him,&quot; they now ruefully admit,
&quot;was that he was forty years ahead of his time.&quot; They
recall with satisfaction the satiric accounts which Page used
to publish of Democratic Conventions---solemn, long-winded, frock-coated,
white-necktied affairs that displayed little concern for the reform
of the tariff or of the civil service, but an energetic interest
in pensioning Confederate veterans and erecting monuments to the
Southern heroes of the Civil War. One editorial is joyfully recalled,
in which Page referred to a public officer who was distinguished
for his dignity and his family tree, but not noted for any animated
administration of his duties, as &quot;Thothmes II.&quot; When
this bewildered functionary searched the Encyclopaedia and learned
that &quot; Thothmes II &quot; was an Egyptian king of the XVII1th
dynasty, whose dessicated mummy had recently been disinterred
from the hot sands of the desert, he naturally stopped his subscription
to the paper. The metaphor apparently tickled Page, for he used
it in a series of articles which have become immortal in the political
annals of North Carolina. These have always been known as the
&quot;Mummy letters.&quot; They furnished a vivid but rather aggravating
explanation for the existing backwardness and chauvinism of the
commonwealth. All the trouble, it seems, was caused by the &quot;mummies.&quot;
&quot;It is an awfully discouraging business,&quot; Page wrote,
&quot;to undertake to prove to a mummy that it is a mummy. You
go up to it and say, 'Old fellow, the Egyptian dynasties crumbled
several thousand years ago: you are a fish out of water. You have
by accident or the Providence of God got a long way out of your
time. This is America.' The old thing grins that grin. which death
set on its solemn features when the world was young; and your
task is so pitiful that even the humour of it is gone. Give it
up.&quot;

<br><br>Everything great in North Carolina, Page declared, belonged
to a vanished generation. &quot;Our great lawyers, great judges,
great editors, are all of the past. . . . In the general intelligence
of the people, in intellectual force and in cultivation, we are
doing nothing. We are not doing or getting more liberal ideas,
a broader view of this world. . . . The presumptuous powers of
ignorance, heredity, decayed respectability and stagnation that
control public action and public expression are absolutely leading
us back intellectually.&quot;

<br><br>But Page did more than berate the mummified aristocracy which,
he declared, was driving the best talent and initiative from the
state; he was not the only man in Raleigh who expressed these
unpopular views; at that time, indeed, he was the centre and inspiration
of a group of young progressive spirits who held frequent meetings
to devise ways of starting the state on the road to a new existence.
Page then, as always, exercised a great fascination over young
men. The apparently merciless character of his ridicule might
at first convey the idea of intolerance; the fact remains, however,
that he was the most tolerant of men; he was almost deferential
to the opinions of others, even the shallow and the inexperienced;
and nothing delighted him more than an animated discussion. His
liveliness of spirits, his mental and physical vitality, the constant
sparkle of his talk, the sharp edge of his humour, naturally drew
the younger men to his side. The result was the organization of
the Wautauga Club, a gathering which held monthly meetings for
the discussion of ways and means of improving social and educational
conditions in North Carolina. The very name gives the key to its
mental outlook. The Wautauga colony was one of the last founded
in North Carolina---in the extreme west, on a plateau of the Great
Smoky Mountains; it was always famous for the energy and independence
of its people. The word &quot;Wautauga&quot; therefore suggested
the breaker of tradition; and it provided a stimulating name for
Page's group of young spiritual and economic pathfinders. The
Wautauga Club had a brief existence of a little more than two
years, the period practically covering Page's residence in the
state; but its influence is an important fact at the present time.
It gave the state ideas that afterward caused something like a
revolution in its economic and educational status. The noblest
monument to its labours is the State College in Raleigh, an institution
which now has more than a thousand students, for the most part
studying the mechanic arts and scientific agriculture. To this
one college most North Carolinians to-day attribute the fact that
their state in appreciable measure is realizing its great economic
and industrial opportunities. From it in the last thirty years
thousands of young men have gone: in all sections of the commonwealth
they have caused the almost barren acres to yield fertile and
diversified crops; they have planted everywhere new industries;
they have unfolded unsuspected resources and everywhere created
wealth and spread enlightenment. This institution is a direct
outcome of Page's brief sojourn in his native state nearly forty
years ago. The idea originated in his brain; the files of the
<I>State Chronicle </I>tell the story of his struggle in its behalf;
the activities of the Wautauga Club were largely concentrated
upon securing its establishment.

<br><br>The State College was a great victory for Page, but final success
did not come until three years after he had left the state. For
a year and a half of hard newspaper work convinced Page that North
Carolina really had no permanent place for him. The <I>Chronicle
was </I>editorially a success: Page's articles were widely quoted,
not only in his own state but in New England and other parts of
the Union. He succeeded in stirring up North Carolina and the
South generally, but popular support for the <I>Chronicle was
</I>not forthcoming in sufficient amount to make the paper a commercial
possibility. Reluctantly and sadly Page had to forego his hope
of playing an active part in rescuing his state from the disasters
of the Civil War. Late in the summer of <I>1885, </I>he again
left for the North, which now became his permanent home.<br><br>

<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">III</FONT></center>

<br><br>And with this second sojourn in New York Page's opportunity
came. The first two years he spent in newspaper work, for the
most part with the <I>Evening Post, </I>but, one day in November,
1887,<I> </I>a man whom he had never seen came into his office
and unfolded a new opportunity. Two years before a rather miscellaneous
group had launched an ambitious literary undertaking. This was
a monthly periodical, which, it was hoped, would do for the United
States what such publications as the <I>Fortnightly and </I>the
<I>Contemporary</I> were doing for England. The magazine was to
have the highest literary quality and to be sufficiently dignified
to attract the finest minds in America as contributors; its purpose
was to exercise a profound influence in politics, literature,
science, and art. The projectors had selected for this publication
a title that was almost perfection---the <I>Forum</I>---but this,
after nearly two years' experimentation, represented about the
limit of their achievement. The <I>Forum</I> had hardly made an
impression on public thought and had attracted very few readers,
although it had lost large sums of money for its progenitors.
These public-spirited gentlemen now turned to Page as the man
who might rescue them from their dilemma and achieve their purpose.
He accepted the engagement, first as manager and presently as
editor, and remained the guiding spirit of the <I>Forum</I> for
eight years, until the summer of 1895.

<br><br>That the success of a publication is the success of its editors,
and not of its business managers and its &quot;backers,&quot;
is a truth that ought to be generally apparent; never has this
fact been so eloquently illustrated as in the case of the <I>Forum</I>
under Page. Before his accession it had had not the slightest
importance; for the period of his editorship it is doubtful if
any review published in English exercised so great an influence,
and certainly none ever obtained so large a circulation. From
almost nothing the <I>Forum</I>, in two or three years, attracted
30,000 subscribers---something without precedent for a publication
of this character. It had accomplished this great result simply
because of the vitality and interest of its contents. The period
covered was an important one, in the United States and Europe;
it was the time of Cleveland's second administration in this country,
and of Gladstone's fourth administration in England; it was a
time of great controversy and of a growing interest in science,
education, social reform and a better political order. All these
great matters were reflected in the pages of the <I>Forum</I>,
whose list of contributors contained the most distinguished names
in all countries. Its purpose, as Page explained it, was &quot;to
provoke discussion about subjects of contemporary interest, in
which the magazine is not a partisan, but merely the instrument.&quot;
In the highest sense, that is, its purpose was journalistic; practically
everything that it printed was related to the thought and the
action of the time. So insistent was Page on this programme that
his pages were not &quot;closed&quot; until a week before the
day of issue. Though the <I>Forum</I> dealt constantly in controversial
subjects it never did so in a narrow-minded spirit; it was always
ready to hear both sides of a question and the magazine &quot;debate,&quot;
in which opposing writers handled vigorously the same theme, was
a constant feature.

<br><br>Page, indeed, represented a new type of editor. Up to that
time this functionary had been a rather solemn, inaccessible high
priest; he sat secluded in his sanctuary, and weeded out from
the mass of manuscripts dumped upon his desk the particular selections
which seemed to be most suited to his purpose. To solicit contributions
would have seemed an entirely undignified proceeding; in all cases
contributors must come to him. According to Page, however, &quot;an
editor must know men and be out among men.&quot; His system of
&quot;making up&quot; the magazine at first somewhat astounded
his associates. A month or two in advance of publication day he
would draw up his table of contents. This, in its preliminary
stage, amounted to nothing except a list of the main subjects
which he aspired to handle in that number. It was a hope, not
a performance. The subjects were commonly suggested by the happenings
of the time---an especially outrageous lynching, the trial of
a clergyman for heresy, a new attack upon the Monroe Doctrine,
the discovery of a new substance such as radium, the publication
of an epoch-making book. Page would then fix upon the inevitable
men who could write most readably and most authoritatively upon
these topics, and &quot;go after&quot; them. Sometimes he would
write one of his matchless editorial letters; at other times he
would make a personal visit; if necessary, he would use any available
friends in a wire-pulling campaign. At all odds he must &quot;get&quot;
his man; once he had fixed upon a certain contributor nothing
could divert him from the chase. Nor did the negotiations cease
after he had &quot;landed&quot; his quarry. He had his way of
discussing the subject with his proposed writer, and he discussed
it from every possible point of view. He would take him to lunch
or to dinner; in his quiet way he would draw him out, find whether
he really knew much about the subject, learn the attitude that
he was likely to take, and delicately slip in suggestions of his
own. Not infrequently this preliminary interview would disclose
that the much sought writer, despite appearances, was not the
one who was destined for that particular job; in this case Page
would find some way of shunting him in favour of a more promising
candidate. But Page was no mere chaser of names; there was nothing
of the literary tuft-hunter about his editorial methods. He liked
to see such men as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, William
Graham. Sumner, Charles W. Eliot, Frederic Harrison, Paul Bourget,
and the like upon his title page---and here these and many other
similarly distinguished authors appeared---but the greatest name
could not attain a place there if the letter press that followed
were unworthy. Indeed Page's habit of throwing out the contributions
of the great, after paying a stiff price for them, caused much
perturbation in his counting room. One day he called in one of
his associates.

<br><br>&quot;Do you see that waste basket?&quot; he asked, pointing
to a large receptacle filled to overflowing with manuscripts.
&quot;All our Cleveland articles are there!&quot;

<br><br>He had gone to great trouble and expense to obtain a series
of six articles from the most prominent publicists and political
leaders of the country on the first year of Mr. Cleveland's second
administration. It was to be the &quot;feature&quot; of the number
then in preparation.

<br><br>&quot;There isn't one of them,&quot; he declared, &quot;who
has got the point. I have thrown them all away and I am going
to try to write something myself.&quot;

<br><br>And he spent a couple of days turning out an article which
aroused great public interest. When Page commissioned an article,
he meant simply that he would pay full price for it; whether he
would publish it depended entirely upon the quality of the material
itself. But Page was just as severe upon his own writings as upon
those of other men. He wrote occasionally---always under a nom-de-plume;
but he had great difficulty in satisfying his own editorial standards.
After finishing an article he would commonly send for one of his
friends and read the result.

<br><br>&quot;That is superb!&quot; this admiring associate would sometimes
say.

<br><br>In response Page would take the manuscript and, holding it
aloft in two hands, tear it into several bits, and throw the scraps
into the waste basket.

<br><br>&quot;Oh, I can do better than that,&quot; he would laugh and
in another minute he was busy rewriting the article, from beginning
to end.

<br><br>Page retired from the editorship of the <I>Forum </I>in 1895.
The severance of relations was half a comedy, half a tragedy.
The proprietors had only the remotest relation to literature;
they had lost much money in the enterprise before Page became
editor and only the fortunate accident of securing his services
had changed their losing venture into a financial success. In
a moment of despair, before the happier period had arrived, they
offered to sell the property to Page and his friends. Page quickly
assembled a new group to purchase control, when, much to the amazement
of the old owners, the <I>Forum </I>began to make money. Instead
of having a burden on their hands, the proprietors suddenly discovered
that they had a gold mine. They therefore refused to deliver their
holdings and an inevitable struggle ensued for control. Page could
edit a magazine and turn a shipwrecked enterprise into a profitable
one; but, in a tussle of this kind, he was no match for the shrewd
business men who owned the property. When the time came for counting
noses Page and his friends found themselves in a minority. Of
course his resignation as editor necessarily followed this little
unpleasantness. And just as inevitably the <I>Forum </I>again
began to lose money, and soon sank into an obscurity from which
it has never emerged.

<br><br>The <I>Forum </I>had established Page's reputation as an editor,
and the competition for his services was lively. The distinguished
Boston publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Company immediately
invited him to become a part of their organization. When Horace
E. Scudder, in 1898, resigned the editorship of the <I>Atlantic
Monthly, </I>Page succeeded him. Thus Page became the successor
of James Russell Lowell, James T. Fields, William D. Howells,
and Thomas Bailey Aldrich as the head of this famous periodical.
This meant that he had reached the top of his profession. He was
now forty-three years old.

<br><br>No American publication had ever had so brilliant a history.
Founded in 1857, in the most flourishing period of the New England
writers, its pages had first published many of the best essays
of Emerson, the second series of the Biglow papers as well as
many other of Lowell's writings, poems of Longfellow and Whittier,
such great successes as Holmes's &quot;Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table,&quot; Mrs. Howe's &quot;Battle Hymn of the Republic,&quot;
and the early novels of Henry James. If America had a literature,
the <I>Atlantic </I>was certainly its most successful periodical
exponent. Yet, in a sense, the <I>Atlantic, </I>by the time Page
succeeded to the editorship, had become the victim of its dazzling
past. Its recent editors had lived too exclusively in their back
numbers. They had conducted the magazine too much for the restricted
audience of Boston and New England. There was a time, indeed,
when the business office arranged the subscribers in two classes---&quot;
Boston&quot; and &quot;foreign&quot;; &quot;Boston&quot; representing
their local adherents, and &quot;foreign&quot; the loyal readers
who lived in the more benighted parts of the United States. One
of its editors had been heard to boast that he never solicited
a contribution; it was not his business to be a literary drummer!
Let the truth be fairly spoken: when Page made his first appearance
in the <I>Atlantic </I>office, the magazine was unquestionably
on the decline. Its literary quality was still high; the momentum
that its great contributors had given it was still keeping the
publication alive; entrance into its columns still represented
the ultimate ambition of the aspiring American writer; but it
needed a new spirit to insure its future. What it required was
the kind of editing that had suddenly made the <I>Forum </I>one
of the greatest of English-written reviews. This is the reason
why the canny Yankee proprietors had reached over to New York
and grasped Page as quickly as the capitalists of the <I>Forum
</I>let him slip between their fingers.

<br><br>Page's sense of humour discovered a certain ironic aspect in
his position as the dictator of this famous New England magazine.
The fact that his manner was impatiently energetic and somewhat
startling to the placid atmosphere of Park Street was not the
thing that really signified its break with its past. But here
was a Southerner firmly entrenched in a headquarters that had
long been sacred to the New England abolitionists. One of the
first sights that greeted Page, as he came into the office, was
the angular and spectacled countenance of William Lloyd Garrison,
gazing down from a steel engraving on the wall. One of Garrison's
sons was a colleague, and the anterooms were frequently cluttered
with dusky gentlemen patiently waiting for interviews with this
benefactor of their race. Page once was careless enough to inform
Mr. Garrison that &quot;one of your niggers&quot; was waiting
outside for an audience. &quot;I very much regret, Mr. Page,&quot;
came the answer, &quot;that you should insist on spelling 'Negro'
with two 'g's'.&quot; Despite the mock solemnity of this rebuke,
perennial good-nature and raillery prevailed between the son of
Garrison and his disrespectful but ever sympathetic Southern friend.
Indeed, one of Page's earliest performances was to introduce a
spirit of laughter and genial cooperation into a rather solemn
and self-satisfied environment. Mr. Mifflin, the head of the house,
even formally thanked Page &quot;for the hearty human way in which
you take hold of life.&quot; Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the present
editor of the <I>Atlantic, </I>has described the somewhat disconcerting
descent of Page upon the editorial sanctuary of James Russell
Lowell:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  <br><br>&quot;Were a visitant from another sphere to ask me for the
  incarnation of those qualities we love to call American, I should
  turn to a familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living
  portrait that hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness,
  bluntness, it seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy;
  a disposition to underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts;
  ingrained Yankee common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm;
  enormous self-confidence, impatience of failure---all of these
  were in him; and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted
  to his country, his family, his craft---a strong, bluff, tender
  man.
  <br><br>&quot;Those were the decorous days of the old tradition, and
  Page's entrance into the 'atmosphere' of Park Street has taken
  on the dignity of legend. There were all kinds of signs and portents,
  as the older denizens will tell you. Strange breezes floated
  through the office, electric emanations, and a pervasive scent
  of tobacco, which---so the local historian says---had been unknown
  in the vicinity since the days of Walter Raleigh, except for
  the literary aroma of Aldrich's quarantined sanctum upstairs.
  Page's coming marked the end of small ways. His first requirement
  was, in lieu of a desk, a table that might have served a family
  of twelve for Thanksgiving dinner. No one could imagine what
  that vast, polished tableland could serve for until they watched
  the editor at work. Then they saw. Order vanished and chaos reigned.
  Huge piles of papers, letters, articles, reports, books, pamphlets,
  magazines, congregated themselves as if by magic. To work in
  such confusion seemed hopeless, but Page eluded the congestion
  by the simple expedient of moving on. He would light a fresh
  cigar, give the editorial chair a hitch, and begin his work in
  front of a fresh expanse of table, with no clutter of the past
  to disturb the new day's litter.
  <br><br>&quot;The motive power of his work was enthusiasm. Never was
  more generous welcome given to a newcomer than Page held out
  to the successful manuscript of an unknown. I remember, though
  I heard the news second hand at the time, what a day it was in
  the office when the first manuscript from the future author of
  'To Have and To Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl.
  He walked up and down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping
  the crisp manuscript to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler
  instance, I recall the words of over generous praise with which
  he greeted the first paper I ever sent to an editor quite as
  clearly as I remember the monstrous effort which had brought
  it into being. Sometimes he would do a favoured manuscript the
  honour of taking it out to lunch in his coat-pocket, and an associate
  vividly recalls eggs, coffee, and pie in a near-by restaurant,
  while, in a voice that could be heard by the remotest lunchers.
  Page read passages which many of them were too startled to appreciate.
  He was not given to overrating, but it was not in his nature
  to understate. 'I tell you,' said he, grumbling over some unfortunate
  proof-sheets from Manhattan, 'there isn't one man in New York
  who can write English---not from the Battery to Harlem Heights.'
  And if the faults were moral rather than literary, his disapproval
  grew in emphasis. There is more than tradition in the tale of
  the Negro who, presuming on Page's deep interest in his race,
  brought to his desk a manuscript copied word for word from a
  published source. Page recognized the deception, and seizing
  the rascal's collar with a firm editorial grip, rejected the
  poem, and ejected the poet, with an energy very invigorating
  to the ancient serenities of the office.
  <br><br>&quot;Page was always effervescent with ideas. Like an editor
  who would have made a good fisherman, he used to say that you
  had to cast a dozen times before you could get a strike. He was
  forever in those days sending out ideas and suggestions and invitations
  to write. The result was electric, and the magazine became with
  a suddenness (of which only an editor can appreciate the wonder)
  a storehouse of animating thoughts. He avoided the mistake common
  to our craft of editing a magazine for the immediate satisfaction
  of his colleagues. 'Don't write for the office,' he would say.
  'Write for outside,' and so his magazine became a living thing.
  His phrase suggests one special gift that Page had, for which
  his profession should do him especial honour. He was able, quite
  beyond the powers of any man of my acquaintance, to put compendiously
  into words the secrets of successful editing. It was capital
  training just to hear him talk. 'Never save a feature,' he used
  to say. 'Always work for the next number. Forget the others.
  Spend everything just on that.' And to those who know, there
  is divination in the principle. Again he understood instinctively
  that to write well a man must not only have something to say,
  but must long to say it. A highly intelligent representative
  of the coloured race came to him with a philosophic essay, Page
  would have none of it. 'I know what you are thinking of,' said
  Page. 'You are thinking of the barriers we set up against you,
  and the handicap of your lot. If you will write what it feels
  like to be a Negro, I will print that.' The result was a paper
  which has seemed to me the most moving expression of the hopeless
  hope of the race I know of.
  <br><br>&quot;Page was generous in his cooperation. He never drew
  a rigid line about his share in any enterprise, but gave and
  took help with each and all. A lover of good English, with an
  honest passion for things tersely said, Page esteemed good journalism
  far above any second-rate manifestation of more pretentious forms;
  but many of us will regret that he was not privileged to find
  some outlet for his energies in which aspiration for real literature
  might have played an ampler part. For the literature of the past
  Page had great respect, but his interest was ever in the present
  and the future. He was forever fulminating against bad writing,
  and hated the ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as
  much as he despised the sham of the man who affected letters,
  the dabbler and the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef
  of literature, not for the side dishes and the trimmings, and
  his appreciation of the substantial work of others was no surer
  than his instinct for his own performance. He was an admirable
  writer of exposition, argument, and narrative-solid and thoughtful,
  but never dull. . . . I came into close relations with him and
  from him I learned more of my profession than from any one I
  have ever known. Scores of other men would say the same.&quot;</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>But the fact that a new hand had seized the <I>Atlantic </I>was
apparent in other places than in the <I>Atlantic </I>office itself.
One of Page's contributors of the <I>Forum</I> days, Mr. Courtney
DeKalb, happened to be in St. Louis when the first number of the
magazine under its new editor made its appearance. Mr. DeKalb
had been out of the country for some time and knew nothing of
the change. Happening accidentally to pick up the <I>Atlantic,
</I>the table of contents caught his eye. It bore the traces of
an unmistakable hand. Only one man, he said to himself, could
assemble such a group as that, and above all, only Page could
give such an enticing turn of the titles. He therefore sat down
and wrote his old friend congratulating him on his accession to
the <I>Atlantic Monthly. </I>The change that now took. place was
indeed a conspicuous, almost a startling one. The <I>Atlantic
</I>retained all its old literary flavour, for to its traditions
Page was as much devoted as the highest caste Bostonian; it still
gave up much of its space to a high type of fiction, poetry, and
reviews of contemporary literature, but every number contained
also an assortment of articles which celebrated the prevailing
activities of men and women in all worthwhile fields of effort.
There were discussions of present-day politics, and these even
became personal dissections of presidential candidates; there
were articles on the racial characters of the American population:
Theodore Roosevelt was permitted to discuss the New York police;
Woodrow Wilson to pass in review the several elements that made
the Nation; Booker T. Washington to picture the awakening of the
Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans upon a national beauty
and wealth of which they had been woefully ignorant, their forests;
William Allen White to describe certain aspects of his favourite
Kansas; E. L. Godkin to review the dangers and, the hopes of American
democracy; Jacob Riis to tell about the Battle with the Slum;
and W. G. Frost to reveal for the first time the archaic civilization
of the Kentucky mountaineers. The latter article illustrated Page's
genius at rewriting titles. Mr. Frost's theme was that these Kentucky
mountaineers were really Elizabethan survivals; that their dialect,
their ballads, their habits were really a case of arrested development;
that by studying them present-day Americans could get a picture
of their distant forbears. Page gave vitality to the presentation
by changing a commonplace title to this one: &quot;Our Contemporary
Ancestors.&quot;

<br><br>There were those who were offended by Page's willingness to
seek inspiration on the highways and byways and even in newspapers,
for not infrequently he would find hidden away in a corner an
idea that would result in valuable magazine matter. On one occasion
at least this practice had important literary consequences. One
day he happened to read that a Mrs. Robert Hanning had died in
Toronto, the account casually mentioning the fact that Mrs. Hanning
was the youngest sister of Thomas Carlyle. Page handed this clipping
to a young assistant, and told him to take the first train to
Canada. The editor could easily divine that a sister of Carlyle,
expatriated for forty-six years on this side of the Atlantic,
must have received a large number of letters from her brother,
and it was safe to assume that they had been carefully preserved.
Such proved to be the fact; and a new volume of Carlyle letters,
of somewhat more genial character than the other collections,
was the outcome of this visit.<ref>"Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Youngest Sister." Edited by Charles Townsend Copeland. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1899.</ref>And another fruit of this journalistic habit was---The Memoirs
of a Revolutionist,&quot; by Prince Peter Kropotkin. In 1897 the
great Russian nihilist was lecturing in Boston. Page met him,
learned from his own lips his story, and persuaded him to put
it in permanent form. This willingness of Page to admit such a
revolutionary person into the pages of the <I>Atlantic</I> caused
some excitement in conventional circles. In fact, it did take
some courage, but Page never hesitated; the man was of heroic
mould, he had a great story to tell, he wielded an engaging pen,
and his purposes were high-minded. A great book of memoirs was
the result.

<br><br>Mr. Sedgwick refers above to Page's editorial fervour when
Miss Mary Johnston's &quot;Prisoners of Hope&quot; first fell
out of the blue sky into his Boston office. Page's joy was not
less keen because the young author was a Virginia girl, and because
she had discovered that the early period of Virginia history was
a field for romance. When, a few months afterward, Page was casting
about for an Atlantic serial, Miss Johnston and this Virginia
field seemed to be an especially favourable prospect. &quot;Prisoners
of Hope&quot; had been published as a book and had made a good
success, but Miss Johnston's future still lay ahead of her. With
Page to think meant to act, and so, instead of writing a formal
letter, he at once jumped on a train for Birmingham, Alabama,
where Miss Johnston was then living. &quot;I remember quite distinctly
that first meeting,&quot; writes Miss Johnston. &quot;The day
was rainy. Standing at my window I watched Mr. Page---a characteristic
figure, air and walk---approach the house. When a few minutes
later I met him he was simplicity and kindliness itself. This
was my first personal contact with publishers (my publishers)
or with editors of anything so great as the <I>Atlantic. </I>My
heart beat! But he was friendly and Southern. I told him what
I had done upon a new story. He was going on that night. Might
he take the manuscript with him and read it upon the train? It
might---he couldn't say positively, of course---but it might have
serial possibilities. I was only too glad for him to have the
manuscript. I forget just how many chapters I had completed. But
it was not quite in order. Could I get it so in a few hours? In
that case he would send a messenger for it from the hotel. Yes,
I could. Very good! A little further talk and he left with a strong
handshake. Three or four hours later he had the manuscript and
took it with him from Birmingham that night.&quot;

<br><br>Page's enterprising visit had put into his hands the half-finished
manuscript of a story, &quot;To Have and to Hold,&quot; which,
when printed in the <I>Atlantic, </I>more than doubled its circulation,
and which, when made into a book, proved one of the biggest successes
since &quot;Uncle Tom's Cabin.&quot;

<br><br>Page's most independent stroke in his <I>Atlantic </I>days
came with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Boston was
then the headquarters of a national mood which has almost passed
out of popular remembrance. Its spokesmen called themselves anti-imperialists.
The theory back of their protest was that the American declaration
of war on Spain was not only the wanton attack of a great bully
upon a feeble little country: it was something that was bound
to have deplorable consequences. The United States was breaking
with its past and engaging in European quarrels; as a consequence
of the war it would acquire territories and embark on a career
of &quot;imperialism.&quot; Page was impatient at this kind of
twaddle. He declared that the Spanish War was a &quot;necessary
act of surgery for the health of civilization.&quot; He did not
believe that a nation, simply because it was small, should be
permitted to maintain indefinitely a human slaughter house at
the door of the United States. The <I>Atlantic </I>for June, 1898,
gave the so-called anti-imperialists a thrill of horror. On the
cover appeared the defiantly flying American flag; the first article
was a vigorous and approving presentation of the American case
against Spain; though this was unsigned, its incisive style at
once betrayed the author. The <I>Atlantic </I>had printed the
American flag on its cover during the Civil War; but certain New
Englanders thought that this latest struggle, in its motives and
its proportions, was hardly entitled to the distinction. Page
declared, however, that the Spanish War marked a new period in
history; and he endorsed the McKinley Administration, not only
in the war itself, but in its consequences, particularly the annexation
of the Philippine Islands.

<br><br>Page greatly enjoyed life in Boston and Cambridge. The ''Atlantic'' was rapidly growing in circulation and in influence, and the
new friends that its editor was making were especially to his
taste. He now had a family of four children, three boys and one
girl---and their bringing up and education, as he said at this
time, constituted his real occupation. So far as he could see,
in the summer of 1899, he was permanently established in life.
But larger events in the publishing world now again pulled him
back to New York.


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[[Main Page | WWI Document Archive]] > [[Diaries, Memorials, Personal Reminiscences]] > [[The_Life_and_Letters_of_Walter_H._Page|Walter H. Page]] > '''Chapter II'''
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