When I learned a few years later that Baker was the author of the wise, homely, whimsical “Adventures in Contentment,” “The Friendly Road” and other delightful essays under the nom de plume of David Grayson I said at once, “How stupid of me not to have known it! Haven’t I always known that Baker is a David Grayson?” Few practical philosophers, indeed, have so lived their creed as Ray Stannard Baker, and none have had a more general recognition from the multitude of people in the country who, like him, believe in the fine art of simple living. It is a comforting and beautiful thing to have had as a friend and co-worker over many years so rare a person as Ray Stannard Baker.
By good fortune _McClure’s_ in this period happened on a reader of real genius—Viola Roseboro—the only “born reader” I have ever known. I found her in the office after one of my frequent jaunts after material. It was as a talker that I first learned to admire and love her. Her judgments were unfettered, her emotions strong and warm, her expressions free, glowing, stirring, and she loved to talk, though only when she felt sympathy and understanding. She loved to share books, of which she read many, particularly in the biographical field; she wanted none but the best—no imitation, no mere fact-finding. Her eagerness to let no good thing slip, her consciousness of the all too little time a human being has in this world to explore its riches made her rigid in her choice. An unsleeping eagerness to find talent and give it a chance, and secondarily, she said, to enrich the magazine, made every day’s work with the unsifted manuscripts an adventure. If she found exceptional merit that was also suited to _McClure’s_ she might weep with excitement. And she stood to it till faith grew in those less sure of the untried. It was when _McClure’s_ was making a great hunt for a good serial that I saw her one morning bringing into the editorial sanctum Booth Tarkington’s “The Gentleman from Indiana,” tears celebrating the discovery as she cried, “Here is a serial sent by God Almighty for _McClure’s Magazine_!”
This woman of unusual intelligence, loyalty and of truly Spartan courage was a precious addition to the crowd. Ill health, threatened blindness, have never lowered her enthusiasm, her ceaseless effort to find the best, to give the best. She is still doing it.
The most brilliant addition to the _McClure’s_ staff in my time was Lincoln Steffens. He had made himself felt in the journalistic and political life of New York City by a fresh form of reportorial attack. Young, handsome, self-confident, with a good academic background and two years of foreign life and observation, Steffens began his professional career unencumbered by journalistic shibboleths and with an immense curiosity as to what was going on about him. He was soon puzzled and fascinated by the relations of police and politicians, politicians and the law, law and city officials, city officials and business, business and church, education, society, the press. Apparently groups from each of these categories worked together, supporting one another, an organization close, compact, loyal from fear or self-interest or both. It was because of this organization, Steffens concluded, that graft and vice and crime were established industries of the city. Attacks from outraged virtue had slowed up the system at intervals ever since the Civil War, but never permanently deranged it. A few rascals might be exterminated, but they were soon replaced. The system had bred new rascals, grown stronger and more cunning with time. He set out to trace its pattern. Incredibly outspoken, taking rascality for granted, apparently never shocked or angry or violent, never doubtful of himself, only coolly determined to demonstrate to men and women of good will and honest purpose what they were up against and warn them that the only way they could hope to grapple with a close corporation devoted to what there was in it was by an equally solid corporation devoted to decent and honest government, business, law, education, religion. First as a reporter and later as the city editor of the _Globe_, Steffens stirred the town.
It was entirely in harmony with the McClure method of staff building that this able, fearless innocent should be marked for absorption. He was persuaded to take the editing of the magazine, now in its tenth year and steadily growing in popularity and influence. He was to be the great executive—the editorial head that would shift some of the burden from the shoulders of Mr. McClure and Mr. Phillips. But the machine was running smoothly even if with little outward excitement. Steffens made a brave effort to adjust himself to the established order, to learn the situation. Naturally he took Mr. McClure’s meteoric goings and comings, his passionate and often despairing efforts to make his staff “see” what he did, his cries that the magazine was stale, dying, more seriously than those of us who had been longer together. He seems to have been bewildered by what went on in the excited staff meetings held whenever Mr. McClure came in from a foraging expedition. I had come to look on Mr. McClure’s returns as the most genuinely creative moments of our magazine life. He was an extraordinary reporter; his sense of the meaning, the meat of a man or event, his vivid imagination, his necessity of discharging on the group at once, before they were cold, his observations, intuitions, ideas, experiences, made the gatherings on his return amazingly stimulating to me. Sifting, examining, verifying, following up, were all necessary. Mr. McClure understood that and trusted John Phillips to see that it was done, but he properly fought for his findings. In his “Autobiography” Steffens credits me with a tact in our editorial scrimmages which I do not deserve. It is true, as he says, that I was the friend of each and all, but what I was chiefly interested in was seeing the magazine grow in delight and in usefulness. I knew our excited discussions were really fertile. They also were highly entertaining.
It was in this unsatisfied seeking by Mr. McClure for more and more of contemporary life that Lincoln Steffens’ chief contribution to it and to the political life of his period had its root. Mr. McClure’s fixed conviction that great editing was not to be done in the office he finally applied to Steffens, who was bravely struggling there to become the great editor he had been called to be.
“You can’t learn to edit a magazine in the office,” Mr. McClure told him. “Get out, go anywhere, everywhere, see what is going on in the cities and states, find out who are the men and the movements we ought to be reporting.”
And so Stef went for a month, to the Middle West mainly, constantly reporting back to the office in McClure fashion what he was finding. He combed the universities and the newspaper offices; he looked up politicians; he searched for writers, anything and everywhere which might possibly be grist to the greedy mill in New York.
One of the schemes on which he had been commissioned to check up was a series of articles on city and state governments. Almost at once he began to see larger and larger possibilities in the idea. There should be two series, he wrote the office, descriptions of the actual government of four or five typical cities and of as many states, humanized by studies of the men who ruled them or who were fighting the true rulers. A meeting with young district attorney Folk of St. Louis, then in the thick of a fight to reform his town, whetted his appetite. “If we take up the states,” he wrote, “I would prefer to wait for William Allen White to write the articles. The cities will be more in my line. If I should be entrusted with the work I think I could make my name.”
A few weeks later he was entrusted with the work. The result was “The Shame of the Cities” which, as he prophesied, made his name.
11 A CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY SEEKS MY ACQUAINTANCE
As Steffens’ case shows there was always much fingering of a subject at _McClure’s_ before one of the staff was told to go ahead. The original hint might come from Mr. McClure’s overflowing head and pocket, Mr. Phillips’ notebooks, as much a part of him as his glasses, the daily mail, the chance word of a caller. We all turned in our pickings. They must concern the life of the day, that which was interesting people. An idea, once launched, grew until fixed on somebody; and, once started, it continued to grow according to the response of readers. No response—no more chapters. A healthy response—as many chapters as the material justified.
It was by this process that my next long piece of work came into being: “The History of the Standard Oil Company.”
The deluge of monopolistic trusts which had followed the close of the Spanish-American War and the “return of prosperity” was disturbing and confusing people. It was contrary to their philosophy, their belief that, given free opportunity, free competition, there would always be brains and energy enough to prevent even the ablest leader monopolizing an industry. What was interfering with the free play of the forces in which they trusted? They had been depending on the Federal Antitrust Law passed ten years before. Was it quite useless? It looked that way.