On a Saturday afternoon in 1907, believing myself alone, for the offices and plant had closed at twelve, I was standing at a drafting table making up the Thanksgiving issue of Collier’s when Mr. Collier entered. He became intrigued with proofs of decorative units being combined for initial-letter and page borders, as had earlier been done with similar material in designing a cover, and asked for some to take home and play with on the morrow. Robert Collier was that kind of a boss—a joy!

Of the Thanksgiving issue Royal Cortissoz wrote: “This week’s number has has just turned up and I cannot refrain from sending you my congratulations. The cover is bully; it’s good decoration, it’s appropriate, it’s everything that is first rate. The decorations all through are charming. More power to your elbow. It does my heart good to see Collier’s turning up in such splendid shape.” There were other favorable comments—but no noticeable jump in newsstand sales.

My joining Collier’s staff has been under circumstances quite exceptional, even for that somewhat pioneer period in which the streamlined editorial and publishing efficiency of today was only a vague dream. I had been asked to give the weekly a new typographic lay-out. When this was ready Mr. Collier suggested that I take the art editorship. He said I would be given his office in the editorial department and he would occupy one in the book department, where he could devote more time to that branch of the business, an arrangement he knew would please his father. I was to carry the title of art editor but in reality would be responsible for make-up and other details that had been demanding too much of his own time.

At the age of twelve I had begun to learn that type display is primarily for the purpose of selling something. In 1889, as a free-lance artist in Chicago, I had discovered that to sell something was also the prime purpose of designs for book and magazine covers and for posters. Later I was to realize that salesmanship possessed the same importance in editorial headings and blurbs. These never-to-be-forgotten lessons, taught by experience and emphasized by the sales results of the publicity campaign I had lately conducted for the American Typefounders Company, would classify that Thanksgiving number as a newsstand disappointment. However, it pleased Robert Collier who, even to hold a guaranteed circulation—when a loss would mean rebates to advertisers—would not permit the use of stories by such popular writers as Robert Chambers and Zane Gray nor the popular illustrations of such artists as Howard Chandler Christy!

My tenure at Collier’s gave me a new experience. There I always worked under conditions inviting and stimulating imagination, and there I probably unknowingly shattered many a precious editorial precedent.

Collier’s had one of the early color presses akin to those used on newspapers. We decided to use this to print illustrations for a monthly “Household Number” carrying extra stories. The editorial back-list showed no fiction suitable for color; the awarding of one thousand dollars a month for the best story, judgment based upon literary merit, had resulted in the purchase of nothing but literary fog. Mr. Collier told Charles Belmont Davis, fiction editor, to order what was necessary. Charley asked me who could write the type of story needed. I said, “Gouverneur Morris.” Mr. Morris, then in California, sent a list of titles accompanied by the request: “Ask Will Bradley to take his pick.” We chose The Wife’s Coffin, a pirate tale. During an editorial dinner at his home Robert Collier read a letter from his father, then out of the city, in which P. F. (his father) wrote: “If you continue printing issues like this last our subscription-book salesmen report the weekly will sell itself.” Robert said: “Mr. Bradley can make this kind of a number because he knows the people from whom the salesmen obtain subscriptions. I don’t, and any similar undertaking by me would be false and a failure.”

During this period of art editorship, and following the lay-out of a booklet, Seven Steps and a Landing, for CondÉ Nast, advertising manager of Collier’s, a color-spread for Cluett-Peabody, lay-outs for the subscription-book department, and pieces of printing for Mr. Collier’s social activities (also a request from Medill McCormick that I go to Chicago and supply a new typographic make-up for the Tribune; a suggestion from Mr. Chichester, president of the Century Company, that if I were ever free he would like to talk with me about taking the art editorship of Century; and from Mr. Schweindler, printer of Cosmopolitan and other magazines, an expression of the hope that I could be obtained for laying-out a new publication), Robert Collier proposed the building of a pent-house studio on the roof near his father’s office where, relieved of much detail, I could give additional thought to all branches of the business. This promised too little excitement, and instead I rented a studio-office on the forty-fifth floor of the then nearly-finished Metropolitan Tower. At this time CondÉ Nast had just purchased Vogue, then a small publication showing few changes from when I had contributed to it in the early Nineties.

In this new environment I handled the art editorship and make-up of Metropolitan, Century, Success, Pearson’s and the new National Weekly, which was given a format like that of present-day weeklies and a make-up that included rules. Caslon was used for all headings except for Pearson’s which, using a specially-drawn character, were lettered by hand.

Among some discarded Metropolitan covers I found one by Stanislaus—the head of a girl wearing a white-and-red-striped toboggan cap against a pea-green background. By substituting the toboggan-cap red for the pea-green background, with the artist’s approval, we obtained a poster effect that dominated the newsstands and achieved an immediate sellout.