The soul of the Magazine was the breath of life which Jehovah breathed into _me_; and Col. Mann can no more defile it by his touch than he can defile me.
I commenced working industriously for the Magazine in December 1904. Hundreds of letters were mailed from my house every month. Hundreds of subscribers enrolled themselves and paid their money in advance of the publication. I paid my own assistants, paid the postage, worked for nothing. _It wasn’t the money that I was after._ Col. Mann saw that, _and took every advantage of it_.
Not a cent of the small sum that was paid me came out of _his_ pocket. I am glad to be able to say so.
But while money-making was not my purpose, I could not contemplate with any satisfaction the prospect of _never_ being able to get anything for my labor. The Magazine was bearing upon me heavily. The contract only asked 3,000 words per month of me. After the first few numbers, my task was never less than about 20,000 words
All this work I did with my own hand. Mr. Duffy, the Managing Editor, had a stenographer. Mr. Flaacke, Advertising Manager, had a stenographer; Mr. DeFrance, Business Manager, had a stenographer. I am not sure about Mr. Hoffman and the office boy, Robert, but I guess they had one too. _The Editor-in-Chief was the only member of the staff who had to do his own work._
Finally, the toil became so irksome--especially during the Georgia campaign of 1906, when Everybody and his Uncle and his Aunt were jumping on me--that _I begged DeFrance to allow me six dollars per week for a stenographer_. He did so for several weeks and then quit. In ceasing to help me to this pitiful extent, he gave me neither excuse nor explanation.
He himself was all the while drawing his $60 per week, for dictating to a fifteen-dollar-per-week stenographer.
“EXPLANATORY” alleges that I usurped authority, and began to discharge employes as though the Magazine were my personal property.
“EXPLANATORY” says that, unfortunately, I was allowed to have my way in a great many business matters.
The new Editors, Mann and DeFrance, give _no specifications_.
Into _the very first number of the Magazine_, Col. Mann inserted a full page _advertisement of some of his nasty_ “SMART SET” _books_. When I saw that advertisement, which _had been slipped into the magazine without my knowledge_, Ted Flaacke, Advertising Manager, was summoned to my room, and _told that there wasn’t money enough in New York to buy space in my Magazine for prurient literature of that sort_.