The day of _Godey's Lady's Book_ had passed; _Peterson's Magazine_ was breathing its last; and the home or women's magazines that had attempted to take their place were sorry affairs.

It was this consciousness of a void ready to be filled that made the Philadelphia experiment so attractive to the embryo editor.

He looked over the field and reasoned that if such magazines as did exist could be fairly successful, if women were ready to buy such, how much greater response would there be to a magazine of higher standards, of larger initiative--a magazine that would be an authoritative clearing-house for all the problems confronting women in the home, that brought itself closely into contact with those problems and tried to solve them in an entertaining and efficient way; and yet a magazine of uplift and inspiration: a magazine, in other words, that would give light and leading in the woman's world.
The method of editorial expression in the magazines of 1889 was also distinctly vague and prohibitively impersonal.

The public knew the name of scarcely a single editor of a magazine; there was no personality that stood out in the mind: the accepted editorial expression was the indefinite "we"; no one ventured to use the first person singular and talk intimately to the reader.

Edward Bok's biographical reading had taught him that the American public loved a personality; that it was always ready to recognize and follow a leader, provided, of course, that the qualities of leadership were demonstrated.