worm is worthy of his hire, and would not cheapen himself and his advertising genius in the esteem of a business man. "The price of extra copies of the 'Fra' is $200 a thousand," he writes. He proposes to charge Mr. Rockefeller twenty cents apiece for magazines which he can produce and mail for ten cents apiece. In other words, he suggests that Mr. Rockefeller shall pay him two hundred thousand dollars, from which, after paying postage and wrapping, he will retain at least one hundred thousand!
But alas, it is notorious how the business man fails to appreciate genius! Mr. Rockefeller consults "Poison Ivy" Lee, whose advice is that the worm shall be allowed to go out to Colorado and see everything, but "have it distinctly understood that he is making this study entirely on his own initiative and at his own expense. If, after he has produced his article and you have read it, it seems to you something worth distributing, an arrangement for such distribution can be made with him."
A cold, cold world for a public educator and prophet of judiciousness! These business men haggle, precisely as if Pegasus could be harnessed to a garbage-wagon! Says Mr. Rockefeller, writing to the president of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Denver:
I have not seen Mr. Hubbard nor given him any encouragement
in this matter, other than as set forth in the above correspondence.
To which comes the reply from Denver:
Mr. Hubbard's price for extra copies of his publication is to my
mind high. . . . We can determine after he has produced his
article whether or not we should go any further than we already have
in enlarging its distribution.
There was more of this correspondence. It was printed in
"Harper's Weekly" under the title, "Elbert Hubbard's Price";
the substance of the matter being summed up by "Harper's
Weekly" as follows:
Mr. Hubbard's proposal, it will be seen, had two parts. 1. To
sell his opinion. 2. Later on to make an "investigation" in support
of that opinion.
