Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 148: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

430 dozen out of the several millions who still admire Bowman, know that what was ad- mired and liked about him was the bor- rowed genius of Eddy Denby, masquerading under Bowman’s name. : Eddy Denby was Walter Bowman’s “‘ ghost,” that being the trade name for the brains hired to make a dull man bril- liant. He was accounted one of the best ghosts known to paid publicity, and besides that, he was a mighty nice fellow, and he and Bowman thought a great deal of each other. | Understand, Walter Bowman didn’t seek to buy fame from any motive of vanity. So far as he was concerned he had never asked from life more than the opportunity to pay for his moderate wants and a modest slice of happiness. If he did not become famous actually against his will, at least he entered the limelight—or was pushed in —to his considerable surprise. Oscar Hayden, head of America’s great- est advertising agency and probably the world’s greatest genius in publicity, said to the directors of the Metropolitan Light, Heat, Power and Traction Corporation, ‘‘ Find me a man—a man not past forty— hitherto unknown to the public; a man who knows enough to hold his tongue and . let somebody else do his public thinking for him; neither a brilliant man nor a fool; if he has the ability to help run your business so much the better, but the other qualities are first consideration. Find me that man.” And the directors found for him Walter Bowman. At the dictation of old Oscar Hayden they made Walter Bowman head of one of the biggest corporations in Amer: ica. | For various reasons men become success- ful. Walter Bowman won success because he was not yet forty years old; a fairly good looking, steady, industrious, loyal fel- low; he held no radical opinions; was will- ing to let his public thinking be done for him, and showed the makings of a very good executive. Hitherto he had been a minor executive, one of a number of prom- ising young men working for the Metro- politan Light, Heat, Power and Traction Corporation. In a stroke he was jumped over the heads of probably a score of Digitized by (Go ogle ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. seniors and within three years the public had forgotten the corporation name entire- ly. When it thought of light, heat, power or traction it thought “ Bowman.” Oscar Hayden is one of the few living men who can do a thing like that—a modern miracle. The directors of the Metropolitan fol- lowed his dictation not because they wanted to, but because they could think of no other remedy for their troubles, which were. plenty and multiplying like Belgian hares. The Metropolitan was in bad with , the public and getting in worse at increasing _ ratio. When Hayden was called in for advice it was probably the worst hated cor- poration in a nation of big business. It had recently lost a franchise worth five millions of dollars and was threatened with the loss of others worth five times as much and the reason for that, as Hayden -told the directors, was that the corporation had for- feited public good-will. | Good-will, one of the vital principles of business, is as easily lost as a woman’s fair ‘name—and as hard to win back. To win this favor for the hated Metropolitan, Os- car Hayden set all his machinery of pub- licity to work to the end that the public forgot the corporation name and remem- bered the name Bowman. And of this man Bowman, Hayden’s skilled workers, partic- ularly Eddy Denby, made a public char- acter that was a clever blend of the ster- ling patriotism of Washington, the shrewd democracy of Lincoln and the eloquence of Patrick Henry; it was a character fla- vored with the philanthropy of George W. Childs; it had that same love of the beau- tiful and fine things in art that character- '- ized the late J. P. Morgan; in literature it could write with the dignity of Carlyle, but was not above doing a limerick in the man- ner of our best metropolitan columnists; and withal this mythical Bowman was as common, as familiar and as likable as the cop who patrols the block. And gradually everybody connected with this business, except perhaps Eddy Denby, forgot there was really a human being named Walter Bowman who was none of these things—only a nice, quiet, likable chap who was getting a trifle bald and Teommicbooks EO