SOURCE: “Edward Bok and the Simple Life,” in American Heritage, Vol. 36, No. 1, December, 1984, pp. 100–09.

In the following essay, Shi considers Bok's crusade in favor of simple living.

For the thirty years between 1889 and 1919, Edward Bok and the magazine he edited—Ladies' Home Journal—exerted a profound influence over middle-class American values. His message was direct: The Simple Life was joyous and good, and too many Americans, seduced by the clutter and false values of Victorian materialism, had drifted away from it.

Bok is best known today as an example of the “rags-to-riches” success story: an immigrant youth who made good in America and then became a public benefactor and inveterate booster, telling others how to do the same. Yet Bok was far more than a typical success specialist. He was at heart an ardent moral reformer who found in simple living the key to personal happiness and social...