The Press: Chicago Inheritance

“When Marshall Field died, everything was going right for him,” said Katherine, his second wife, who divorced him in 1963. She was talking about the publishing business, and her assessment was correct. When Marshall Field IV died fortnight ago at 49 (TIME, Sept. 24), Field Enterprises, Inc., was at its peak.

The Chicago Sun-Times, which Field had taken over from his father in 1950, was not only making a profit after long years in the red, it was also closing in on the front-running Chicago Tribune. A serious and responsible tabloid, the Sun-Times was even outselling the Trib within the city limits of Chicago. Field’s second paper, the Chicago Daily News, which he bought for $24 million from the Knight Newspapers in 1959, was not making as much money as the Sun-Times, but it was gaining in reputation. “I think newspapers should speak to the orchestra seats as well as to the peanut gallery,” Publisher Field once said, and from both places, Chicago seemed to be listening.

His World Book Encyclopedia, which had concentrated on quantity of sales, had turned out to be so profitable—$130 million sales this year—that Field had the financial resources for expansion in several directions. On the Chicago River, he built a $21 million modern newspaper plant that now prints both the Field papers. He joined with the New York Herald Tribune in a news syndicate that served 1,800 papers and included such big names as Cartoonist Bill Mauldin and Columnist Ann Landers. He was ready to go on the air this January with his first television station.

Painful Reverses. Field’s personal life was another matter. He was almost painfully aware of his family responsibilities and he took reverses very hard. He had already been divorced once, and after the death of his father in 1956 and a series of bone-wearying negotiations with other publishers, he suffered a nervous breakdown that hospitalized him for six months. After periodic relapses, his second marriage was also dissolved. A third divorce was probably imminent. Since 1963 he had been less and less able to exercise command; control of Field Enterprises, Inc., passed into the hands of the three other trustees who direct the corporation that was set up in 1952 by Marshall Field III. They are George B. Young, a lawyer who is also corporation president; Edward I. Farley, who is senior vice president; and Howard Seitz, who has been legal counselor to the Field family for more than 20 years.

Even at the newspapers that were always Field’s primary concern, the chain of command effectively bypassed him as publisher. Editors Larry Fanning at the Daily News and Emmett Dedmon at the Sun-Times ran their papers largely on their own, with no interference from the trustees. As Field would have wanted, they considered themselves competitors even though they took the same editorial line on major issues. “The newspapers,” said Fanning, “will continue to be operated according to our understanding of Marshall Field’s likes, and our understanding of the kind of newspapers he wanted.”

Training an Heir. Nor is one-man control likely to be reasserted any time soon. Marshall Field V, a Harvard graduate now working at the New York Herald Tribune, will replace his father as a trustee when he turns 25 next May. But he will not become publisher of his father’s newspapers until the trustees consider him “sufficiently trained.” When his only brother Frederick, now 13, reaches 25, according to the terms set by Marshall Field III, the trust, which now holds two-thirds of the corporation’s stock, may be dissolved. Then the two Field brothers can take over to run the family enterprises in whatever way they see fit.