The Press: Humanizer

Personal journalism is not what it used to be. The press is too crowded to afford subtlety, quiet wisdom or even sound brilliance an advantageous setting. The only voices heard above the tumult are the loudspeakers and loudness is usually the mother of mediocrity.

But what business man would venture to call Editor Bertie Charles Forbes of Forbes (bimonthly) “For Busy Business Men,” a mediocrity? And what stroke of journalism, however loud, could have been more personal than one wrought by Editor Bertie Charles Forbes last week, when he reprinted in his own magazine, with a generous photograph and headline an article from Circulation (press trade sheet) entitled, “All About B. C. FORBES?” What greater testimony to Editor Forbes’s eminence could there have been than the fact that the article was signed by Charles M. Schwab, steel man? Text from the article:

“One of the reasons why the United States is the most prosperous country in the world today is because it is the only nation where the average citizen has a good general understanding of what business is trying to do….

“My friend, B. C. Forbes, has been in the leadership of this educational movement for so many years that his work is thoroughly well-known, but I often wonder whether he really gets all the credit due him….

“The discovery that you can make hard work easy is to my mind the great contribution of B. C. Forbes to American prosperity We can thank Forbes today for the fact that real news of the personalities of the business world has an unprejudiced audience….”

Mr. Schwab then referred to the youthful hardships of Bertie Charles Forbes— learning short-hand at 13 in his native Scotland; leaving school at 14 to be a printer’s devil: reporting news at meagre wages for the Dundee Courier; helping to found the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, aged 21; reporting news, at no salary, for the New York Journal of Commerce. “There were days and nights of drudgery during which the one thing he wanted was a smile,” said Mr. Schwab’s article.

“Instead of becoming soured… of making up his mind to ‘get even’ with the world some day, he be gan to look forward to the time when he could make life more cheerful for others….”

He rose on the Journal of Commerce to a point where Publisher Hearst could see him without difficulty. Publisher Hearst bought his executive services for the New York American, and Mr. Forbes was in a position to cheer up “People Who Think.” In 1916 he founded his own magazine and in 1917 cheered up another class of people with his book Men Who Are Making America. This contained complimentary sketches of a score of business tycoons.

Making rich men and poor men think alike was henceforth his great aim, which he pursued with a lively, pioneering use of the terms, “team work,” “co-operation,” “the other fellow’s slant.” Banal enough on other tongues, these terms apparently possessed charm when rolled forth with lively persistence by a member of the St. Andrews and Burns Societies. Unlike most go-betweens, Editor Forbes escaped being crushed; was instead raised on high by opposing pressures.

He prints “Little Bits About Big Men”—how President Kingsbury of the California Standard Oil, bitten on the lip while he manicured his pet chow, was startled and painfully amused by his crony, Banker Fleishhacker, who crawled into President Kingsbury’s office barking violently; how Dwight W. Morrow, Morgan partner, boarded a train, lost his ticket, forgot where he was going; how Henry Ford, 25 years ago, lost his nerve driving a racer at 60 miles an hour; how Bertie Charles Forbes himself, “about as careless as Dwight W. Morrow of Morgan’s as to how I dress for the golf course,” was stranded in a Hawaiian locker-room when his wife went off with suitcase keys.

That sort of thing, Mr. Schwab pointed out, “humanizes” Big Business. For the smaller figures in Big Business, Editor Forbes riddles his pages with epigrams of which he is justly proud (he has published many of them in book form). While not exactly a Ben Franklin in wit, he can coin a dazzling pun: “

Sweat makes rest sweet.”

“A sound principle: interest in others.”

“Strive to become the kind of pal that doesn’t pall.”

Statistics, corporation surveys, informal business history with plenty of personalities thrown in, editorials long and short on current “situations,” timely contributions by board chairmen, state governors (Governor Martin of Florida on “What Will Happen There This Winter?”)—all make Forbes what 49,478 readers think it should be. Editor Forbes goes marching on, whistling stridently, apostle of savings, efficiency, prosperity, humanity, understanding and Bertie Charles Forbes.

What puzzles many people, seeing what prodigious contributions he has made to U. S. prosperity—how he has educated the U. S. wage-earner to the viewpoint of the wage-payer, and vice versa—is, why is Editor Forbes’ magazine not subscribed to by 1,000,000 or by 10,000,000 U. S. wage-earners—the latter figure would be some 25% of all—instead of only 49,478? Are prosperous citizens ungrateful to “the founder of modern business journalism, the dean of popular American economists?”