The Press: Below the Zone

The stench of Bernarr Macfadden’s published dejecta rises from twelve magazines and three newspapers. The magazines—Physical Culture, Dream World, True Stories, True Experiences, True Romances, National Pictorial Monthly, Movie Weekly, and the like—have a total circulation, he claims, of 5,000,000 copies. The New York Graphic, the worst of his papers in morals, is the best in circulation (360,596 daily). He has become a potent force in U. S. subculture.

His readers are the little educated, barely literate mass—chiefly women—”who yearn for the better things in life”; and the “better things” that he gives them examples of are physical well being and stories of love and sin. The office girl on the street car, nuzzling into his current magazines sees photographs of Bernarr Macfadden, her physical pastor, wearing only a skimpy breechclout, his chest hairless. He is illustrating “How I keep fit at Fifty-Eight.” Yet pictures of girls predominate in the periodicals. A favorite female pose is the sway-back with the mons veneris thrown forward. An advertisement by the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (Rosy Cross, Rosicrucians) dis-plays the ansate cross, phallic symbol. Yet the publisher pretends to give highly moral instruction, whereas in reality he salaciously veils salacities. He makes no appeal to the intellect, little to the emotions, almost all to the sensations below the zone.

His wily pornography has apparently made him so rich* that last week his publication corporation was able to buy an eight-story building, yet under construction in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, to house his activities. The building is worth $1,500,000, and stands on ground leased for 84 years at $30,000 yearly rental, or $2,520,000 for the entire period. Bernarr Macfadden cannot buy the land in fee simple, for it is owned by Trinity Corporation, which represents Trinity Church.

Trinity Church, on Broadway opposite Wall Street, two centuries ago owned approximately 60 acres of Manhattan land between Broadway and the Hudson River. Much other land has been donated since. Much has been sold. Trinity still is a very great landlord, and, like all great landlords of urban property, cannot keep supervision on its tenants—be they banks, brothels or Macfaddens.

*Publisher Macfadden sells stock to the public in $5 lots, indicating that bankers do not consider him a good risk.