The Press: President’s Bible

On a spring day in 1888 a conservative-looking youth marched into the office of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, got a job as a reporter. Eight years later he started to write editorials. In 1911 he was chief editorial writer. In 1922 he became editor.

Had he become editor 30 years previous, he would have edited one of the most influential sheets in the U. S. He would have edited a sheet read religiously by the tightlipped, tightmouthed New England bourgeoisie, by politicians, statesmen, presidents. He would have lifted from his presses each evening the first wet copy of a lankcolumned, pinheadlined journal, which, even in the moment of its moist birth seemed austere enough to belong in the files of a Boston library; where, when he actually became editor, 30-year-old copies reposed as valuable records.

In recent years his newspaper has won many honors. In 1915 the New Republic eulogized it as “the highest achievement of American journalism.” In 1921 professional testimony placed it high in a list of twelve daily newspapers polled in the newspaper offices of the nation as of most assistance in “interpreting the events of the day.” In the same year its strong editorials drew for it the quarterback position on an all-American newspaper team assembled by the journalistic department of the University of Illinois. It has also won the honor of having more tightlipped, tight-mouthed New Englanders scan it crossly, not over three-minute eggs, but after breakfast on the porch. Dutifully read by New England-bred Calvin Coolidge, it has more recently won the honor of being termed “the President’s Bible.”

Recently pocket mouthed, mustachioed, big fisted Editor Waldo Lincoln Cook wrote an editorial, titled with New Hampshire Senator George H. Moses’ phrase “A Sullenly Accepted Administration.”

In it he cast forebodings in case President Coolidge should be a successful candidate for another term. Said Editor Cook: “There would be … feeling against Mr. Coolidge within the ranks of his own party. . . .Up to a certain point . . . one can achieve success without . . . arousing to a fury . . . the iconoclasts who resent the fabrication of … heroes. Beyond that point . . . the resistance increases as the square of the distance covered.”

Devout, Bible-reader President Coolidge typed out on little slips: “I do not choose. . . .” Said the New York Times: “The editorials of leading newspapers which have given him loyal support and lately have been not so friendly . . . were a factor. . . . Copies of the Springfield Republican came here last week. . . .” Said the Boston Herald: “The Springfield Republican which has been the President’s Bible, came here last week with an editorial entitled, ‘A Sullenly Accepted Administration,’ pointing out how President Coolidge would be received if … reelected. This . . . had some influence on the President.”

Progress of Hearst

There were seven local newspapers in Pittsburgh not so long ago. Soon mergers cut them to five. Last week William Randolph Hearst and Paul Blocktook the five down and shuffled them around, and now there are three.As result of a complicated deal, Mr. Block becomes publisher of a morning newspaper called the Post-Gazette, and Mr. Hearst of an evening print, the Sun-Telegraph. The Pittsburgh newspapers that melted into two were the Post, the Gazette-Times, the Sun and the Chronicle-Telegraph. The only other newspaper left in town is the Scripps-Howard-controlled Pittsburgh Press.

“When William Randolph Hearst was very young,” once wrote Arthur Brisbane, “when he was running the San Francisco Examiner after leaving Harvard, he complained to his father, U. S. Senator George Hearst,that so many men were fools. Father Hearst replied: ‘That’s true, Willie. But let us not be too hard on fools.If there were not so many of them life would be less easy for you, for me and for some others.'”

Presumably William Randolph Hearst has whispered this advice to himself many times. He has followed it faithfully. But life has not been easy for William Randolph Hearst.

He was born in California in 1863. His father, and his father’s 17 million dollars,entrusted him to the careful English exclusiveness of St. Paul’s School at Concord, N. H., and then to Harvard. He was ousted from Harvard, did not graduate; but he there learned much not in the curriculum. Pouring over the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, he learned much that Joseph Pulitzer knew and suspected things Joseph Pulitzer had never thought of. Working as business manager and later as managing editor of the Harvard Lampoon, Mr. Hearst first sniffed the—to somany—drug of printer’s ink. What is more important he made the Lampoon pay.

Senator George Hearst, a millionaire in mines and cattle ranges, was bewildered when Willie came home and asked his birthright in the form of the San Francisco Examiner. The Examiner printed four pages and almost no advertising, and cost the Senator severely for the small political influence it gave him.

Willie got the Examiner.

A few years later the Examiner became, as it remains, one of the great newspapers of the West. It had swelled prodigiously in size; its staff was irrepressible and brilliant; its headlines had shot up like weeds; its features and its murders swept up the population’s pennies.

When William Hearst came to Manhattan where, with money borrowed from his mother,* he acquired another jaundiced journal. He was to cure it of financial jaundice and infect it with another ocherous bug. It was the yellow wrappings of the “funnies” in this newspaper from which grew the household epithet “yellow journalism.”

This newspaper was called the Morning Journal. Later Mr. Hearst rechristened it the New York American. Reverting to title he brought out a little sister of the evening (the Evening Journal). These two papers were the steppingstones in Mr. Hearst’s climb to red ink pinnacles of domination in the sensational newspaper field.

Today the American is weakening. The terrible tabloids have out-Hearsted Hearst and the morning New York field in screams and scandals is dominated by the Daily News. For a time (about 1921) Mr. Hearst fought back by publishing a tabloid insert in the American, which did not pay out. Then he resorted to a tabloid of his own (he has several in the U. S. now) and his Daily Mirror, picture paper, is on the make with about 412,000 copies sold every morning.

It is reliably reported that Mr. Hearst, accepting the fight as lost by the American, purposes to give that newspaper a thoroughgoing fumigation. If the plan, which he is known to have entertained, goes through, the American will gradually become comprehensive and dignified.

Since that far-off day when “Willie” Hearst came to Manhattan his record has been one of astounding success in the field of publishing. He controls at least 25 newspapers, eight magazines, two press syndicates and film newsreels. His papers sell to over 3,000,000 people daily—or nearly 10% of the nation’s total population.

This success is due first to the genius of the man. His methods are unlimited expenditure in the employment of the best news noses; unflagging search for features.

Hearst newspapers have always made a stunning show of fighting for the masses. Mr. Hearst has fought the trusts (with good results) ; he has fought “the interests” (whatever they may be); he has bellowed against political graft; he supported the Bonus.

Mr. Hearst’s motives in these things have often been suspected. His good results in some of them have not been questioned. His unfailing eye for sensational — news when the Little Man of the People is belabored by the Big Men of the Interests has been an uncanny key to newspaper success.

Against his success as a publisher is set his failure as a politician. Unfitted by his retiring personality to capture votes by red-ink methods as he has captured readers, he started under an almost insuperable handicap. He lacked the glad hand. He never was a mixer on a small scale or a large one. Accordingly the only weapon he had left was his brain, backed up by the power of newspapers. These proved insufficient.

In 1902 New York’s Tammany sent Publisher Hearst to Congress, and heserved through the 58th and 59th sessions. His record there was notable for his poor attendance. When he left Congress his career as a public officeholder stopped short.

Mr. Hearst obtained some 200 delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1904, but was not nominated for President. The next year he was defeated by Tammany for mayor of New York by a bare 3,000 votes. It was said that the count was crooked. In 1906 Mr. Hearst ran against Charles E. Hughes for Governor of New York and lost. In 1909 he was again defeated for mayor.

But it was not until 1919 that Mr. Hearst hanged himself politically. Then hisNew York newspapers, snarling with headlines and cruel cartoons, accused Alfred E. Smith, Governor of the state, with “killing East Sidebabies.” The city milk supply was bad (everybody agreed to that) andbabies were suffering. But a onetime Republican Legislature had takenpower to regulate the problem out of the Governor’s hands. GovernorSmith knew this, and Mr. Hearst must have known it. Governor Smithhad a genuine love for East Side babies, of which he once was one, and never forgave the publisher.

Bitter was Governor Smith’s hatred. Three years later Mr. Hearst had allied himself with the powerful Tammany organization and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York. On the same ticket he wanted Mr. Smith to run for Senator, and so did Tammany. An overwhelming victory was assured. Chewing stubbornly on his cigar in a Syracuse hotel room the day before the 1922 State Convention, Governor Smith risked political extinction, defied his organization, and said he would not run on the same ticket with the man who had accused him of withholding good milk from the bottles of East Side babies. Tammany wavered. Mr. Hearst quit the field and in so doing dismissed himself forever as a factor in New York and national politics.

William Randolph Hearst is called an attractive man. His is a great, tall, 2201b. figure with long arms and big hands. His eyes are bluish grey, and it is said, not very kind. He is quiet, almost bashful, and possesses quantities of that illusive thing called personality.

In his Harvard days he’ played the banjo and sang songs. He still dances, solo, if notably elated. He loves candy. He does not drink or smoke. He collects art wholesale. He was once rabid on the subject of amateur photography.

Despite his anti-British battles in his newspapers (so violent early in the War that he was accused of pro-Germanism), he owns castles in Lincolnshire, England, and in Wales. He has traveled far. He owns in the Coast Range Mountains of California a domain of hundreds of acres, luxuriously complete with castles, works of art, and modern plumbing. His wife is Millicent Willson Hearst, a onetime actress, active in many charities. They have five sons, two of whom are already old enough to function in their father’s news factories. Indeed, George, the oldest (23), already controls and operates the New York Mirror and the New York American.

Has life been easy for “Willie” Hearst? Success is all around him. It is true he had the ten-year start on life which family millions give to any man. Unlike many a man, he has worked hard with them. His success has meant ceaseless work; and that (for the few men who like it) is easy. Politically life has been hard. He wanted to see “President Hearst” streaming across the pages of his newspapers. He’ did not see it. Socially, who can say whether life has been hard or easy?

—The late Phoebe Apperson Hearst, daughter of a wealthy Missouri farmer. Famed for her beauty, kindness, wit.