The Press: A. B.

What makes Arthur Brisbane “tick”?

Why does he, son of a wealthy man, “write down to the level of Hearstpaper readers”?

How much money does he make?

Whence comes the “socialistic” flavor in his preachments?

Such questions had often occurred to Editor Frank Parker Stockbridge of the trade magazine The American Press. A good reporter as well as a good editor, Editor Stockbridge submitted his questions to Editor Brisbane, printed questions and answers (copyrighted by Mr. Brisbane) last week. Most significant were Editor Brisbane’s replies concerning the influence of his father, Albert Brisbane, who in the 1830’s and 1840’s was the principal disciple in the U. S. of the French Sociologist (François) Charles Marie Fourier.

In 1842 the elder Brisbane bought at advertising rates a front-page column in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, wrote therein every day for two years of Fourier’s plans for the development of small cooperative communities (called Associations), in which manual labor should be dignified, social distractions nonexistent. At Freehold, N. J. Albert Brisbane founded such a community, forerunner of famed Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Mass.

“Many others have since adopted those ideas. I, needless to say, have always been guided by them. . . . My writing is far inferior to my father’s.* I should probably not be writing at all, except for the teaching that I had from him. . . .

“When my father had written for the Tribune for a couple of years, he said to Greeley: ‘I shall not want that column of yours any more, as I am going to Europe.’ Greeley replied: ‘Don’t do that, Brisbane; I’ll let you write the column for nothing.’ The fact was that my father’s writing had helped to increase the circulation of the Tribune.”

Concerning his reputed inheritance of wealth, Editor Brisbane told Editor Stockbridge:”My grandfather was a rich man and left to his two sons, George and Albert, my father, a large fortune which made it unnecessary for either of them to work. . . . Fortunately it had about disappeared at the time of [my father’s]; death, which compelled me to go to work, which I certainly should not have done if I had inherited any considerable wealth.”

As everyone knows, Arthur Brisbane began newspaper work on the New York Sun. His father had introduced him to Editor Charles A. Dana (whom the elder Brisbane had gotten started in a $5-a-week job on the Tribune).

Mr. Brisbane was editor of Pulitzer’s Evening World when Publisher Hearst hired him to the Journal at $8,000 a year plus a commission of $1,000 for every 10,000 increase in circulation. “I did not see Mr. Hearst when I went to work for him. I don’t think he cared to see me. I had been rather disagreeable in various ways, hiring away men, like [Artist Homer] Davenport and Alfred Henry Lewis, then saying to them: ‘Go back and get more money, I don’t need you, the Journal does!’ . . .”

After the first year, in which his circulation commissions reached as high as $23,000 in a single month, Brisbane changed to a salary basis of $50,000 a year, “which was considered a good salary in those days. It would be small now.” Contrary to a widespread impression, he has no financial interest in any of the Hearst papers today, other than his salary.*

Asked Editor Stockbridge: “It is rumored that your present salary is $5,000 a week. Correct?”

Reply: “I do not care to state the exact salary which he pays me, but it mayinterest you as a newspaperman to know that it is more than three times the salary that the people pay the President of the United States. They don’t pay him enough.”â€

Editor Stockbridge has been a newsman and author for 37 of his 60 years, is well known to journalists throughout the land. About two years ago he was engaged by Publisher John Holiday Perry to edit The American Press. That magazine had been a house organ of the American Press Association, a feature service for country weeklies, until The Fourth Estate was bought and merged with Editor & Publisher. Then Publisher Perry made it a general monthly magazine of the trade.

*An unduly modest misstatement. Albert Brisbane’s writings were prosy, meatless, platitudinous. Their most apparent influence on Arthur Brisbane’s style is in the persistent use of capital letters. Sample: “The great Agriculturist . . . whose genius causes the earth to bloom more luxuriantly . . . and the great Mechanician . . . must be honored as highly as the scheming Politician or the intriguing Statesman, whose intrigues fill the World with conflict and discord.” Son Arthur Brisbane carries capitals further. Samples of last week: “It pays to THINK AND WORK. NEITHER, BY ITSELF, WILL CARRY YOU FAR. . . .” “No nation could exist HALF STARVED AND HALF FED.”

*Last week Henry Ford declined Arthur Brisbane’s invitation to write a daily “piece”for $150,000 a year.

†President’s salary: $75,000 a year.

Rumors

The rumor that the New York World was for sale began buzzing on Park Row as early as 1926. But it was denied so convincingly by those in authority that nearly everyone was astonished when rumor burst forth as fact. Had that not occurred, little attention might have been paid a new rumor: that the thriving Sun and struggling Post might merge. First it was said that the Sun would buy Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis’ Post. That brought this reply from Vice President John Charles Martin, on the office bulletin board last fortnight: “. . . Mr. Curtis has never sold a property after he purchased it and the Post is not for sale.”

Last week the rumor was reversed thus: Publisher Curtis might buy the Sun if financial arrangements could be made to meet the Sun’s price of $21,000,000 and merge it with his Post to compete with the newly formed World-Telegram.

Among the Sun personnel are many stockholders (principally President William Thompson Dewart) who bought the paper from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to which it was bequeathed by the late Publisher Frank Munsey.

Certain sportive Chicago financiers have lately been amusing themselves by trying to circulate fantastic rumors. One story possibly attributable to such a source: that Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick was selling his interest in the Chicago Tribune to Gum Man William Wrigley Jr. and Advertising Man Albert Davis Lasker. The rumor gained wide currency last week because of the recent sale of Liberty to Bernarr Macfadden (TIME, April 13), but it brought only denials and loud laughter from the principals.

Another Chicago “story” of the week: that Evangelist Billy Sunday is a brother of Judge Adolph Joseph Sabath, having changed his name to Sunday some years ago because it “went better” when he was playing professional baseball (Chicago Cubs).

Old Chief

Whatever liberties Funnyman Will Rogers may permit himself in conversation, the homely humor of his syndicated daily squibs is lily-pure, fit for consumption by all the households reached by clean home newspapers. Hence, Rogers-readers were mildly astonished one day last week to find in his “letter to the editor” a comment which might have passed unnoticed in scores of other colyums but which, for Rogers, verged on the “raw.” Returning from Managua to the U. S. via Venezuela by plane, Will Rogers wrote:

“Well, all morning we flew low over [the] beautiful coral islands [of the San Bias Indians] You can leave and visit them but you must get away before night. The old chief won’t let you stop after dark. Due to his foresight they are the only 100 per cent pure Indians.”*

San Blas belles are short, squat, swart. In her broad, flat nose each wears a large gold ring.

*Will Rogers was born in Indian Territory (Oklahoma); his grandmother and great grandmother were full-blooded Cherokees.