Press: Maple Leaf Magazines

For 32 years Home Publishing Co. Ltd. wandered through the wheat deserts of western Canada building prestige and circulation for Western Home Monthly. Twelve months ago the firm decided it was time to enter the more fertile publishing fields of the populous East. With wheat at 50¢ a bu., Western Home Monthly (headquarters: Winnipeg) found its readers broke. The magazine “went national,” guaranteed an A. B. C. circulation of 180,000 by October 1932, a boost of some 60,000 over the distribution it then had. With a whoop of delight, last week the publishers announced that the goal had been reached. To celebrate they changed the journal’s name to National Home Monthly. Subscribers had been tracked down by the hundreds throughout the verdant Eastern Provinces and as far as cold grey Newfoundland.

Most big general magazines published under the Maple Leaf are close family affairs. No exception is National Home Monthly. It was founded by an old newspaperman of Mount Forest, Ont. named Henry H. S. Stovel. In 1867 he began a weekly newspaper called The Confederate, the name springing not from the recently concluded U. S. Civil War but from Canada’s provincial confederation which occurred that year. Eighteen years later Publisher Stovel moved with his four sons, all printers, to Winnipeg. Fourteen years later Western Home Monthly came to life. Father Stovel and sons Harry, John and Augustus died, but the business is still run by Chester David.

National Home Monthly differs from its predecessor in name only. The magazine continues to carry more than 50 pages of fiction, editorials on Canadian problems, pointers on how to care for the baby, how to make tomato aspic, corn meal pancakes, dress patterns. U. S. readers would appraise it as a countrified Delineator.

The resourcefulness of its promotion staff is not the only factor in National Home Monthly’s circulation gain. Within the past two years all the front-rank Canadian periodicals have come upon more or less better days. Prime reason is the Canadian tariff (as high as 15¢ a copy) on U. S. magazines, effective last year. Another reason is the depreciation of Canadian currency; after a U. S. publisher has scrambled over the tariff wall he finds himself accepting subscriptions in Canadian dollars worth U. S. 90¢. Most important of all is Reason No. 3. Few U. S. publishers in recent years seriously went after the Canadian Cousin’s subscription. The small plum of Canadian distribution found its way almost unsought into U. S. circulation puddings. Canadian circulation of a U. S. periodical holds little lure for big-advertising, international industries like General Motors, Campbell’s, Pepsodent, Squibb, Swift, Westclox et al. which manufacture in Canada, must stress that point in special copy directed at their Canadian consumers through Canadian publications. Result: in three years Canadian distribution of the ten leading U. S. magazines has dropped from 750,000 to 150,000.* From this decline Canada’s Big Five reaped harvest.

Of the Big Five only one, National Home Monthly, is not published in Toronto. All cost 10¢. Only Maclean’s, mightiest of them all, is a fortnightly.

Maclean’s (circulation: 160,028*) is Canada’s Satevepost. It favors native authors, remains in the homey Canadian magazine tradition by maintaining a small culinary department and investment advice. Maclean Publishing Co. Ltd. also issues Chatelaine (circulation: 127,873*), the Canadian Good Housekeeping, No. 3 of the Big Five, and 30 other specialized magazines. In addition, the company prints Canadian editions of U. S. pulps and Punch, a month late.

President and founder of Maclean Ltd. is Lieut.-Colonel John Bayne Maclean, who looks like a Lord and generally feels like one. He rides in a Rolls-Royce, owns a big house in Toronto, another in England, a third at Palm Beach. His wife, the former Anna Perkins Slade, daughter of onetime Harvard Professor Daniel Denison Slade, is a niece of Countess Edla of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha. He likes to tell how a British secret service agent whisked them out of Germany on a diplomatic train on the eve of the War.

Canadian Home Journal (circulation: 153,393*) is the Canadian Ladies’ Home Journal. Its founder, the late Harry C. Gagnier, also possessed the Toronto Saturday Night, the Dominion’s best known financial newspaper, and a wide reputation for being a hard man to beat in a deal. The Gagnier properties are now directed by the founder’s good friend and onetime secretary Miss M. R. Sutton.

Canadian Magazine (circulation: 96,288*) is Canada’s oldest and most deeply intrenched general magazine. In format and contents it might be rated a mite inferior to National Home Monthly. It is published by Major Hugh C. MacLean who started in the magazine business with his brother Col. John by founding the Canadian Grocer 45 years ago. Now the brothers spell their names differently, never speak.

*A notable exception is Bernarr Macfadden’s Liberty. Published in Canada to avoid tax, in the first six months of this year it gained 12,000 over last year’s 115,000.

*Last N. W. Ayer figure. More now claimed.