Press: Recessional

On Oct. 1. 1929, Bernarr Macfadden’s New York Daily Investment News was only five months old, but wisdom issued from its presses. It advised its readers: “Get out of the market, losses or no losses.” The eternal credit that it gained by that advice did not save it from the hard times which descended upon it and Wall Street’s three other financial dailies.* Not until 1935 did Mr. Macfadden heed his own good advice by selling the Investment News. Last week his successor, Haydock (“Eternal Optimist”) Miller, followed Macfadden’s precept and example by bowing the Investment News out of existence.

Chief feature of the Investment News was a daily column of market advice run under the by-line of “Waldo Young.” Its author, Editor Clarence Hebb, unwilling to leave Wall Street, announced he would continue the column as a broker’s tipsheet. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal took over Investment News’s 6,000 subscriptions, editorialized: “The business recession, rising costs and taxes upon gross —problems with which all business men are familiar—contributed to the final decision to suspend. More will be heard from this ghastly combination. . . .”

* The Wall Street Journal, Bond Buyer, American Banker.