The Press: When Portland Went Crazy

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art;

For there thy habitation is the heart—The heart, which love of thee alone can bind.

So mused the great but indiscreet poet, Byron.

“We chose Liberty for a name because it is the first word in American consciousness. It was first made to mean something here in America. . . It had been a dream despaired of elsewhere. Here it was realized!”

So exclaimed the publishers of the Chicago Tribune and the Daily News (Manhattan). It was small wonder that the musings of J. M. Patterson and R. R. McCormick differed from the poet: they had not committed his indiscretions, nor had he made a fortune by collecting pennies from the gum-chewers of a great nation.

For Messrs. Patterson and McCormick, having driven out all comers except Hearst and a small business daily from the morning newspaper field in Chicago, looked ahead for new fields to conquer. They chose Manhattan and there five years ago founded a little illustrated sheet, of scandalmongering propensities, the Daily News. The gum-chewers of Manhattan seized the News and gloated. Pennies by the carload rolled into the proprietors’ pockets. And yet they felt the urge for “More! More!”

It is now some months since the report was bruited through the publishing world that the Chicago Tribune had in mind a new magazine to compete with The Saturday Evening Post. Last week the report was justified. Liberty appeared.

With the magazine in hand it is easier to conjecture what went on in the fertile minds of Messrs. Patterson and McCormick.

“We have taught the people of Chicago to stomach our ware. The gum-chewers of Manhattan have gobbled it up. It must be popular stuff. It’s too bad we can’t sell it to the whole country. But it would cost a terrible lot of money to start a newspaper in every city. Why not put our stuff into a magazine and sell it everywhere?

“We’ll have John T. McCutcheon draw a cartoon for the cover. Then we’ll have an editorial page and put at the top that things of Decatur’s: ‘Our Country . . . may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!’ That must be good stuff; we’ve used it for a long time. Then we’ll get some stories—the kind we use in our Sunday editions—by George Barr McCutcheon, Albert Payson Terhune and Montague Glass. And we can have Mae Tince, who does our movies, contribute some of that ‘Ask

Me! Ask Me!’ stuff about the screen. We can take a leaf from our success with the News and put in a couple of pages of news photographs—everybody likes pictures. And a few of that not-too-serious kind of article that gets away strong in The Saturday Evening Post. Oh, yes, and add a few of those ‘inspirational’ articles that the American Magazine makes its living by, and some of the women’s heart stuff and patterns—the things that sell women’s magazines. We can print the whole thing by ‘coloroto’ the way we do our Sunday supplements. Better still, we’ll sell every other page for advertising, all the way through the entire magazine—that will get the advertisers ! And sell the whole thing for a nickel, in competition with The Saturday Evening Post. By , that’s a wonderful mixture!

“Now for a name—a good 100% American name. How will we get that ? Oh, that’s easy, we’ll start a competition, offer prizes, put up $25,000. That will get all our little friends interested before we put out the magazine. We’ll more than get the $25,000 back from the extra sales on the first issue. Great!”

So the thing was planned. So put into effect. In the prize contest for a name 1,005,002 persons submitted 1,395,322 suggestions. If all of them bought the first issue of the magazine the net receipts from that source alone would have been $50,250. The prize-winning name was submitted by one George A. Elwell, of Youngstown, and won the $20,000 first prize. It was a stroke of inspiration that brought to his mind “LIBERTY—A Weekly Periodical for Everyone.” He submitted 3,016 other suggestions but none of them were so inspired. The suggestions of Queen Marie of Rumania, Admiral Sims, Billy Sunday, Anton Lang, Harry Pratt Judson, also fell short of this inspiration.

So Liberty spread her wings and flew, just as Messrs. Patterson and McCormick had planned. How high? If one can believe an advertisement published in the Chicago Tribune the day following Liberty’s appearance on the newsstands, there had been sold in one day the entire first issue—725,000 copies. (According to another account in the Tribune the number was 735,000—at any rate, a great number.)

In support of this announcement were published 22 telegrams from news agencies all over the country. Selections:

Boston. “Entire order of Liberty Magazines sold in two hours. You may want to undersupply me, but demand is so great that you better rush 20,000 more.”

Milwaukee. “Liberty Magazine is going like wild fire. Can use an additional 1,000 or 1,500 copies.”

Indianapolis. “Liberty Magazine going like wildfire. Could use 1,000 more copies.”

Columbus. “Rush 2,000 more Liberty. Going like wild-fire.”

Portland, Ore. “Town gone crazy. Have not half enough copies.”