The Press: Growing Corn

The sun and the moon do not shine in the same sky. What use has the sun for the moon, which can grow no corn?

Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis is one of the major luminaries of the publishing world. He did for publishing much what Cyrus H. McCormick did for farming—industrialized a comparatively unorganized business. Having had unimagined success with The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies’ Home Journal, Mr. Curtis turned to newspapers. First he took the two Public Ledgers (morning and evening) of Philadelphia. Last January he reached out to Manhattan and bought the New York Evening Post. In taking control of the Post he took possession of an heirloom. On the list of its editors and owners were Alex ander Hamilton, William Cullen Bryant, John Bigelow, Carl Schurz, E. L. Godkin—great men who had made the Post a landmark of journalism. But these men had passed and the Post was no longer their Post. It was a paper run by a group of wealthy men for the pur pose of satisfying their view of what a newspaper should be—an educated man’s paper, liberal, refined, in good taste. Mr. Curtis changed the Post into what he thought a paper should be—a paper for news, a go-getter for circulation, the kind of intellectual pabulum that could attract a large audience. In making the change he immediately lost Christopher Morley, that most genial of columnists. In general, how ever, he did not destroy the paper of the bygone intellectual giants, because it was no longer their paper. The Post had passed their high-water-mark a generation earlier. But there was one portion of his purchase which has not passed its high-water mark. It was the Literary Review, which was published as part of the Post’s Saturday edition. Back in 1920, the owners of the Post had cast about to find a man who could adequately conduct the Literary Review. They went to the group of literary professors at Yale—the group which included the fluent William Lyon Phelps, the dramatic Chauncey Brewster Tinker (author of Young Boswell) the Chestertonian John M. Berdan, the quiet, sage Charlton M. Lewis, now dead, Dean Wilbur Cross, Editor of the Yale Review, and others less well known. From this group the Post secured Dr. Henry Seidel Canby.

He had been a lecturer at Yale, an assistant editor of the Yale Review, and during part of the War had en gaged in liason work abroad. In September, 1920, he went to Manhattan and took charge of the Saturday Literary Review of the Post. In stature rather short, in manner kindly, humorous, direct, Mr. Canby soon made the Literary Review an out standing institution in the field of belles lettres. Under his conduct it was intelligent, sane, discriminating and flavored with the salt of sanity, humor. To his office marched the people of the literary world— Edith Wharton, Carl Van Doren, Stuart P. Sherman, Archibald Cary Coolidge, Sinclair Lewis, Edmund Wilson, Jr., Mary M. Colum, Padraic Colum, Vernon Kellogg, Chauncey B. Tinker, William Lyon Phelps, Charles Seymour, Ludwig Lewisohn, Willa Gather, Hamilton Holt, Louis Untermeyer —while across the ocean his friends numbered H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Walter de la Mare, May Sinclair, Frank Swinnerton, Hugh Walpole … Yet the only “I” in his interesting discourses was the “I” in “literature.” Aside from his famous associates he was the adviser, helper, great and good friend of young and undistinguished writers. He built up a group of literary people who helped to make his Review distinguished—William Rose Benet, Amy Loveman and others. When Mr. Canby had made the Literary Review a landmark, it was sold to Mr. Curtis.

What more remained? Curtis and Canby could not shine in the same sky. Curtis wanted to grow corn. The Literary Review had extended its circulation beyond the Post; it had spread, infiltrated gradually into the farthest states, where it circulated as a separate publication. But it was not part of Mr. Curtis’ conception of a newspaper. It was not calculated to help the Post become the standard largest circulation newspaper in Manhattan. So Mr. Curtis ordered an about face. The Literary Review must be popularized.

Last week Mr. Canby resigned. W. Orton Tewson, who in Philadelphia treats literature as Mr. Curtis likes it treated, was placed in charge of the Review from afar. He sent ahead some modern improvements, notably some pictures of authors such as are published in newspapers, a slightly different typographical “make up” and a series of paragraphs about what Mr. Tewson had found out by reading books during the past week.

The New York World, commenting on Mr. Canby’s departure, declared ; “His resignation takes the heart out of a hopeful enterprise.” But Mr. Curtis’ heart beat on, as sturdily as ever.