The Press: Friend Block

On a hot day last week, a small baldish man named Paul Block announced he had bought the Brooklyn (N. Y.) Standard Union. The price was $1,000,000 or thereabouts. For the Standard Union it was a tidy sum, because for all its 65 years of distinguished history, the paper was losing money at the rate of about $25,000 dollars a month.

When the deal had been made public, when the Standard Union had carried polite letters of congratulation from the country’s celebrities, Publisher Block gave a theatre party. He bought out the house for a performance of George White’s “Scandals,” and asked his friends to help celebrate. Among the guests were Polar Pilgrim Byrd, Aviatrix Earhart, Mauler Dempsey. Both the purchase and the party were typical of Publisher Block.

Like another newspaper chain owner, famed Frank Ernest Gannett, Publisher Block was trained in the quiet city of Elmira, in the “southern tier” of New York State. He went to Public School No. 1, and in his summer vacations he did odd jobs, ran errands for the Sunday Telegram.

Thirty-three years ago he quit Elmira and advanced confidently upon Manhattan, to the offices of a Frank Richardson, then acting as the New York representative of many a country newspaper. Young Block became adept in garnering rich advertising contracts. By 1898 he felt able to start out in business for himself. Ten years later, he bought the Newark Star-Eagle at a receiver’s sale for $235,000. It required all his savings in cash, some $125,000.

In 1910 he gathered in the Toledo (O.) Blade; the Duluth Herald he bought in 1918. Last year, he negotiated a shrewd deal in Pittsburgh, where he bought both the morning Post and the evening Sun, then traded the Sun to Publisher William Randolph Hearst for the morning Gazette-Times, then consolidated the two morning papers into the enormously profitable Post-Gazette. With the Standard-Union, Publisher Block owns five daily newspapers.

From time to time, he has owned many another. Among the journalistic corpses which litter his past are the New York Mail, swallowed by Frank R. Munsey; the Detroit Journal, swallowed by Hearst; the Memphis News-Scimitar; a paper in Lancaster, Pa. These he bought and then sold. But he rejects vigorously the idea that he is a newspaper broker. “It is a good business,” he says, “but it is not my business.” He sold the Mail, he explains, because neither he nor his partner, Henry L. Stoddard, had the money to carry on. The Journal was a sacrifice to a Hearst scare in Detroit. Neither the News-Scimitar nor the Lancaster paper interested him. The one he bought to settle a debt; the other to give a friend a job.

But Brooklyn is another matter. It is near home, available for his experiments. His plans for the Standard Union are expansive and expensive. He has made a bet with himself that he can make the paper break even by January.

Outside his business and his family, Publisher Block has few interests. On his 200-acre estate near Greenwich, Conn., he has a picturesque nine-hole golf course, but his game is indifferent. He once played 13 consecutive holes in fives. It was a triumph he has neither forgotten nor repeated. Occasionally, he rides one of his saddle horses. Occasionally, he takes a hand in running the estate, as this summer, when his gardeners reported that his lake was leaking. For the most part he leaves the house and grounds to his wife. He asks only that he can bring 20 guests to dinner without warning.

Publisher Block is a specialist in friendship. The word itself, with all its synonyms, affects him strongly. “Friendship” is the name of his estate, and next month, when he boards his new private car (the first he has owned) for a vacation in Maine, he will find “Friendship” lettered on its sides. Almost, friendship is a secondary business with Publisher Block. On his office desk lies a small brown leather book, stencilled “A Deed a Day.” Here his secretary eagerly inscribes the Block benefactions: $5,000 to Commander Byrd, $10,000 for a new cathedral, $500 for the widow of a Manhattan fireman or policeman, an order to serve lemonade in his newspaper offices on a hot day.

Publisher Block is proud of his sons, Paul Jr. (now at Hotchkiss School), and William (entering Hotchkiss next year). Perhaps never was he so proud of them as last September, when “Rudy,” their favorite fox terrier, unhappily demised. Down by the golf course went Paul and William with the remains of Rudy. They dug a trench and raised a headstone. They inscribed: “He left us.” Publisher Block likes to walk, puffing ever so slightly, from the house to the headstone. It is proof to him that his sons are absorbing friendship.

Distinctions are unknown to him. President Coolidge is his good friend. When Paul Jr. wrote a poem about Lindbergh, the President, no lover of poetry, sent an unusually prompt and cordial note of Presidential praise. Three men won executive pardons because Publisher Block intervened. With Nominee Smith, it is a question of “Al” and “Paul.” But Publisher Block is equally fond of Ballplayer Ruth, Mauler Dempsey, Banker Kahn, Globetrotter Walker, Parson Cadman. Said Friend Block, last week: “My wife’s hobbies are jades and antiques. Mine are newspapers and human beings.”

Politically, he is an independent Republican, at least nationally. But he has made a vow not to support Nominee Hoover unless he declares for modification of the Volstead Act. Prohibition is his chief antipathy. He could not possibly dislike any human being so much.