Business & Finance: All Morning

In 1880 two reporters went to Manhattan to work for the only financial news agency in the U. S.—a service run by John J. Kiernan. After two years Reporters Charles H. Dow and Edward D. Jones branched out for themselves, writing longhand bulletins for delivery by messenger to Wall Street subscribers. Dow, a dour black-bearded figure with a professorial manner, and Jones, a jovial, ruddy gentleman with a great walrus mustache, soon discovered a market for a daily summary of their hurried flashes. By 1889 they were calling this the Wall Street Journal, “A Paper of News Not Opinion.”

Up to last week Dow, Jones & Co. published both evening & morning editions of the Wall Street Journal. The morning edition, which was launched in 1898, had become indispensable reading matter for every responsible Wall Streeter. The circulation of the Wall Street Journal was only 30,000 but where nine copies were sold of the morning edition, only one was sold of the evening edition. For this there was a good reason. Under the late great Editors Clarence Walker (“They Told”) Barren and William Peter Hamilton, Dow, Jones built up a staff of experts whose opinions were highly valued in the Street. It was impossible for these writers to clothe the bare skeleton of the day’s news with background and analysis before the evening edition went to press at 3 p.m. The morning edition, however, blossomed with learned and comprehensive articles on every significant business development.

Last week Kenneth Craven Hogate, Dow, Jones’s able president, simply dropped the evening edition. At the same time he lifted William Henry Grimes, a crack correspondent, from the Washington bureau into the managing editor’s chair.

To this day the Wall Street Journal is incidental to the news service started by Messrs. Dow & Jones. Messengers still deliver bulletins every half hour, some-times 160 per day, but the heart & soul of Dow. Jones is its ticker service. Not to be confused with tickers which tap out stock quotations, Dow, Jones distributes a complete digest of financial, political and economic news with incredible speed and accuracy. A customer with a Dow, Jones ticker in his office for $100 per month knows as much spot news of the day’s events as does the editor of the Wall Street Journal—and just as soon. From a master transmitter in the company’s Broad Street office, leased wires run to 2,000 subscribers in 75 cities in the U. S. and Canada. An important Washington announcement should be on San Francisco tickers in ten seconds.

The Dow, Jones staff is the product of a rigorous training system unique in the Press. President Hogate, a Phi Beta Kappa from De Pauw, prefers youngsters from western colleges because he thinks they have a sharper news sense. After trailing around with a seasoned Journal reporter for a year or more, a cub will gradually specialize in some field — rails, steel, aviation, municipals. Then if he is lucky he may, as one reporter did, spend 18 months and $10,000 of the Journal’s money running down a story that a fabulous Mexican oil gusher had turned to salt.