The Press: Biggest End

Last week the men who are putting the Hearst publishing empire in order got around to Mr. Hearst's magazines. Quietly knocked on the head was 39-year-old Pictorial Review, which only a year and a half ago boasted a circulation of more than 3,000,000, bigger than any other women's monthly.

Publisher Hearst took it over from its printer and paper company in 1934, in a deal which presumably permitted him to ignore its back debts unless it made money. In 1937 he got Butterick Co.'s 68-year-old Delineator the same way, rolled the two magazines into one. But admen last year bought only slightly more than two-thirds as much Pictorial lineage as in 1937.

Whatever Pictorial was while alive, its demise will be the biggest in U. S. magazine history. It owes subscribers in unfulfilled subscriptions a sum estimated at over $1,000,000. Mr. Hearst's trustees are under no obligation to saddle any of it on his profitable Good Housekeeping, may seek to peddle it around to other women's monthlies like Woman's Home Companion (circ. 3,044,000), Ladies' Home Journal (3,047,000), McCall's (2,809,000).