The Press: Herald Tribune's Lady

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Such were the surface qualities, coating innate efficiency, ambition and commonsense, which Helen Rogers of Appleton, Wis. carried out of Barnard College 31 years ago. She wanted to teach, but Elisabeth Mills Reid, handsome, gracious wife of Editor Whitelaw Reid of the New York Tribune, wanted her as social secretary. Wisely she chose Miss Rogers. When President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 sent Whitelaw Reid to the Court of St. James's, Secretary Rogers went along. There she met the Reid's fun-loving Son Ogden, just out of Yale. Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, who had a deep affection for her pert, level headed secretary, smiled on the match. Helen and Ogden were married in 1911. Next year Whitelaw Reid died and the Tribune, which he had acquired in 1872 from Horace Greeley, passed to Son Ogden.

Home in the U. S., Helen Reid bore three children. One died of typhoid at the age of nine. Son Whitelaw is now at Yale, Son Ogden Jr., 9, in boarding school. Mrs. Reid slaved for women's suffrage until 1918 brought victory. Then her husband said to her: "You are freed from your suffrage work and responsibility. The Tribune needs you; come down to the office and work the paper's success out with me."

Mrs. Reid went out on the street and solicited advertising for two months be fore assuming an office in the Tribune. She then took charge as advertising director, knowing how to whip her staff into a lather of energy they never suspected in themselves. In 1924 the Tribune absorbed James Gordon Bennett's Herald, which the late unlamented Frank A. Munsey had run into the ground, and Mrs. Reid acquired new responsibilities. At 52 she is still advertising director, firing her sales force with 9 a. m. pep talks every Monday and keeping them stoked through Saturday noon. Though her husband owns nearly all of the newspaper's stock and has the title of editor, the Herald Tribune today as a business is largely Helen Rogers Reid.

Ninth Floor. Votes-for-women is no longer an issue, but the flame of feminism burns as high as ever in Helen Reid's compact breast. Proud is she that no other metropolitan newspaper employs as many female executives. There are Mrs. Helen W. Leavitt, assistant advertising manager; Elsa Lang, promotion director; Esther Kimmel in charge of the Home Economics Department; Books Editor Irita Van Doren; Mary Day Winn, assistant fiction editor; Book Critic Isabel Paterson. And most important, presiding on the ninth floor, Marie Mattingly Meloney.

Kentucky-born 50 years ago "Missy" Meloney at 15 worked on the Washington Post, at 16 helped cover a Republican National Convention for the New York World. Like many a crack newshawk she served her hitch on the rowdy Denver Post, and was the first woman reporter ever admitted to the U. S. Senate Press Gallery. She was editor of Delineator in 1926 when her good friends the Reids invited her to take charge of the Herald Tribune magazine. The magazine is said to be a money-loser at present, but beyond doubt it pulls substantial circulation. Like Helen Reid, "Missy" Meloney is small and indomitable. She is warm, friendly, with arge brown eyes and a hawk nose.