The Press: Iowa Formula

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Not only did the Register & Tribune saturate the city circulation (83,000 morning & evening in a population of 142,500), but it pushed its frontiers to the farthest of Iowa's 99 counties, became for all practical purposes Iowa's State newspaper. Its serious competitors are not the Sioux City Journal nor the Cedar Rapids Gazette, but big dailies from outside the State. On the east the invasion of the Chicago Tribune must be—and is—vigilantly resisted; on the west the Omaha World-Herald and Bee-News knock at the Nebraska-Iowa border. But the Register & Tribune has its State—most literate and fourth wealthiest per capita in the U. S.—sewed up tight. Reason: It gets and prints all Iowa news, and knows how to deliver it. Its 254 State correspondents report not only hot news, but every marriage and death in their communities. A single day's edition of the Register & Tribune may be replated as often as 20 times, to front-page news of special interest to this distant town or that remote county. Once printed, the news is rushed to the Register & Tribune's quarter-million subscribers (including 72,000 farm families) by the most elaborate and thoroughgoing carrier system in the U. S. Old "G. C." with his head full of route numbers and train schedules, built an organization of 4,820 carriers who swarm over Iowa. Where train schedules are not adequate, a fleet of motor trucks does the job. On Sundays, when R. F. D. is off duty, carriers cover the farm regions. Fifty-six circulation managers, 90 supervisors—all crack men—keep the machine running. Chief of them all is the Register & Tribune's circulation manager, William A. ("Bill") Cordingley, whose red-topped pate peers over the same roll top desk at which Gardner Cowles first placed him 30 years ago.

Young Blood. Three daughters, three sons has Gardner Cowles. Daughter Helen, who used to edit the Register & Tribune book page, collaborated on four volumes including 7,000 Ways to Please a Husband. Pleased by Daughter Helen is Husband James LeCron. secretary to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Agard Wallace. (Since the Cowleses are traditionally Republican. Son-in-law LeCron's New Dealism is a subject for family jokes.) Son Russell, living in Santa Fe, N. Mex., is a Prix de Rome muralist. an abstractionist who does portraits of himself in a bathtub (TIME, Feb. 11). Daughter Bertha's husband. Sumner Quarton, manages a Cowles radio station at Cedar Rapids. Daughter Florence's husband is in the automobile business. Remaining are two sons who now. with their 74-year-old father's counsel, rule his publishing domain. They are John and Gardner Jr. ("Mike").