The Press: All That Money Can Buy

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As casually as most men buy a hat Marshall Field III last week added another $5,000,000-a-year business to his publishing empire. It was an odd buy for the No. 1 "angel" of New Deal literature, who already puts out such evangelically leftist journals as the Chicago Sun, Manhattan's hyperthyroid PM, and the once-conservative monthly Southern Farmer (now run for Field by ex-NYAdministrator Aubrey Williams).

Marshall Field's new possessions: the 19-volume World Book Encyclopedia for children (top price: $92) and Childcraft (14 volumes, $47) for parents and teachers. Field did not plan to rewrite them to fit his philosophy; he was just helping out W. F. Quarrie, the Encyclopedia's publisher, who wanted to sell and retire.

Same day, another youngster in the fast-growing family of Field enterprises had a birthday. For the four-year-old Chicago Sun, deep in the red, it was a red-letter day that saw its first A.P. copy (TIME, Dec. 10) roll out of clacking teletype printers. He was still being politely charitable about his rival, the Chicago Tribune's autocratic Robert Rutherford McCormick. Field's comment: "He runs a very efficient paper."

Other news last week in Field's casually-put-together empire:

¶ Harper, Random House, Book-of-the-Month Club, Scribner and Little, Brown, who ganged up to keep Field from buying the big reprint house of Grosset & Dunlap, have ganged up again—this time with giant Curtis Publishing Co.—to put out 25¢ paper-back Bantam Books in opposition to Field's Pocket Books.

¶Southern Farmer in five months has shown "tremendous improvement" under Publisher Aubrey Williams, says Field. He added: "We had to throw out quite a bit of awful advertising. Aubrey is a great fellow. I'm crazy about him."

¶ PM, Manhattan's adless tab, which bragged in June that it had spent a whole year in the black, backslid a fortnight ago into the red.