The Press: High-Priced Heritage

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The U.S. has 7,350 magazines, tailored to every taste and purse. But to scholarly-looking Malcolm S. Forbes, 29, one of Business Biographer B.C. Forbes's five sons, there seemed to be a yawning gap in the market, right at the top. Nobody was putting out a magazine that cost $150 a year. Last week young Forbes had one in the dummy stage, and was taking a full-page ad in the New York Times next week to announce it. Its name was Nation's Heritage, its high-flown purpose to illustrate "the whole American panorama —the resources, the living patterns, the culture and the tradition of all the people and of all the land."

Nation's Heritage, a bimonthly, will start out in January with 5,000 copies and a cover painting (printed on linen) by the late Grant Wood. Its readers won't have to do much reading: the magazine will be nine-tenths pictures. It will also be adless (Malcolm's idea, reluctantly approved by B.C.). Forbes is counting heavily on its snob appeal—it is designed to look impressive on boardroom tables—but figures that many a businessman will want to buy it as a gift (with his name as donor on the inside cover) for his local library. "Heavy antique stock," the prospectus brags, "will give the magazine its fine library appeal guaranteed to keep its timbre and color for a century." In four years, Malcolm hopes to get 100,000 circulation, and cut his price to a mere $100 a year.