The Press: At the Waldorf

(See front cover.)

It was Convention Week for the gazette & clarion men. Unlike other convention groups, they did not backslap. That was their distinguishing sign as they swarmed through the lobbies and corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria, Manhattan hotel, during the annual sessions of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association and the Associated Press.

Among those present were:

McCormick & Patterson. The two newspapers with the largest circulations in the U. S. are the New York Daily News (daily 1,226,000, Sunday 1,416,000) and the Chicago Tribune (daily 811,000, Sunday 1,167,000). The first, a tabloid, is the offspring of the second. Both are published by Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick, 47, and Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, 49. Col. McCormick devotes most of his time to the Tribune, while Capt. Patterson's chief interest is the Daily News.

They are cousins, grandchildren of famed Joseph Medill who put the Tribune on the path to lustiness. They made sandpies together as children. They went to Yale. But before young Patterson was graduated, he rushed off to China in 1900 as war correspondent. Two years later, he was married and became a reporter on the Tribune. As he rose from one desk to another, he wrote four trivial novels, the most successful of which was A Little Brother of the Rich, and one good play, The Fourth Estate. He said he was writing to please himself. When the War started, he went to Germany, Belgium, France for the Tribune. On the entrance of the U. S., he enlisted in the artillery as a private, emerged a captain.

Meanwhile, young McCormick was studying law, dabbling in politics, getting married, emerging from the War a colonel.

From the time that they first began to wiggle pencils, Cousins McCormick & Patterson knew that the Tribune was waiting for them. They took over the reins of editorship in 1914, and after the War their whip cracked loudly, domineeringly. The morning field in Chicago had been cut down to two newspapers: the Tribune and the Hearst-owned Herald and Examiner.* In a circulation war which culminated in the distribution of nearly $1,000,000 worth of "lucky number" coupons, both newspapers distinguished themselves in bad taste and the Tribune achieved a domination which has never since been threatened. Andy & Min Gump became world figures and the Tribune Tower was built (Col. McCormick chose the site and Capt. Patterson suggested the $100,000 contest for an architectural design). This April, the Tribune won another great victory when it led the attack that smashed the Thompson-Small-Crowe-Smith machine in the Republican primaries (TIME, April 23). To the victor belong the boasts; and boast the Tribune did.

The smaller fry of editors and publishers at the A. N. P. A. convention saw a small electric sign on the ground floor of the Waldorf-Astoria. It read:

CHICAGO TRIBUNE ≫-> EXHIBIT

It led into the largest and perhaps the most blatant exhibit at the convention. Huge electric signs gleamed: "CHAMPION OF THE WORLD," "WORLD'S GREATEST NEWSPAPER." Printed matter told how the Tribune had licked Mayor Thompson & friends; how, because of the Tribune, "Chicago can again walk proudly among the cities!—and the class in advertising may now step up and learn a lesson from the politicians!"