The Press: The Fair Lady of Milwaukee

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Grant, who already held 20% of the tock, arranged for the employees to get a $250,000 cash bonus to pay for a quarter interest on 25% more, declared a first-year dividend enabling them to pay another quarter, and got a Milwaukee jank to lend the employees the balance at 3% interest. Since the dividends averaged 10% a year, the employees were able to pay their debts largely out of earnings. Grant's stock is now down t012½ %. Last year he announced that the staff, which now holds 55% of the stock, will in five years own 67½% of the paper (the remainder will be held by heirs of early stockholders). None of the top five executives under Grant, whose salaries average about $40,000 a year, owns more than 3% of the Journal's stock (at $26.27 Der share, Grant says each of the five is worth "from $250,000 to $500,000"). Grant need not fear the employees' power. More than 95% have given him their voting proxies, and they are not allowed to sell stock outside the Journal.

He has been seriously challenged only once. In 1943, the American Newspaper Guild tried to organize the Journal. Grant stopped it in his own way. He met the employees in small groups, announced: "By law [Wagner Act&], I am not allowed to make a statement to you. But the time has come for you to choose my management or the Guild—you can't have both. I'll get out if you want the Guild. Here's my record. You decide." The speech ended the drive, and the Journal still has no Guild.

Do Journal employees really feel they own the paper? Many do, especially those who have worked for the Journal for long (258 employees have more than 25 years' service). But some Journalists argue that the executives really own and run the paper, and that stock ownership is, whether intended or not, a device for keeping staff salaries lower than they should be (the Journal's highest-paid reporter makes $250 a week, most average under $140). However, their dividends ($7,176,000 to date) and the tremendous increase in the value of their holdings ($8,669,100 at present) give them security they might not otherwise have.

As boss, Grant has created around him not only a newspaper tradition but a group of men who know how to carry it out. Thus, Grant's successor is likely to be not an individual but a group of Journalists. For their part, Milwaukeeans will continue to read the Journal, often feeling the same shuttling between love and hate for the paper that children sometimes feel toward their parents.

That's all right with Harry Grant. Says he "We're trying to lead. The only way to lead is to get out ahead. We're not a loved paper. But we're a respected one."