The Press: Sylvia & You

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With equal effect, she dips into her own experience to make points. "One of America's leading dermatologists simplified my life and slashed my personal budget a few months ago," she confided in a column last September. In the chatty paragraph that followed, Sylvia admitted a feminine partiality for expensive face creams ("I won't confess to myself, much less to you, what I was spending"), but said she had given them up when a skin specialist assured her that nothing, but nothing, beats common soap. This little white lie (in private fact, she still dabs on assorted costly ointments, pays 75¢ a cake for Elizabeth Arden soap) had its purpose. It was Sylvia's way of backing into a survey of the billion-dollar cosmetic industry so stuporously dull that few readers would have bothered to read it in the raw.

Eye-Dropper Economics? In her very simplicity of approach Sylvia Porter detractors are wont to see superficiality. Their principal objection is that she is not worth reading by anyone who has gone beyond the kindergarten economics level. "Economics by the eye-dropper." sneers a teacher of economics at NewYork University.

Many other Porter critics, especially among businessmen who profess not to read her, apparently hold the view of Britain's renowned 18th century lexicographer and epigrammatist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who felt that women ought to know better than to invade a male province and could only succeed there as a freak. "Sir," said Johnson, "a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Spotting Trends. The fact is that as a business columnist, Sylvia Porter can more than hold her own in a predominantly male field. Even her critics acknowledge her perception. Says the chief of research for a topflight economic agency in Washington: "She is watched, more than read, because she is perceptive, and we want to know what is on her mind."

Sometimes her crystal ball is as cloudy as anyone else's—together with most forecasters, she missed the 1960 steel picture, for example, inaccurately predicted record profits. But Sylvia has no equal at reducing vital but complex subjects, such as the Federal Reserve System, to manageable size. She is sometimes miles ahead of the competition in spotting trends: she was one of the first to see the business recession of 1958, made a splash by spotting the travail of Miami's resort-hotel business.