The Press: Britain's Biggest

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The newspaper with the world's biggest circulation is published in London: not by the blustery Rothermere (see p. 21), not by the brilliant, impish Beaverbrook nor by the rugged Camrose. Those three —particularly the first two—are conspicuous national characters, living richly in town and country, moving momentously across Britain's political stage. But for publishing shrewdness they all yield to a neat, stumpy London-born Jew named Julius Salter Elias, who sold newspapers on London's streets at 13, never wrote a newspaper story in his life, at 65 is not mentioned in Who's Who.

His "greatest" newspaper is the London Daily Herald. It is owned by Odhams Press, Ltd., but Odhams means Julius Elias, its chairman and managing director. Since picking up the Herald, a doddering Laborite organ, five years ago, busy little Julius Elias has rammed its circulation from 250,000 to more than 2,000,000. In so doing he led the English Press in the most insanely expensive circulation war that circulation-war-torn isle had ever seen (TIME, Sept. 25, 1933). All the popular London newspapers pitched into the furious scramble for readers, bribing them with every premium imaginable from sets of Dickens, through washing machines to suits of underwear. The war's hottest year — 1933 — cost all combatants £2,500,000, nearly double their combined earnings.

Although Julius Elias came out on top with 2,030,000 readers, everyone knew his Herald was losing money and nearly everyone predicted its circulation would slump heavily following the truce. Last fortnight Chairman Elias complacently told Odham's shareholders, in annual meeting, just what was what. Excerpts:

"With regard to the Daily Herald . . . its net sales are in excess of 2,000,000 copies per day, the largest sale of any daily newspaper in the world, and have remained so for the past 18 months. . . . It is receiving increasing support and confidence from the advertisers. . . . No further capital should be needed for the development of this property [which] may now be considered on an entirely self-supporting basis. [Applause]."

With like good news for Odhams' John Bull (1,500,000 weekly), The People (3,300,000) and the new Weekly Illustrated, Chairman Elias got to the point of net profits—£347,216 (up nearly £15,000 from 1933).

The entire list of publications owned by Odhams has grown too numerous to warrant discussion in Chairman Elias' annual speech, but the shareholders knew better than to worry. Every decrepit sheetlet that Elias has picked up, he has turned into a moneymaker. The Herald, when Elias found it, was on its last legs as a Laborite party organ because the millionaire publishers Beaverbrook & Rothermere knew better than the Herald's editors what the British workingman wanted to read. Elias fixed that, had its sales up to 1,000,000 in a fortnight. He repeated the feat last year with the Socialist weekly Clarion. In two months he drove its circulation from 40,000 to nearly 250,000. So long as they show a profit, he is willing to let his publications hang on to their traditional politics, like the old-style Liberalism of John Bull, the Conservativism of The People. Publisher Elias is Britain's Socialist Press—on a profit basis.