Heirloom Resold

The Washington elm at Concord, which endured since Revolutionary days, died during the last year. The great landmarks of life all pass--except great newspapers. In 1801 Alexander Hamilton, casting about for publicity medium for the Federalist Party, founded a little four-page sheet, The New York Evening Post. That sheet was sold last week to Cyrus H. K. Curtis, proprietor of The Saturday Evening Post, of The Ladies' Home Journal, of The Public Ledger (Philadelphia).

Mr. Curtis said:

"By arrangement just completed with the present owners, I will assume the sole ownership and direction of the New York Evening Post on and after January 1, 1924.

"I know and respect the great traditions of The Post, reaching back nearly a century and a quarter, and I wish to preserve and, if possible, strengthen them."

The Post changed hands in consideration of a sum variously reported as $1,600,000 and $3,600,000. The lower sum is probably the more accurate guess, since its circulation is about 30,000, with a Saturday edition of about 55,000. A large part of the purchase price is understood to take the form of the assumption of obligations contracted by the present owners to Thomas W. Lament of J. P. Morgan & Co. when they purchased the paper from him less than two years ago.

The history of The Post contains an amazing list of names on its roster of editors and proprietors alone.* When founded by Hamilton and his friends (with a capital of probably not over $10,000) William Coleman, a literary lawyer from Massachusetts, was made editor. Hamilton, himself, exercised a controlling influence until his death in 1804, and wrote many editorials. Coleman carried on with the paper after Hamilton's death. In 1827 William Cullen Bryant became a proprietor and later editor. He attempted to purify journalistic English. In 1836 Bryant was followed as editor by Parke Godwin, who later became his son-in-law. Later John Bigelow took the helm, and after Bryant's death, in 1878, Godwin returned as editor. Three years later Henry Villard, the railroad builder, bought the paper. Under him as editors were Carl Schurz (hero of the German revolution of 1848, and one of those who helped to nominate Lincoln in 1860), and E. L. Godkin (founder of The Nation, and generally admitted to be the ablest literary critic of his time, although his trenchant pen also turned to politics). Godkin's largest reputation was gained in the bitter and successful fight that he made against Tammany--he was a "fighting editor." After Schurz and Godkin, followed Horace White and Rollo Ogden.

On the death of Henry Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard, his son, inherited the paper, In 1917 the younger Villard sold The Post to Thomas W. Lamont. Mr. Lament was understood to have spent much money on The Post, and it was common talk that he "dropped a million or two" in it. Early in 1922 he sold the paper to a syndicate of 34 men headed by Edwin T. Gay and including Harold I. Pratt, Mrs. Willard Straight, Clarence M. Woolley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marshall Field, Charles C. Burlingham, Cleveland H. Dodge, August Heckscher, Finley J. Shepard, George W. Wichersham, Paul M. Warburg, Harold Phelps Stokes. These men in turn have now sold the paper to Mr. Curtis.

*There is an excellent history of The Post: THE EVENING POST--Allan Nevins--Boni ($5.00).