Grasty

An editor and a publisher who left his mark in several American cities, Charles Henry Grasty, died in London at the age of 60. His was the story, not of a reporter who wanted to be a publisher, but of a publisher who preferred to be a reporter. It was as a reporter, as "editorial correspondent" of The New York Times, that he died.

Born in Virginia, educated in Missouri, Mr. Grasty became Managing Editor of the Kansas City Times, a post that held him five years and gave him his grounding.

He made his name, however, when in 1892 he became publisher and part owner of a struggling, uninfluential little paper, The Baltimore News. He built it up, he fought crooked politics tooth and nail, he made it into a paper to be reckoned with.

In 1904 the Baltimore fire wiped out his plant. From the ruins he went to a telephone and called up a friend in Manhattan who owned an unused newspaper plant in Philadelphia. He bought the plant by telephone, he moved it to Baltimore and set it tip in an unused building. He obtained an old locomotive from the Pennsylvania Railroad and ran it alongside the plant, using its steam to furnish power for his presses. Ten days after the fire, The Baltimore News appeared once more, calling on the citizens of Baltimore to build a greater and more beautiful city. In 1907 Mr. Grasty sold the News to Frank A. Munsey, who retained it until last year, when it was resold to Mr. Hearst. For a year Mr. Grasty traveled abroad. Then he bought a half interest in The St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press and in a short time revolutionized it much as he had The Baltimore News. He did not remain in St. Paul long, however; he returned to Baltimore, (1910) and bought a controlling interest in The Sun, a large and successful paper. Two months later he produced The Evening Sun. Two years later the Democratic National Convention was held in Baltimore. From the beginning Grasty swung The Sun behind Woodrow Wilson and kept it there through all the vicissitudes of the Convention until Wilson was nominated--a fact of which Mr. Grasty was always proud. The coming of the War marked a new era for Mr. Grasty. Abandoning editorship, he went abroad as correspondent for The Kansas City Star and the Associated Press. He was not a battlefront correspondent. He kept behind the lines with the men who were managing affairs. He had a remarkable faculty of making friends and inspiring public men with that kind of confidence which leads them to give good interviews. In 1916 'he returned to America and tried to be Treasurer of The New York Times, but the cor- respondent-business, the desire to be where things were going on, was in his blood. In May, 1917, he sailed for Europe on the Baltic, with General Pershing. He had a commission as correspondent for the Times, which after a bit was made a roving commission. He wandered over Europe cultivating friends and harvesting interviews* in a way that was the envy of many less gifted correspondents. Pershing, Lloyd George, Foch, Northcliffe, Joffre, Clemenceau, King Constantine, Wilson were his material. The nature of his acquaintanceship with these men is well illustrated by such despatches as: "I met the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, casually in Downing Street today. He was coming out from luncheon, and I asked him What he thought of Lord Grey's letter." Or an interview with Foch 'during the dangerous German drive of 1918: "General Foch, before answering, took a few whiffs from his 2-c- cigar and looked at me with a smile of quiet confidence in his bright brown eyes. 'They won't break through,' he said, and the words were as percussive as pistol shots."

*There is a book (now out of print) of Mr. Grasty's outstanding despatches, published in 1918. FLASHES FROM THE FRONT-- Century.