Direct Action

In Youngstown, a controversy arose at the "copy" desk of the Vindicator, a newspaper. Did the Prime Minister of Great Britain spell his name with a "D" or a "d"? The telegraph editor took typewriter and paper, and sent a letter across the sea.

Back from England came the answer: "I am Ramsay MacDonald." So those papers and magazines who have been following the Manchester Guardian and the British Who's Who will change from little d-ians to big D-ians.

Costly Circulation

Frank A. Munsey, the great consolidator, bought the New York Globe last Spring (TIME, June 4), and added it to his New York Sun. Since then, they have been published as the Sun and Globe. On March 10, the consolidation became complete; the paper will be called thenceforward simply The New York Sun.

Mr. Munsey was reported to have paid about $2,000,000 for the Globe, According to the claims of his papers, the circulation of the Sun was about 172,000 daily at that time. Now the combined paper claims a circulation of more than 250,000. Hence apparently Mr. Munsey paid $2,000,000 for about 80,000 circulation.

A Veteran Returns

Some 68 years ago, a man child was born in County Antrim. He grew. At nine his mother brought him and six younger brothers to America. They settled on a farm in Indiana, near Valparaiso. He got some education. He tried school teaching three times and quit from boredom. He became a printer's devil and learned to swear. He became a butcher and failed in business. He became a teamster on railroad construction work, and went to Knox College at Galesburg, Ill.

All in good time he was graduated. He went to Boston, taught bicycle riding. Then he became editor of the Wheelman, a bicycle paper. He went to New York and started a fiction "syndicate." Finally, in 1893, at 37, he started a magazine. It grew. In two and a half years its circulation was greater than Century, Harper's or Scribner's. That is how the world came to know Samuel Sidney McClure.

Mr. McClure picked up as writers and presented to America in McClure's Magazine Kipling, Conrad, Doyle, Jack London, Henry, Tarkington, Meredith. His other contributors included Barrie, Anthony Hope, Robert W. Chambers.*

Twice Mr. McClure was reported to have refused $1,000,000 for the magazine. But fortune changed. McClure's went into a receivership. Mr. McClure sold it in 1911 and set out to see the world, "to take a post graduate course in the universe."

Meanwhile, the magazine changed hands several times. Its founder announced last week: "McClure's Magazine came in my way and I have bought it." What he paid for it is not known, but he said: "I wouldn't take half a million dollars for it." The only change in the magazine that he announced was an increase in size, to 160 pages, from its present 130-page form.

A True Journalist

Newspaper writing is not ordinarily a matter of inspiration. It has certain set forms and rules. These being complied with--and they come naturally to a man after some experience--any newspaper story is a satisfactory story. But this routine type of writing can get into a man's blood, become instinctively necessary to him. The following is a story which complies with newspaper tradition: "Los ANGELES--Suffering from the effects of a fractured skull, from which he never recovered his mental powers, Frank C. Kingsland, newspaper man, committed suicide at a downtown hotel by shooting himself in the temple. His death was instantaneous.

"Kingsland was on The New York Sun for seven years under Chester S. Lord, and acted as their Far East correspondent during the Chinese rebellion, when the empire was turned into a republic.

"During the war he enlisted in the 27th Engineers and was transferred to the Intelligence Department under Major Rupert Hughes. He was discharged as sergeant shortly after the armistice. He returned to New York and was on the Wall Street Journal until coming west in 1920 on a special mission for the Republican National Committee.

"During the Democratic Convention in San Francisco he had an automobile accident in which he was severely injured. Kingsland was 45 years of age and is survived by a wife and two children, who reside at 1102 Elden Avenue. He was a member of the Sun Alumnae Association and the American Legion."

This was the last story ever written by Frank C. Kingsland, journalist.

*With the exception of George Barr McCutcheon, those writing for the current (March) issue of McClure's are not well known. Their names: Ledyard M. Bailey, Orville M. Kile, Donald McGibeny, Alain Gerbault. Edmund Snell, Captain Frank Hurley, Ethel Comstock Bridgman, Margaret Wheeler Ross, Frederick A. Thompson, Mary Shannon, Major "Tom" Vigors, Zoe Beckley, John Randolph Hornady, Harry Benjamin, M.D., Anonymous, Franklin K. Sprague.