GREAT TIMES

One of the treasures which cannot be bought is the fatherly New York Times. Last week it increased its capitalization to $26,000,000 from $16,000,000. The new figure hardly reflects its earning capacity, which is probably from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 per year. But the U. S. Government collects income tax on no such earnings, for the unpurchasable Times is not operated as a dividend milk cow. The formula of its success, the secret of its prestige, is its policy of accepting only the best, and paying for it.

The TIMES' new capital increase took the form of a $5,000,000 dividend of Times Preferred (8%) to holders of the fabulous common, of which there are only 10,000 shares. Five more millions of the preferred were authorized, for future disposition. The dividend declared was the fourth of its kind, the three prior ones having totaled $15,000,000.

The Times was started in 1851 by two young men who were excited by the report that Horace Greeley had made his New York Tribune earn $60,000 in one year. These founders--Henry Raymond and George Jones, both Tribune men, the one editorial and the other business--set the Times going with 100 shares of common stock, each of which they dared to believe might, sometime, be worth $1,000.

For two decades the Times was known as Raymond's paper. He died in 1869 and Mr. Jones carried it on to greater wealth and prestige. Dying in 1891, he left a splendid property to his children, with an injunction that they never sell out. Within a year they were preparing to sell. The editors, fearing the paper would fall into unworthy hands, rushed about and got a company organized which bought the property for $950,000. Then came the panic of 1893. The Times barely escaped consolidation and, in 1896, welcomed the help of Adolph Simon Ochs of Chattanooga. Tenn. For $75,000 and his services he got, within four years, half of its stock, which was now increased to 10,000 shares.

Adolph Simon Ochs was a teacher's son who had begun on his own as newsboy and printer's devil. Working on through nearly every standard newspaper job, he had bought the Chattanooga Times when he was 20, paying for it $250 (borrowed) and assuming its debts of $1,500.

The present-day New York Times is his creation. People mocked his motto, "All the news that's fit to print." They scoffed at his plan to cover fully phases of the news that had never been so covered before, such as Wall Street, real estate, books, routine governmental matters of the city, state and nation. At his refusal to accept the trend toward sensationalism, muckraking, funnies and "yellow" headlines, his contemporaries and competitors snorted.

He printed about 20,000 copies of his first issue. Half of them came back unsold. The Sunday circulation of the Times last week was 752,689. It is unquestionably the greatest U. S. newspaper, with special emphasis on the "news." Perhaps it is the world's greatest.

In the first 25 years of his ownership, Publisher Ochs made the paper produce $100,000,000, more than 90 millions of which he poured back into the property for expansion and improvement. Last year it printed more than 30,000,000 lines of advertising, for which the public paid from 55-c- to $10.00 per line.

It has 3,383 immediate employes, more than 500 in the news and editorial departments. It owns, jointly with a power and newsprint company, an entire town and miles of timber in the wilds of Canada. Last year it spent nearly a million in the U. S. Postoffice Department, half a million on telegraph and cable tolls, almost as much on welfare work among its employes.

As to news nothing is too hard for the Times to tackle, nothing too high It financed Peary to the North Pole, is backing Byrd at the South Pole. Covering a suburban murder trial, it leased an entire house to take care of its correspondents, their machines and helpers. Automobiles, trains, airplanes, ships-- whatever a Times newshawk needs he gets.

Louis Wiley, business manager, has been with Mr. Ochs's Times since its beginning. Carr V. Van Anda was managing editor through the paper's Great War days. He still holds the title but is virtually retired, reputed to be enormously rich, chiefly from stock ownership in the paper. Frederick T. Birchall, long with the Times, is acting managing editor. David H. Joseph, city editor, up from Kentucky, has given nearly 20 years to the paper. Beginning as police reporter, he now commands some 250 pairs of eyes and ears.

Mr. Ochs, 71, is still in supreme command of the Times. Virtually all the stock --and there are no bonds or mortgages--is owned outright by him, his immediate family and his employes, past and present. He retains his Chattanooga paper because it was his first. Once he was tempted to buy and merge other papers. He took over two Philadelphia sheets and made the Public Ledger, which he sold to Magazine Tycoon Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis.

It is his policy to have in training within the organization a likely successor for every important post. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, 37, his son-in-law, is a vice president of the company and extremely active in its management. So too is Julius Ochs Adler, nephew, 36, vice president and treasurer. Mr. Sulzberger has four children--three girls and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Mr. Adler has one son--Julius Ochs Adler Jr. Looming on the Board of Editors as a potential heir to power if not to stock is able Arthur Krock, onetime chief of the Louisville Times, onetime aide to Publisher Ralph Pulitzer of the New York World.