Mack Through

The three leading newspaper chains are: Hearst papers (28), Scripps-Howard papers (24), Gannett papers (17). Last week the Scripps-Howard chain took on a link, bought the Buffalo Evening Times and Sunday Times for some six million dollars.

A half-century ago, in the same year that the late E. W. Scripps was establishing the first of his chain, the Cleveland Press, Norman Edward Mack, a Canadian country boy who had learned about advertising in Chicago, was establishing the Times in Buffalo. At first it was a Sunday paper only. In 1883, he made it a daily. It served him well, and he it, during a career of which the high mark was the Mack chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (1908). Upon selling out to Scripps-Howard, Mr. Mack, now 70, has retired.

Controlling stock in the Scripps-Howard chainpapers is held today by Robert Paine Scripps, 33, son of the founder. The active chainmaker is Roy Wilson Howard, spruce, spry, 46.