Again, Curtis-Martin

Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis's jewels have been his sons-in-law. With the late Edward William Bok he built his great magazine publishing business (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, et al.). And for the last 17 years his dapper, alert step-son-in-law, John Charles Martin, has busied himself in the other Curtis publishing enterprise, that of gaining control of the Philadelphia newspaper field. Announced, last week, was the seventh addition to Curtis-Martin Newspapers Inc.--The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Unlike Brother-in-Law Bok, with whom he was not particularly intimate, Publisher Martin was not brought up in the publishing business. He married into it. In 1909 he took to wife Alice W. Pillsbury of Milwaukee, daughter of Publisher Curtis's second cousin. A year later, Publisher Curtis made that second cousin his second wife. Two years after, John Charles Martin left the machinery business to run Mr. Curtis's first newspaper, the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Since then, with little direction from above, he has played a sharp game in Philadelphia journalism. Soon after the purchase of the Ledger (1913), the Evening Ledger was founded. Then the Evening Telegraph was merged with the Evening Ledger. Then the Ledger absorbed the North American and the Press. In 1925 Publisher Martin broke into the tabloid field by founding the Sim to compete with the News (MacFadden-operated), which had sprung up that year. The Sun failed two years ago. The only Curtis-Martin paper outside the home town is the New York Evening Post (bought in 1924), to which Publisher Martin devotes Tuesdays.

Last week's buy, the 100-year-old Inquirer, has been in the hands of the Elverson family since 1890. James Elverson, Civil War telegrapher to Secretary of State Seward, made the Inquirer the organ of Pennsylvania Republicanism. So firm was his conviction that employment advertisements increased circulation, that Philadelphians used to say "if you see a man carrying the Inquirer, he's out of work."

After Elverson Sr.'s death, Col. James Elverson Jr. managed the paper. Last year Col. Elverson died, leaving the property, housed in a big new $10,000,000 plant, to his sister, Mrs. Eleanor Elverson Patenotre, relict of a onetime French Ambassador to the U. S., whose son Raymond is a member of the French Chamber of Deputies. Mrs. Patenotre's desire to live near her son was given as a reason for her selling out, for a reputed $18,000,000, to Curtis-Martin.

What Publisher Martin intends to do with the Inquirer is still a secret between him and his maker, Father-in-Law Curtis. Shrewdest journalistic surmise is that he bought it primarily to keep it out of rival hands.

As a result of the purchase, the combined circulation of the Curtis-Martin newspapers in Philadelphia becomes over 823,000, not quite equal to the total city distribution of the Bulletin, Record and News. Publisher Martin's journals are read by the bulk of the "best people," carry the best financial news, the most society pictures.

The business of supplying daily reading matter to every other literate Philadelphian ds not Publisher Martin's only chore. He is a trustee of Equitable Trust Co. (Manhattan), director in the Philadelphia National Bank, president of Benjamin Franklin Realty Corp., vice president of Edgewood Investing Co.

Although he is not so lavish a charitarian as was Brother-in-Law Bok, he is interested in the Y.M C A. During the War he served as a "Y" secretary in France. He owes allegiance to no church or college.

The Martin menage is located across the road from the Curtis home in Wyncote, Pa. (Philadelphia suburb) and consists of Mrs. Martin, two daughters, three sons. Daughter Isabel is betrothed to William Porter Oglesby, Philadelphia socialite. Son Harrison is going to Annapolis next year.

Although he has never been associated with the magazine business, Publisher Martin is a director of Curtis Publishing Co. To him will ultimately, evidently, fall the task of carrying on all the gigantic Curtis interests. With spectacular prudence, his life is insured for $6,000,000-- the U. S. record.

Koenigsberg to Denver

Over the portal of the rip-snorting Denver Post, the late part-owner H. H. Tammen, onetime bartender, is credited with having had inscribed: "O Justice! When Expelled from All Other Habitations Make This Thy Dwelling Place."

Glad indeed was Moses Koenigsberg. half of whose 51 years have been spent as a Hearst executive, to enter such a promised land. He became, last week, the paper's general manager. Publisher Frederick G. Bonfils--who bought the Post for his partner Tammen and himself in 1893 with some of the money he made out of operating the Little Louisiana Lottery (TIME, Nov. 19, 1928)--had specially made the new job for his longtime friend Koenigsberg.

Two years ago Moses Koenigsberg was chief of all Hearst feature and news services, world's widest read.* In 1927 he went to Geneva as one of five U.S. delegates to the League of Nations' first international conference of press experts. There he distinguished himself by helping to defeat a proposal to make news government property. Delegate Koenigsberg protested that such legislation might deliver the world's press into the hands of wilful statesmen. For his crusading, France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. The pleasure which Delegate Koenigsberg might have experienced from the decoration was not shared by his boss. Publisher Hearst wrote an editorial saying that no man of his should accept the baubles of a foreign land. Moses Koenigsberg had to resign.

For one who had risen so high, times became comparatively lean. He organized Kay Features, a syndicate which has not proven eminently successful. The rumor that he might help form and head a new chain of newspapers has not, to date, materialized. But, besides his medal, Newsman Koenigsberg can point pridefully to a journalistic career begun at the age of 13, when, as a result of winning a Chamber of Commerce essay prize, he began reporting on the San Antonio Times.

Rotund, big-voiced, bad-land-bred, city-smoothed, General Manager Koenigsberg will not seem out of place around the office of the Denver Post, where once trod fleshy, practical-joking, hard-boiled H. H. Tammen. Nor will a Hearstman be any novelty to Publisher Bonfils, who imported a setting of them in the Yellow '905 when he first began to make his paper a hissing to indiscreet Denver citizens.

* Newspaper Feature Service, International News Service, King Features Syndicate, Universal Service, Premier Syndicate, International Feature Service.

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