Father & Daughter

Readers of Liberty, nickel-weekly, last week found "JOYRIDE, A Story of Love --and Wings," by Alicia Patterson. Opening lines: "Laura Withers was bored. Not the casual brand of boredom that smart women like to wear. But a stifling boredom. . . ." Editor's blurb: "... A young writer with experience as a newspaper reporter, known to readers of Liberty through her articles on hunting, fishing and flying. This time she has turned to fiction." Omitted from blurb: She is the attractive socialite daughter of Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, who divides with his cousin, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, management of Liberty, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News. It was on the tabloid News that Daughter Alicia worked in 1927 as a $30-a-week sobsister, was once thrown downstairs by an irate Hoboken housewife whom she sought to interview on henpecking. To other Chicago -L-nd Manhattan social ites the authoress is Mrs. Simpson. James Simpson Jr., whom she married in 1927 and from whom she now lives apart (in Manhattan), is son of the board chairman of Chicago's Marshall Field & Co. But to the publishing world she is sec ond principal in a Father-&-Daughter saga unique in its annals. Their wealth is immense. The Chicago Tribune is the greatest money-maker among U. S. newspapers. The New York Daily News has the largest circulation in the U. S., makes other millions. But hardship makes the closest bonds. And Liberty, the Patterson pet, has found hard-going. Its advertising is slim. Just why this should be so, few can explain. In May 1924, Liberty was born. No magazine had ever been blessed with such a blast of birthday publicity or with more potent parentage. Within six months it had 600,000 readers. Advertisers in magazines were prejudiced against its Sunday-supplement flavor, but in a few years this prejudice waned and Liberty's advertising pages increased. Then, in 1928, just as success seemed certain, Liberty blundered, tripped. Not in circulation, for that continued to mount, to a staggering 2,250,000 today. Liberty's popularity with the man-and-woman-on-the-street can scarcely be denied. But, even though 1929 was a boom year, its advertising fell off. Meanwhile, old Collier's came up from behind, went far ahead. The Pattersons--pere et fille--could easily afford to throw Liberty away and still live lavishly on Tribune-News money. And they might do if Liberty were not, with him, a point of honor. As public evidence of loyalty to Father's enterprise, Daughter Alicia has frequently contributed articles and last week risked amused reactions of her friends by addressing Liberty's motley public in fiction without pretense to great literary merit.* Father & Daughter camaraderie is carried beyond office walls. Each has a sport biplane and a pilot's license. Capt. Patterson also maintains an amphibian yacht in which with guests and private pilots they make flights for hunting, or fishing in the Caribbean. These adventures provide meat for Alicia's articles, which appear in more-than-average length in Father's Liberty--and, indicative of rising reputation, she had an article on aviation clothes in Conde Nast's current Vogue. Daughter Alicia's spirit is come by honestly. Her father displayed it 30 years ago when he dashed away from Yale University to report the China uprising for his father's Tribune. A vigorous career was interrupted in 1916 when Vice President Patterson of the "World's Greatest Newspaper" became Private Patterson, currying artillery horses under the critical eye of a corporal who had been an "L" train guard. In the same year Sergeant Patterson refused a lieutenancy because he said he had not merited it. After St. Mihiel and the Argonne, however, he became a captain--a title which he earned by great gallantry. His beaux gestes he carried from war to publishing. A victim of gas, he lay hospitalized in France. A burly Britisher came to visit him, and asked: "What will you do with your mounting Tribune profits?" Patterson: What do you suggest, Northcliffe? Northcliffe: Start a tabloid in New York. Patterson: Done. That, according to one story, is how the New York Daily News began. With equal daring, Capt. Patterson launched his Liberty to challenge the monarchy of the Saturday Evening Post. To have made a magazine which millions read and then to be spurned by advertisers might make an ordinary publisher quit in disgust. But not the Pattersons, pe et fille.

editor Croly naturally espoused the League of Nations--devoted an issue to denouncing its enemies after the Versailles Treaty and the defeat of President Wilson's original plan. His was then not a popular attitude. Much potential pre-War Liberalism had turned reactionary in the War-time fever, and The New Republic lost 40% of its 48.000 circulation. After the War it faced a nation whose tempo had suddenly, nervously quickened, whose major thought tendencies, expressed in journalism, philosophy and literature, were toward the satire, horselaugh and Menckenian sneer, hardly sympathetic to the earnest, didactic, creative attitude of The New Republic. Dismayed by the scene around him, Editor Croly's faiths subtly changed; his belief in progressive movements weakened, he began to feel that in individual development lay the real future of Liberalism. With the collapse of the LaFollette boom in 1925 the magazine suffered another relapse, since when it has slowly recovered a circulation of 25,000 based largely on its literary and critical ingredients.

Question of Love

The most striking bit of medical news from the newspaper point of view last week was a Buffalo doctor's prescription for procreating boy or girl babies ad libitum. The doctor, A. L. Benedict, 65. is an authority on the physics of the digestive system, an authority on American Indian ethnology and archeology, a dilettante in genetics.

From his genetic observations he concludes that: "Children of couples deeply in love with each other, particularly first, invariably are boys. ... It is all a question of love, and while it may seem a little wicked to say it, unrestrained love. In nature there is little interest in morals. Nature is alone interested in perpetuating its species, and where there is normal living and normal emotions the sexes are fairly well balanced. . . ."

But "where you have a preponderance of girl babies, such as the vast wave of spinsters which came out of New England, the phenomena can easily be traced to Puritanical living. . . ."

Although Dr. Benedict's recipe made excellent newspaper copy, its scientific validity is nil.

Daily Defined

To crush a reporter for ornate writing, a caustic city editor bawls, "What do you think you're writing for? A magazine?" The rebuke is pregnant with insulting implication. A newspaperman is jealous of his association with spot news and of the qualities of speed and vigor which he feels set him apart from the magazine "journalist."

What, then, must the staff of William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal have felt last week if they read their publisher's full-page advertisement in Printers' Ink weekly headed: "We agree with Mr. Collins"? The copy quoted Kenneth Collins, publicity director of R. H. Macy & Co., saying: "Today the name 'newspaper' is a misnomer. The great metropolitan dailies are, in reality, magazines with news value added. . . ."

* Her heroine finds flying an antidote to dull husband and luxurious ease. Love enters ("flying was her offering to love") -In the end she crashes fatally. But her testimony to aeronautical delights is convincing.

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