The New Yorker

About few U. S. magazines do readers talk so much and know so little as they do about The New Yorker. The business books of this successful smartchart are closed to outsiders and its editorial anonymity is severe. Last week in its August issue FORTUNE told The New Yorker's full story for the first time.

Green Baize & Blue Chips. The story begins ten years ago in Manhattan at the Saturday night poker sessions of the Thanatopsis Literary & Inside Straight Club. This group consisted chiefly of journalistic wits like Franklin Pierce Adams ("F. P. A."), Heywood Broun and Alexander Woollcott, who lunched together daily at the Algonquin Hotel. With them at the green baize table were two characters who did not fit into the regular membership. One was a nervous, profane, broom-thatched wild man from the West named Harold Ross. Born in Aspen, Colo., he had been a waterfront reporter in San Francisco, a picture-snatching newshawk in Atlanta, boss of a Negro gang in Panama and, most important, editor of the A. E. F.'s Stars & Stripes. The other was a suave, good-humored millionaire named Raoul Fleischmann, who at that time was in the bakery business. (His uncle made the yeast.)

From the editorial success of the Stars & Stripes Harold Ross had carried home the outlines of a formula for a magazine to be written and edited strictly for one class of readers. Its blood and bone was to be delicate but honest humor and satire, written up to the standards of its editors, deliberately unpopular with the masses. With caviar for editorial fare, the buying power of its readers would be assured, and its advertising could be easily sold on this basis. Thus, Harold Ross's journalistic hand held a pair of aces at the start. To play it, he needed a tall stack of blue chips. Poker-player Fleischmann, weary of the baking business, gladly furnished them.

Red Ink. Ross put in $20,000, Fleischmann $25,000. First issue of The New Yorker appeared Feb. 19, 1925. Manhattan was distinctly unimpressed. Editor Ross had made the colossal mistake of starting to print his magazine before he had anything worth while to print. He could not write; he knew few writers. Inarticulate, impatient, fiercely temperamental, he could not quickly teach others the elusive quality of wit which alone would suit him. In two months The New Yorker's initial 15,000 circulation had dwindled to 8,000, and it was losing $8,000 a week. Every Monday morning Mr. Fleischmann found on his desk a large bill for the deficits. Hopelessly discouraged, the founders came within an ace of calling the whole thing off.

What gave them pause was the unexpected result of an article by Ellin Mackay* entitled ''Why We Go to Cabarets, a Post-Debutante Explains" and printed in The New Yorker in November 1925. The New York dailies featured Miss Mackay's piece on their front pages and The New Yorker suddenly found that it had succeeded in storming the penthouses of High Society.

Its success opened the eyes of Editor Ross to the importance of the Manhattan socialite, to the fact that Broadway gossip sounds dull on Park Avenue.

Meanwhile a $126,000 promotion campaign directed by Publisher's Counsellor John Hanrahan, articulating the smart-chart objective of The New Yorker, began to get results. Mr. Fleischmann put up $400,000 before the corner was reached, but in 1927 he could and did refuse $3,000,000 clear profit to sell out. He advanced $393,000 more to see the magazine completely around the corner, was repaid in two years. His $400,000 investment is today represented by 35% of the stock of the F. R. Publishing Co. which pays $3 dividends.

Up went The New Yorker's circulation to 62,000 for the metropolitan area, 63,000 outside. Up went its advertising rates to $550 for a black & white page for the Metropolitan circulation, $850 for national. Up went its earnings to $517,000 in 1929. Last year, in the face of sparse luxury advertising, The New Yorker netted $263,000. It has made that much in the first six months of this year, carrying more pages of advertising than the Satevepost. This year's net should top $600,000. No longer a bored businessman playing angel to the arts, Raoul Fleischmann is now proud and happy to be the earnest hardworking publisher of a profitable property.

Who's Who. Ellin Mackay, singlehanded, did not put The New Yorker on its unsteady feet. Her contribution merely coincided with the beginnings of Editor Ross's success in getting what he wanted by a chaotic process of elimination. The process is described by FORTUNE:

"There are two things that measure Ross's genius. One was the fact that he never deluded himself on how little he knew--and he learns some things rapidly; the other was his sublime dissatisfaction with everything and everyone as he battered his way to what he was after but did not know how to ask for. He is not a large man, but he is a furious and a mad one. Men left The New Yorker for sanitariums, they had fits on the floor, they wept, they offered to punch his nose (he is terrified of physical violence). But he kept on hiring and firing blindly. By hit or miss he found the individuals who could articulate his ideas--and who could stand the pace of his temperament."

Most important of those individuals today are:

Elwyn Brooks ("Andy") White, the "E. B. W." who signs much of the fiction and light verse in The New Yorker. He writes many of the captions and taglines in the back of the book. More important, he is the anonymous author of the rapier-like "Notes & Comment" which leads off The New Yorker's famed "Talk of the Town," sometimes called the best column in Manhattan. Shy, gentle, melancholy "Andy" White, 35, was a newsman and adman before joining The New Yorker in 1926--just when Editor Ross needed him most. Five years ago he married The New Yorker's brilliant managing editor, Katharine Sergeant Angell (see below). He earns $12,000 a year, is one of the magazine's two wheelhorses. The other is:

James Thurber, whom FORTUNE describes as follows: "Thurber is madder than White. His prose is more vital, has an earthy quality refreshing in The New Yorker. Born in Columbus (39 years ago) he graduated from Ohio State University. There he is remembered as a long, lean, funny-looking grind who sat around the library all day with his hair hanging in his eyes."

Thurber struck up a friendship with a quarter-miler named Elliott Nugent, who persuaded him to get a haircut and stop wearing funny clothes. Thurber drifted into newspaper work, was hired from the New York Evening Post by Editor Ross in 1927. A poor judge of men, Ross tried to make Thurber into a managing editor, for months kept him from writing a line. Sad, vague "Andy" White took instantly to sad, vague James Thurber. He salvaged Thurber's neurotic, amorphous scratchpad drawings from the waste baskets by the thousands, finally bulldozed scornful Editor Ross into printing them. Today the magazine pays Thurber $100 apiece for the same drawings. Thurber's salary: $11,000.

Katharine White, Boston-bred, Bryn Mawr-schooled, joined The New Yorker in its first spring as a reader. Says FORTUNE: "Ross was without taste, either literary or good. . . . Katharine Angell, hard, suave, ambitious, had both kinds and Ross was bright enough to see it. Definitely an antifeminist, he resented her at first, used to tear his hair and bellow that his magazine was 'run by women and children.' But he has long since grown to depend on her, often considers her his most important executive. ... It was she who raised the standard of prose and verse." Her salary as managing editor: $11,000.

Wolcott Gibbs, associate editor, Mrs. White's right hand, does most of the interviewing of artists, much of the editing of manuscripts. Sharp, savage, an able parodist, "he is practically the perfect New Yorker editor."

Rea Irvin, mellow, good-natured, immune to the deliberate insanity of the regular staff, drew the first New Yorker cover ("Mr. Eustace Tilley" in a high hat, high stock, with a monocle up to a butterfly), passes on every drawing the magazine uses, scanning some 1,000 pictures every Tuesday afternoon. Scale of prices to artists: $10 for a one-column spot without caption, $200 and up for a full page or cover.

Lois Long ("Lipstick"), onetime wife of Artist Peter Arno, created the "Tables for Two" review of night clubs, roadhouses, other fun places. Her more important "On & Off the Avenue" boldly reports, with freshness and honesty, what stores are selling what and for how much.

"Jesus Parade." With a few others, including such well known regulars as Alexander Woollcott and Robert Benchley, that staff has survived the frequent eruptions of its volcanic editor. In addition the last six years have witnessed the parade of 16 "Executive Editors" whom Editor Ross has successively hired in a mad search for System. The procedure is invariable: Ross finds a new genius at a cocktail party or on a newspaper or in an advertising agency, promptly installs him as Executive Editor. Oldtimers on the staff refer to the luckless incumbent as "Jesus." For a few weeks, perhaps for a few months, "Jesus" is given what is supposed to be a free hand. Then Editor Ross is assailed by doubts. Soon he takes issue with every decision that "Jesus" makes, and presently his hostility becomes a deep loathing for his Executive Editor. He tries to make "Jesus" so uncomfortable that he will take the hint and resign. If that fails, he leaves a letter of dismissal on his desk and scuttles out of town.

One Man Magazine. Editor Ross, who owns 10% of the New Yorker stock and is paid $40,000 per year, tries to keep himself lashed into a rage to do his best work. He is full of phobias, fears crossing streets, is mortally terrified of earthquakes. He is surprisingly prudish, a fact which has kept out of The New Yorker all dirty jokes, except those which he cannot understand. This "really great editor" FORTUNE sums up as follows:

"Harold Ross still is The New Yorker. His judgment of values, of importance, timeliness, effectiveness, is exceptional to the point of brilliance. For all his strange record with fellow human beings, those who are nearest to him have great loyalty to him. . . . Without him the magazine might easily disintegrate even today."

*Daughter of Socialite Clarence Hungerford Mackay, board chairman of Postal Telegraph. Two months after her story appeared she married Composer Irving Berlin.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.