Four on Hearst

At 73, William Randolph Hearst continues to be one of the most fabulous figures in the land. Not the least extraordinary thing about him is the fact that, until two months ago, only one full-length Hearst biography between covers was available. That was John K. Winklers IT--. R. Hearst: An American Phenomenon, published in 1928. By last week, as if in competitive haste to turn literary light on the aging publisher, four biographers in quick succession had added three full-length prose portraits to the Hearstian gallery.

Two months ago, first of this new biographical crop to present itself was William Randolph Hearst: American,* by Mrs. Fremont Older, wife of the late great San Francisco editor, who helped her prepare the book, died before it was completed. In 581 pages Mrs. Older pours out her wholehearted admiration for her husband's old boss. In a different vein, fortnight ago appeared Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography,/- by Ferdinand Lundberg, onetime Chicago reporter and New York Herald Tribune Wall Street man. A charter member of the American Newspaper Guild, newshawks' union with which Mr. Hearst is perpetually at war, Biographer Lundberg entrenches himself on the economic Left and muckrakes his subject with pious zeal.

Similar in tone is last week's angry Hearst: Lord of San Simeon** by Oliver Carlson & Ernest Sutherland Bates. Mr. Carlson, a University of Chicago researcher, collaborated last year with Mr. Bates, onetime literary editor of the Dictionary of American Biography, on five articles about Mr. Hearst which appeared in the Leftist magazine Common Sense. The series gave Common Sense's circulation such a boost that Authors Carlson & Bates sensed they had a good thing, expanded their journalistic findings into a 332-page book.

Like the famed blind men who examined the vast contours of an elephant with widely variant results, the four biographers bring in antipodal reports on their huge subject. Following William Randolph Hearst from his abbreviated career at Harvard, through his early publishing ventures in California, his entry into New York, his pre-War triumphs and present stormy twilight. Authors Lundberg, Carlson & Bates liberally plaster Publisher Hearst with controversial tar, while Mrs. Older is equally generous in coating her hero with sympathetic whitewash. Some contrasting findings on the character & career of Mr. Hearst:

Harvard. "He himself seldom drank even beer," says Mrs. Older, "but his friends were Harvard's merriest roisterers. More and more were their misdemeanors held to be a violation of discipline and order. . . . Before he took his degree he left Cambridge never to return."

"According to the adolescent philosophy which Willie Hearst was never to outgrow," Carlson & Bates report, "professors were the natural enemies of the students and the natural enemies of man. So in the Christmas season of 1885 he determined to put them in their place in a right regal manner. To each of his instructors he sent, elaborately done up as a Christmas gift, a large chamber pot with the recipient's name ornamentally inscribed in the bottom. The perpetrator of the lordly jest was easily discovered, and Willie Hearst's connection with Harvard ended forever."

Hearst v. Pulitzer, Hearst's first big publishing battle began in 1895 when he invaded New York with his Journal to fight Joseph Pulitzer's World for the allegiance of the city's masses. Biographer Lundberg maintains: "From a business viewpoint the contest was a complete failure for Hearst, although it has often been said that he 'conquered' Pulitzer."

To this view Mrs. Older retorts: "[Hearst] had made up his mind to have a paper as much as possible like the World, only he would out-World the World and out-Pulitzer Pulitzer. . . . One day Hearst was introduced to Pulitzer. . . . Pulitzer patted him on the back. He was almost inclined to pity him. . . . Then suddenly the price of the Morning Journal dropped to one cent. Into the office of the World the news crashed like doom. . . . In truth, the World's profits each day lessened."

Hearst v. Spain. Carlson & Bates: "William R. Hearst ... in 1898, almost solely for the private profit of William R. Hearst, succeeded in prodding this country into a wholly unnecessary war. ... It was the first instance of that effective use of newspaper propaganda on a large scale which has become one of the most familiar features of the twentieth century." Mrs. Older: "Hearst was the flaming crusader for the Pearl of the Antilles. He challenged Bourbon tyranny. He determined to drive Spain from this hemisphere. . . . Without Hearst Cuba might still be under the heel of Spain."

Hearst v. Labor. Lundberg: "Hearst's financial interests, from the very beginning, have made him an implacable enemy of labor. . . . During the closing stages of the [1934 San Francisco general] strike the three Hearst papers in the San Francisco area repeatedly called upon the police to take violent measures against the strikers and the police did shoot and kill. Not satisfied, though the police and Guardsmen were in full charge, the Hearst press demanded that Vigilante bands be formed to proceed against the 'revolutionaries.' "

Mrs. Older: "In the late eighties, owing to new inventions there was a labor depression. Ironworkers struck. They demanded eight hours a day. . . . Hearst wrote: 'The workmen are merely demanding what is reasonable. They should have it at once.' The eight-hour day was granted ironworkers. Rejoicingly Hearst wrote that it created jobs for thousands of unemployed."

Hearst v. Intellectuals. In 1934 Publisher Hearst was granted an audience with Nazi Germany's Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler, chatted with many another Nazi bigwig. Biographers Lundberg, Carlson & Bates believe the German junket explains Mr. Hearst's subsequent journalistic forays against pinko professors at Syracuse, Chicago, Columbia and New York Universities. "One of the first lessons he had learned from his German mentor was the importance of terrorizing the faculties of colleges and universities."--Carlson & Bates. "Since his German trip, Hearst has been very preoccupied with students."-- Lundberg.

"When he learned that many college professors were Communists and that students in universities were following their teachings, Hearst grew alarmed lest in these dark days of depression democracy might be destroyed."--Older.

Final Appraisals of Mr. Hearst's most recent interpreters:

"Today Hearst is the keystone of American fascism, the integrating point . . . around which political reaction is attempting to develop."--Lundberg.

"All his life he has worked on behalf of death--the death of personal integrity, the death of decent journalism,the death of honest patriotism--and now ultimately death will take its own."--Carlson & Bates.

"He still sees through the eyes of youth. . . . Time has not dulled his sense of news. He wants to make people laugh, cry, to stir them with his own eagerness for news and his passion for the greatness of America."--Older.

*Appleton-Century ($4).

/-Equinox Cooperative Press ($2.75).

**Viking ($3).

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