Big Boiler-Plater

Western Newspaper Union sells to 10,732 daily and weekly newspapers 400 features, conducts in 34 plants from coast to coast a lively tradepaper & magazine printing business, jobs type, printing machinery and wholesale paper. Western Newspaper Union, world's largest publishing syndicate, is valued by its owners at a conservative $8,500,000. Last week control of this little known enterprise remained safely in the hands of the dynasty which had directed it for half a century, but only after a good stiff intramural fight.

Early in 1935, Western Newspaper Union's silver-haired President Herbert Henry Fish proposed a reorganization plan which was to scale down interest payments on W. N. U.'s bonds from 6% to 2%. President Fish explained that he wanted to "conserve principal." When this plan was announced, a committee of bondholders applied to the Federal Court in Omaha, onetime Western Newspaper Union headquarters, for permission to reorganize the company under Section 776 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act. The bondholders' committee's alternate plan called for less drastic interest reductions. The court ruled that since 1930 the home office of W. N. U. had been in Manhattan, and there the matter would have to be settled.

By the time the litigation was scheduled to appear in Manhattan, President Fish and the Omaha bondholders had come to terms. Meanwhile a third investors' faction headed by Allison L. Bayles, Manhattan investment banker, and counseled by Attorney Bruce Tuttle, had appeared. Its announced objective: To do away with W. N. U.'s present management, bring in as head man John Holliday Perry, president of American Press Association, country weekly advertising representatives. Counting noses for this fight, President Fish said he had 1,000 of the 1,200 bondholders on his side. Unable to get even a list of bondholders from the management, the Bayles-Tuttle group sought to qualify as a reorganization committee under Section 776 by securing the proxies of 25% of the company's preferred stockholders. This they did in time's nick by corralling the votes of 4,000 shares held in England.

Last week the opponents were lined up and ready to clash in court. But when zero hour came, W. N. U.'s amiable Vice President Edward C. Johnston astounded Manhattan financial editors by quietly handing out a brief announcement that there would be no fight. W. N. U. would continue to pay its 6% bondholders their 6%. All hands agreed to drop reorganization proceedings. On its part, the Fish management attributed this change of heart to improvement in rural business conditions. Everybody seemed pleased. Next day, W. N. U.'s bonds, with $8 back interest accruing, shot up 20 points on the New York Curb Exchange.

The institution of a central printing service to boiler-plate all but the local news for many little country papers was started when country editors found them selves short-handed due to enlistments in the Civil War. This simple and effective idea was too good to die with the surrender at Appomattox. Various printing &; publishing "unions" were nourishing through out the Midwest when in 1878 a shrewd Vermonter named George A. Joslyn arrived in Omaha to establish a branch of Iowa Printing Co. Two years later he reorganized this branch under the corporate name of Western Newspaper Union. Ten years later George A. Joslyn was president, general manager and principal stock holder of a prosperous syndicate concern. As a lucrative sideline, he sold '"Big-G," a specific for venereal disease. There were many competitors in the country-paper syndicate field, but by 1917 Western News paper Union had absorbed or outstripped all but one. In that year W.N.U. paid $500,000 to rival American Press Association for its plate, mat and photographic service. In consideration of a yearly royalty, American Press Association was to stay out of the country weekly syndicate business for 20 years. The agreement expires in September 1937.

When Founder Joslyn died in 1916. he left the business to his widow, Omaha's famed art patron Sarah Selleck Joslyn. In 1929 she in turn handed W. N. U. over to its executives, most of whom had worked for her husband all their business lives. This deal was brought about by Airs. Joslyn's taking $4,000,000 in cash from the company's $5,000,000 surplus and $1,000,000 in stock from its $6,300,000 capitalization.

Today Western Newspaper Union supplies the features for nine out of ten U. S. weekly newspapers. This material is poured into the weeklies in three different ways: by supplying fibre matrices, which the publisher casts himself; by supplying stereotyped plates already cast: and finally, for extremely lazy or short-handed publishers, by supplying sheets of newsprint with the material already printed on one or both sides.

Local editors have the choice of hundreds of features, including articles on cooking, business, sport, fashions, religion, travel, a "This Week" column assembled from Arthur Brisbane's "Today." Also available are such standard entertainers as Hearst-throbber Kathleen Norris, Funnymen H. I. Phillips, Irvin S. Cobb. columns of Broadway gossip and Hollywood chitchat, "semi-news" stories, an endless assortment of comic strips and photographic layouts.

In charge of selecting this mass of material at W. N. U.'s Chicago editorial headquarters is spectacled Wright A. Patterson. On his judgment nearly 11,000 little editors depend. Editor Patterson provides three editorial services on the New Deal: pro, con and middle-of-the-road.

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