Cachet Without Cash

To most U.S. citizens nothing could be more British than the toploftical Encyclopaedia Britannica. Yet for more than 20 years the Britannica has been controlled by the world's biggest mail-order house, Chicago's Sears, Roebuck & Co.

Last week University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins announced that Sears had given the Britannica to his university. The transfer itself was logical enough: members of Chicago's philanthropic Rosenwald family, identified with Sears, Roebuck for half a century, have long been generous supporters of the university. Onetime Chairman Julius Rosenwald was responsible for Sears's acquisition of the Britannica in 1920, when it was in such bad financial straits that its priceless plates were about to be sold at auction. What made the deal especially interesting was what Bob Hutchins did not tell about it.

Sears' gift to the university was engineered by U.C.'s kinetic Vice President William Benton. Bill Benton is famed in the advertising world as the onetime chairman of Benton & Bowles and the man who said he would make a fortune and quit--and did. He came by his yearning for learning naturally: both his father and his mother were university professors. He sees the Britannica as a logical adjunct to U.C., which has always had a flair for combining scholarship with good publicity.

But, since the gift did not include the Britannica's (i.e., Sears's) working capital, rich U.C.'s trustees thought they might be getting a pig in a poke. They did not want to risk endowment funds on a property that had long had more cachet than cash (though its domestic sales last year were over $4,000,000, Sears prudently carried the Britannica on its books at $1). Result: Bill Benton himself agreed to put up whatever might be needed to keep it going, took an unnamed percentage of the stock from U.C. to back his investment. The university has an option to buy his stock (for the sum he put into it--plus no interest) if the going is good, a further option on the whole works at 42-year-old Bill Benton's death. Meanwhile Benton will devote at least part of his ample talents to making the university's gift pay.

The Britannica (whose name was chosen merely to indicate that it was written in English) was first issued in 1768 in Edinburgh by "a society of gentlemen in Scotland." Its first editor was a tippling friend of Robert Burns named William Smellie. Financial control passed to U.S. citizens about 1901.

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