New England Dream

With the help of the G.I. Bill of Rights, New England had a new magazine last week.

Its young editor-publishers had borrowed $4,500 on a G.I. loan, and scraped up another $6,500 from relatives and girl friends. Then they set out to publish a weekly called the Moderator, combining the varied virtues of Harper's, The New Yorker and TIME, with an overall New England accent. The adventures of the two publishers, 25-year-old John Donahue (late of the Coast Guard and the Burlington, Vt. News) and 26-year-old Raymond Bearse (late of the Navy and the Brookline, Mass. Citizen), made better reading than their dream magazine.

They began by buying the printing plant of the defunct Brighton, Mass. Item for $5,500. John Dos Passos, anxious to encourage both the ambitions of the ex-G.I.s and the literary future of New England, promised them a piece on "What's Wrong in New England." Price: a $10 share of stock, a dinner and two beers. For another $10 share of stock, no dinner and no beers, they got Sinclair Lewis to promise an article on New England's writers.

Then trouble started. It took a lot of wheedling of government ration officials to get a year's paper supply (48 tons). After they got all the copy written for Vol. 1 No. 1, they spent three weeks hunting for a linotype operator. Editor Donahue finally set the type himself.

When their old press broke down in midrun, Donahue and Bearse talked a Boston printer into finishing the run. On the way to the plant with the page forms, they saw a girl about to jump off a bridge. They grabbed her, took her to a hospital, then went on to the printshop. The following night, after 72 sleepless hours, they got the first issue of the Moderator off to their customers.

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