According to Holies

Over his San Juan newsstand in Texas' lower Rio Grande Valley, Quentin Newcombe tacked a sign: "The Valley Evening Monitor, the Valley Morning Star and the Brownsville Herald are . . . against our American public-school system. Buy other newspapers and help drive these objectionable carpetbaggers from our valley." The "carpetbagger" Newcombe meant is 73-year-old Raymond Cyrus Hoiles, a pinch-faced Californian who looks and acts as if he had just bitten into an unripe persimmon.

Until three months ago, few valley Texans had ever heard of Hoiles. Then, for $2,000,000, his Freedom Newspapers Inc. bought the three main valley dailies--the Brownsville Herald, Harlingen's Morning Star and McAllen's Evening Monitor (total circ. 37,500). From his Santa Ana, Calif, headquarters, old "R.C." himself rode into the valley on a bus to reshape the papers according to Hoiles. He threw out Drew Pearson's column, replaced him with Fulton Lewis, George Sokolsky, and his own column. His favorite campaign: a bitter, continuous assault on public schools on the ground that free, tax-supported education violates the Ten Commandments. Taxing those who do not use public schools, he says, is stealing.

Violent Objections. To readers of the seven other papers in Hoiles's string* of small-city dailies, such crackpot cerebrations have come to be part of the routine grist from the Hoiles mill, to be taken with the news. Among other Hoiles convictions: Herbert Hoover and the National Association of Manufacturers are too leftish, churches are socialistic, majority rule should be abolished, and so should aid to Europe, all involuntary taxes, and unions. Most of his readers have no choice but to read Hoiles papers; in nine of the ten cities, there is no competition. But there have been violent objections. Four times his plants have been struck. Once his home was bombed.

Residents of the valley took different action. Meetings protested Hoiles' stand. The McAllen P.T.A. sent parents a statement which suggested canceling subscriptions "to a paper which denounces . . . public schools." The Monitor lost 2,000 readers; circulations of the others also slid.

Harmless Crackpot? Then Houston Lawyer-Industrialist Roy Hofheinz, 39, who had opened a 50,000-watt radio station, KSOX, in Harlingen, joined the attack on Hoiles in an all-out crusade over the air. His station also began taking ads away from the Hoiles papers. Partly because he was pinched by this competition, and partly because they disagreed with him, Hoiles fired the three editors who had stayed on when he bought the papers.

Radioman Hofheinz broadcast a defense of the editors, added: "There may be those who say that Hoiles is a harmless crackpot. A man backed with a reputed $20 million and a chain of newspapers cannot be classed as a harmless crackpot." It looked as if Hoiles might have to mend his editorials, if he wanted to stay in the valley.

*The Santa Ana, Calif. Register; Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph; Bucyrus, Ohio Telegraph-Forum; Clovis, N. Mex. News-Journal; Marysville, Calif. Appeal-Democrat; Odessa, Texas American; Pampa, Texas News.

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