WHILE the editors this week pay anniversary tribute to a durable American figure (see cover story), I should like to report on another birthday. It was 35 years ago this week that Vol. i, No. i of TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine, went to press.
The late Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce launched TIME in 1923 out of the conviction that people should be better informed and that something should be done about it. They did, and they called it TIME. The early indifference of advertisers was monumental, but more to the point was the spirited response of readers.
The press run for each of the first three issues was 25,000 copies--20,000 for "subscribers" and 5.000 for newsstands. But these subscribers, for the most part, were a special breed and all "from Missouri." President Roy E. Larsen (then circulation manager) had attracted his readers by means of a two-way dare. Take the magazine on free trial for three weeks, he wrote his prospects, and if you like it, send us $5.00 for a year's subscription. Some 9,000 did just that.
What sort of world was TIME born into? The following passages from stories that ran in Vol. i, No. i, March 3, 1923 give an idea.
Mr. Harding and Mr. Hughes proposed that the United States join The Hague Permanent Court of International Justice . . . Whether or not the plan is put into effect by this Congress or another or not at all, the multiplication of such proposals coming from our own government shows a growing sense of American discontent with isolation.
Last year there were 22,000,000 hungry Russians whom the Soviet government did not have grain enough to keep alive. The American Relief Association came to the rescue, and fed many of the starving. This year the American Relief Administration estimates there will be 13,000,000 hungry mouths that Russia cannot feed.
The military expenditures of the United States, England, France and Italy will be well over a billion dollars this year:
England $469,043,784
France 405,000,000
United States 251,250,231
Italy 150,000,000
"So far as I know, you have produced the first successful helicopter." This is a fragment of the congratulatory message sent by Thomas A. Edison offering assistance in further experiments to Dr. Bothezaat, who broke the world's helicopter record at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, by remaining in the air two minutes and 45 seconds at a height of 15 feet.
President Harding has allowed it to be understood that he will not convene the new Congress until December, and for three good reasons:
1) The President and Mr. Hughes can develop a foreign policy more easily without Congress than with.
2) The new Congress will generate new opposition to the President in both home and foreign affairs.
3) Business is happier when the Capitol is deserted . . .
Mrs. Gifford Pinchot, having drawn breath after the whirlwind campaign that made her husband Governor of Pennsylvania, went to Washington with a plan. "Let the women . . . take charge of prohibition enforcement." she urged President Harding, "and see if they are not more zealous for enforcement than men."
The great English public is tremendously worked up over the character of 15-year-old boys. The headmaster of Eton has stated in print that "It is only known to schoolmasters, and not to all of them, how large a proportion of boys are a little mad between the ages of 14 and 17 ..."
Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer, reckons the per capita taxation of the following nations at:
Great Britain: Direct, $55; indirect, $30.
France: Direct, $15; indirect, $12. United States: Direct, $13.60; indirect, $12.70 . . .
THUS TIME on the world of March 1923. As for the future, just as people are vastly better-informed today than they were 35 years ago, so may we expect more and more people to become more and more knowing in the next 20, 25 and 35 years. Whatever small credit that may come to TIME for this happy progression* is dwarfed by our continuing responsibility to increase both the scope of knowledge and the ranks of those who would know. To do this, TIME must continue to report on man's affairs with perception, with clarity, with a measure of urbanity and with faith in human and moral values.
* TIME circulation as of the Feb. 17 issue: an all time high of 2,312,000.
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