PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

Southland Times, Issue 18834, 29 May 1920, Page 8

PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

PEN PORTRAITS OF PROMINENT PERSONALITIES. (By Criticus.) o- .* 6

No. 34. FRANK A. MUNSEY. America is the country of big things and it is not surprising to discover that the newspaper field is being affected by the financial operations that are disturbing the business world. For some years now the English speaking people have thought of the name of Hearst as typifying “bigness” in American newspaper business, though there has been little respect for the class of newspapers that he has run. It looks now, however, as if he is to have a rival in the realm of the daily newspaper, and that rival no loss a personage than Frank A. Munsey, whose experiments in monthly magazines have been of interest to folk quite outside the press world. Mr Muntey’a latest exploit has been the purchase and amalgamation of two great New York daily papers, two journals that have had great records in American journalism, the New York Herald, which the Cordon Bennett's made famous as an exponent of sensationalism, and the Sun, founded by Charles A. Dana, a witty and well written paper. In 'addition he owns the Baltimore Sun.* Mr Munsey’s purchase of these newspapers caused a considerable stir in the United States and led, as one would expect, to a searching examination of that gentleman’s career, the result being a story that reads almost like a romance. Frank Andrew Munsey, to give him his full name, was born in the little town of Mercer, Maine, in 1854 and he received his education in a little country school. His business ca/eer started in a country store and from there at a tender age he went into a telegraph office, but only a.s a stepping stone to something bigger. Speaking of this episode in his life, Mr Munsey, in a little autobiography he has issued, says: pit is probable that I never should have found myself in the publishing business but for the fact that the general manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company sent me to Augusta, Maine, to taka the management of their office in that city. I was a youngster at the time, with life before me, and with an insatiable ambition, I had picked up telegraphy and was using it as a stepping-stone to something better, a.s a means to an end. But to got out of one kind of activity and into another fur which one has no special training. i? not easy. I learned this fact through bitter disappointment and many heartaches. As Augusta wtis the capital of the State, and as I lived at the hotel whore most of the legislative and other State officers stayed, I very soon acquired a pretty good knowledge of the strong men of the entire commonwealth. Their lives had scope; mine had none. I chafed bitterly under the limited possibilities of my environment, where ambition, and energy, and inspiration counted for little. My very soul cried, out for an opportunity to carve out for myself a bigger life. I lost no chance to make the acquaintance of men prominent in business and in public ail fits, through whom 1 sought the opportunity to throw my life and energy into the work that they had in hand. 1 knew at that time as well as I know now. that I could do things. But the opening did nor coma tny way. There were always sons or relatives, or people of political influence, who stood before, me in line for the place. I was pretty nearly as good a business man at that age, oven, as I am now, and the tantalising part of it was, I know it. It was more than a conviction with me. It was a. certainty, I was so sure of myself that 1 would willingly have given ten years of my life, without compensation, for a chance with some of the big concerns of the count ry—-rail road, steel-manufacturing, shipping, banking, or any of the great staple industries.” •■q.-i-It was more nr less by accident that Mr Munsey decided to carve himself out a larger life in the literary field rather than in railroad, shipping, or some other great business. Ills formal education had not gone far, hut, as he tells us, he "absorbed a considerable superficial knowledge of publishing in Augusta,'' and conceived the idea of a juvenile magazine, to be conducted along the general lines of that lurid juvenile periodical called “Golden Days,” which, with its wild tales of murders, robberies, and daredeviitry, compared with the perfectly proper "C'h/.tterbox” and “St. j Nicholas” juveniles of that time somewhat as Mr Munsey's contemporary fiction .magazines compare with “Harper’s” or “The f.Vtitury.” Both in his magazine and newspiip"r venture? he has been compared to William Bamlolph Hearst in bis readiness to give the public what a considerable portion of it seems to want. It look much hard work, however, to get the new Mnnspy ideas in fiction to tins public that was waiting for it. Finally, after much tribulation, he managed to raise 4,01)0 iT-liars and went to New Vo-k to start “The Golden Argosy,” as lbs successor to “Golden Days” was to be railed. He expatiates, with sincere and deep feeling; “lour tho-uiui.l dollar?: The overwhelming assurance, the audacious hope, ’he infinite nerve of this proposition a-t-v.md me to day, as 1 look hack upon it and know what real put dishing means in a town like New York--publishing that ha? the piftmiw to leach out for national .support! but on si;-h a slender possibility I threw away a certainty, cut myself off from friends ant! assoc au?. and plunged into this great whirlpool of strenuous activity with a confidence and courage that knew no limitations. It was pathetic pitable oven, ami the more so because I had barely landed here when I discovered that my plans for “The Argosy” were hopeless. A day s tnvestipation matle it clear that the information which had been furnished me. ana on which I had based my calculations, was of a hearsay nature. All hat! to be discarded---the plans and figures and fancie- of anxious months swept away in an instant. It meant just what everybody in Augusta had said it would mean. I had fatefully concealed 'he fact that I was going to leave the city until the very day I started fur New York. I gave an interview to a reporter of the Kennebec Journal, who was a very good friend of mine, and who was of so optimistic a turn of mind that the picture he drew of my forthcoming enterprise eclipsed even my own over-san-guine fancies. This account served to heighten for the pessimistic community tho ridiculous phase of the whole undci taknig.” YP-'.VC/'d Evidently this pessimism affected the man who was his partner and who had promised to send him 25,000 dollar? as soon as he called for it for The Argosy, because when the call came the partner did not hoar it. lie had evidently taken fright at what everybody said would happen to tho enterprise. Relying on this agreement, Munsey had spent over five hundred of liis own money betorc leaving Augusta in the purchase of manuscripts for ’The Argosy.” So, on landing in New York, ho had with him a gripful of manuscripts unci about forty dollars in cash, Mr Munsey was not dismayed by this .situation. He look his scheme to a publisher, who agreed to bring the magazine out in his own name, retaining Mr Munsey as editor and manager. Misfortune still pursued, however, and the publisher failed at the end of five months. Mr Munsey continues the story of his hectic adventures: “My very lifo was centred in the work I had undertaken. 1 had been putting eighteen hours a day into it. I had been working with the most intense interest and keenest enthusiasm. The crash came like a bolt from the blue, and again left me pretty nearly high and dry, with but a few dollars iu my pocket, us I had drawn only so much of my salary as I needed for my slight expenses. That was a time of awful suspense, while ‘The Argosy’ was in the hands of the receiver. Once it came pretty near being blotted out when it was offered to a rival

publisher, who, if -he had taken it over, would have merged it with his own publication. That was a close call, and it hada good many other close calls at that period. ■ft'®®®'®’ In the end the situation cleared up in this way: I gave my claim against the house, amounting to something more than one thousand dollars, for the good-will of ‘The Argosy.’ I had no capital, and no means of raising any. A bad phase of the mutter was that a good many subscriptions had been received and Ihe money used up. These subscriptions had to be carried out—that is, papers had to be printed and mailed every week to the end of the term paid for. No one had any faith in ‘The Argosy,’ or believed that I could pull it through. I could get no credit anywhere. The proposition was too risky for the paper-dealer, for the printer, and, in fact, for everyone from whom I purchased supplies.” “From a friend of mine in Maine I borrowed three hundred dollars, and what a tremendous amount of money it seemed! It was summer, when the publishing businew is at its worst, when few subscriptions are coming in, and reading is at its lowest ebb. I was everything from editor and publisher down to office-boy. And editor with me meant writer and contributor as well. I wrote much of the paper myself —freshened and brought up-to-date old things that had been published years before. They were not quite so good us new material, but they were a great deal better than nothing. The main thought with me was keeping the paper alive, for so long as there was life there were possibilities, and in possibilities there was to me a kind of sustaining hope. It would be a long story to tel! the details of the awful struggle that ensued during the following months, and, in fact, during the three or four following years. There were many times—hundreds of times, I might almost say—when it seemed as if another number of ‘The Argosy’ could not be produced. But with a determination to keep t alive at all hazards, a determination that amounted almost to an insane passion, I went on, and on, and on, confronting defeat on every hand, and yet never recognising it.” Mr Munsey had to write for his magazine. “Afloat in a Great City,” “Under Fire,” and “The Boy Broker” are among the works he produced at this time. He gives an intimate glimpse of the composition of one of his literary efforts, which, as he explains, he produced in order to use it as the foundation for an advertising campaign. His idea of literary composition, interesting not only for itself but because of the ‘ tips” it may contain for writers anxious to “break into” Mr Munsey’a several magazines, is suggested in the following: “In the winter of 1880 I wrote my second serial story for ‘The Argoey’, to which I pave the title ‘Afloat in a Great City.’ I have never worked harder on anything than I did on that story, to put into it elements of dramatic interest that would pet a crip on the reader. I wrote and rewrote the early chapters many times. It was midnight toil—work done by candlelight, after long days of struggle at the office. I wrote that story with a special purpose. I wanted something to advertise, and I put my faith to the test by plunging on it to the extent of ten thousand dollars. I had never advertised before, because I neither had the means nor the credit with which to do it. I owed at this time something like live thousand dollar.*, and this advertising increased my indebtedness to fifteen or sixteen thousand dollars. I put out one hundred thousand sample copies ■•ontaining the first instalment of my story. These I had distributed from house to house in New York, Brooklyn, and near-by seciions. Prior to this time ‘The Argosy’ had made no permanent headway. Sometimes it was a little over paying line, but more frequently on the wrong side, ns is evidenced by the fact of my indebtedness. The result of this advertising brought new life to ‘The Argosy,’ so far increasing its circulation that it began netting a profit of one hundred dollars a week. Battered and worn by four years of toil and disappointment, with never a vacation, never a day of play, and rarely a night at the theatre, I could with difficulty realise that ‘The Argosy’ was actually bringing me in a clean hundred dollars a week. But it was nr; real profit, for the advertising bills were not yet paid. I say I wrote that story in the winter. I should have said I began it in the winter and went on with it as it was published from week to week during the spring and summer. The success of tho spring advertising pointed (he way to a greater success in the fall, and beginning with the reading season I throw myself into a circulation-building campaign that in its intensity and ferocity crowded a life'? work into a few months. At the dose of tliis campaign, early in May. 1887, 'TV Argosy, had reached the splendid circulation of one hundred and fifteen thousand copies, and was paying me a net in-ou-.e of fifteen hundred dollars a week. But mv ambition was to build bigger, an;! to build stronger,''

What Mr Mun?ey meant by this was -iiown later in “Munscy’s Magazine.” which, he says, “blazed the.way for . . . most i f ihe other magi zincs r.f the country.” He was always an experimenter, always ready to try some new trick if things went ■srar.:. “Mvnzey's” was reduced from twenty-live rent* to ten cents per copy, ; n the fare of prote-ts by the American News Company, and Mr Munsey took it di.-eei to I lie newsdealers of the country. ■'No human being except ’myself believed I could win out” in the fight with “this fiant monopoly.” writes Mr Munsey. 'T had no doubt about if. I was sure I had -he combination to the vaults of success;.” Kv;TV!)!!“ knows how thoroughly Mr Mrn■;ey’s theory, "the theory of giving the aoople wluit they wanted, and giving it to them at the right price." won out, financially at least, in spite of handicaps. “Mun--ey’s” became, in several ways, the foremost American magazine. ‘ Included in hi? experiments were many failures, one of which I always regret, a magazine published und-r the title “The Scran Book.” Its name (ie-cribe.s it. but it failed. Many • ■Torts to icvive it were tried. It was made cheaper, it was enlarged, it was cut nto two sections issued fortnightly; it was given over to fiction; hut it died. There w-r> many other magazines, but the main tiling is the man and it is interesting to lin'd his estimate of himself: "If there lies l>'ini any luck about this development, I cannot tell you where it came in. I have told you of one or two of the fights, out of the many—one or two of the most dramatic scenes —but as a matter of fact it has been a fight all along the line. A business like this renuires constant thought, constant watching, constant truing up, and constant energising. And to do this successfully —to make the wheels go round—me must himself become a kind of human dvnamo.”