THE HEARST BOOM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81888, 15 November 1906, Page 4

THE HEARST BOOM.

A XKWSPAPF.R MILLIONAIRE.' Tilt- campaign oi .Mr \\. R. llearsi, lie propnc-ior of the New Yurk "journal' and other papers. fur tiie ujveriioisiiip uf New ork State, is atiiacting much attention in America, pancular.y in view uf the lait nat Mi Hearst is a-pning to b>- nominated as tile Lkmociaac candidate at the next I'residenial e'.cctioii. The lollowing description ot .Mr Hearst trim "Collier's Weekly" is interesting in view of the recent cab.e messages.

Hears: does not sit at a desk with a row of pu-h button- winch wilt summon his diffcient neads of d;paitmema; lie is given to none uf tin tormulas which make the head of an institution palpabie to t.:-' aveiugt perception. When he is in the mooti there is no side of the cunnc '"sups" u r of sensational news disp'ay or bu-i ■less management too miail fur his onsideiation. There ate many ex ample* in point which his associates recount. People who follow such florrors will remember the faniuU' Gulden-uppe case, which occurred in tils riotous days of the "Journal s beginnings. To thu-o who do no. I will say that a German midwife, one Mrs Nack, Und her new paramour, Them, murdered Guldensuppe, her old paramour, and cut his body into sections in a bath tub. The discovery of first one and then an other of the sections created une oi

these sensations which makes papers I -ell when the general public scarcely look at the headings of a debate in Congress. Hears; pcifonally took the same morbid and intense interest in this case as his readers, and personally took charge of its direction foi his paper. He rented the house where the Nack woman lived in order tu keep the other newspaper men out, he bribed the rubbers of the Turkish bath house, who had the secret of the physical mark thai would identify the murdered man, to keep silence unti' the "Journal'' sleuths had their case of identification complete,and then ht sent out reporters and representatives on the "Journal" wagons to prevent any other morning paper from purloining a copy and taking the edgeoff the scoop with a stop-press notice in their iater editions. This was a lark and a triumph which lie wou.d have enjoyed even more keenly in that stage of his career than the thirty minutes of cheering will whicn his delegates of his Independence League Convention greeted him when he appeared before t.iem after his no minauon for Governor. Besides, a -coop on Gulden-uppe meant circulation; and circulation was his ambi tion of the moment.

For ever he was unsatisfied with hi* "Journal.' 1 It was never quhe powerful or striking enough. A idea" morning edition to him would have been one in which the Prince ot Wales had gone into vaudeville, Queen Victoria had married her cook, the Pope had issued an encyclical favoring free love, a man murdered in Jersey had been identified by the llhumbmark of a s'eventb daughter found on the Sphinx, France had de clared war in Germany, the Presidentof the United States had .secured a divorce in order to marry the .Dow*' ager Empress of China, the Czar had commuted suicide by; the use 'of a bomb of his own Making, and the Sultan of Turkey had been converted to Christianity—all of these being "scoops" in the form of "signed statements."

Signed statements were then the rage. If you could get a great ruler simply to say that he bad a cold and to say it under his own name the "feature" was played up.in double column head.ines. There was no limit to the daring of Hearst's conceptions. He proposed to sink a ship in the Suez at his own expense to pie vent the passage of Camara's squadron to the Pacific; and he sent a man half way round the world to get Ad miral Dewey's cogent <> a Presidential nomination with the "Journal's" label on it. Like the author of the "Thre# MuskateerV he lay abed late inventing new wonder^; and when he rose with that power of his for creating energy in others without exhibiting energy himself, he stilted the fagged brains of his assistants to further dreams in order to make a continuous holiday of surprises for his public.

His favorite hour for going to the office was then, and is still, from five to six in the afternoon and at midnight. These functions are never perfunctory. Night after night his high-powered Fifench aulomobr.e — and he had one of the tirsi brought to this country —waited in front ot the "Journal' office while he waiched ! lie ticking in over the wire, and with Cflamberlain he sought the extravagant feature in some reporter's story. It was in those days that one of the men working under him was asked about his personality. "He is a world-beater,'' was the answer. "What kind of a world-beater?"' I pursued. "Don't atk me!" was the answer; "I wil not quarrel with my daily bread.'' Hearst, the proprietor, the autocrat, the commander, was the one who-fin-

ally said "no," or finally said "yes" to every important suggestion, and no one ever said "no" to him except the Hearst estate, whidh furni-hed him with the funds for his mighty escapade. Uz !po yiibji'oko complettnsakk