McCall Buys

McCall's, third largest in size of woman's magazines, has in recent years been a fast-growing profitmaker for its owners. Profits give publishers ideas. Last week McCall Co. decided to acquire control of Consolidated Magazines Corp., publishers of the fiction monthlies Red Book (circulation, 791,219) and Blue Book (165,903). Louis Eckstein, "the man behind Ravinia,*" president of Consolidated, required 25,603 shares of McCall stock, valued at more than two million dollars, to consummate the deal.

Editorial policies of the purchased magazines will remain the same, McCall President William B. Warner announced. Edwin Balmer will continue as editor of both. But their printing may be transferred from Chicago to a McCall plant at Dayton, Ohio.

Flounced, wasp-waisted, tight-corseted women in the early '70s were much pleased to learn that one James McCall, a Scotsman, was making dress patterns. Civil War still a vivid memory, economy was a popular word and patterns were economical. Scotsman McCall knew how to make them, for he had once been a tailor. Soon the wife of his secretary, writing under the name of May Manton, started The Queen, eight-page fashion sheet. Along with McCall patterns, The Queen prospered in a small way. After Scotsman McCall's death in 1885 May Manton's husband, George H. Bladworth, took charge of The Queen, eventually made it McCall's Magazine.

McCall's, edited by Otis L. Wiese, 23, gives advice on how to raise children, set table, cook meals, keep the house neat, the cellar clean. Its fiction is Zane Greyish, its articles "nicely" written. Aimed at the "model" housewife or Girl Scout, it contains no cigaret advertisements, no suggestive matter.

Of McCall's competitors, five are outstanding in the mass-publication field. It is probably a fact that if the publishers should transpose their covers, few readers could distinguish one of the Women's Group from another. But there are differences of size, value and fine distinctions of policy. The big five: Ladies Home Journal (circulation, 2,538,412), Pictorial Review (2,523,384), Woman's Home Companion (2,274,657), Delineator (2,300,000), Good Housekeeping (1,645,602).

*For some years Publisher Eckstein has been main supporter, personal manager of the summer concert season at Ravinia Park, Chicago. He selects the operas, engages the artists, meets most of the deficits (TIME, July 2, 1928).