Hearst

(See front cover)

The most fabulous dwelling place in the U. S. is the ranch of William Randolph Hearst. Midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, it surveys the Pacific along a 50-mile crest of hills. Five times the size of the District of Columbia, its 240,000 acres give lordly privacy to its little capital. La Cuesta Encantada. On this Enchanted Hill, the monarch's castle rears cathedral towers to the sky. On the hill's slope, lesser castles serve humbly as "guest houses'"--Casa del Mar, Casa del Monte, Casa del Sol. Hard by these are enchanted gardens, marble swimming pools, a zoo complete with lion, leopard, bear, elephant, chimpanzee. On the hillside roam bison, zebra, kangaroo, giraffe, llama, antelope, the emu and the gnu. These are but outward show. Within the palace portals is a treasury of Art that brings the value of their new-found home to $15,000,000: a Great Hall, where 150 trenchermen may dine on 16th Century refectory boards beneath the festal banners of Siena; six Gobelin tapestries which cost $575,000; carved ancient choir stalls; the bed of the great Richelieu for guests; $8,000 vases; gold dinner plates and paper napkins; a ping-pong table of medieval wood; a lavish theatre, where each night is shown the latest talking picture film, very likely flown that day from Hollywood; and 150 men and women menials to tend the comfort of their lord.

Such is the fitting home of the man who rules the biggest publishing empire ever carved out of these U. S. His hermitage it was originally, his place of retirement from the world, but each year he has made it more and more a capital whither he calls satraps, whence he sends commands. There he picks up a telephone --of his private switchboard, Hacienda 13 F 11--to talk, for perhaps an hour, to his editors in San Francisco or Chicago or Atlanta or Manhattan. There every day he dictates sheafs of orders-of-the-day beginning "The Chief says . . . ," signed "Willicombe" -- Joe Willcombe his 6-ft. secretary of 17 years service, who promptly flashes the messages over Hearst's Universal Service wire which links Enchanted Hill to its fiefs across the continent--and to its outposts throughout the world. And there last week William Randolph Hearst prepared to meet old age. There the scandalous Bad Boy of only yesterday --the genius of a thousand melodramas-- becomes 70 years old on April 29.

The telephone and telegraph operators on Enchanted Hill will be just as rushed on the Chief's 70th birthday as any other day. For the man who has given freer play to every whim and ambition than any American of his time holds no dav pure holiday. And he has said: "The time to retire is when God retires you and not before."

Hearst at 70 has become something of a myth. Few. of his 20,000,000 readers have ever seen his 6-ft., big-boned frame; his long, horsey face and cold, pale blue eyes; few have heard his strangely querulous, nearly effeminate voice. He went to Cleveland for a throat operation last autumn, has not crossed the Rockies since.

If he can no longer "eat anything, anytime,'' if he can no longer ride all day and dance all night, and if he no longer, in a single hour, does everything from buying a Venetian palazzo to scrapping a dozen printing presses and remodeling the fashion pages of Harper's Bazaar, he still spreads his newspapers on the floor beneath him and he can feel that no other publisher is such a power in the land. Even adolescent Hearst-readers feel the reverberations of his career. Did he not always want to be President or make one and were not his telegrams the electric power which welded the Roosevelt- Mc-Adoo-Garner deal and put the New Deal in the White House? Controlled inflation, the policy of the hour--whose policy is it, if not his? And looking out upon the Pacific he may sometimes see the smoke of a fleet which he has always urged must be ready to fend off the Yellow Peril.

After Hearst? When a mighty man is 70, men eye his heirs. There are five Hearst sons (no daughters) of whom two --Twins William Elbert & Randolph Apperson--are too young to be studied as successors to their father's power & glory (but not too young to borrow one of his airplanes last week to fetch a Pittsburgh girl to the Lawrenceville Junior prom). One of the other three, fat George, 29, is senior--and least likely on his showing to date to handle the Hearst empire when the Chief passes. Nicknamed "Fanny." good-natured Son George has been tried out on the papers in New York and San Francisco, where he delighted in treating the composing room crew at a bar. At present he is in Los Angeles, ostensibly "learning the game from all angles." But flying (at which he is fairly expert) and fast motoring he finds more diverting. Currently he is very much "in the dog house" with The Chief, who did not like his dalliance and divorce.

The second son, tall, curly-headed William Randolph Jr., 26, has also been divorced but was last week cordially received at the ranch on his second honeymoon. From his father he inherits a high-pitched voice, a mannerism of drumming fingers & feet, a habit of reading newspapers on the floor, and a capacity for quick decisions. From his mother he inherits graciousness, sentimentality. Well-liked throughout the organization, "Bill" has honestly tried to apply himself to being publisher of the New York American within the limits imposed by a crown-princely aura and his father's incurable autocracy. Also he understudies bald, owlish Edmond David ("Cobbie") Coblentz as editorial chief of all Hearst morning papers. His enthusiasms are genuine. And if the American's capture of the old World's classified advertising and the development of a lively "opposite editorial page'' are not to be credited to him solely, at least he knows what it is all about.

"Keep your eye on John Randolph Hearst"--were the words five years ago of John K. Winkler, the one man who has had the temerity to write a book on The Chief.* At 23, Son John ("Jack") is also already a divorce, also remarried. At 19 he was president of The Stuyvesant Co. which holds Hearst's Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, Home & Field, Connoisseur (& International Studio). Then he was moved to the vice-presidency of International Magazine Co. (Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Motor, Motor Boating, American Architect, American Druggist}. He did so well that last autumn his father tried him in a new role--understudy to General Manager Thomas J. White of all Hearstpapers. His current task: administrative economies. Of all the sons, John, a blond six-footer who looks something like his father and something like Britain's Prince George-- shows most of The Chief's shrewdness and business sense. As a youngster he used to apportion his allowance to cover special treats, while "Bill" usually spent all of his the first day. His office walls are hung with stuffed sailfishes and drawings of ravishing women which have graced the pages of Cosmopolitan. Also on the walls is framed a three-page telegram addressed to John R. Hearst. It begins: THERE ONCE WAS A LAD AND THE NAME THAT HE HAD WAS EITHER JOHNNY OR JIMMY AND AT ANY RATE HIS REGULAR STATE WAS A CHRONIC CONDITION OF GIMME VERY SELDOM HE WROTE HIS FATHER A NOTE BUT WHENEVER HE DID GOOD GRACIOUS OLD KING COLE THAT MERRY OLD SOUL WHO ASKED FOR HIS PIPE AND ASKED FOR HIS BOWL HAD NOTHING ON JOHN IN THE ASKING ROLE DONT FANCY MY TALE FALLACIOUS. . . etc. For 500 words the doggerel went on, ending with assurance that John might have what he had asked for. It was signed "Pop."

The estate to which the sons will fall heir, no man can appraise. No publisher in history has had such an inexhaustible treasure to draw from. To the vast cattle lands and mines amassed by his father, including the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, richest in the U. S.,* Hearst has added other mines in Peru, mines and oil in Mexico, rich real estate in Manhattan, Chicago, San Francisco; a castle in Wales and warehouses full of antiques. His newspapers alone were worth over $100,000,000 in 1929. But in 1930 William Randolph Hearst, who had never had to consider anything but his own will where money was concerned, began to sell preferred stock in some of his newspapers to the public--and is still selling it. Whatever the real reason for his seeking other people's money (perhaps to make inheritance simpler), the fact alone was significant as a break in the tradition of a rich individualist.

Before Hearst-- In none of the third generation is there visible anything--ex-cept the geniality--of the extraordinary character of whom William Randolph Hearst was the only son. Across the plains and mountains from a farm in fat Missouri went hawk-nosed George Hearst among 250,000 other young men drawn by the California gold strike. He was one of the handful who struck it, and kept it, and multiplied it richly. With mule and pack horse he roamed hardily from Alaska to Mexico. He went back to Missouri for his bride, patrician Phoebe Apperson, descended from Carolina-Virginia stock. His mines, ranches, banks, race horses and friends were one of the greatest collection ever made even in old California. He also owned $7,500,000 worth of the Anaconda; his million acres in Mexico pastured 48,000 cattle; and he would have bet any amount of it all on the landing of a fly on a lump of sugar. He went to the Senate on the appointment of a man he had fought for the Governorship. President Cleveland preferred him to Senator Leland Stanford. (After his death Phoebe Apperson Hearst did almost as much for the University of California as the Stanfords did for their private university.)

Senator Hearst's gangling son Willie got on neither at St. Paul's School (Concord) nor at Harvard. He was shy. and had too much money to work out of it the natural way. His early habit of entertaining the boys to win them stuck to him. The striking things about Hearst's prankish, college days, which were twice interrupted by "rustications," were his comparative sobriety and calmness at the centre of the whirlwinds he created, and his real interest even then in publishing. He haunted Boston newspaper plants. He made the Lampoon not only funny but profitable. And he decided Joseph Pulitzer's sensational new World was the ablest newspaper in the country.

"Gee Whiz!" Small wonder that rugged old Senator Hearst was surprised when his gangling son came home and, out of all the riches he might have chosen, asked for the Examiner, a pitiable rag taken in for a bad debt. But greater was the Senator's surprise when "Willie," calling about him some of his blithe college friends, proceeded to run up the old rag's circulation--at wanton initial expense-- by an amazing application of the Pulitzer method. (He had brought home bound copies of the World.) "The Monarch of the Dailies," he called his sheet, and the spirit of the office was carnival. "There is no substitute for circulation" and "What we want to arouse is the 'Gee Whiz!' emotion" were the watchwords. Lots to drink (though not for Hearst; he was and is a sipper of fine wines), lots to spend, cannon crackers, yacht rides--Hearst's staff were his familiars, and his paper's contents were historic. He had Ambrose Bierce, Gertrude Atherton, Joaquin Miller and Mark Twain on his payroll. Also Thomas Nast, Jimmy Swinnerton, T. A. ("Tad") Dorgan, Homer Davenport, Harrison Fisher, "Bud"' Fisher. In the Examiner first appeared "Casey at the Bat'' and "The Man with the Hoe." (A Negro doorman turned away Rudyard Kipling when he came peddling Plain Tales from the Hills.} Hearst hired special trains at the slightest drop of the journalistic hat to get big stories. And with the Examiner he tried his first crusading, to break the railroads' domination of San Francisco politics. Daring greatly, or perhaps not daring at all because his was a concentrated, icy, shrewdly calculated excitement, he greatly won. He lost money at more than $10,000 per month for nearly two years--and then got it back to spend over again even faster. He toured Europe intermittently (with a camera) and dreamed expanding dreams. Once, crossing San Francisco Bay, he drew rings around the country's great cities and said to his mercurial employe George Pancoast: "Some day, a paper here and here and here." Around New York he drew a double ring.

Hearst v. Pulitzer. From his devoted mother, four years after his father's death in 1891, Hearst got a $7,500,000 advance on his fabulous patrimony. For $180,000 he bought the doddering Journal and stalked quietly into New York to knock the breath out of imperious, blind Joseph Pulitzer. Few knew he was there until. to add to the cream of his imported San Francisco staff, he began buying up Pulitzer's best brains--including Arthur Brisbane--and in addition made Pulitzer accept 1-c- instead of 2-c- for his paper. Richard Harding Davis and a dozen other star writers were also at call. The sensationalism with which Pulitzer had startled Publishers Dana and Bennett and shocked Godkin, now paled beside the hyperbolic extravagances of the Journal, which in three months rocketed from 20,000 to 150,000, and in ten months to 400,000 copies a day. Two of Hearst's seven millions were in it before the year was out-- and then he started an evening edition.

Phantasmagoria. The fantastic pyrotechnics of colored ink and nightmare layouts with which Hearst, ever demure in appearance, staggered public attention in the next few years are still faintly reflected today in his American Weekly (circulation: 6,000,000). Snorting brontosauri with swarms of pterodactyls perched on their backs go gallivanting from the primordial slime across the toes of fabulous princesses, heiresses and actresses who, swooning in ermine negligees with hot love-letters stacked around them, "confess all" under the shadow of Science's latest mechanical star-splitter, a device for laying the centuries end to end-so that they will reach from the pearly minarets of wicked Constantinople to the awesome depths of the profoundest ocean abyss yet plumbed by man ! Editorially the Journals were equally exciting. They flayed Tammany and the Trusts, boomed Bryan, whanged McKinley, eagle-screamed at Spain until they brought on war. Hearst. getting himself commissioned an ensign, leaped pantless from his launch at the battle of Santiago, rounded up 26 dripping Spaniards on the beach, herded them at pistol's point into his chartered steamer and delivered them in person to Admiral Schley.* Nor was this flair for the theatrical a symptom of professional adolescence. In later years, a genius for adventure, he owned a cinema company, promoted aviation, practically leased the Graf Zeppelin for a world flight, and sent Sir Hubert Wilkins to Antarctica to discover Hearstland.

quot;Wicked" Hearst. All these manifestations were simply the performance of a master journalist-showman run away with by his own technique. Strangely mingled in Hearst were patriotism, the sense of power and a desire to sell newspapers, with the last dominant. Hearst always loved to entertain, with his own stories, songs, guitar, clog-dancing as well as lavish parties. His newspaper formula added Money, Sex and Patriotism to the old imperial adage about Bread and Circuses. In 1896 he plumped for Bryan and free silver. After the Spanish war he discovered he had gone too far in his formulistic excoriation of President McKinley as a tool of the Plutocracy. McKinley's assassination was blamed on the Journal's incendiary editorials. Hearst changed the morning Journal's name to American.

By then he was 41 and taking himself really seriously as a social force. From then it seems he was taken seriously by society and his hangings-in-effigy after McKinley's death mark the crystallization in the U. S. mind of the idea that Hearst was sinister. The machinery which he built for Bryan he deliberately used later to carry himself toward the White House where he felt, doubtless sincerely, his "new journalism" could best serve The People. The measures he introduced in Congress (1903-07) were truly liberal in conception, but despite his lavish torchlit campaigns for Mayor, Governor and President, his motives were never sufficiently trusted by The People ("Who Think"). Perhaps, eloquent though he became on the stump, he was too mental for them, too synthetic. It was a simpler, earthier politician than T. R. who drove Hearst out of politics--Al Smith, with the astutely simple declaration. "He's no Democrat." On his Enchanted Hill with his seventies upon him, it is a question whether Hearst is still unreconciled to age. He has never let his newspapers keep a "Morgue" file on him. No man may call him by his first name.

Hearst has seen the journalism he perfected surpassed in profits even by such sober journalism as that of the New York Times. He has seen that Democracy in politics which he championed, suddenly altered to a dictatorship even more absolute than the one that made him attack Woodrow Wilson. In the internationalism which he has always shunned--to the point of being called pro-German during the War--he now sees his country taking the lead. Five years or so ago it was the fashion to regard Hearst as a "failure" and a "tragic figure"--but though he may need cash (as always) and though his papers' prestige is low now that the country has outgrown them in both directions, above and below, it is doubtful that so subtle a mind as Hearst's is trapped in tragedy. He knows he has lived a great life and bent the course of millions of other lives. By the dark mental spiral that is called "inconsistency" he can accommodate himself and his past to whatever is new. That is what he has always been, a newsman.

* W. R. Hearst--An American Phenomenon. Simon &Schuster, 1928.

* Last week Homestake stock passed 200-- only stock quoted at that figure on the New York Exchange in more than a year. * His militant peak, however, was when he ordered his London man to sink a steamer in the Suez Canal to keep the Spanish fleet fr.om going after Admiral Dewey at Manila!

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