After Curtis

(See front cover)

Last week U. S. recognition of Soviet Russia looked nearer than at any time since diplomatic relations ceased in 1917. For the first time in 16 years a U. S. President formally admitted the existence of a nation of 160,000,000 inhabitants when last May Franklin Roosevelt included U. S. S. R. in his world-circling appeal for peace. For the first time in 16 years a Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs did business as an equal with U. S. statesmen when last month Maxim Maximovich Litvinov met Assistant Secretary of State Moley at the London Economic Conference. For the first time in 16 years U. S. trade with Russia was officially promoted when last fortnight Reconstruction Finance Corp. made some $4,000,000 available for exporting cotton to U. S. S. R. And for the first time in 16 years a U. S. Minister had definite instructions from the White House to keep his eye peeled to the possibilities of resuming U. S.-Soviet relations when last week Laurence Adolf Steinhardt sailed out of New York to assume his new looking & listening post at Stockholm.

Though the die-hard clamor against Russian recognition has largely died down since March 4, the public mind is still foggy with uncertainties as to just what that step would mean for the U. S. economically and politically. A new market for U. S. goods would open--but how & why and when and where? In an effort to answer such questions for the puzzled businessman there came into being in Philadelphia last week a new investigating agency sponsored by the American Foundation. It was called the Committee on Russian-American Relations and its membership included such potent figures as Morgan-Partner Thomas W. Lament, whose son Corliss is a near-Communist; Harvard Economist Frank W. Taussig; Lawyer Paul D. Cravath, a Russian recognitionist; President James D. Mooney of General Motors Export Co., whose trading field is the world at large; Dean Roscoe Pound of Harvard Law School, a liberal of the first water; Engineer Hugh L. Cooper who built the Dnieprostroy Dam for U. S. S. R. Modestly buried away in the middle of the committee list was the name of its chairman and sponsor--Curtis Bok.

To all literate U. S. citizens that combination of names could suggest only one thing--the great Philadelphia publishing family long headed by Cyrus H. K. Curtis and well served by his son-in-law, Edward William Bok. Mr. Bok died in 1930, Mr. Curtis last month. To Curtis Bok, able grandson of an able grandfather, able son of an able father, passed the prestige and tradition and responsibility, if not the immediate wealth of the Curtis-Bok family. But when for the first time since his succession Curtis Bok stepped into the limelight to perform an important act of public service, it was not as the scion of the rulers of a huge publishing empire but as a stubbornly independent individual doing what he considered his independent duty.

Empire, Not until it turned into the 20th Century did the U. S. magazine business start swelling to mammoth proportions. At the root of that amazing growth was Cyrus Curtis who developed advertising as a sort of huge hydro-electric system to drive the wheels of the publishing business. What Henry Ford did for automobiles, Cyrus Curtis did for magazines-- and they both waxed very, very rich. Today the House of Curtis towers so high above all others that there is no room for comparison.

In 1929 Curtis collected $73,000,000 from advertisers. Even in 1930 after the slump, Mr. Curtis's $67,000,000 was more than double the revenue of any other group. The Saturday Evening Post, for which Editor George Horace Lorimer gathered the world's largest circulation (today: 2,900,000), alone accounted for $47,000,000 while Mr. Curtis's Ladies' Home Journal stood second with $15,000,000. The nearest any other magazine came was Good Housekeeping's $12,000,000. By last year Curtis Publishing Co.'s net profits were down to $5,500,000. But in 1929 they were four times that much.

Mr. Curtis had already made his monumental success in magazines when he decided to try newspapers. He failed to repeat. The Curtis-Martin newspapers, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Evening Ledger, Inquirer, and the New York Evening Post comprise a weak point in the Curtis frontiers. Nevertheless they strengthened Publisher Curtis's position as head of the first family of Philadelphia. When Son-in-law Edward William Bok resigned the editorship of Mr. Curtis's Ladies' Home Journal the family turned from money-making to social service, music, peace. Cultural Mr. Bok founded and conducted his American Foundation, gave yearly prizes for outstanding service to the city. In Philadelphia Mrs. Bok founded and still heads the Curtis Institute of Music. She is chairman of the opera, director of the orchestra association, and a generous donor to Philadelphia museums and charities. The empire left by Cyrus Curtis was as brilliant socially as it was professionally and financially.

Heirs. No doubt it will always be called Curtis Publishing Co. But when Cyrus, aged 83. died, the family name was buried with him. An only son. he had no sons. In 1875 he married Louisa Knapp who started Ladies' Home Journal. She bore him one daughter, Mary Louise, who grew up to marry Editor Bok. and in turn to bear him two sons. Curtis & Gary. Less than six months after his first wife died in 1910, Publisher Curtis married his second cousin, Mrs. Kate Stanwood Cutter Pillsbury, widow of a Milwaukee lumberman. She died a year ago. This second marriage was childless, but "Cousin Kate" already had three daughters, one of whom married John Charles Martin.

Publisher Curtis took a great fancy to Stepson-in-law Martin, soon lifted him out of the Milwaukee machinery business to manage his Public Ledger. Young Mr. Martin made good. Eventually he was given charge of all Curtis newspapers. His life was insured for $6,500,000. He raised a family of five, in a house across the road from Lyndon, the Curtis estate in Wyncote. Pa. And he became known on the outside as the "crown prince" of the Curtis organization.

But within the family John Martin was far from being the "crown prince." Snowy-bearded Old Man Curtis was well-beloved by all his kith & kin but he could not get the Boks to share his enthusiasm for the Martins. His only child, Mrs. Bok, resented his marriage to ''Cousin Kate" Pillsbury so soon after her own mother's death. Her displeasure was inherited by her sons. In this family feud, polite and unobtrusive though it was. the Lorimers sided with the Boks against the Martins. For a long while the name of Mrs. Lorimer never appeared in a Curtis-Martin news paper.

When Cyrus Curtis's will was opened a month ago. the public first realized what the family had long known--that Stepson-in-law Martin was not to succeed to the throne. His wife. Alice, was bequeathed $100,000 outright. But so far as the publishing property is concerned, there was no provision for a Martin or any other Pillsbury issue until the direct line of Boks should wither away. To Mary Louise Bok her father left his residences at Wyncote and at Camden, Me., his gorgeous yacht Lyndonia, the income from his Curtis stock, everything he owned--except the stock itself. That went to a board of seven trustees composed of Mrs. Bok. her two sons. Editor Lorimer, Vice President Fuller of Curtis Publishing Co., Publisher Martin, and his Treasurer Tyler. Counting Editor Lorimer and Vice President Fuller, five out of seven trustees were sure Bok votes. Hence, if a Curtis crown prince must be found, one turns to the Bok family and to the elder son. William Curtis Bok, 35. Yet never was there a junior heir more reluctant to assume the position to which birth and breeding destined him than young Curtis Bok.

Grandsons, Edward Bok was proud of the fact that he encouraged his sons to make their own decisions, choose their own schools, plan their own vacations. Thus when his firstborn, tall, soft-spoken Curtis, finished at Hill School in 1915 he chose to enter Williams College. There he chose Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, distinguished himself as a varsity first baseman, was tapped for Gargoyle, the honor society whose roster includes New York's Governor Lehman, Massachusetts' Governor Ely. When the U. S. entered the War he chose to quit college for the Navy in which he attained a senior lieutenancy at 21.

Back in Philadelphia, young Bok was presented with an opportunity which any young man might well covet, a chance to enter the publishing House of Curtis and climb quickly to the top. Instead he went to University of Virginia to try a year of law. Its fascination astonished even himself. By the time he finished his course Curtis Bok knew once and for all that the pen attracted him far less than penology, the penitentiary, sociology. Returning to Philadelphia to practice his new profession he threw himself into works of public welfare, became a trustee of Eastern Penitentiary. He even arranged to serve a voluntary term in a cell to get a real taste of prison life, but when newshawks discovered the scheme he abandoned it. For three years he worked as assistant district attorney of Philadelphia county, invariably drawing the toughest cases which his chief thought were hopeless.

Criminology was only a phase of Lawyer Bok's sociological pursuits. He is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of his father's American Foundation which awards the Bok Peace Prize, and is a confirmed World Courter. In 1927 he went to Geneva, first of the rich men's sons to work under Arthur Sweetser in the information section of the League. While there, he recruited a baseball team from League attendants, with himself as pitcher, played a Japanese team and was roundly trounced. One of his great good friends is Philadelphia's famed Baseball Manager Connie Mack, who was awarded the Bok prize for outstanding service to the city in 1929.

Last year, after motoring through Russia for two months with his wife, Curtis Bok decided he had not really seen the country. Sending his wife home he returned to Moscow, found lodgings with a Russian family in a tiny house, got a job tending a machine in a candy factory at 80 rubles per month. Thence he went to Leningrad, took another job as chauffeur for Intourist at 250 rubles. At the end of three months he returned to the U. S., second class, wearing a wrinkled brown suit, khaki shirt, flannel tie, battered cap, carrying two pieces of luggage and a cardboard box. He bubbled with enthusiasm over the Russians who, he felt, had "the answer to the future." Such is his practical background for the forthcoming investigation of U. S.-U. S. S. R. relations.

Grandfather Curtis had every reason to be proud of his two grandsons. But he was less diffident than their father about coaxing them into his business. Having given up hope for Curtis Bok, he enlisted the aid of his daughter in gaining the ear of her younger son, Gary William. Gary, who resembles his big brother in quiet charm, mild humor and Dutch stubbornness, has followed him to Williams, into Deke and Gargoyle. He shared his brother's fondness for beer & ale and baseball, and he pitched on the varsity.

Although Gary was on the staff of the Record, Williams undergraduate newspaper, he also was indifferent to the publishing business. Following graduation (1926) he went to Oxford for two years, cherished two ambitions: to teach school and to deal in rare books. (He has a remarkable library of earthy Americana.) Eventually he was persuaded to enter the Curtis company. He worked hard, without enthusiasm but without complaint. He peddled his grandfather's magazines from door to door, went to Manhattan and sold advertising, returned to Philadelphia to work in the circulation department at a desk among rows & rows of others. Enthusiasm and aptitude grew apace. Last week Gary Bok, 28, found himself occupying his late grandfather's office in the Curtis-Martin newspaper offices. It may have been mere coincidence that shortly after Gary Bok moved in, Harry Baxter Nason Jr., assistant editor of the Ledger, was sent to take charge of the New York Evening Post for six months over the shoulder of Editor Julian Mason. Then he will recommend whether or not that money-losing sheet should be continued. (Three bidders last week were trying to pick it up for a bargain.)

To at least one phase of the three-fold Curtis empire--the cultural--Brothers Curtis & Gary are walling, earnest heirs. Gary is an officer of the Curtis Institute, as is Curtis who is vice president of the orchestra association. Also Curtis heads, as president, the social Philadelphia Forum (lectures, dances, music) and sits on the Committee of Seventy for political reform. Professionally the destiny of the Curtis regime is difficult to read. Brother Gary is training himself for technical command but it may well be the voice of Brother Curtis that is some day heard speaking his politico-social creed through their magazines.

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