Philadelphia Feud

One afternoon last week, readers of the Philadelphia Record, who are constantly being told to love, honor & obey the New Deal, were startled to find in their paper a full-page advertisement entitled THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, or The United States is wasting its substance in riotous extravagance. Excerpt: "WOODROW WILSON and Franklin D. Roosevelt, however admirable their qualities, nevertheless divide the distinction of standing forth as the Coal-Oil Johnnies of American politics. . . . Before the times of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States had practically NO NATIONAL DEBT. Now we have a formidable National debt of some THIRTY THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS, which is continually INCREASING. . . . The most important thing before this Nation at this moment is to reduce EXPENDITURES, to reduce the NATIONAL DEBT, to reduce TAXATION, to reduce the BURDENS UPON BUSINESS AND UPON LABOR. . . . This is the A-B-C of economics; but unhappily there are a lot of people in Washington who do not know their A-B-C's."

Completely out of tune with the Record's New Deal preachment of "Spend! Spend! Spend!" the advertisement was signed by William Randolph Hearst who had run it in his own 28 papers and 60 others throughout the land. With no outlet of his own in Philadelphia, he had bought space for his anti-New Deal advertisement in the reactionary Inquirer. When Julius David Stern, shirtsleeve publisher of the Record, saw it there, he picked it up, reprinted it free, used it as an excuse for another of his stand-up fights with a man whom most other publishers prudently ignore.

Chief characteristic of "Dave" Stern is his pugnacious aggressiveness. A practicing journalist who puts a high price on the power of his editorials, he picked up the New Brunswick (N. J.) Times in 1912, sold it at a profit after a clean-up campaign against the local government, moved on to Springfield, Ill. repeated the process, went back East and did almost the same trick with the Camden, N. J. Evening Courieer and Morning Post. The Philadelphia Record was a down-at-heel Democratic rag in a Republican city when Publisher Stern took it over. In Philadelphia it now ranks commercially and politically near the top. His New York paper, the Post which he bought two years ago, has made a good deal of vulgar noise getting on its feet but has not yet proved its journalistic worth.

The Stern-Hearst feud developed several months ago when Publisher Hearst tried to woo away some of Stern's best men. Politics rather than personalities were at the bottom of their grudge fight. Out in the open last week it took on new proportions. Besides reprinting the Hearst attack on the New Deal, New Dealer Stern editorially challenged the master of San Simeon thus on the Record's front page: "Let Hearst, arch reactionary, battle the liberal Record at close range, and let Philadelphia citizens be the jury. . . . Philadelphia is one of the few cities in the country where Mr. Hearst has to pay for space to place his views before the public. . . . We suggest that Hearst immediately remedy this situation by purchasing a Philadelphia newspaper so our fellow citizens may have the benefit of a steady flow of his 'disinterested advice.' "

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