Companion's Climb

In 1911, when Gertrude Battles Lane was promoted from associate editor to editor-in-chief of Woman's Home Companion, that magazine was reaching 737,764 subscribers. By February 1916 circulation was 1,000,000. By November 1923 there were more than 2,000,000 names on the Companion's books. By 1929 there were 500,000 more. By December 1933 the Companion led the women's field. Last week it was evident that the climax of the Companion's climb was not yet reached when The Crowell Publishing Co. proudly announced that the April issue had circulated 2,906,000 copies, high mark to date in women's magazines.

Such success in a highly competitive field was attributed by the Crowell organization solely to Miss Lane's 25 years of alert, often brilliant, editorial showmanship. Typical Lane stunts have been the series Too Many Churches, which recommended plowing under moribund congregations; new correspondence between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Charles Spencer Chaplin's own account of his travels; and the Auto Gypsy series, one of the first to call attention to the motorized vagabonds of the U. S.

As Gertrude Battles Lane well knows, successful women's magazines are primarily choice advertising media, must stand or fall in the realm where circulation meets advertisers over a counter called ''merchandising." Good Housekeeping makes the most out of what that Hearstian publication calls the Good Housekeeping Institute, which confers a seal of approval on worthy advertisers. Editor Lane's merchandising trick consists of appointing "Reader-Editors" who gather from all parts of the U. S. to spend a fortnight in Manhattan at the Companion's expense. There they refer household problems to the Companion Home Service Center, return to their communities loyally sold on the Companion and its advertisers.

Administering such big operations gradually advanced Gertrude Battles Lane in The Crowell Publishing Co.. which also issues American Magazine, Collier's and Country Home. For years a director, Miss Lane was made a vice president in 1929, counseled the company so wisely throughout Depression that Crowell's No. 1 stockholder Joseph Palmer ("Old Joe") Knapp chuckled delightedly: "Gertrude Lane is the best 'man' in this business!" A great publishing adviser, Miss Lane gave Crowell's groggy American Magazine a shot of editorial adrenalin which helped that outmoded publication to get back on its feet, start sparring with Redbook and Cosmopolitan.

Born some 50 years ago in Saco. Me., Spinster Lane uses traditional New England caution in buying for the Companion, will take nothing sight unseen. Once sold, she pays big money for what her judgment tells her the Companion ought to print. The Browning letters fetched $25,000 for three brief installments. Editor Lane pays Kathleen Norris $85,000 for a serial, comparable amounts to Edna Ferber, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Sophie Kerr. other famed and popular woman writers. From Crowell and the Companion, Editor Lane receives a salary of some $50,000 a year.

Quiet, feminine, essentially non-spectacular, Editor Lane cultivates no office mannerisms, permits herself an occasional mild pun. Once Miss Lane told a male colleague who complained that Crowell's female executives were invading a hitherto masculine restaurant that he evidently wished to be ''obscene and not heard." Miss Lane's personal life is centred at her Harwinton, Conn, country home in summer, her Manhattan apartment in winter. Gertrude Battles Lane often combines business and pleasure by bringing home a brief case full of work, starting an automatic phonograph, settling down to the strains of a Bach concerto to read the latest manuscripts submitted for Woman's Home Companion.

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