Philadelphia Purchase

Fishing on his 2,000-acre ranch in the Black Hills of Wyoming, Moses Louis Annenberg heard last month that the Philadelphia Inquirer could be purchased by anyone who had a desire to own a large morning newspaper and $15,000,000 in cash. Mr. Annenberg had both. Forthwith he sent one of the five Annenberg sons-in-law to Paris to dicker with the Inquirer's socialite owners, Mme Eleanore Elverson Paternotre and her sleek son Raymond, onetime Undersecretary of State for National Economy, member of the Chamber of Deputies and publisher of the Paris Petit Journal. Last week the deal went through. From his modest Manhattan offices, Purchaser Annenberg announced that he was taking over active control of the Inquirer at once, that he had no backers, that the Inquirer would continue a stanch Republican sheet.

Philadelphia's oldest morning daily, the Inquirer was founded in 1829 and bought by Colonel James Elverson 60 years later. Colonel Elverson's daughter, an international belle, married French Ambassador Jules Paternotre in the 1890's, inherited the Inquirer at her brother's death in 1929, sold it within a year to Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis and his stepson-in-law John C. Martin for part cash, part credit.

Under the Curtis-Martin ownership the Inquirer started downhill to failure. Combining it with the famed old Public Ledger failed to slow its descent. In 1934 the Inquirer bounced back on the Paternotres when the Curtis-Martin interests could no longer pay off their recurrent notes. Still carrying the old Ledger nameplate,* the Inquirer was administered for its absentee owners by Publisher Charles A. Tyler. Morning competition in Philadelphia was supplied by rambunctious New Dealer J. (for Julius) David Stern and his bustling Record (circulation: 221,927). When the Paternotres sold out for $15,000,000 cash last week, the Inquirer had a daily circulation of 277.994, nearly 700,000 on Sundays. (Peak circulation, in 1934: 295,735.) Philadelphia newsmen guessed that the new management would oust Publisher Tyler and oldtime Editor John T. Custis, keep most of the staff.

The man who thus quietly acquired a major publishing stake in the No. 3 city of the land began his business life as a Chicago newsboy, after being brought from his native Germany as a youngster. In 1904 William Randolph Hearst made "Moe" Annenberg circulation manager of his Chicago Examiner. The tough tactics of that era gave to Mr. Annenberg and his older brother Max--a sinister aura which dogged them throughout their careers. In 1907 Moses Annenberg went to Milwaukee to distribute all the Chicago newspapers then in existence, branched out as a newsdealer all over the U. S. In 1917 he became publisher of the Wisconsin News. Two years later Mr. Hearst stepped in as owner of the News, soon made Mr. Annenberg circulation boss of the entire chain of Hearst newspapers. In 1920 Mr. Annenberg showed Hearst how Publisher Frank Munsey was merchandising magazines with a clever premium plan. Impressed, Publisher Hearst made one of his celebrated snap decisions, drawled: "Mr. Annenberg, I want you to go to New York and take charge of the magazines !'' This quick boost made Moses Annenberg circulator of all Hearst publications, but he shrewdly reserved the right to develop his own interests on the side. Biggest of these was the gradual acquisition of Daily Racing Form, track tradepaper (circulation: over 100,000), published simultaneously in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle and Toronto. Collateral activity was the purchase and revivification of the New York Morning Telegraph, 100-year-old sporting sheet which was dreaming away in a tumbledown building opposite Manhattan's Madison Square Garden. From his wires and turf news facilities at every U. S. track, Publisher Annenberg set up Nationwide News Service, Inc., which furnishes sport and racing news to all comers, including the Associated Press, United Press, International News Service, hundreds of U. S. dailies and, inevitably, countless bookies and handbook operators. Though bettors use his services, Mr. Annenberg is himself no gamester, places no wagers, owns no tracks, keeps no racehorses, and is wroth when publisher-rivals refer to him as "Moe Annenberg, the gambler."

Other Annenberg publishing properties are the unprofitable tabloid Miami Tribune, the highly profitable pulp magazines Radio Guide, Screen Guide and Official Detective Stories. Directing such enterprises took able Mr. Annenberg out of the Hearst organization in 1926. As an independent capitalist, his holdings included Milwaukee and Manhattan real estate and a partnership in a Wall Street brokerage firm, which he luckily liquidated two days before the 1929 market panic.

Because it has long been a truism in the newspaper business that "Hearst wants to get into Philadelphia," and because of Mr. Annenberg's oldtime association with that publisher, tipsters last week thought the Inquirer purchase meant that the long-awaited Hearstian invasion was at hand. Bankers thought otherwise, believed that Mr. Annenberg had probably outbid his old chief for the Philadelphia paper. Long on the lookout for a big paper, Mr. Annenberg bought the Inquirer, not because he has any great social or political message to give to Philadelphia, but because he would rather "make a dollar in the publishing business than ten dollars anywhere else."

Lean, grey-thatched, soft-spoken Moses Annenberg, 58, has seven daughters so attractive that all have been married at one time or another. His one son Walter he is training to be a publisher. Moe Annenberg says he would not give a dollar for all the Old Masters in Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Annenberg place at Great Neck, L. L, once the estate of Actor George M. Cohan, teems with in-laws and grandchildren, is "like an old-fashioned Milwaukee home." In his office. Mr. Annenberg smokes cork-tipped Pall Mall cigarets from a loose pile on his desk, apologizes for his occasional profanity, belies his reputation of being a mean, unsociable skinflint. The Annenberg winter home in Miami Beach is gay, but when Mr. Annenberg goes to "Ranch A" (for Annenberg) in Wyoming he prefers to rest in comparative solitude. Sometimes when guests appear he goes away, leaves them in possession. Last June Republican Mr. Annenberg lent his ranch in absentia to South Dakota's Democratic Governor Tom Berry who gratefully used it to see that visiting New Dealer Rexford Guy Tugwell had a good time.

*The Evening Ledger was not involved in the combination, remains the property of the Curtis-Martin interests.

--Circulation director for the Chicago Tribune and its cousin, the New York Daily News.

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