According to Holies

When Odessa struck oil 15 years ago, West Texans yahooed with delight. Last week, when a man named Hoiles struck Odessa (pop. 40,000), few citizens knew whether to toss their Stetsons into the air or jump on them. Even by Texas standards, the newcomer looked as ruggedly individualistic as a steer on the loose.

Terrible-tempered Publisher Raymond Cyrus Hoiles, 69, who already owned six newspapers in five states,* bought the Odessa American, in partnership with 20 employees, for more than $200,000. Like the Chicago Tribune, whose editorials he reprints on days when his own spleen is small, Publisher Hoiles knows how to make people mad and make it pay.

Minority Prophet. "R.C." is against unions (the Hoiles papers are all open shop), majority rule ("The majority can't give my consent to anything"), progressive, income taxes ("nothing but socialism"), public education ("a house of prostitution is voluntary, grade school is not") and aid to Europe ("Let 'em go to hell"). He considers both Herbert Hoover and Earl Warren too leftwing. Two things Publisher Hoiles is in favor of: child labor for the average, child ("Give him a pick & shovel and let him get started") and the black market. One touch of liberalism in the Hoiles record: during the war, he campaigned to give U.S. Japanese a fair break.

Born in Alliance, Ohio, Hoiles went to public school because he didn't have any say in the matter, then to a Methodist college. He started work on his older brother's newspaper in Alliance for $2 a week, was making $10,000 a year when they had a falling-out over R.C.'s labor-baiting views. Then R.C. published an anti-union paper in industrial Mansfield, Ohio, sold out (for a profit) after enemies blew up his front porch.

Healthy Profit. Moving to California, Hoiles bought the Register, doubled its circulation, became the richest man in Orange County as he added one profitable paper after another to his string.

With the help of two sons and a daughter, all of whom work for him, Publisher Hoiles runs his chain from Santa Ana. He shouts his letters and columns to a long-suffering secretary, passes out pamphlets on Christ and taxes to all comers, harangues editors, reporters and the janitor. But he confines his independent opinions to his signed column. Says he: "The news columns don't belong to us. We're just like stenographers."

Even his enemies admit that he tells the news. Most Hoiles readers have little choice, anyway: six of his seven papers are monopolies. Hoiles has survived two dynamitings, four strikes, and floods of counter-denunciation. Sample (from a Colorado Springs pastor): "They say Hoiles has a Stone-Age philosophy. That is an injustice to the Stone Age . . ."

* The Santa Ana, Calif. Register; the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph; the Bucyrus, Ohio Telegraph-Forum; the Pampa, Tex. Daily News; the Clovis, N.Mex. News-Journal; the Marysville, Calif. Appeal-Democrat.

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