The Telephone Booth Indian (24 page)

Among the eighteen ScrippsHoward newspapers, aside from the
WorldTelegram
, are the Cleveland
Press
, Pittsburgh
Press
, Cincinnati
Post
, Memphis
Commercial Appeal
, San Francisco
News
, Washington
News
, and papers in Birmingham, Indianapolis, and Columbus. Of these, the Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Memphis papers are believed in newspaper circles to be extremely profitable and the others less so. The combined circulation of the nineteen papers is about 1,500,000, which is around three quarters that of the New York
Daily News
and approximately three times that of the New York
Times.
Howard and Hawkins have said repeatedly that the profits of the
WorldTelegram
, despite its 400,000 circulation, have been negligible. On one occasion in 1935, Howard, addressing a group of editorial employees, said that Heywood Broun's salary of approximately forty thousand dollars was larger than the profits of the newspaper in the previous year. The United Press, a newsgathering organization that sells its news to 1460 papers in the United States, South America,
and Japan, as well as to five hundred radio stations, has been said to earn a million dollars a year. There are also complementary organizations, like the Newspaper Enterprise Association, or N.E.A., a syndicate which sells newspaper features; the Acme picture service, which sells news pictures, and the United Feature Syndicate. Every ScrippsHoward paper pays a fee to the central office for “national management.” Sometimes a paper which, considered as a single corporate enterprise, is just breaking even is actually a profitable ScrippsHoward property because of this fee and the fees it pays as a customer of the ScrippsHoward syndicates.

Howard says that he has not been in an office of the United Press for years and that its policy is controlled entirely by Hugh Baillie, its president, who has a much larger financial interest in that organization than either Howard or Hawkins. The E. W. Scripps Company, which Howard runs as an officer and trustee, although he owns only about thirteen per cent of its stock, holds over half of the stock in the United Press. Baillie has worked for the United Press for thirty years. It now has fifteen hundred fulltime correspondents and fiftyfive thousand contributing parttime correspondents. The subscribers include a hundred and fiftyone papers in twentyone LatinAmerican countries, the Japanesegovernment news agency, the Osaka
Mainichi
and Tokio
NichiNichi
, which are two of the most widely circulated newspapers in the world, and a cluster of customers in Europe, including thirtythree papers in Germany.

Howard and Hawkins are less inseparable in social life. This may be because Howard tries to regulate the bigbodied Hawkins' intake of food and drink for what he considers Hawkins' own good. He takes a maternal interest in the private life of everybody he knows. A United Press correspondent, explaining a fondness of
his employer's for Orientals, once said, “Roy likes to teach them how to use chopsticks.” Another time, when Howard was on a cruise ship, the vessel's social director fell ill, and the publisher spent a satisfying week introducing apathetic men to patently antagonistic women and making people play deck tennis when they didn't want to. Not long afterward he bought the
Jamaroy
, on which he could be social director officially. He is never happier than when he has guests on his yacht to organize. Merlin H. Aylesworth, former president of the National Broadcasting Company, who was an important ScrippsHoward official for about two years after he left the radio corporation, says he once saved a leading Howard columnist from being killed by the publisher's solicitude. “Roy wanted him to go on the wagon,” Aylesworth says, “and I told him, 'Roy, if that fellow goes on the wagon, he'll die.' “ The columnist is still in good health.

The publisher freely volunteers advice to political candidates, plans complete careers for young women he has known three minutes, and for a year tormented a Russian portrait painter he knew with instructions for the improvement of a left eye in one of the painter's works. The maddened painter finally turned on him and shouted, “Yah, and I know who designs your shirts! The Congoleum Corporation of America!” As a matter of fact, Howard has them made for him by WalterMcCrory, on West Fortysixth Street. Howard's willingness to run things sometimes rises to the international plane. Matsuoka, whose wife sent Mrs. Howard the cloisonne, was chief of the Japanese delegation to Geneva at the time Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. Howard was also in Geneva then. “Matsuoka never could sell me on the idea of taking Japan out of the League of Nations,” Howard says, “but he tried like hell.” Another Japanese project of which Howard disapproves is the appointment of Wang
Chingwei as puppet President of China. “I am personally acquainted with Wang Chingwei,” he says, “but I do not think he would make a good president.”

Howard prefers as friends men whom he considers leaders in their field. This includes not only businessmen like Barton, Bernard M. Baruch, and Bernard F. Gimbel but Howard Chandler Christy and Leon Gordon, the artists; Lowell Thomas, the broadcaster; Rex Beach, Rupert Hughes, John Erskine, and Hendrik Willem van Loon, the writers; and Kent Cooper, general manager of the Associated Press. Of the entire group, Baruch is the only one who might be called a representative of finance capital. Howard grew up in Indiana with a pious, Midwestern fear of Wall Street. In general he finds the Eastern or pseudoEnglish type of rich man a bit stiff and prefers the company of transplanted Midwesterners like himself. Many of his friends are members of the Dutch Treat Club, a sort of Kiwanis of the arts. Howard likes the Rotarian congeniality of the club and doubtless approves of the house rule that every man pays for his own lunch. He has a feminine reluctance to part with money for anything except clothes. Sometimes he tries to make this characteristic amusing, saying blithely, “I'm Scotch,” as one of his employees pays the fare for the taxi in which they have been riding or picks up a check for drinks. On other occasions, in restaurants, he determines the tip by dividing the amount of the check by ten and leaves the exact tithe, down to the penny. “The soandso gave us the worst service I ever saw in my life,” he is likely to say afterward.

The event in his life to which Howard most frequently refers in ordinary conversation is the time he had an audience, in 1933, with Hirohito, Emperor of Japan. This privilege, as the United Press was careful to explain in sending out Howard's account of the meeting, had never before been enjoyed by an American newspaperman. Howard was unfortunately unable to quote the
Emperor in his newspapers, because court etiquette forbade it. However, his account of the colloquy, which ran on the front pages of all ScrippsHoward papers, left no doubt that the publisher had favorably impressed the Emperor. Howard often dates events by the momentous day. “That was two and a half years before my interview with the Emperor of Japan,” he will say to a woman he meets at a dinner party, while discussing almost anything, and one associate unkindly says that Howard thinks of the Christian era as something that began 1933 years before the historic encounter.

According to Howard's own story of the interview, Matsuoka, who, after maneuvering the Japanese out of the League of Nations at Geneva, barnstormed the United States in a dignified fashion, explaining Japan's position, suggested that the publisher come to Tokio sometime and meet the Mikado. One gathers that, having business there a few months later, he dropped in on Matsuoka casually and the statesman practically dragged him through the palace gates, insisting that Hirohito would be offended if he didn't call. Newspapermen who were stationed in Tokio at the time are wont to state openly that however easy it had been for Howard, it hadn't been much of a cinch for Miles Vaughn, the United Press correspondent there, who had gone through months of diplomatic toil arranging the audience. Howard was not permitted to write much more than such general statements as “JapaneseAmerican friendship, understanding, and cooperation are of the utmost importance to peace not only in the Far East but in the world, in the opinion of His Imperial Majesty Hirohito, Emperor of Japan.” As one looks back, it is doubtful if the interview can be considered a milestone in the old endeavor of the Occident to understand the Orient.

Howard, in some moods, likes to deprecate the importance of his scoop as a journalistic accomplishment, although it is
naturally impossible to deprecate anything without mentioning it. He does not wish it to obscure other achievements. “Nobody ever says anything about my knowing anything about Russia,” he often complains. “I interviewed Stalin too.” The Stalin interview was in March 1936. The publisher submitted a written list of questions before the interview, and the dictator was ready with prepared answers which were read off by an interpreter. Stalin spoke harshly of Hitler and the Japanese. “The interview was devoid of forensics and dramatics,” Howard wrote. “…the informality and ready humor which characterized the conversation are silk gloves covering an oftendemonstrated iron will.” Although Stalin didn't divulge much information, Howard felt that his time had not been wasted. He believed that he had a clearer understanding of the Russian situation. On his return to New York he told shipnews reporters that Russia had the kind of government the people wanted and that any businessman could see that it was going to last, a statement he has since referred to as illustrating his openmindedness. “Stalin is a little fellow,” he told the shipnews men, “not as tall as I am.”

Howard also had an interview with Hitler in 1936, but his impression of him was not so happy. “I only got a chance to say four or five words,” he says. “Every time I said something to the interpreter Hitler let loose with an oration in German.” It was one of the rare occasions in Howard's life on which he has been talked down.

Early the morning after last Election Day, a message went out on the wires of the United Press, the ScrippsHoward news service, to editors of the nineteen ScrippsHoward papers scattered over
the United States, saying, “Kill Talburt Cartoon Out at Third—|R. W. H.” The cartoon, drawn by Harold Talburt, an artist employed by a ScrippsHoward feature syndicate, showed Franklin D. Roosevelt in baseball togs sliding for a base marked, with the usual ScrippsHoward subtlety, “Third Term.” The third baseman, marked “American People,” was, presumably upon ScrippsHoward advice, tagging him out. The precautionary message was a typical tribute from Roy Wilson Howard to the alertness and intelligence of his editors. He wasn't taking any chances. A few weeks after this, Howard paid a friendly call on Mr. Roosevelt at the White House. Ever since the first Wednesday of last November, a sign above the desk of the President's secretary, Stephen T. Early, has proclaimed, “We ain't mad with nobody.” It is unlikely that any other critic of the President as acrid as Howard took the sign literally so soon.

As Howard left the President's office after the interview, reporters from the press room in the White House gathered around him on the chance of picking up a few quotations. The publisher waved the newsmen away with a twanging “Nothing to say, boys.” As he headed for the door, somebody called out, “Mr. Howard, did you call to report another armistice?” “Who said that?” Howard asked. Nobody answered, and the publisher hurried on with his short, quick stride. The anonymous voice had recalled the most gigantic
gaffe
in newspaper history, the falsearmistice report Howard sent over from France on November 7, 1918. The fellow who had asked the question may have reflected on the possibility that the falsearmistice episode was the clearest proof in Howard's career of his ability to survive experiences that would have proved mortally discouraging to other men.

The report that set the country to celebrating the end of the first World War on the afternoon of November 7 was received by the United Press in New York and said, in the customary
newspaper cablese: “URGENT ARMISTICE ALLIES GERMANY SIGNED ELEVEN SMORNING HOSTILITIES CEASED TWO SAFTERNOON SEDAN TAKEN SMORNING BY AMERICANS.” It was signed “HOWARD SIMMS.” Howard, then president of the United Press, was supposed by his subordinates here to be in Paris. William Philip Simms, now foreign editor of the United Press, was then the organization's manager in Paris, and it was a rule that all United Press messages from France had to bear his signature. When Howard sent the cable, he was not in Paris but in Brest, where he had just finished having a chatty lunch with ViceAdmiral Henry B. Wilson, commander of the American naval forces in France. According to Howard's subsequent account of the affair, he had concluded that the World War was about washed up and had obtained permission to return to America on a transport scheduled to sail from Brest on November 8. Armistice was in the air. The German government had appointed a delegation to meet with representatives of the Allied powers and receive terms. The two delegations were due to come together sometime on November 7, but Howard did not know the exact hour. When he met Admiral Wilson, the naval officer told him that he had just had a telephone call from a friend in the United States Embassy in Paris. The friend had told Wilson that the armistice had been signed. Howard promptly wired this interesting item from Brest, which was the cablehead of the transatlantic cable. The Brest censors were in the streets celebrating the armistice rumor, which had spread rapidly from the officers of Admiral Wilson's staff to American sailors and from them to the inhabitants. The telegraph operator assumed the censors had passed Howard's dispatch and simply transmitted it. Howard had added Simms's signature
ultra vires
as Simms's boss, and because of Simms's name the United Press office in New York assumed that the message came from Paris via Brest, instead of directly from Brest. Simms, if consulted, might have advised his superior
to doublecheck his information, a naive procedure habitual among journalists of lower voltage.

Newspapers in the United States passed the news along to the public under headlines like the New York
Journal's
“GERMANY GIVES UP, WAR ENDS AT TWO P.M.” and the
Evening Post's
“REPORT ARMISTICE SIGNED; CITY IN WILD DEMONSTRATION.” Factory whistles blew; church bells rang, and office workers began throwing paper out of windows. It cost New York eighty thousand dollars to clear the debris of the celebration off the streets. The State Department issued a statement in the afternoon denying that the war was over, but the public refused to be balked. The Associated Press, older and more conservative rival of Howard's pushing organization, denied the report from the first, but newspaper editors suspected that it was covering up its own lack of enterprise. An angry crowd tried to wreck the office of the Associated Press at 51 Chambers Street, shouting that it was a nest of German spies. Outside the headquarters of the United Press in the Pulitzer Building, an airraid siren, vintage of 1918, shrieked at oneminute intervals.