In San Francisco

Last week Publisher William Randolph Hearst made an announcement in the city where he first began publishing newspapers. He purchased from C. H. Brockhagen the San Francisco Bulletin and merged it with his San Francisco Call-Post. Editor Fremont Older of the Call-Post, 6 ft. 2 in., with a sea-captain's mustache, would continue as editor of the combined newspapers.

Citizens of graftless San Francisco thought back over 25 years, when large in San Francisco's vocabulary was the word Graft, when Fremont Older rose to fame among San Francisco journalists.

One day in 1895 a tall, blustering, hearty man walked into the Bulletin building and announced that he was the new managing editor. Chewing the end of an unlighted cigar, he called into his filthy, paper-littered office all the staff, invited them to put their feet on his desk, talked over with them the prevailing situation.

The situation was worth conversation. As rotten as San Francisco's politics were San Francisco's turn-of-the-century newspapers. To gain an end editors stopped at nothing. A typical incident: at 1 p. m. one day the city editor of William Randolph Hearst's morning Examiner told one of his newssnatchers that R. A. Crothers, owner of the Bulletin, had been attacked as he was emerging from a restaurant. Rushing to the Bulletin, the Examiner reporter learned that Owner Crothers was still in the restaurant, enjoying a good meal, good health. The newsgatherer departed. A few minutes later Mr. Crothers emerged from the restaurant, was set upon, beaten. The clock of the Examiner's city editor had been, it seemed, a little fast.

Editor Older soon discovered that his newspaper was not on the pure list. It was receiving "pay" from railroads. It was receiving money from political parties for candidacy support. But this bothered Editor Older not at all. Graft was running the railroads, governing Labor, electing city officials. Fearless, ambitious, fight-loving, Editor Older set out to purify San Francisco. His great and good friend Rudolph Spreckels, sugar tycoon, agreed to help him. They found lined up against them potent local powers. Patrick Calhoun, hardheaded, two-fisted president of United Railroads; Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz, tall, handsome, the people's idol; Abraham Ruef, a Hebrew Schmitz henchman. "These men are crooks," said Editor Older. "We must prove it," answered Sugarman Spreckels.

Soon their chance came. Patrick Calhoun desired to modernize United Railroads' ramshackle Sutter Street car line, and to do so he decided to construct an overhead trolley system. Sugarman Spreckels, with an eye to a more beautiful San Francisco, objected. 'He called on Mayor Schmitz, proposed a modern underground conduit system, went so far as to offer to pay the extra expense himself. Mayor Schmitz laughed him out of the City Hall. Suspicious, Messrs. Older and Spreckels prevailed upon President Roosevelt to "lend" them famed Detective William John Burns and Lawyer Francis Joseph Heney, to conduct an investigation. They discovered that Grafter Calhoun had paid to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors $200,000 for the overhead trolley franchise.

Thus armed, Editor Older opened fire. In every Bulletin appeared blaring headlines, sensational stories on Graft. In every editorial Editor Older flayed Grafters Schmitz and Ruef.

For his pains, Editor Older became an unpopular figure. San Franciscans admired Patrick Calhoun, respected Mayor Schmitz. Editor Older was dropped from his clubs. His friends ostracized him. He lived in seclusion with his wife, ate his meals at a seaside "dog wagon," for exercise swam off a lonely beach. Once he was saved from gunmen only through the diligence of private detectives. Another time his home was almost bombed. Once he was kidnaped, taken by train to another city, saved by an unknown friend who wired ahead to authorities. "That story," boasts Editor Older, "went around the world."

People gradually came to believe there was basis for the Bulletin's graft charges. Finally evidence was placed before a Grand Jury. A lawyer named Hiram Warren Johnson took up the prosecution and by it came to fame. Bribery was proved, the courts acted, San Francisco's graft days were over.

Not entirely satisfying was victory to Editor Older. The jury disagreed on Grafter Calhouri and his case was dismissed. Mayor Schmitz was never brought to trial. Only Abraham Ruef was convicted, sent to San Quentin for 14 years. Peculiarly enough, the sentence of Ruef was more sorrowful to Editor Older than his failure to convict the others. Always an intense reader, he became at about this time a Tolstoyan humanist. He started writing fiercely uplifting editorials asking for-and obtaining-Ruef's parole. Explaining it, he says:

". . . I was vindictive, unscrupulous, savage. . . . Then I said to myself, 'You've got him . . . you've won. How do you like your victory?' . . . Well, my soul revolted. I thought over my life, the many unworthy things I have done to others, the injustice, the wrongs I have been guilty of, the human hearts I have wantonly hurt. ... If society will let me, I want to unlock that barred door and for the rest of my life try to get nearer the spirit of Christ."

"To the well-to-do," writes Editor Oswald Garrison Villard of the pinko- liberal Nation, "contented and privileged, Older is an anathema. They not only hate, fear and distrust him, they honor him by their disbelief in his sincerity and honesty. To them 'the friend of crooks' is as good as a crook himself. . . . But his friends see in Fremont Older a journalistic knight-errant of superb power, who can never be made to know that he is beaten when it comes to a straight-put fight."

This estimate is probably nai've. Knight-Errant Older, after years of flaying Publisher Hearst, went over to Hearst from the Bulletin to be editor of the Call-Post in 1918. Prior to that transition, the Bulletin always led the Call-Post in circulation. Editor Older soon put the Call-Post ahead. Lately they have stood: Call-Post, 112,000; Bulletin, 81,000. Practical journalists saw in Publisher Hearst's purchase of the Bulletin merely the logical conclusion of an operation which began eleven years ago when he got Editor Older over on his side. A pressing reason for the purchase at this time could be seen in the steady rise of the Scripps-Howard News, only other occupant of the San Francisco evening field. Started in 1903 as a working man's sheetlet circulated "south of the slot,"* it has crept steadily into the field of the Bulletin and the Call-Post. Lately it passed the Bulletin by a few thousand copies.

When the young Scripps-Howard editors consider the seasoned chief of their Opposition, here are some other things they know about his journalistic career:

He pioneered newspaper fiction serials.

He "discovered" Cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

The late Cartoonist Thomas Aloysius ("Tad") Dorgan used to be his office boy. One day a dowager called to have her portrait drawn. All the artists were drunk. Office Boy Dorgan was sent out to pretend to draw her. He turned in a cartoon so superb that Editor Older cried, "I've got to print it."

Once to many prominent clergymen he sent a girl reporter (Sophie Treadwell) disguised as a prostitute in distress. A few days later he published accounts of exactly what the preachers did and said.

Once Editor Older shouted at a preacher: "Why don't you preach Christianity?" The preacher protested that he did. Editor Older shouted: "If you did we'd have reporters and cameramen out there to cover the stoning of your church!"

Gazette Revived

Last year John Davison Rockefeller Jr. announced that he would provide funds (approximately $5,000,000) to-restore Virginia's sleepy, historic Williamsburg to something of its pre-Revolutionary appearance and consecrate it as a national shrine (TIME, June 25, 1928). Not until last week, however, was announcement made concerning plans for the reconstruction of one of Williamsburg's most famed institutions, the Virginia Gazette, oldest U. S. newspaper below the Mason-Dixon Line.

The latest Williamsburg rehabilitation enterprise, with the backing of many a local philanthropist, was conceived and will soon be executed by J. A. Osborne, a Salem, Va., newspaper publisher, great-grandson of Archibald Mcllmoyle, George Washington's surgeon-general. His plans: 1)To refound the Gazette as a weekly newspaper of historic and national interest, "making known to the world the past, present and future of colonial Williamsburg." 2) To bring to Williamsburg an entire newspaper plant from Jacksonville, Fla. 3) To build suitable housing facilities, reconstructing the oldtime Gazette office as a "museum." 4) To obtain from Dr. Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler, president of William & Mary College, the nameplate and title to the newspaper, now the property of the college.

Journalistic historians last week looked back to see what manner of newspaper was the Virginia Gazette of colonial times.

Founding. On Aug. 5, 1737, the first edition of the weekly Gazette "containing the freshest advices, both Foreign and Domestick," was printed by William Parkes whose daughter Eleanor later became the mother-in-law of Statesman Patrick Henry. Mr. Parkes described himself as a "Printer, by whom subscriptions are taken . . . at 15 shillings per Ann. And Book Binding is done reasonably, in the best manner." The issues, 7 1/2 in. wide by 12 1/2 in. long, contained but four pages (one sheet folded like letter paper), with two columns on each page.

News. The only headlines were the names of the places from whence the "freshest advices," had come. For many years Printer Parkes devoted his front pages to despatches from England, Russia, France. Fortunate were subscribers if they found a foreign September despatch the following February. But colonists cared little how stale the news so long as it was interesting.

Modern, they read of "the late Discoveries and Improvements of Arts and Sciences. . . . Once there was War without Powder, Shot, Cannon or Mortars . . . the mob made bonfires without Squib . . . the Lover was forced to send his Mistress a Deal Board for a Love Letter."

Prohibition was a subject worthy of the public prints. "The Act of Parliament to prevent the selling of Gin, being to take place on Tomorrow, Mother Gin lay in State yesterday, at a Distiller's Shop in Swallow Street near St. James's Church; but to prevent the ill Consequences of such a Funeral, a neighboring Justice took the Undertaker, his Men, and all the Mourners into Custody."

News values were vague. Dissertations upon the hot weather in Philadelphia, arrival of muslins from the Orient, occupied as much space as his "dearly beloved Majesty" addressing Parliament.

Alteration. In January, 1775, two men, John Dixon and William Hunter, became the Gazette's joint editors. They enlarged it, added another column on each page, front-paged the motto: "Open to All Parties, but Influenced by None."

As the "official organ" of the Virginia government, the Gazette was slow in taking public notice of the Revolution. On an inside page of the issue dated May 13, 1775, readers learned of "skirmishes" in New England which had taken place April 19. One despatch, unsigned, read: "I have taken up my pen to inform you, that last night, at about eleven o'clock, 1,000 British troops fired upon the provincials. . . . Yesterday produced a scene the most shocking New England has ever beheld. . . . The first advice we had was about 8 o'clock in the morning, when it was reported that the troops had fired upon and killed five men in Lexington." Another despatch of the same date said: "The reports of the unhappy affair and the causes that concurred to bring an engagement, are so various that we are not able to collect anything consistent or regular."

Thus warned of war, Gazette readers went on to the next paragraph, which read: "We are assured that Mr. Eustace, at the vineyard . . . has collected thirty bushels of cocoon . . . notwithstanding the loss he sustained by the hail, etc., he has a prospect of making three or four hopheads of wine in the fall."

Historians, thumbing over old Gazette files, wonder how Editors Dixon and Hunter would have treated President Hoover's election. For this was their whole account of a potent colonial event: "The Hon. John Hancock, Esq., a Delegate [to the Continental Congress] from Boston, is appointed President of the Congress in the room of the Hon. Peyton Randolph, Esq." Impartial, the Gazette gave George Washington no more space when he was appointed commander-in-chief of "all the provincial troops in North America."

When the Revolution was at its height, the Gazette took due notice of battles, in despatches, letters. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Gazette was the only newspaper to print its text in full. With a spurt of news instinct, Editors Dixon and Hunter once announced on the front page: "For London news, see last page." Such back-paging, however, lasted but a short while. Soon Gazette readers were again being entertained by "The Assyrian Practice of Marriage," "Present State of Algiers," "Advices from Petersburg."

Advertisements. Mr. Parkes obtained few advertisements for his Gazette. They were mostly for sales of plantations, "for money or tobacco, very cheap . . . containing 200 acres of good Land, with a good bearing young Orchard, of Variety of Good Fruit Trees. ..." Printer William Rind, a later owner, fared better. Sometimes he was able to insert as many as two pages of advertising, dealing with "Run Way Slaves," slaves to be sold, slaves arrested and refusing to give names of masters, doctors who were about to open a season of vaccination, lottery winners, sailings of ships. Advertising costs were indefinite: "3 shillings the first week, and 2 shillings each time after. And long ones in proportion."

Decline. In 1780 the capital of Virginia was removed from Williamsburg to Richmond. The Gazette followed the government officials. Soon it began to lose circulation and prestige; publication became intermittent and finally ceased entirely, excepting for a three weeks' resurrection by the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce, when it was sold as a souvenir.

*San Francisco's tough district is south of the old cable slot on Market street.