Monday, Mar. 24, 1930
Circulation by Alcohol
It will be recorded that, in the eleventh year of its existence, Prohibition became a circulation-getter, instead of just a topic for debate, among U. S. magazines.
The Literary Digest is conducting a poll, with subscription blanks enclosed. The Pathfinder, more obscure, has already completed a poll (see p. 16). Plain Talk has been screeching about alcoholic conditions in Boston, Washington, Kansas, Minnesota--a campaign calculated frankly with a view to newsstand sales. Similarly Collier's magazine, which began a Wet series in 1928. Liberty's editorial this week said: ". . . since its open espousal of the Wet cause the circulation of Liberty has increased much more rapidly than before." Liberty announced a $1,000 per week prize for the best answers to this question: "Are you Wet or Dry?" And last week Life, exhibiting some of the initiative by which for 40 years it has made citizens not only laugh but think, inaugurated a crusade for consummate shrewdness.
Life bought a page in the New York Times and, beneath a weeping Goddess of Liberty, cried out: "HOW LONG WILL WE PUT UP WITH IT?" The text went into a smashbang flaying of current liquor phenomena, contrasting the $882,727,114 paid as individual income tax in 1928 with a figure of $936,000,000, which Life said was the cost of Prohibition enforcement "and loss in revenue." Then Life made this proposition: if you agreed with its sentiments, please send at least $1 to "the Life War Chest." It was promised that "every penny thus received will be used by Life to buy similar publicity throughout the country." The astuteness of this proposition was at once apparent: by working on Prohibition sentiment, the magazine would literally get the public to pay for a lot of out-and-out advertising. Yet no one would mind, in fact, all contributors would be glad to help so public-spirited a publication.
Life's president nowadays is Clair Maxwell, 38, aggressive sportsman-executive, able brother of able brothers.* But the astute "War Chest'' scheme was not conceived by him. Life's vice-president nowadays is tall Langhorne Gibson, onetime oarsman, son of Artist Charles Dana Gibson, who has worked for the magazine some 40 years, is now board chairman. the scheme was not Gibson-generated. of Life is Norman Hume Anthony, in last year from Judge as a resuscitator. But it was not Editor Anthony who thought up this smartest of stratagems. man whom an admiring fraternity in applauding was broad-browed Burtch Winters of the advertising of Erwin, Wasey & Co. That firm is one which, while the stockmarket was crashing last autumn, struck the note harped upon by President Hoover his doctors of industry: "Let's go to work."
So well did Adman Winters' idea work within 24 hours Life had recovered cost of its page in the Times ($2,100) something over. Thereupon Mr. Win ordered a page in the Herald Tribune. paid out too, financing the purchase page in the Chicago Tribune. Next the Detroit Free Press, the Boston Herald, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Thus, initial outlay of $2,100 which he got back, Adman Winters put in motion self-propelling publicity vehicle extremely simple to operate. He thought $5,000,000 worth of publicity would wonders for the Cause. What the effects would be on Prohibition and on Life's circulation (now down to 137,000 its 1919 peak of 255,000) remained be seen. One effect on the magazine editorially was to give point to the Prohibition jokes which Life began publishing with redoubled fervor, viz.:
"What's the charge, officer, selling it?'"
"No, your honor--DILUTIN' it!':
In the newspaper world, the Hearst press has considered it profitable to stump against Prohibition. The Scripps-Howard press likewise courts the displeasure of what is said to be a majority of good citizens. The leading newspapers of all the biggest cities have decided it is good business to take a stand on Prohibition, most of them against the present law. A canvass last week of leading U. S. magazines assembled the following statements:
"That the Constitution may be purified and true temperance promoted, we favor the repeal of the 18th Amendment."
--Century.
"To say that workmen are more efficient under the Volstead Act is to pay a compliment to the virtues of home brew and dago red. . . . Prohibition has failed to prohibit. . . ."
--The Commonweal.
"Vanity Fair, definitely against the Prohibition Amendment, have with one exception opposed the law editorially. Printed in unexpurgated form Wayne B. Wheeler's defense of his activities which probably lost him many supporters. . . .
"The Prohibition law is one that oppresses the poor and is the tool of many politicians and has been an instrument used in prostituting the Government."
--The Argonaut (San Francisco).
"Plain Talk advocates temperance which can only be achieved through repeal and substitutions of new systems preventing return of the saloon. . . ."
"Liberty has always expressed the belief that Prohibition is fundamentally wrong."'
The New Yorker, seldom serious, sent the following telephotograph:
"Every sermon, lecture or argument for Prohibition indirectly assists the bootlegger."
--California Graphic.
"The Nation does not believe that any honest effort has ever been made to enforce Prohibition. ... It finds that the chief weakness in the Wets is their inability to suggest any definite plan of what is to come after Prohibition is repealed."
"We open our columns freely to articles on both sides of the Prohibition controversy. . . ."
--Atlantic Monthly.
"Scribner's Magazine is receptive to the effective and reasonable expression of any point of view . . . whatever the individual views of its editors. . . ."*
National Organization of American Legion has never expressed attitude on Prohibition.
0. L. Bodenhamer
(for the American Legion Monthly)
"Judge is neither an advocate of Prohibition nor of unrestricted manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages ... is not a magazine for exploiting our personal opinions."
"Cosmopolitan is not in any sense a crusading magazine and therefore it has no fixed policy on Prohibition. ... As individuals, the members of the editorial staff all are in favor of repeal of the amendment. . . ."
--Editor Ray Long.
Fireman's Freeman
Those who like their radical literature couched in singing prose were delighted last week when The New Freeman made its newsstand debut. Good radicals instantly recognized the magazine's parentage. It was a rebirth of the old Freeman, crack left wing weekly which died, but did not surrender, after Mrs. Francis Neilson, its angel, felt that she could pay its printers' bills no longer. Under the editorship of Albert Jay Nock, radical rhetorician, the Freeman lasted from 1920 to 1924, enjoyed a circulation of 10,000. The New Freeman felt it would surely do that well, perhaps better.
The new magazine is in the hands of substantially the same people who ran its predecessor. Suzanne La Follette, cousin of the late Senator from Wisconsin, is its editor. On the old Freeman she served under Mr. Nock, who will write exclusively for the new publication. Financially, The New Freeman is being nurtured by Peter Fireman, Russian-born chemist and paint manufacturer of Trenton. N. J. Mrs. Cecile Craik Hibben, widow of Author Paxton Hibben (Henry Ward Beecher) is treasurer.
Vol. 1 No. I devoted much of its space to graceful praise of Communism. Literate job-hunters who gave 15-c- for The New Freeman were given solace in an editorial on unemployment: "The Communist says to the workers: 'Act for yourselves. Assert your right to a decent living. Demand work or wages.' The Administration has contented itself with announcing that the situation is really too bad, but that distress among the workers has been even more acute in the past and might be more-acute now; that the worst is probably over. . . . This does not furnish the unemployed with any food save food for thought."
More bookish were the dissertations of Critic Lewis Mumford (Sticks & Stones, The Golden Day, Herman Melville), contributor to the New Republic, and Dramacritic George Jean Nathan, recently retired from the American Mercury.
*There are four famed president-brothers Maxwell, two in publishing, two in advertising. play good golf together, have a standing challenge to any four president-brothers or presidents. Beside brother Clair they are: brother Lee Wilder Maxwell, president of Crowell Publishing Co. (Woman's Home Companion The American Magazine, Collier's etc.)', brother Lloyd Maxwell, president of Williams & Cunnyngham (Advertising Agency, main office Chicago): brother Ray Maxwell president of G. Maxwell & Co., Inc. (Manhattan Advertising Agency).
*Board Chairman Charles Scribner Sr. is a director of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment.
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