Curtis Move?

Next to removing the Liberty Bell from Independence Hall or the fat statue of William Penn from atop the City Hall, the most preposterous suggestion to any Philadelphian would be that Curtis Publishing Co. (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Country Gentleman) would rise from its great 12-story brick and steel nest where it prints 17,500,000 magazines every month*, ruffle its tail feathers and waddle away to another State.

Last week the usually careful New York Times printed a report from Camden, N. J., just across the Delaware from Philadelphia, that Curtis had made an offer to buy Camden's $10,000,000 City Hall. Fortnight earlier had come rumors from Philadelphia of a poll of 16,800 Curtis stockholders. From $6,000 in 1934, Pennsylvania had upped its taxes on Curtis Publishing Co. to $716,000 in 1936, rumored a levy of $1,800,000 in 1937. Delaware and New Jersey were mentioned as new home States for Curtis. There taxes would be around $8,000.

The Camden story displeased aging Vice President & Treasurer Philip Sheridan Collins. "There's absolutely nothing to it!" he snorted. "We never made them an offer and wouldn't be able to use their building. It's not suited to manufacture."

Was Curtis Publishing Co. bluffing Pennsylvania, hoping to force tax adjustment? Not according to Mr. Collins: "We've gone beyond the maneuver stage long ago. There is no remedy in sight in Pennsylvania. Our sentimental impulses are not toward moving. But we are faced with facts, not sentiments. We are studying the question from all angles, costs, legal and financial complications. When we have completed these studies we will make our decision and stick to it."

Saturday Evening Post this week reported net sales of 3,200,000 copies of its issue of March 6: claimed all-time U. S. record for sales of single issue of a magazine.

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