Q&WG-N k hzmdbook. pPnevw Cx paper administration, -editorial, advertising, production,cii'culation, -minutely depicting in word and picture, "how it's done" by the worlds greatest newspaper in commemoration of its Sflenty-f/th Birthday* - (L333 V/" Copyright 1922 The Tribune Company Contents Page THE W. G. N 7 THE PAST History of The Chicago Tribune 1 1 From Foundation to Fire (1847-1871) 14 From The Fire to The Fair (1871-1893) 40 From The Fair to The World War (1893-1914) 53 The World War and After (1914-1922) 80 THE PRESENT EDITORIAL DIVISION . . 125 Local News 134 ^Departments 139 National News 143 LxFbreign News 145 LMakeup of News . 1 53 Art and Photographic Department . . . 160 Features 163 Selling News, Features and Pictures 167 Morgue and Library 168 Editorials 170 ADVERTISING DIVISION 177 Want Advertising 179 Classified Display . 189 Display Advertising 190 Local Advertising 191 National Advertising 193 PRODUCTION DIVISION Chicago Tribune Pulp Wood Forests 205 Turning Trees into Paper 219 Composing Room 227 Etching Room 237 Sterotyping 242 Electrotyping 245 Press Room 246 Rotogravure and Coloroto 256 Electrical Department 267 CIRCULATION DIVISION 272 AUDITING AND COMPTROLLING DIVISION 282 Building Department 284 Purchasing Department . . .291 The Medill Council 294 List of Illustrations Page Page Joseph Medill Frontispiece Headlines on Fall of Fort Sumter . . 24 Tribune Offices 1849 ..... 8 Headlines on Surrender of Lee . 26 HolSwhite^ ' 19 Headlines on Assassination of Lincoln . 28 John Locke Scripps, Charles H. Ray 20 Letter from Lincoln subscribing to Tribune ad of 1860 22 The Tribune 30 5 List of Illustrations Continued Page Headlines on Burial of Lincoln . . 31 Courthouse before The Fire ... 37 Headlines on Chicago Fire ... 38 Horse Power for Presses in the Forties 39 Waterworks before The Fire . . 40 Scenes during Chicago Fire ... 41 Chicago in 1865 and in 1870 . . 42 Headlines on Beecher-Tilton Case . 43 Headlines on New Testament Scoop 45 Headlines on Assassination of Garfield 46 Headlines on Haymarket Riots . . 47 Headlines on Swing Heresy Case . 48 Tribune Buildings before and after Fire 51 World's Columbian Exposition, "The Fair" 52 Headlines on Battle of Manilla Bay . . 57 Corner of Madison and Dearborn Streets in 1860 61 Two Compositors with Century of Tribune Service 61 Robert W. Patterson 62 Tribune Building . . 71 Land Show 1912 72 Library in Tribune Plant .... 72 Investors Guide 78 Headlines on Outbreak of World War . 79 Headlines of February 1, 1917 ... 81 Headlines of February 4, 1917 ... 82 Headlines of April 6, 1917 . . . . 83 European Edition of The Tribune . . 90 How European Edition is Quoted . . 92 Daily News, New York's Picture Newspaper 100 Cross-Section View of Tribune Plant . 102 Advertisement of Cheer Check Contest . 110 Airplane Views of Tribune Plant . . 114 Offer of $100,000 Prize to Architects . 120 Laying Corners tone of Tribune Plant . 123 Tribune Plant 124 Heads used in The Tribune . . . .129 Weekly Contest for Best Head ... 130 Floor Plan Fifth Floor Tribune Plant . 134 Floor Plan Tribune Local Room . . 135 How News Moves from source to printers 136 Wireless Operator in Tribune Plant . 147 Crowd Receiving Election Returns . 147 London Office of The Tribune . . 148 Tribune's European Territory . . 150 Expense account in rubles . . 152 Makeup Dummy ... . 159 Photographic Assignment Sheet . . 162 Tribune "Sunday" Room . . 165 Where Tribune News is Bought and Sold 166 Editorial Page of The Tribune . . .172 Tribune Local Room 173 Tribune Linotypes 173 Special Auto for Photographers . . . 174 Tribune Offices in Rome and Berlin . .175 Tribune Want Ad Store 176 Advertising Charts 178 Advertising Charts 181 Want Ad Phone Room 185 Want Ad Credit Records 185 Want Ad Solicitors Records . .186 Page Tribune School and Travel Bureau . .186 Tribune Advertisement of Lyon & Healy in 1864 192 Chicago Market Pictured in Charts . 194 Clothing Advertising Statistics . . 197 Advertising Lineage Chart 1906-1921 198 The Co-operator, Retailers Trade Paper 200 Advertising Advertising in 1982 . . 201 Conference Room for Advertisers . 203 Copy and Art Service for Tribune Advertisers 203 Tribune Spruce Forest 204 Map Tribune Timber Lands and Paper Mill 206 Tribune's Timber Lands at Baie desCedres 209 Submarine Chaser Dispatch Boat . . 210 Logjams .215 Diagram and Photos of Paper-Making Machine 216 Million Dollar Log Pile 218 Grinding Logs into Pulp 223 Screening Impurities from Wood Pulp . 224 Couch and Press Rolls of Paper Machine 224 Composing Room Layout .... 228 "Making up" The Tribune . . . .229 Linotype Operator 229 Camera and Acid Bath in Etching Room 230 Steam Tables 247 "Plating-up" a Press 247 Printing Presses and Newsprint Reels . 248 Diagram of Progress of Papers through Press . 250 Cutting and Folding Mechanism of Press 253 Electrical Control Switchboard . . . 253 Automatic Conveyor from Press to Mailing Room 254 Ownership, Management and Circulation Statement to Federal Government . 255 Methods of Printing 257 Diagram of Coloroto Press . . . 262 Coloroto Cylinder being Etched . . 263 Coloroto Cylinder being Resurfaced 263 Coloroto Magazine Presses . . . 264 Tribune Baseball Champions . . 269 Stereotype Casting Machine . . 269 Mailing Room in Tribune Plant . . 270 Circulation Chart, 1912 T 1922 . . 273 Dot Map of Tribune Circulation Outside of Chicago .... 274 Sketch of Mailing Machine . . . 275 Floor Plan of Mailing Room ... 278 Dot Map of Tribune Circulation in Chicago 279 Trucks Receiving Papers 281 Steel Steamers "Chicago Tribune" and "New York News" 287 Tribune Schooners at Quebec and Shelter Bay 288 Tribune Building at Madison and Dearborn Streets 290 Rotogravure Studio and Press Room . 293 TheTrib Employees House Organ . 300 The W. G. N. r iHREE hundred and sixty-five mornings each year The Chicago Tribune is delivered to JL hundreds of thousands of readers. Without apparent effort it appears afresh each morning telling what the world has been doing during the preceding twenty-four hours illustrating the report with photographs and drawings enlivening it with car- toons offering features both entertaining and instructive. Each day's Tribune contains far more words than the average book involves greater problems of typography and make-up and must be distributed to hundreds of readers in thousands of towns and cities before its ink is quite dry. This book is designed to picture the machinery which makes possible such a spectacular accomplish- ment steam, steel, timber, electricity, brawn, brains, skilled hands all closely co-ordinated and driven every minute toward the daily rebirth of The Chicago Tribune. Preceding this analysis of The Tribune as it is today is a historical sketch. 1849 8 THE PAST A brief history of the World's Greatest Newspaper; its influence in the political \ social and economic develop- ment of Chicago and the Central West. History of The Chicago Tribune THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE made its appearance on June 10, 1847. The office was a single room in a building at Lake and La Salle streets, southwest corner. The first edition, four hundred copies, was pulled on a Washington hand press, worked by one of the editors. "... but with every stroke of the lever was anneal- ing the substructure upon which was erected the power and influence that has not alone decided the fate of this city, but of the nation. From The Tribune, that had such an humble origin, have been uttered dicta that have controlled the destinies of parties and individuals of prominence in the country, and infused the people with that patriotism which bore such glorious results in the internecine contests." So speaks an historian of some thirty-five years ago, when the Civil War was still a part of the lives of the men of that time, and the most important national issue the United States had known. It is a little difficult for the reader today to visualize the men and events of the past century; we are accustomed to regard the newspaper as a business institution, short lived as are the great businesses of our day in point of their past. We are accustomed to think of big newspapers, and The Tribune, as current as the linotype, the giant presses, and the mechanical wonders that make them possible. It is our habit to identify them as things of Today; almost never do we regard them as a part of history. Consider this item: that some six decades ago, The Tribune was as much of a living voice as Lincoln ! Today, Lincoln " belongs to the ages. " This morning, The Tribune appears less than twelve hours old. The story of The World's Greatest Newspaper is in part the story of our country, interwoven with the lives of men and events that determined our present state. And it is a great, an inspiring story, that shows the sources of strength and greatness which this Greatest Newspaper derives from its historic past. 11 LIN.KS MODERN WEST WITH PIONEERS The Chicago Tribune was a creature of destiny, as much a product of the times it lived and the events it helped to shape, as was the Civil War. Essentially is it a part of Chicago, and the Middle West. From a tiny ham- let settled on a swamp has grown the fourth city of the world ; an unsettled wilderness has become the most active, productive part of this nation. And The Tribune, whose growth and fortunes are indissolubly linked with these, shared their peaks and depressions, their progresses and retrogressions, their glories and their disasters. You addressing you as a mature man or woman now doing the day's work of the world and your father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, and The Tribune have gone through four major wars together the Mexican, the Civil, the Spanish-American, and the World War; through nineteen presidential campaigns, eight of which may be said to have been big with the destiny of the people ; through a fire that reduced the city to ruins but not to ruin; through an international exposition that established a tradition of vastness and beauty which, in some of its aspects, the world in three decades has not surpassed; through strikes that disorganized the affairs of a nation, and through more violent social and racial disturbances that put panic into the public mind everywhere; through processes of upbuilding and tearing down and rebuilding that changed the face of nature over leagues of coastline and prairie and that have given to the most humbly placed man in the community comforts and opportunities, material and spiritual, that could not be enjoyed by the richest when great-grandfather and grandfather and The Tribune began working together for father and for us. Persons who so long have worked together in matters so crucial for the matters were naught less than the build- ing of a world-city in a new world ought to know each other pretty thoroughly. They do. The beginning and the end of each third of The Tribune's three-quarter century synchronize roughly, but still aptly 12 To FIRE, To FAIR, To WAR, To TODAY enough, with three distinct epochs in Chicago's develop- ment. The first quarter century began when, within a period of four years (1843-1847), the population of the city had risen from 6,000 to 16,000. That growth was con- sidered phenomenal, though the years following '47 were to make it seem slow. This first epoch ended in 1871, with the great fire. It comprised twenty-four years. It was the epoch of great-grandfather and grandfather and the time of their hardest work. From the fire to the fair was the second epoch. It com- prised twenty-two years. It was the era flamboyant of Chicago of bewildering growth, of great riches quickly acquired, of boisterousness, of vulgarity, and of vision. It was father's epoch. And so is this one his his and ours. Say that the opening of the world war put an everlasting landmark into it, it may be described as comprising twenty-one years by 1914. Now, as The Tribune starts toward the century mark we are eight years along in the bewildering epoch which historians of the future may designate as "The Great War and After." 13 From Foundation to Fire 1847-1871 r "^HE TRIBUNE was started at a time and in situations that were both strategic. * City after city was falling before Generals Scott and Taylor and the Mexican War, fraught, as fourteen years were to prove, with the peril of another war, was drawing to a close ; Salt Lake City was being founded by the Mormons ; King William IV. of Prussia, that kindly, ineffectual cry baby , convoked a parliament at Berlin; the Roman Catholic hierarchy was established in England; that magnificent vocality, Daniel O'Connell, came to a rather pusillanimous end in Genoa; Queen Victoria had been ten years on the throne ; Sir John Franklin perished in the region of eternal ice, and "Jane Eyre," the authorship of which was the current mystery of the English-speaking world, was pub- lished. And the rumblings of '48 were worrying Europe. The population of Chicago was then 16,000. Our country comprised twenty-nine states, with a population of less than 20,000,000. James K. Polk was President of the United States our last Democrat president of southern birth for sixty-four years, a fact large with significance. Abraham Lincoln was 38 years old and Joseph Medill, still practicing in Coshocton, O., what law there was to practice and picking up in a flirtatious sort of way the rudiments of the printer's trade and the editor's craft, was 24. The opening of his Chicago career was eight years distant. Capital was centered in the East. Boston and New York controlled the trade of the nation. The westward trend was a slow seepage that spent itself in the prairies, lacking the great impetus that the discovery of gold was to give in '49. Illinois' first railroad had just been planned in '46, and the project was meeting with the greatest dis- couragement. The stagecoach companies, vast monopolies 14 GALENA AND ST. Louis OUR RIVALS of travel and hostelries, interested in stores and horses were fighting it bitterly. So little did Chicago think of the railroad that the total subscriptions of Chicago merchants were only twenty thousand dollars. The farmers were opposed to the railroads, and wanted plank roads to haul their grain to town to market. The Illinois and Michigan canal, destined to link Chicago with Mississippi River trade, was still unfinished after eleven years of effort and discouraging work. St. Louis was the commercial city of the central west, a promising metropolis born and thriving on Mississippi River trade. Galena was the Illinois commercial "big" city; it and Kaskaskia had been considered rivals of St. Louis, until Kaskaskia, with its ten thousand inhabitants, had been wiped out in the Spring floods of 1844. The destruction of Kaskaskia helped Galena and Cairo; Chicago was not thought of as a potential big city. The state government, even, gave its business to Galena and the East. Picture, then, this frontier town in 1847. Built on marshland, two feet above the lake level, its streets were always muddy, and some nothing more than bogs. Water was pumped through bored logs. Sewerage was limited, insanitary, and primitive; three planks fastened together to form triangular drain pipes, set six inches to a foot below the street surfaces. The first school building was only two years old. Trade was nearly all retail. There had been a terrific boom some years before, from 1833 to 1836, which sent Chicago real estate sky high, and flooded the town with a temporary prosperity. The panic of '37 left it in a terrible depression. Business men and merchants were forced to go back to the land to raise food to keep alive. So much selfishness and unfair dealing, both in business and politics, were in evidence during the boom years that people were suspicious of any public movements for a long time after. By '47, the effects of the panic had pretty well worn off, and Chicago was building again, more slowly and sanely, but giving little promise of being a wonder city. 15 FIRST NEWSPAPER IN CHICAGO 1833 The two decades following were to be the most active and the most fearsome in our history, when sudden growth was faced with as sudden dissolution, when accomplishment and disaster ran side by side. * * * Chicago had been a fertile field for newspapers, since the inception of its first, in 1833. But the exigencies of pioneer country, the constant change and not infrequent disaster were too much for the journals of the day. Pre- vious to the appearance of The Chicago Daily Tribune, some seven daily and weekly newspapers had been started. Of these, two were contemporary. Newspaper history began in Chicago with the advent of The Chicago Democrat, a weekly founded by John Calhoun in J#3J, and later brought to a position of considerable influence by "Long John" Wentworth, a famous mayor of Chicago. The Democrat became a daily in 184.0, and was issued in the morning. In 1846, the issue was changed to evening. "Long John" Wentworth kept it going until the time that tried men's souls in 1861. Then he sold out in a mood of war panic and the property was merged with The Tribune. Through The Democrat, therefore, The Tribune may trace its ancestry back to the first newspaper published in Chicago. Subsequent to The Democrat came The Chicago Amer- ican, a weekly in 1835, issued as a daily in 1839; and dis- continued in 1842; The Chicago Express, a daily afternoon paper, began on October 24, 1842, and discontinued two years later; The Chicago Daily Journal, which grew out of the remnants of The Express, and with various changes in ownership, continues up to the present ; The Chicago Repub- lican, a weekly, started in December, 1842, and dropped after six months; The Chicago Daily News, also short lived, appeared from late in 1845 till January 6, 1846; The Chi- cago Commercial Advertiser began as a weekly on Febru- ary 3, 1847, later appearing daily, tri-weekly, and weekly until its expiration in 1853. There were also a number of 16 ENTER THE TRIBUNE JUNE 10, 1847 journals and magazines, devoted to various interests, but none of these survived for long. With this none too encouraging background, The Chi- cago Tribune was started. Joseph K. C. Forrest, James J. Kelly and John E. Wheeler were its originators. As for The Tribune's personal appearance in 1847, the liveliest paper in town liked it. That was the Journal. Our sole surviving contemporary of those days looked us over on the morning of June 10, and in the afternoon printed its opinion, which was detailed, admonitory, and instinct with neighborliness. A few lines of its comment follow : CHICAGO DAILY TRIBUNE A large and well-printed sheet with the above title was laid on our table this morning. Our neighbors have launched their bark upon the stormy sea of editorial life, proposing to observe a strict impartiality. We wish them every success in their enterprise and firmly trust they will shun the rocks upon which so many gallant vessels have been wrecked. The mechanical execution of THE TRIBUNE is beautiful and reflects great credit upon the art. The chronicle of the first few years, however, is little more than record of the changes of ownership indicating that journalism of that day was a precarious profession and not the substantial business the newspaper is today. Our early owners were more our projectors than our founders. They did not stick to the ship or the shop. They had other irons in the fire. Before The Tribune was a month old, James J. Kelly had withdrawn to devote himself to the more lucrative pursuit of leather merchant. His share was bought by Thomas A. Stewart, who assumed the editorship. Mr. Stewart was shortly thrust into the prominence incumbent upon his position. In an editorial, he suggested that the government vessel stationed at Chicago might make itself useful by helping two merchant vessels into the harbor. The Commandant, Captain Bigelow, resented the sugges- tion and straightway challenged the editor to a duel. Stewart published the challenge as an item of news. The 17 MEDILL BUYS SHARE IN TRIBUNE 1855 duel was never fought. The doughty captain abdicated and thereafter helped belated vessels make the harbor. In the same year, The Tribune bought the plant and equipment of The Gem of The Prairie, which it continued to issue weekly. In 1848, the second change in ownership occurred. Mr. Forrest retired, selling his third interest to John L. Scripps. The following year was notable for two incidents. On May 22, 1849, a fire destroyed The Tribune office and pub- lication was suspended for two days. On December 6, The Tribune installed telegraphic news service, the first paper in the west to get news by wire. This was a startling innovation. News from the east was commonly a month or two old before it reached Chicago papers. The presi- dential message, eagerly awaited every four years, was considered well dispatched if its text reached Chicago by mail or courier within a month after its publication at Washington. The determination to get the news first, for which The Tribune has always been noted, was manifest even in that early day. On February 20, 1849, a weekly Tribune was also begun. The Gem of The Prairie was merged with this weekly edition in '52. In '51, a syndicate of Whig poli- ticians purchased the share of Scripps, who founded an- other paper, The Democratic Press, in 1852, in company with William Bross. General William Duane Wilson, representing the syn- dicate, was installed as editor. An evening issue of the paper was also begun, but was shortly discontinued. On June 1 8, 1855, Joseph Medill secured a third interest, and Dr. Charles H. Ray a fourth interest, the firm name be- coming Wright, Medill & Co. It was eight years after The Tribune was founded that Joseph Medill became a guiding force in it. He was then 32 years old. He remained a guiding force for forty-four years, but to the end he had young colleagues. When his grandsons took up their work as guiders of The Tribune 18 OF THE STOCK OF THE TRIBUNE COMPANY, 52 PER CENT IS OWNED BY THE ESTATE OF JOSEPH MfiDILL. PRACTICALLY ALL THE REMAINDER IS OWNED BY DESCENDANTS OF MEDILL's THREE ASSOCIATES, PICTURED ON THIS PAGE. ALFRED COWLES SERVED as treasurer and business manager of The Tribune during the sixties ', seventies, and eighties. His son is now a director of The Tribune Company. WILLIAM BROSS A STAUNCH abolitionist^ was lieutenant governor oj Illinois from 1865 to 1869. His grandson, Henry D. Lloyd, is now a director of The Tribune Company. HORACE WHITE WAS editor of The Tribune in the sixties and early seventies. 10 IJIUIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'LJ'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIL.I JOHN LOCKE SCRIPPS was editor of The Tribune in the forties and fifties. He was appointed postmaster of Chicago by Lincoln in 1861. His cousin, James Edmund Scripps, who started his newspaper career on The Chicago Tribune in the fifties, later founded The Detroit News and assisted in initiating the " Scripps string of newspapers" which now numbers twenty -nine. DR. CHARLES H. RAY, who joined with Joseph Medill in the purchase of an interest in The Tribune in 1855. MEDILL HAD FOUNDED AND SOLD CLEVELAND LEADER they were not so old as he was when he came out of the Western Reserve to do his big work in the world. The point of the allusion is that this newspaper, like the city of its birth, has ever had the spirit of youth in it. It is today what it is because it has marched with the genera- tions; because it has grown with a community whose growth is one of the phenomena of human annals. For seventy-five years it has been a going concern; for sixty- seven years its tradition has been definite and vital because the ideal that sustained the founder of its greatness has been the inspiration of those to whom the wheeling years brought his tasks. Joseph Medill was a curious combination of austerity and aplomb. He was not showy, but he was sternly per- vasive. He seems never to have cared for, nor to have won, popularity of a flamboyant kind. But he was uni- versally trusted, for his sense of duty permitted him no evasions. He had a certain sangfroid and he was capable of making and executing large decisions. To them he adhered. His idol, if he had one, was humane common sense. That is why he loved Franklin and why he was loved by Lincoln. Beneath his formal exterior was a sense of humor. Reverting once to the years of the late forties when he was teaching school in Ohio, he told how he had had to whip one of the boys who had been a leader in driv- ing from the district MeduTs predecessor in the master's chair. "After that fight," he said, "all the boys were my friends" a. pause "and," he added, with his sparse smile, "as for the girls, I married one of them." He came to Chicago in 1855 from Cleveland, where he had successfully established the Leader, which still exists. His purpose was the purpose of thousands of energetic young Americans of those days to "look over the new field." Here he met Dr. Charles H. Ray of Galena, who brought to him a letter of introduction from Horace Greeley, who urged Medill to join Ray in starting a newspaper in Chicago. They acted upon the plea by buying into The 21 A DAILY, TR1-WEEKLY AND WEEKLY JOURNAL UETOTKD TO News. Commerce, Polities, Agriculture, Science and Literature, EDITED 1XD PCBLISIIEP AT CHIiUCO RV THK PRESS f information respecting every locality embraced in the North-Wesr fern States and Territories. Articles of this description appear in every issue of our paper, anil have already made for It a reputation in this respect second to no other paper in the whole country. In price and size of sheet, amount and freshness of intelligence, variety nud value of .information, -fullness and accuracy of Commercial matter, and in whatever else goes to make up a first-class Newspaper, we challenge comparison with any other journal East or West. la Politics, the PBESS & Tamm: is on the side of FREE LABOR. As an exponent of the North-West, which has been made great through free labor, it could hot successfully fulfil it* mission, vere it .to remain neutral on so vital a question. Parties abroad, who may desire ro advertise in a paper having a general circulation throughout the North- West, will find the PRESS & TRIBCXK the best possible medium of com- munication. Ita circ'nlatioir-ia lareex thaniHuvLof any other paper West of the seaboard cities IN 1858 The Tribune absorbed The Chicago Democratic Press and for two years thereafter was known as The Press and Tribune. The above is a reproduction of one side of an adver- tisement sent out at that time. The other side asks for job printing. The job printing department was in charge of William H. Rand y superintendent, and Andrew J. McNally, assistant. 22 ADVANCE BEGINS UNDER NEW REGIME Tribune. Medill had sold his interest in the Cleveland Leader to Edwin Cowles, but Edwin's brother, Alfred, came to Chicago with Medill. For a year he served the new firm of Ray & Medill as bookkeeper and then he, too, bought into the property. In 1858, The Tribune absorbed the Democratic Press, and that brought into the firm Deacon William Bross, a grand old Cromwellian of the early days of Chicago Presbyterianism, and John Locke Scripps, who stayed with us between two and three years, becoming in 1861 the Lincoln-appointed postmaster of Chicago. For two years the paper was known as The Press and Tribune, but then reverted to The Chicago Tribune. Dr. Ray sold out in 1863, and Mr. Medill became editor-in-chief. Thus with Medill, Cowles, and Bross was founded the original "Tribune family," which, growing later to include Horace White, survives through direct descendants as a Tribune family to this day. Among all these colleagues of his, Medill seems to have been the driver the man who, though he was all jour- nalist, was also practical printer. In a word, he was no empiric, though he was not afraid of experiments. To the last detail of newspaper making he knew what he wanted to do and how to do it. Through his initiative a steam press was installed and the first copper faced type ever used by an Illinois newspaper was bought. He had an abiding dis- taste for the "other irons in the fire," and that was, and is, good for this newspaper. "Alas," the great Hippolyte Taine once said, "there are writers who were born to write newspaper articles and who write only books." Joseph Medill was not that kind of a journalist. His product was not indifferent books but great journalism. He believed that to prepare, to inspire, and daily to assemble excellent newspaper articles was a grand work which demanded all of skill and fortitude that good minds and honest hearts possessed. Thus The Tribune got its real start with a growing town and an honest man who was also a man of vision. 23 HAD FAITH IN GREAT FUTURE FOR CHICAGO Because he was visioned he believed in the town. He be- lieved with the acute English publicist, Frederic Harrison, that "the manifest destiny of Chicago is to be the heart of the American Continent," but he said that forty-six years before the memorable night at the Union League club, where Frederic Harrison said it. Medill bought into the nearly BYTELEG RAPH. bankrupt Tribune on June 18, 1855. He took active hold on Saturday, July 21. The property 'TUB SURRENDER! made money in its first month m MMMM ; piratl< under the new regime. EFFECT OF THE NEWS IN Chicago had leaped from a WASHINGTON. population of 16,000 in '47 to i^i******* n-m. 80,000 in '55. It was a big year PRESIDENT LIXCOUTS PBO- in the world. The Exposition CLAMATIOR. TT it r <* * or *** State VUltlA. Umverselle was on in rans; so was , ^ . t i r AQTIOH OF TH1 8TATI8. the Crimean war, and the Russians ^ r n i_ i t&8 PBITAILDFO SZGXXHCEHT, were getting out ot bebastopol; - - the Bessemer process was being Thriulflg War K6W& patented; Thackeray's "The TUB VERY LITEST. Newcomes" and Tennyson's Fm u CM*, Tnt, " Maud " were published ; Frank- April 15, 1861 lin Pierce was President of the United States, and The Tribune neither liked nor trusted him thought him too slick and devious and used to call him "Frank Pierce." We (The Tribune) then, as now, were ever admonitory, but not portentously so, for there was humor in us, and that saving infusion of common sense which Joseph Medill thought so important an attribute of a newspaper that he put some words about it in his last will and testament. We struck out at every abuse, whether it was cruelty to a black man or cruelty to a horse, and when we could we nailed it to the wall with names and dates attached. There was the case of "a Mrs. Wheeler. " She tried to commit suicide on Monday night, June 29, 1857, by drowning herself in the 24 LOCAL REPORTING OF THE FIFTIES lake at the foot of Ohio street. On the Thursday following we printed this: ATTEMPTED SUICIDE We learn that on last Monday night a Mrs. Wheeler attempted to commit suicide by drowning herself in the lake at the foot of Ohio street. She was rescued by Robert Donnelly. The woman stated that she had been married about a month, and that her husband abused her so much she was induced to commit suicide. The husband told Donnelly he was "d d sorry he did not let her drown. " There was a sequel. It came eighteen days after the attempt, and we said : A BRUTE James Wheeler was yesterday fined $5 for abusing his wife. Mrs. Wheeler is the woman who has twice attempted to commit suicide, once by throwing herself into the lake and again by taking laudanum. Both those attempts resulted from injuries inflicted upon her by her husband. A few months' experience in breaking stones in the bridewell would do this Wheeler a "power of good," and he ought to have been sent there. So lately as a few weeks ago in a lecture at Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern university, Dr. Charles M. Sheldon, author of " In His Steps, " said that was the way it should be. " Put your editorial protest against a wicked deed, " said he, "in with your record of it not in a detached editorial six pages distant." The same day that we told James Wheeler what would do him "a power of good" we also had a word on the case of John Connor : SERVED HIM RIGHT A brutal fellow named John Connor was fined $5 in the police court yesterday for abusing his horse. There is scarcely despical [sic] or cowardly crime than the abuse of domestic animals, nor one which should meet with a more prompt punishment. Thus we tried cases and imposed sentence in our news columns. 'Tis considered highly indecorous now to do so. The outstanding community problems of six decades ago were identical with ours today. They were Crime Wave and High Cost. On January 28, 1857, the crime situation seemed rather a cause for optimism than consternation, considering that we were a city of nearly 100,000 extremely lively and adven- turous souls, for on that date we printed this : IN JAIL There are but twenty-two prisoners confined in the County Jail. 25 CRISES FREQUENT THEN AS Now But two days later hope was dashed to pieces. The sacred hen-roosts had been invaded. We were bitter about it and recommended legislation : ROBBING HEN-ROOSTS During the present week a number of hen-roosts on West Madison street have been depopulated by thieves. We would suggest the propriety of adding a chapter to the new city Charter for the especial protection of everybody's hen-roosts. Matters soon assumed the aspect of a crisis and we laconically "razzed" the police: WHERE DO THE POLICE BURROW? We learn from a reliable source that during the past week some one hundred robes have been stolen from sleighs left standing in the streets. Are the police asleep? In less than six months the crisis burst right in the town's face, and The Tribune set up a lusty shout for Pinker- ton firm still flourishing. Things were coming to "a terrible pass" and this drove us to italics. The "burglarious depredations" excitement did not con- strict our vocabulary included the use of chloroform, as now: WHAT SHALL BE DONE? Things are coming to a terrible pass in this city. Chicago seems to be delivered over into the keeping of thieves and house breakers. The police force, which our citizens are sustaining, at a cost of two thousand dollars per week, have proven to be utterly useless, to protect the dwellings of the people from burglarious depredations. They are good for nothing outside of the open view, rough work, of picking up drunkards, suppressing dog- gery brawls, and carrying away articles found on the sidewalk at night, while the thieves are oper- ating upon the domiciles of our citizens. Now, what shall be done? No man's house is safe. Every night a large number of dwellings are entered by burglars and robbed. Sometimes the inmates are shot, other times drugged or chloroformed in their beds, and others again are forced into silence by revolvers pointed at their heads, while their clothing and drawers are rifled of their contents before their eyes. . . . We verily believe that, if Bradley and Pinkerton were employed as "de- tectives," that within a week afterwards burglaries would cease and pocket-picking become infrequent. In short, Managing Editor Medill, coming from sedate 26 NEWSEYTELEEBAPH. THE END. THE OLD FLAG VINDICATED. LEE MB HIS WHOLE AflMY EMWD YESTERDAY. The Official Correspond- ence between Gens. Grant and Lee, The .Officers and Men to be ft. roled and Go Home Until Exchanged. All Am, Artillery anil W timiGf farMradti Gen Grant Officers to Retain Side Arms, Horses and Baggage. SeJma, Ala., Reported Burned by Union Cavalry. Later from MoMle-The City belli? Gradnallj forested. -The Contents of Troa- nolm'i letter-Book. From The Chicago Tribune April 10, 1865 COST OF LIVING A VITAL ISSUE Cleveland, found that he had cast his lot with a lively town, and he was ever for keeping the peace in it even at the cost of a fight. High cost it seems not only followed but preceded the civil war. Trusty old Pro Bono Publico, whose grandchild is Voice of the People, came forward emphatically during Buchanan's administration with his protests, and The Tribune sustained them. Pro Bono said: THE COST OF MARKETS AND HOW TO SECURE CHEAPER PRICES It costs more to live in Chicago than in any other western city. Rents are frightful, and growing more terrible each year. Market- ing keeps pace with the rents and is outstripping them. It is not the wholesale prices nor the sum paid to the producer that is increasing, but rather the retail the huckster's price. We have seen barrels and boxes of poultry held for bigger prices until decomposition destroyed them. There is only one effectual remedy for the present state of things and that is to establish protection unions, or people's grocery stores, one in each division of the city, where good fresh marketing of all kinds shall be sold at cost. A million dollars a year could be saved to Chicago people if this plan was fully carried out. PRO BONO PUBLICO. And we said there was something to do besides " sitting down and trading corner lots with each other." The Medill recipe of "following the line of common sense in all things " was being vigorously applied to the mind of a some- what flighty community. This was in a semi-news, semi-editorial article : CHEAP LIVING AND INDUSTRIAL PROSPERITY If Chi- cago ever attains the greatness for which we all look so confidently, it will be because her manufacturing, as well as commercial advantages, are properly developed. Some men talk as if we had only to sit down and trade corner lots with each other to grow immensely rich, like the two boys who swapped jackets all day, each making money at every trade. Others are sanguine enough to believe that commerce alone will expand the limits of our goodly city till she fills the ample dimen- sions staked out for her by the land dealers. [But manufactories were not developing rapidly enough. Therefore] : These retarding causes are mainly high rents, and famine prices in provisions; and if these continue there is little prospect that two dollars a day will tempt skillful artisans to Chicago, where one dollar a day has to go for rent of a decent shelter for himself and family, and only the strictest economy enables him to procure the other necessaries of life with what remains. . . . The cost of living must come down, or Chicago 27 GOSSIPY DAYS BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR POSTSCRIPT. can never become the great manufacturing place for which it is, in every other respect, so admirably adapted. Rents will come down when capital enough is invested in building to supply the demand. . . . When we speculate less and produce more; when the industrial arts vie with the commerce. . . . Then may we indeed talk largely of the future of Chicago. The two decades from our birth year to the period of the six years after the civil war and before the fire were neighborly days in the town and in our office. There was intense solicitude for the city and deep pride in the achieve- ments and honors of its citizens. One morning in kindly old times we led our news columns with this : DOCTOR OF DIVINITY Hamilton college, New York, has conferred the degree of doctor of divinity upon Rev. R. W. Pat- terson, Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in chis city. That clergyman was the father of the R. W. Patterson who years afterwards was to become the paper's editor-in-chief. When, as he put it, "items were dull," young Editor Medill, fresh from the less hectic Cleveland, did not worry. He simply said : CORRESPONDENTS We surrender pretty much all our local space to corre- spondents. Items were "dull" yesterday, with a downward tendency, and we fill up with communications as a substitute. In fact, in those days, before the civil war put a premium on prompti- tude in news presentation, The Tribune, like all its local contem- poraries, serenely scissored and pasted from the New York papers, and was very grateful when McNally, the newsdealer, or his rival Burke, got the latest New York papers to it early in the evening so that there was plenty of time to chop them up for next morn- ing's issue. It was wonderful time when McNally or Burke, 28 TERRIBLE NEWS President Lincoln Assassi- nated at Ford's Theater. A REBEL OE8PER ABO SHOOTS HIM THROUGH THE HEAD, AID ESCAPES- Secretary Sewwd and Major " Fred Seward Slabbed by Another Desperado. . THEIR WOUND8 ABE PBO NOUSCED NOT FATAL, Details of the Ter- rible Affair. TJNDOtJBTED PLAN TO MURDER SECRETARY BTANTOtf. Very Latest-The President is Dying. [Splll Dbp^ch to th Chlcig o Tiftaw. J From The Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1865 MEDILL, RAY AND BROSS FIGHT SLAVERY here, delivered the papers at The Tribune office forty hours after they had left the presses in New York. Today it is done in half the time, but we thought McNally and Burke were wonders, and we used to fire their souls with ambition by putting their records into the paper. For example, this appeared on a Thursday: McNALLY had the New York papers of Tuesday at 6 o'clock last evening. He also has the Ladies' Journal for July. And this on a Wednesday: QUICK TIME McNally and Burke tread close upon each other's heels. Me brought us Monday's New York papers last evening about 5 o'clock and Burke followed in, three minutes thereafter, with his arms full of the same. Go it, 63 Clark street! And this on the next day: BURKE AHEAD At 5 o'clock precisely Burke left on our table the New York papers of Tuesday, and in a few minutes thereafter we had the same favor from McNally. Go it, Me! * * * As the war drew nearer the tone of the paper changes. The quaintness that was almost rusticity begins to disap- pear. Questions that were to tear the republic asunder were becoming very pressing and the editors and your grandfathers had more important things to think about than current facetiae or the local case of drunk and dis- orderly. In these years we see passing of The Tribune as town gossip and local mentor. It is becoming the public intelligencer and a voice of the nation. Medill had equip- ped himself to act a great part in the supreme crisis. In Cleveland, in 1853 and 1854, he had done history making pioneer work in organizing the forces which were to con- stitute the Republican party, and to that party he had given its name. In the columns of The Tribune the fight which he and Dr. Ray and William Bross waged against slavery was early, constant, and pitiless. They defined the issue in long editorials and they fired the soul of the North with brief burning paragraphs, of which this is a specimen : MORE OF THE BEAUTIES About two weeks ago a Negro belonging to Logan Harper in Carthage, Miss., arose in the night and killed his wife, by chopping off her head, after which he hung himself to a tree near the house. The reason for this horrible deed was that 29 LINCOLN SUBSCRIBES FOR TRIBUNE LINCOLN'S first subscription to The Tribune was paid in cash to Joseph Medill. Shortly after the latter had injected his personality into the paper, Lincoln walked into the office, said that he had not liked The Tribune in the past because it smacked of" Knownothingism" but he had noticed a decided change for the better recently. Therefore, he had decided to quit borrowing it and to subscribe for a copy of his own. The above letter reads: PRESS & TRIBUNE Co. spring, junc 15. 1359 Gentlemen: Herewith is a little draft to pay for your Daily another year from today. I suppose I shall take the Press & Tribune so long as it, and I both live, unless I become unable to pay for it. In its devotion to our cause always, and to me personally, last year, I owe it a debt of gratitude, which I fear I shall never be able to pay. Yours very truly, A. Lincoln. 30 TRIBUNE PRINTS LINCOLN'S SPEECHES IN FULL HEWS BY TELEGRAPH THE LAST OF EARTH. Closing Obsequies to theHonored Dead. ABEAHAM LINCOLN IN HIS TOMB. his wife, a beautiful quadroon, was obliged to submit to the sensual caprices of her master. This is another of the beauties of the Southern Democratic Amal- gamation party. In this fight no quarter was given or asked. The lan- guage was bitter, the blows terrible. President Buchanan got a taste of both : THE CURTAIN LIFTED The President's message was delivered yesterday. . . . Mr. Buchanan boldly espouses the cause of fire eaters of Carolina and the highwaymen of Kansas. He flings the gauntlet in the face of the North, spits upon the land that bore him and upon seventy years of his own life, takes his party in the Free States by the throat and leaps with it into the ditch. Poor old man! that you should bring your gray hairs so low! Lies so portentous that they darken civilization, smite the humanity and blaspheme the Christi- anity of all ages! At least you might have spared the place of Washington this last humiliation. . . . Millions of freemen inspired by the common truth and stung by the general degradation shall rise to stay this giant and overmastering wrong. But simultaneously with the tearing away of the props of slavery, which many cautious men still considered props of union, went constructive work, and Ab- raham Lincoln was The Tribune's choice as the man to carry the work into the na- tion's councils. Steadily, on a big scale, and shrewdly The Tribune built up a body of opinion which in three years was to effect the nomination of Lincoln for the presidency. Here is a specimen of that valiant and candid propaganda, and it should be added that we were the first to print Lincoln's speeches in full: MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH Elsewhere in today's paper, we publish entire the speech made by Hon. A. Lincoln at Springfield, in answer to the late effort of Senator Douglas. Our readers will give it the attentive perusal demanded by the importance of the subjects of which it treats, and the great reputation of the speaker. They will find it a calm, lucid, and convincing refutation of the assumed facts and the false logic contained in the senator's harangue. In it Mr. Lincoln has evidently spent more labor to be plain and clear than to 31 Bfe Father. A BEF1TTIAU AND MOURN- FUL CEREMCKY. The Eulogy f Bishop Slmpsoa. 7he Election of twoU.&Seiu. ton from Tennessee. leff Dnl* and. Lndbg Rcbefe to k Indicted wlih EI8HT MABTLAW ABETTORS OF THi AMAMHAMEmO. Jff Thompson Surrendered. BXIWCTIOV OF TEX ASHY AID IATY. G6T. AIKES HOT ARRESTED. |Spel=l Dtoptw, to a. OMetfo nam.l mnniLB.lhr4.i8fe From The Chicago Tribune May 5th, 1865 PROPOSE LINCOLN FOR PRESIDENCY be ornate and oratorical. That he has succeeded, we are sure our readers will admit. We cannot neglect the opportunity to thank him for his vindication of the language and intent of the Declaration of Independence, now so frequently assailed by the politicians of the Pro-Slavery party. The part of the speech devoted to that vindication is in Mr. Lincoln's happiest vein; and if we knew him only by that we could not fail to declare that he is a clear headed, sound hearted, and eminently just man. The Republican party, organized in February, '56, thus found its leader. At the state convention, May, '56, Lincoln made the "lost speech" that made him a national figure. Joseph Medill, present at the convention as a delegate, and also representing his paper, said : "I took down a few paragraphs of Lincoln's speech for the first ten minutes, but I became so absorbed in his magnificent oratory that I forgot myself and ceased to take notes, but joined in the clapping and cheering and stamping to the end. I was not scooped, however, for all the newspaper men present had been equally carried away by the excitement and had made no report." Illinois elected a Republican governor. Lincoln was spoken of as Douglas' successor in the Senate. The year '57 brought the panic and the whole country lay prostrate under intolerable economic conditions that were not to be changed until the political atmosphere cleared. In '58 came the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate that left Douglas broken and spoiled of power. The editors of Illinois met in the office of The Chicago Tribune and decided on the railsplitter as a candidate for the Presidency. On February 16, 1860, we came out with the celebrated two-thirds of a column editorial leader placing Lincoln before the people for the nomination. In the great cause of the nomination Mr. Medill was active inside the office and out. Ten days after the nom- inating editorial found him behind the scenes in Washing- ton and to The Tribune he sent back this report: READ, REPUBLICANS, READ! Our Mr. Medill, who is in Washington, as the correspondent of The Press and Tribune, writes in a private note as follows: "Washington, Feb. 26, 1860. "From the reports sent here by the Douglas men, some of our folks begin to fear that through disaffection among the Republicans 32 TRIBUNE WORD PICTURE OF LINCOLN the bogus Democrats will carry Chicago. The idea gives them cold chills. Senator Wilson says that the loss of Chicago at this crisis will endanger Connecticut, and do much to insure the nomination of Douglas at Charleston. At least thirty members of congress from other states have spoken to me about it. They say that for the cause and the great campaign the city must be saved. "Wade, senator from Ohio, told me that the loss of Chicago would be the worst blow that the Republican party could now receive. He says he is ready to go there and stump every ward to save it. This is the general feeling. A national convention is soon coming off, and great things are expected of Chicago. She is the pet Republican city of the Union the point from which radiate opinions which more or less influence six states. The city must be saved." We ask our friends who are hanging back to put that letter in their pipes and smoke it. In the face of such direct and explicit testimony as to the vital importance of the contest, no man need hesitate what to do. Boys, up and at 'em. "The boys" did "up and at 'em/' for in three months came Lincoln's triumphant nomination, and with it a Trib- une "close-up" of the candidate which for justness and viv- idness is not excelled by many a Lincoln study of far later and calmer times and far greater pretensions. Phrases from it are reprinted here: Stands six feet and four inches in his stockings. In walking his gait, though firm, is never brisk. He steps slowly and deliberately, almost always with his head inclined forward and his hands clasped behind his back. In dress by no means precise. Always clean, he is never fashionable; he is careless, but not slovenly. In manner remarkably cordial, and, at the same time, simple. His politeness always sincere but never elaborate and oppressive. A warm shake of the hand and a warmer smile of recognition are his methods of greeting his friends. Head sits well on his shoulders, but beyond that it defies description. It nearer resembles that of Clay than that of Webster, but is unlike either. In his personal habits simple as a child. Loves a good dinner and eats with the appetite which goes with a great brain, but his food is plain and nutritious. Never drinks intoxicating liquors of any sort, not even a glass of wine. Not addicted to tobacco in any of its shapes. Never was accused of a licentious act in all his life. Never uses profane language. A friend says that once, when in a towering rage in consequence of the efforts of certain parties to perpetrate a fraud on the state, he was heard to say, "They shan't do it, d n 'em," but beyond an expres- sion of this kind his bitterest feelings never carried. Never gambles. Particularly cautious about incurring pecuniary obligations. We presume he owes no man a dollar. Never speculates. A regular attendant upon religious worship, and, though not a com- 33 WAR CREATES DEMAND FOR NEWS municant, is a pew holder and liberal supporter of the Presbyterian church in Springfield to which Mrs. Lincoln belongs. A scrupulous teller of the truth too exact in his notions to suit the atmosphere of Washington as it now is. If Mr. Lincoln is elected president ... he will not be able to make as polite a bow as Frank Pierce. * * * The war burst. Sumter fell. On April 15, 1861, The Tribune printed its call to battle. It was a hundred per cent appeal nay, command, and to this day it makes the pulse beat high: EVERY MAN'S DUTY READ! Lenity and forbearance have only nursed the Viper into life the war has begun. It may not be the present duty of each one of us to enlist and march to the sound of a bugle and drum, but there is a duty, not less important, which is in the power of every man and woman in Chicago, and in the North, to perform it is to be loyal in heart and word to the cause of the United States. From this hour let no Northern man or woman tolerate in his or her presence the utterance of one word of treason. Let expressed rebuke and contempt rest on every man weak enough to be anywhere else in this crisis than on the side of the country against treason of Lincoln and Scott against Davis and Twiggs of God against Baal. We say to the Tories and lick- spittles in this community, a patient and reluctant, but at last an out- raged and maddened, people will no longer endure your hissing. You must keep your venom sealed or go down! There is a republic! The gates of Janus are open; the storm is on us. Let the cry be, THE SWORD OF THE LORD AND OF GIDEON! * sjc Jfc The Tribune's course throughout the civil war may be said to have made it a great property, both in a material and a moral sense. It was energetic in the covering of events and it was passionately loyal. But even in the heat of conflict it could be decent. In the course of an appeal for comforts for the sick rebel prisoners herded in Camp Douglas, The Tribune said : These men will be our countrymen again. The memory of this conflict will be effaced. As hundreds of thousands of men went to war, the home folks experienced a new deep craving for news from beyond the horizon news complete, authentic, recent such as only metropolitan papers could supply. By striv- ing wholeheartedly to satisfy this craving The Tribune 34 WAR CORRESPONDENTS SCORE SCOOPS FULL DETAILS OF THE OBEAT CRIME. won a place in the hearts of the great foundation stock of the Middle West which has never been shaken. Telegraph news suddenly became of the utmost impor- tance. The Tribune had its correspondents all over the field of action, and gave the best possible news service. George P. Upton, then for 'many years after on The Tribune staff, scooped the other p'oers in the country by his story of the capture of Island No. 10, and later scored other scoops. In 1864, The Tribune exposed a plot to free the Confederate prisoners in Camp Douglas and prevented its accomplishment. At all times, The Tribune advocated aggressive prose- cution of the war, and never wavered in the often question- able assumption that the Union NEWrBYTIlE6RWH. would triumph. It took the lead in many important reforms. When Fremont's abilities were doubted, Secretary Seward Still The Tribune sent Joseph Medill to LiveSi ascertain the facts. Likewise, when General Grant was charged with drunkenness and incompetence, Mr. Medill went to the front to inves- tigate. It was also due to his efforts that the governors of Wisconsin and Minnesota called special sessions to grant soldiers in the field a vote in the second Lincoln election. The Tribune became the head- quarters of Union men. Nightly bulletins were posted for large and enthusiastic crowds. Dr. Ray or Mr. Bross spoke when word of im- portant victories came. Dr. Ray was the hail-fellow-well-met of our family, and on the night when the news of the fall of Fort Donelson was received in Chicago he read the dispatch to an immense throng and then said, "Friends, 'Deacon' Bross authorized me to 35 PBECARIOUS CONDITION OF FREDERICK SEWARD. The Order for the As* sembiing of the Vir- ginia] RIOT IN SAN FRANCISCO BOOTH AND HIS ACCOMPLICES, Booth's Mistress Attempts to Commit Sucicide. Arrest of some of the Supposed Assassins, From The Chicago Tribune A 'prill 7, 1865 CIRCULATION OF 40,000 ATTAINED say that any man who goes to bed sober tonight is a traitor to the government." The deacon's consternation, considering his Cromwellian standards, may be imagined. The Tribune of that day, as now, had its enemies. Federal troops had to be called to guard the building in June, '63, when the copperheads* threatened to destroy the paper. In any event, then as n x 4w, it was characteristic of the paper that it never did anything half-heartedly. It backed a project to the utmost, or fought it to a finish. The war years brought prestige and prosperity to The Tribune. Its circulation increased from 18,000 to 40,000, and the publishers made money despite the generally ad- verse business conditions. In 1861, The Tribune was incorporated by a charter issued by the Illinois legislature. # # # In '65, John Locke Scripps, who had been serving as postmaster since '61, sold his interest to Horace White, who assumed the editorship. White was editor-in-chief of The Tribune from 1866 until 1874, during part of which period Mr. Medill gave much of his time to the proceed- ings of the Illinois constitutional convention of 1869 and to his duties as mayor of Chicago immediately after the great fire. William Bross was also out of active touch with The Tribune, serving as lieutenant-governor of Illinois from 1865 to 1869. During his activities as editor-in-chief Mr. White gave The Tribune a free trade tendency, which did not make Mr. Medill happy, although he was no high protectionist. In any case, in 1874, after a tour of Europe, he took full charge of the paper. Mr. White later performed distin- guished service as editor of the New York Evening Post. Another notable event of 1865 was the establishment of a Western Associated Press, a forerunner of the "A. P." of today. Mr. Medill called a meeting of Western editors, held in Louisville, to effect this association. It was in '69, that The Tribune moved from 51 Clark Street, where it had been published for many years. A new 36 BURNED OUT BUT UNBEATEN building, four stories high, of Joliet marble, had been built on the site of the present Tribune building at Dearborn and Madison Streets. The building was valued at $225,000, and was highly thought of as an architectural accomplish- ment in its day. The paper was published here until the great fire of October 8 and 9, 1871. * * * Because of its rapid growth, building in Chicago had been haphazard and careless. The Tribune, in an editorial, September 10, 1871, called attention to walls "a hun- dred feet high and but a single brick in thickness." . . "There are miles of such fire traps . . looking substantial, but all sham and shingles." The fire virtually cleaned out the city. The Tribune building, spared once, was caught in the conflagration The Courthouse and an issue P ut to press the second night, Monday, Octo- ber 9, while fire surrounded the building and McVicker's Theater next door began to burn. A few hours later another office was opened at 15 Canal Street. Editors, reporters, and pressmen gathered here and went to work on the story of the fire. On Wednesday, October n, a half sheet paper was issued with a five column story of the fire and the following famous "Cheer Up" editorial : CHEER UP In the midst of a calamity without parallel in the world's history, looking upon the ashes of thirty years' accumulation, the people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN With woe on every hand, with death in many strange places, with two or three hundred millions of our hard-earned property swept away 37 FROM FIRST ISSUE AFTER THE FIRE FIRE! Destruction of Chicago! 3. soo Ac rei of Build- ings Bmtroyed. BUM, Wo,!* rift* MM ****** 9ver a Hundred Dead Bodies Recovered f froa the Debris. in a few hours, the hearts of our men and women are still brave, and they look into the future with undaunted hearts. As there has never been such a calamity, so has there never been such cheerful fortitude in the face of desolation and ruin. Thanks to the blessed charity of the good people of the United States, we shall not suffer from hunger or nakedness in this trying time. Hundreds of train- loads of provisions are coming forward to us with all speed from every quarter, from Maine to Omaha. Some have already arrived more will reach us be- fore these words are printed. Three-fourths of our inhabited area is still saved. The water supply will be speedily renewed. Steam fire engines from a dozen neighboring cities have already arrived, and more are on their way. It seems impossible that any further progress should be made by the flames, or that any new fire should break out that would not be instantly extinguished. Already contracts have been made for re- building some of the burned blocks, and the clear- ing away of the debris will begin today, if the heat is so far subdued that the charred material can be handled. Field, Leiter & Co. and John V. Farwell & Co. will recommence business today. The money and securities in all the banks are safe. The rail- roads are working with all their energies to bring us out of our affliction. The three hundred millions of capital invested in these roads is bound to see us through. They have been built with special refer- ence to a great commercial mart of this place, and they cannot fail to sustain us. CHICAGO MUST RISE AGAIN. We do not belittle the calamity that has be- fallen us. The world has probably never seen the like of it certainly not since Moscow burned. But the forces of nature, no less than the forces of rea- son, require that the exchanges of a great region should be conducted here. Ten, twenty years may be required to reconstruct our fair city, but the capi- tal to rebuild it fireproof will be forthcoming. The losses we have suffered must be borne; but the place, the time, and the men are here, to commence at the bottom and work up again; not at the bottom, neither, for we have credit in every land, and the experience of one upbuilding of Chicago to help us. Let us all cheer up, save what is yet left, and we shall come out right. The Christian world is coming to our relief. The worst is already over. In a few days more all the dangers will be past, and we can resume the battle of life with Christian faith and Western grit. Let us all cheer up! The extent of the disaster was terrific. Nobody was 38 Moot Vane, foi Mrtlilit Eigtoew Thousand Buildings De-' stroyed. Incendiaries and Ruffians Shot and Hanged by Citizens. tin ui Crested by M) lag Wills. leW Arriving from Othw Dines Hourly, Organization off a Local Relief Committee. 1M 09 TiM lift V lift From The Chi- cago Tribune, Oct. 11, 1871 IN NEW BUILDING ONE YEAR AFTER FIRE spared. But the spirit of the men of the time did not falter, nor shrink from the truly vast burden of recon- struction. The case of The Tribune was typical. To get paper for the first post-fire issue, the business manager had to borrow sixty-four dollars from personal friends to pay for it. Forty-eight hours before, The Tribune's credit would have been good for more than a hundred thousand dollars. The next day, October 12, the paper came out with a full sheet. Revenue began to come in from advertisements inserted by sufferers who were seeking lost families and friends. A little later, work was begun on a new building on the site of the old. On the night of October 9, 1872, just one year later, The Tribune was published from its old location, but in a new building. Thus swiftly is the first epoch in the history of the community and The Tribune put behind and the second begins. How power j "or the presses was secured in the Forties 39 From the Fire to the Fair 187M893 FOLLOWING the Great Fire are twenty years of rather prosaic history for The Tribune and for Chicago. The effects of the Civil War, as well as of The Fire, were still a depressing influence. It was a period of rebuilding, readjustment and swift, uncouth growth as corn and wheat spread in tidal waves over the prairies which had known but buffalo grass for centuries. To scan for decade after decade the yellow pages of newspaper files is a stimulating experience, one that proves the reverse of many things that men are wont to take so completely for granted that they make them the basis of endless shibboleths and catch phrases. The principal of them rings the changes on "the degeneracy of the press." The community and newspaper story put together from the files of The Tribune and certain of its contemporaries is a seventy-five year study in and vindication of opti- mism. It shows that the type of newspaper now con- sidered reckless and sensa- tional was, at a time still well within the memory of men now living, not only reckless and sensational but villainous and vindictive to the point of outraging de- The Waterworks cency. The type of news- paper now supposed to be identified with "the interests" and to be sustained by them was then susceptible to the blandishments of a free supper at the new hotel. The type of newspaper now described as conservative was then reactionary to the point of pitilessness. 40 IUUUUIU'U'U I U I U'U I U I U'UIU'U'U I U I U I U'U'UU I U I U I U'U I U'U I UU'U'U'UIUIL As the Fire approached the Marine hospital near the mouth of the river. PANIC stricken throngs fleeing across Rush Street Bridge from the Fire. TTTTTTnTTTTnnnnnnnnnTTanTTaTTTTTfTTTTlTWaTTTT 41 JHU'U'U'U'U'U'U'UiU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIUIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UiU'U'U'U'U'U'U'UiL "GOOD OLD DAYS" NOT so GOOD Let him who thinks that newspaper reports of such a case as the current Stillman-Beauvais scandal exceed the bounds of decorum turn to the file of 1874. He will dis- cover in the reports of the Beecher-Tilton scandal a gusto and a particularity in the presentation of squalid details which will convince him that the treatment in our time is all for the better; wholly in the direction of that legitimate reticence which, while it does not pander to pruriency, does not, by silence, make evil easier for the evildoer. The files show how all the material and mechanical changes of newspaper making since its early days in Chicago have been emphatically to the advantage of the newspaper reader. By means of three line digests of every important article and by means of terse, coherent, explicit, and unelaborated headlines his time is saved, and, by the use of larger type in heads and in the body of the paper, his eyes are comforted instead of tortured. The whole paper is more readily assimilated. Pictorial development has been so pronounced in late years and is still going forward at a pace so extraordinary that it makes a history so new and so special that it cannot be linked up with what lay critics of the press like to call the "golden days of Greeley." This picture making and the copious indeed for some prop- erties downright ruinous use of the BEECHER-TILTON. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stonton's Views of "The Great Social Earth- quake." Tb Trw Social Cod Must Be the Same for Both Sens." -the Crowning Perfidy " o 'the Great Preacher." Xn. TiTton Goes Forth "to Vindi- cate the Man She Lore*" ffkt, liter Mid > Fttall if Utt, " Carti Her ijtoliku Wits- trei Flntr." Beecher* PesHleo maintained for lUm to* Three rewerfelltcUg. lousEiBgs." Dlnlomacy end Hypocrisy in High topoaihaty of Securing Juttet. ftr aay One whsn ttaaey Can *UMd b ffUch She Cturwterixei Her Bnburi. Good.ndSWf Kost Pare." Aad ripk of Him a. Ib. tollomng prlU lelter. r- od. to th. publio. TUe Bwcliw naj ccrUWj now b.loj, to th. From The Chicago Tribune, Oct. 1, 1874 cable have been the most striking features of journalistic history in the last decade. The articles you read now are shorter than those father and grandfather read, but their number and variety are far greater. The rule now, whether invariably observed or 43 NEWSPAPERS TODAY BETTER THAN IN PAST not, is "tell it as briefly as possible." The rule so lately as the early 'QOS seemed to be "spin it out," and what with the lead for the whole story and the subsections of the story "tell it at least thrice." Nor is it solely in these material aspects of news presen- tation that there has been change so emphatic that it attains the importance of solid reform. In the things of the intel- lect and of the spirit the emphasis is firmer and more intelli- gent. News articles are not only less windy but vastly less vituperation and partisanship get into them. In truth vehemence and partisanship appear once to have been encouraged; they now are vigorously discouraged. Editorials today are at once more humane and less facetious. They cover a wider range of topics and are written in better English, but with less vigor only if violence and name calling are synonymous with vigor. Our fore- bears in this profession probably would consider them deficient in a quality dear to their hearts. It was "raci- ness." It covered, while it caused, a multitude of sins of taste and manners. The epitome of two outstanding contrasts between the newspaper of the mid-nineteenth century and long there- after and the newspaper of today can be briefly given: There was more individuality of a quaint and rustic kind and less taste. And the news element today is, to use the largest word, an infinitely greater factor. , That vehement individuality was the expression of enormous vitality. Some of the manifestations of it were more interesting than to be imitated. If a rival publicist did not agree with you he was "an ancient liar" or "an old lunatic." Neither age nor ailments protected a man. Mature men, men of parts and men of reading, who were guiding the destinies of a community and of the imperial realm of the middle west, said, and said in print, things that today would not be forgiven a cub reporter. But, after all, the lesson learned from the days of file scanning was the big lesson, as vital today as ever it was, 44 AN EXTRAORDINARY TRIBUNE SCOOP of the survival of the men and the properties that had the clearest ideals of personal and civic probity. On Sunday, May 21, 1887, The Tribune astonished its readers with one of the greatest scoops of history nothing less than the entire revised edition NEW TESTAMENT OF OUS LOBD AHD SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, TRANSIATED OUT OF THE GREBCi Forth A. D. 1611, TBIHTSD VOX CHICAGO AID TEE VO&XHWE8T. CHlCAGOt 0310400 TfUBUVS F1UBSS. OBQRO&+1. DAX gtu.gotfc.JteB 3Q.au. From The Chicago Tribune May 21, 1881 of the New Testament. Samuel Medill, Joseph's brother, who as managing editor engineered it, in- troduced it to his readers as fol- lows: "The Tribune presents to 63,000 purchasers and 200,000 readers this morning, in addition to a regular issue of twenty pages, the revised edition of the New Testament entire. The whole work, without the omission of a single chapter or verse, is contained in sixteen pages of the size usually issued from this office. There are journals which would find a publication of this kind a considerable undertaking. But The Tribune's typo- graphical and mechanical resources are such that it can issue any volume of or- dinary size at a day's notice. The public may be interested to know that the first type of the New Testament as it appears in our columns today was set at ten o'clock yesterday morning and the last page made up in stereotype at ten o'clock last night. The job was completed, therefore, in precisely twelve hours. Ninety-two compositors were employed in setting type and five in correcting errors noticed by the proofreaders. Meanwhile twenty additional pages of advertising and reading matter were set up, corrected, put in form, and stereotyped: so that we are enabled to issue this morning thirty-six pages, not one line of which had been put in type at ten o'clock yesterday morning. The Tribune is not inclined to boast of its present achievement. It believes in doing thoroughly what it undertakes to do at all. Hence it has not undertaken to give mangled extracts from a few books of the New Testament, but to print the revision in such shape that no reader of The Tribune need ever buy a copy of it unless he feels disposed to do so for special reasons. This journal was the first to announce the publication of the New Testament. It may have imitators. It expects them. But it can have none who will be any more than feeble copies of the original. It is accustomed to having its ideas plagiarized by journalistic sharks that follow in its wake and pick up its leavings. But it intends always to lead the way and be the first in introducing novelties to the people of this community. 45 CLAIM SUPERIORITY FOR OUR ADVERTISING Elsewhere on the same page : The fraudulent newspaper on Wells street printed a week ago a bogus "cable dispatch" purporting to contain the principal changes in the Old and New Testaments made by the Committee on Revision. Its shallow trick was immediately exposed by the American revisors so far as the Old Testament was concerned by the simple statement that its revision was barely begun. Its forgeries in case of the New Testament are now proved by indubitable evidence. A comparison of its fraudulent version with the true version printed this morning shows that the former is false in nearly every particular. That was our whack at Story and his shifty Times. ASSASINATIO& James A. Garfield Falls Be- fore the Assasin's Bullet The Oeed Committed by a Madman Named Charles J. Cuiteau. Half-Past HIne O'Clock of Sat- urday the Baleful Moment The President, Arm-ln-Arm with Secretary Btolne, WM En- taring a Depot. From an AmboMade the Mamao Fired Two Balls into the One Took EJfcct iirthe Back and the Other la the Arm* Journey of a Brave Little W. from Long Branch to Washington. Magnificent Courap and Coed Cheer of the Chief Ex- A month later in the same year a circulation war was on and The Tribune went after The Times again : Advertisers are not fooled. There is no shrewder set of men in the world. They would not continue to invest their money as liberally as they do in The Tribune space if they were not satisfied that they got abundant returns for it. And they do get such returns. Every- body who has tried it knows that they do. Seeing is believing, and trying is the best way to find out the truth in this matter. . . . What can possibly ail that venerable lunatic if not a consciousness of the inferiority of his own newspaper in any respect to The Tribune? . . . The facts and figures are in the local columns. They are mathematical evidence that The Tribune is as much superior to The Times in its city circulation as it is in its ad- vertising, or its news, or its sense of decency, or its common sense. Look in, now, on the lads long gone, on the feverish nights of early November, 1884, when the Cleveland- Elaine result still was hanging fire and the whole country's nerves were snap- ping. Here it is the morning of Nov. 6 and still no decision on the election of two days before ! Evidently our nerves were getting a wire edge, too, and we 46 AT THE DEPOT. From The Chicago Tribune July 3, 1881 TRIBUNE BEGINS FIGHT AGAINST ANARCHISM tartly informed a waiting world of subscribers that " inside information" was put in this paper, not kept out of it: In the rush and press of these busy and exciting hours we have no time to answer their telegrams, and this must serve for a general reply and apology for apparent neglect. We can only say that all the news we have or can get is printed in The Tribune and that we have no inside information that does not appear in its columns. ... It would have taken one man's entire time to answer one-half of the inquiries received yesterday afternoon. * * * No event of this period took stronger hold upon men's imaginations than the Haymarket riots and the ensuing murder trials. On May 4, 1886, a platoon of police was bombed when about to dispers^ A HELLIHH DEEP. an anarchist meeting in Hay- market Square, Chicago. Seven policemen were killed. Leaders It Explode* and Coven the Street with * of the anarchist movement in A DYNAMITE BOMB THROYTV INTO A CBOWD OF POLICEMEN. Chicago were tried for murder as instigators of the crime, though no attempt was made to prove that they were present or ...._.. ...- ,*. even that they knew who made JOSEPH DEAGAN, Wet JUlce Street Station; 1 -l i -i i nP1_ Ml d.ad in front of the De.piaine. street Station. Or WJ1O UirCW tllC DOmD. 1 HCV 'to the armi of Detective John McDonald. Be bad ,c,et ..urn,* ~u r . .cen.0, *. fad preached assassination and From The Chicago Tribune revolution and the policemen May 5, 1886 na d been killed by some one in- fluenced by that preaching. On this basis they were convicted and sentenced four to death, three to imprisonment. The Tribune vigorously upheld the justice of these convictions and criticised the action of Governor John P. Altgeld (first democratic gover- nor of Illinois in forty years) when, on July 26, 1893, he pardoned those still in prison. The scandalously high protective Republican platform of 1888 (General Benjamin Harrison's campaign) was forced upon the party despite The Tribune's vigorous declaration that the Mississippi valley was not enamored of excessive protection any longer, and it imparted its scorn 47 ACTIVITIES OF THE EIGHTIES of the document in rhymes that traveled far and still are quoted in the histories (see Paxson: "Recent History of the United States," p. 140): Protection, in a nutshell, means A right for certain classes; A little law that intervenes To help them rob the masses. The rich may put their prices high; The poor shall be compelled to buy. This period also saw the rise and fall of the Parnell- Gladstone movement for Irish Home Rule. Medill had been born in New Brunswick of Presbyterian parents from the north of Ireland, but was a consistent supporter of the various Home Rule bills. A great PROF. SWING. deal of space was devoted to Irish Annna Meeting of the Chicago HCWS in The Tribune. Chicago is famous the world over for having reversed the flow of its river > forcin g a stream to drain Lake Michigan after it had emptied into the lake for eons. In this achievement, The Tribune He Has Preached in Aid of the Mary' ^ad nO Small part. It StOOd COU- pnce comer chapei sistently for the Drainage Canal He Has Rejected Three Great prOJCCt. and ill l88Q, JOSCph Presbyterian Tenete. ^ J > ^ , , - - went to Springfield and exerted his E TOoto Matter Referred to a Cota- i n ' i personal influence to the utmost to see that the necessary legislation was passed. He did not live to From The Chicago Tribune i r -.u* April 14- 1874- see tne completion or this gigan- tic public improvement, nor to see his grandson elected president of the canal board. Alfred Cowles, one of the factors of The Tribune's up- building, died in 1889 and his colleague, "Governor" or "Deacon" Bross, as he was better known, stood too long with head uncovered at Mr. Cowles' funeral, and con- tracted an illness that led to his death within a month. * * * 48 CHICAGO CAPTURES THE WORLD'S FAIR There had always been a bond of comradeship among the men who made The Tribune and on January i, 1890, the management sought to strengthen this sentiment by inviting all employes to a "family dinner." These dinners were held each year until 1908 when the force had grown so large that they became impractical. The following year The Tribune presented each employe with a gold piece in lieu of the dinner, and from this has developed the present generous system of annual bonuses. These bonuses are figured on a scale of percentages of the salary received during the year just ended. The lower salaries and the longer terms of service receive the highest percentages and vice versa. The Tribune's first pension system was in- augurated in 1911. The present day program of pensions, insurance, etc., is chronicled in a subsequent chapter en- titled "Medill Council." * * * That Chicago had fully recovered from the terrible blows of War and Fire was evidenced when America talked of celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the landing of Columbus. Up rose Chicago with indomitable business pluck and audacity to claim the Fair. New York wanted it. St. Louis cried for it. Washington was in a mood to bleed and die for it. Chicago business men, with charac- teristic spunk, fell to and raised $10,000,000, an argument neither New York nor Washington could match. A wonder of wonders, that fair, in and of itself. The flat, prosaic plain enclosed within the borders of Jackson park had become a scenic paradise, with its lovely lagoons, its wooded island, its masterpieces of landscape architecture. Palaces of consummate beauty had risen majestic. Never before had buildings at once so vast, so exquisite, and so numerous grouped themselves in a superbly harmonious composition, nor, has there since been anything anywhere to rival the total effect of grandeur, stateliness, and monu- mental splendor. There is a strong temptation, always, to overestimate the educational value of a world's fair. Just because the 49 FAIR OPENS NEW EPOCH FOR CHICAGO turnstiles at Jackson park registered admissions aggregating 27,530,460 it hardly follows that visitors carried home accurate information anything like commensurate with those figures. On the other hand, it is as easy to under- state a world's fair's cultural influence. At Chicago it was tremendous. Multitudes enjoyed their first delicious ac- quaintance with painting, with sculpture, and with superb monumental architecture. No one thing that ever hap- pened in America tended more directly indeed no one thing that ever happened in America tended half so directly toward the evolution of a public for great art. Joseph Medill appreciated fully the great possibilities of the fair. He was one of the original stockholders and a director. He saw to it that The Tribune led in the presen- tation of its beauties and glories. A special bureau was maintained in the Administration Building from which Tribune reporters covered all activities and telegraphed full reports to the paper, where all " Fair" news was handled by a special copy desk. 50 ! JIUIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIUIL IN 1869 The Tribune occupied the above building erected for it at a cost of $225^000. In 1871 the issues of October o and 10 were missed when the building was engulfed in the great con- flagration. On the first anniversary of the Fire we moved into the $250,000 structure shown below. 51 IjlUiU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'L THE COURT OF HONOR, looking east from balcony of the Ad- ministration Building. This was one of the most inspiring mews afforded by the World's Fair. At the left of the picture is the Manufactures Building, with Agricultural Hall on the right. VIEW from the roof-promenade of the Manufactures Building. In the foreground is the Wooded Island, with the Japanese Building at its northern end. Fronting the Lagoon on the left is the Woman s Building; further to the right is the Illinois Building, with its lofty dome surmounted by a flagstaff which marked the highest elevation on the grounds; while at the extreme right is one of the circular wings of the Fisheries Building. In the background of the picture stretches the Chicago of '93. F From the Fair to the World War 1893-1914 T FOLLOWING the fair came crop failures, hard times, r^ Coxey's " Army," and the industrial warfare known JL as the "Debs" or "Pullman" strike, which flared up in Chicago and radiated to every part of the United States. The Tribune, while fiercely opposed to Debs as the legiti- mate successor of the anarchists and the representative of violence was, nevertheless, keenly critical of the attitude of George M. Pullman who refused to make any conciliatory move. The Tribune warmly supported President Cleve- land when he sent Federal troops to Chicago and it de- nounced the inactivity of Governor Altgeld. An incident at this period shows how the new order in journalism was coming into its own on The Tribune, coin- cident with a new epoch in civic affairs. Mr. Medill one day ordered the city editor to preface every mention of Mr. Debs' name with the word " Dictator. " So the follow- ing morning The Tribune was liberally sprinkled with references to "Dictator" Debs. R. W. Patterson, general manager, demanded an explanation of the city editor, stating that the day had passed for permeating the news columns with editorial comments. The next day the paper appeared without the word "Dictator" and Mr. Medill called the unfortunate city editor on the carpet to know why his orders had not been obeyed. He was referred to Mr. Patterson and finally yielded to him. From that time on, practically the entire burden of Tribune management rested on Patterson's shoulders and The Tribune progressed surprisingly, while its competitors slipped backward. The Times, once The Tribune's most formidable rival, merged with The Herald as The Times- Herald, and later this new paper was absorbed by The Record and the name became Record-Herald. 53 TRIBUNE TURNS LIGHT ON GAS GRAFT In 1892, The Tribune had installed new presses, the first of their kind ever built, capable of producing four-page to twenty-four-page papers at the rate of 72,000 eight-page papers per hour. The Sunday paper was now beginning to develop and in it Mr. Patterson took particular interest. On November 6, 1887, a twenty-eight-page Sunday paper was gotten out in four parts, inaugurating this method of dividing the Sunday issue. On September 14, 1890, a record was set with a forty-page Sunday paper. In 1895, The Tribune startled the newspaper world by reducing its price to one cent daily. Before the Civil War the price had been three cents, raised to five cents in 1864, reduced to three cents in 1886, and reduced to two cents in 1888. It was found impossible to maintain the one cent price, however, and after the Spanish War, the price again became two cents. In 1910 another attempt was made to sell the paper for one cent, but the European War again raised production costs so that the two cent price was made necessary. * * * When the Cosmopolitan Electric Company 5o-year grab and the Ogden Gas ordinance were simultaneously introduced in the council on February 25, 1895, there arose a great cry of graft and boodle. The Tribune led in unsparing denunciation of these "monuments of corrup- tion." "Two more infamous aldermanic jobs" is the title of an editorial demanding the legislature then in session to take from the idiots and boodlers the power to grant franchises and give away the city's rights. "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" "Anti Boodle" -"Let Us Have an Absolute Veto," "Stands by the Boodle Gang Mayor Approves Ogden Gas and Amends Cos- mopolitan." As a result of the campaign against these measures the mayor who signed them, John P. Hopkins, was unwilling to risk a stand for reelection five weeks later. And his candidate was defeated. And as a second result of The 54 TRACTION BOODLERS DENOUNCE "NEWSPAPER TRUST" Tribune's tireless campaign against the boodle aldermen the honest forces of the community laid the basis of the organization of the Municipal Voters' League, which was instrumental in cleaning up the council and putting gray wolves in the minority. The Tribune fought aggressively in the interest of the public against the infamous Humphrey and Allen bills which would have turned the streets of the city over to the Yerkes car line system for a half century. Early in the spring of 1897, John Humphrey, on behalf of Yerkes, introduced his twin bills in the legislature. These took from the city council all power over traction franchises. The late Edward C. Curtis, who has been named in the conspiracy charged against the present gov- ernor, Len Small, was at that time speaker of the House. At the crisis of one of the fights Curtis became ill and left Springfield with a substitute speaker in the chair of the House and it was rumored Curtis was afflicted with a "gumboil." Hence the sobriquet of the day, "Gumboil Curtis." A terrific battle was waged against the measures by The Tribune, which was seconded by such men as Mayor Harrison, John H. Hamline, John M. Harlan, Frank J. Loesch, Edwin Burritt Smith and the Civic Federation. The measures came to a vote on May 12, 1897, and were de- feated by a 4 to i vote. On the night of his defeat and denunciation as the most audacious boodler in the country, Yerkes used some now familiar language: "The newspaper trust has done every- thing to demoralize the people and to injure Chicago. The most brazen and glaring untruths, etc., etc. News- paper trust ! Newspaper trust !" But Yerkes was not so easily licked. He went back to Springfield with new but similar measures, which were finally rounded out as the Allen bill, which gave the city council power to grant fifty-year franchises. The same energetic fight was put up against the Allen bill, but on 55 TRIBUNE FOR GOLD AGAINST "16 TO 1" June 9 of the same year (1897) it became a law. Gov. Tanner signed it after Yerkes had said to him, "The news- papers do not express the sentiment of the people of Chicago." This odious Allen law, denounced day by day by The Tribune as a boodle measure bought by bribery a swindle and a robbery of the people did not long survive. In the subsequent session of the legislature it was repealed and in the intervening months the temper of the people, en- lightened by the upright press, was such as to deter any possible action by the city council. And the council during that time was improving, being lifted out of the shame of Ogden Gas days, a period of purging in which The Tribune was continually alert and aggressive. In 1895 Raymond Patterson, The Tribune's famous Washington correspondent, secured a notable scoop on the decision of the United States Supreme court knocking out the income tax. R. W. Patterson had been distinctively and almost exclusively a newspaper man, but in 1896 he went to the republican national convention and was very influential in having the "Gold Plank" inserted in the republican platform. Needless to say, The Tribune took an exceed- ingly prominent place among American newspapers in bringing about the election and the re-election of William McKinley. * * * The Spanish American War was marked by one spec- tacular Tribune achievement the great scoop on May 7, 1898, which enabled The Tribune to telephone to President McKinley and to the Secretary of the Navy and the Secre- tary of War in Washington the fact that on May i, Dewey had defeated the Spanish Fleet in Manila Bay. When war broke out, Edward W. Harden, a Chicago newspaper man, was in the Orient. The Tribune and The New York World arranged with him by cable to accompany Dewey's Fleet. After the victory, the cables having been cut by 56 SCOOP ON BATTLE OF MANILA BAY Dewey, there ensued a week of waiting. The world knew that Dewey should have attacked Manila, but there was no way of receiving word until Harden reached Hong Kong and filed his story to The New York World and The Chicago Tribune. It reached New York too late for any regular edition of the World, but arrived in Chicago before the " final" had gone to press. Earlier Tribune editions were recalled from railway stations and replaced with new ones containing the big news. Only one Illinois regiment reached Cuba, so there was comparatively little news of fighting from Tribune staff correspondents, but there were powerful stories dealing with the scandalous conditions at Chattanooga, Tampa, and Montauk Point. In fact, the campaign for military preparedness, which was then inaugurated has never been allowed to lag. The Tribune has endeavored to keep con- stantly before its readers the terrible consequences visited upon the volunteer soldier by failure to prepare for war in times of peace. 3SrHhn. ,POPE MOVES FOR PEKLg.q!L Br T'lir.|Ju u IV QWM ln* rf Pfii AlrUtai i w EW tlM Wv. FIOHT HAY tous occru """ EXTRA DIRECT NEWS FROM DEWEY! NO AMERICAN SHIP LOST! NOT ONE AMERICAN KILLED! ONLY SIX AMERICANS INJURED! ELEVEN SPANISH SHIPS SUNK! 300 SPANIARDS ARE KILLED! 400 SPANIARDS INJURED! (5PECI4I. C*tU (BY E. W. HARDEN OF CHICAGO.' From The Chicago Tribune of May 7, 1898 57 LITTLE LABOR TROUBLE IN TRIBUNE HISTORY The Tribune had its first strike at a critical point in the war. On Friday, July i, 1898, the stereotypers' union, having refused arbitration, called a strike on all Chicago newspapers. No paper was issued until July 6. In the meantime, the Spanish fleet was destroyed at Santiago and the French liner La Bourgogne sunk off Nova Scotia with a loss of 553 lives. Newspapers from Joliet, Milwaukee, and other cities poured into Chicago and sold for as much as half a dollar a copy. The only other strike in Tribune history was one which affected all Chicago papers in 1912. It grew out of trouble between the pressmen and the publishers of W. R. Hearst's Chicago newspapers. It involved the pressmen, stereo- typers, drivers, and newsboys, but did not prevent the publication and distribution of The Tribune. Trouble between The Tribune and its employes is a decidedly abnormal event. There has never been a strike among Tribune compositors. The stability of the organi- zation is evidenced by the following tabulation showing the length of continuous service of employes as of January i, 1922: Less 5 10 25 35 45 Than to to to to to Department 5 10 25 35 45 55 56 Years Years Years Years Years Years Years Total Advertising, Classified . Advertising, Display. . . Auditing 117 98 157 8 12 24 5 11 10 1 1 1 131 122 192 Building 90 8 26 124 Circulation 196 45 16 1 258 Composing 57 39 63 20 7 3 1 190 Editorial 149 25 32 1 207 Electrotype 4 1 5 Etching. ... .... 44 18 7 1 70 European ... . . 5 1 6 Executive ... 5 5 14 2 1 27 General 82 8 5 95 Press 92 49 7 2 150 Rec. & Warehouse .... Stereotype 19 28 1 2 1 9 1 21 40 Total . . 1143 245 207 29 10 3 1 1638 58 MODERN SKYSCRAPER BUILT FOR TRIBUNE The Spanish War caused a wave of interest in world affairs and The Tribune established staff correspondents in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Vienna. These foreign bureaus were not continued, however, and from the open- ing of the twentieth century, until the World War, The Tribune's journalistic achievements were chiefly in local and national news, though it recorded a scoop in the fall of Port Arthur to the Japanese. Joseph Medill died March 16, 1899, at San Antonio, Texas. His last words were "What is the news?" During the last several years of his life he had participated very little in the active management of The Tribune. * * # The increasing circulation and advertising under the regime of R. W. Patterson made it imperative that The Tribune secure new and better quarters. It was deter- mined to erect a splendid skyscraper, and a number of sites were under consideration. The corner of Dearborn and Madison Streets, which had been occupied by The Tribune for thirty years, was not seriously considered be- cause of the rule which provided that school board prop- erty would be leased only subject to revaluation every five years. There was a movement on foot, however, to do away with this policy, since practically all school property was covered with dilapidated shacks, it being economically impossible for lessees to spend money on adequate im- provements. As a result The Tribune was offered a ninety- nine year lease if it would agree to improve its corner with a two million dollar building, which would revert to the school board at the end of the lease. This subject is taken up more in detail in a later chapter of this book, headed "Building Department." Three successive school boards ratified The Tribune lease and the modern seventeen-story structure which now stands at Madison and Dearborn is the result. It was occupied by The Tribune in 1902 with the expectation that the new machinery and the great structure would be ample for 59 ORIGIN OF "SANE FOURTH" MOVEMENT Tribune requirements until the end of the lease. It was outgrown in twenty years. * * * In 1899 The Tribune began its crusade for a Sane Fourth a crusade which was successful after twenty years of consistent hammering. As a result thousands of chil- dren are saved from death or mutilation every year. Collier's Weekly tells the story of the inception of this campaign as follows: On the Fourth of July, 1899, Managing Editor Keeley of The Tribune was at the bedside of his small daughter, who was on the verge of death. The air about his home was filled with the din of that bar- barous demonstration which as a matter of unquestioned fact we had come to associate with the demonstration of patriotism. Keeley hover- ing over his little child, anxious to the point of frenzy, thought this noise was pushing her out of the world. Late in the afternoon in the midst of his distraction he called up The Tribune office to speak to his secretary, but there was so much of the clatter of celebration at both ends of the line that for a time neither could hear the other. An idea came to Keeley: "Get reports from thirty cities on the number of killed and injured by this blankety-blank foolery," he said, "and let's see what it looks like." Ten minutes later he called up again and dictated the exact form of the message to be sent, and added: "Make it a hundred cities, get the figures in shape, and we will print them." The next morning on the front page of The Tribune there was a column devoted to the Fourth of July horror. On the following morn- ing, with more data at hand, the results were elaborated in three terrible columns. This was the beginning of The Tribune's campaign for a sane Fourth. At first, papers and people jeered, but year after year The Tribune continued to tabulate the ghastly results until the battle was won. * * * The terrible disaster of the Iroquois Fire stunned Chicago on December 30, 1903. The manner in which this great story was handled by The Tribune is familiar to students of American newspaper history. On the day following the fire the entire first page of The Tribune contained nothing except the names of 571 dead and missing. Before sunrise that same morning twenty members of The Tribune staff had been sent out with lists of names to secure photographs, and on New Years' morning, The Tribune printed several times as many pictures of victims of the disaster as the other Chicago papers combined. 60 JlUiU'U'U'UiU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UiU'U'U'U'U'U'UiU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UiUlLl THIS mudhole is the corner of Madison and Dearborn Streets as it looked in 1860. At the farther corner of Postoffice Alley is the book store of John R. Walsh. (Photo by courtesy of John M. Smyth) T. E. SULLIVAN, $6 years on The Tribune, and T. B. Catlin, 48 years on The Tribune, hold the longest service records among Tribune employes. Both are compositors. 61 IIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIUIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'UIU'U'U'U'U'U'U'U'L ROBERT W. PATTERSON MR. PATTERSON succeeded his father-in-law, Joseph Medill, in control of The Tribune. His funeral in 1010 was one of the most impressive events of the time because, dying within a few hours of his mother, the service for them both was held in the same church on the same day. That was the Second Presbyterian church, of which Mr. Patterson s father had long been 'minister. R. W. Patterson s characteristics were justly appraised by the Illinois State Journal in its notice of his death. "He realized" said that paper, "that changes come slowly, that reforms cannot be effected in a day, that patience is a req- uisite to the accomplishment of any important fact. Better still, he appreciated the saving grace of good nature in the crusader. He seldom lost his temper, and defeat never ruffled him.'" He was born in Chicago in 1850. 62 ENTERPRISE AGGRESSIVENESS MARK TRIBUNE PROGRESS Following the Iroquois Fire The Tribune pressed for the prosecution of those responsible and organized The Tribune Committee of Safety composed of leading engineers and architects. This Committee formulated specific demands for a reform in Chicago's building code; demands which were incorporated in city ordinances and which have un- doubtedly prevented many disasters during the intervening years. On the morning of December 18, 1905, The Tribune scored a scoop on the failure of the banks of John R. Walsh. One consequence of these failures was the discontinuance of Walsh's newspaper, The Chronicle, which suspended publication May 31, 1907. In 1906 The Tribune played an even more spectacular part in giving the world news in connection with a bank failure. Managing Editor James Keeley trailed the ab- sconding bank president, Paul O. Stensland, to his hiding place in Morocco and induced him to return voluntarily to Chicago. During the same year it printed the corre- spondence between Roosevelt and the Storers which caused an international sensation. Throughout the administration of Mayor Edward F. Dunne The Tribune vigorously opposed his program for the municipal ownership and operation of the street car system, and criticized the management of school affairs. As a result suit was begun to invalidate the lease of the property on which The Tribune Building stands. Three courts decided on every point in favor of The Tribune. * * * Nonpartisanship in the handling of news had developed to such a point on The Tribune that this avowedly repub- lican newspaper issued a series of special editions in Denver throughout the democratic national convention of 1908. A full staff of editors, reporters, artists, photographers, and telegraphers was taken west in a private car. The Rocky Mountain News loaned its mechanical facilities, and also assisted in securing distribution. Leased wires sup- 63 TRIBUNE HOLDS FIRST NATIONAL LAND SHOW plied The Tribune in Denver with all news of Chicago and the Central West and also supplied The Tribune in Chicago with complete reports of the convention. A year later, when an imposing expedition of business men and legislators headed by President Taft journeyed down the Missouri and Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, The Tribune published its famous "Deep Waterways Editions" at St. Louis, Memphis, Natchez and New Orleans. The St. Louis Star, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Natchez Democrat, the New Orleans Item, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune gave generous assistance. Again, in 1921, a special edition of The Tribune was printed on the presses of The Commercial Appeal and distributed on the train carrying the investment bankers of the country to their national convention in New Orleans. Irrigation and scientific agriculture had at this period developed a new wave of colonization throughout the United States. Public interest in undeveloped sections and in agricultural opportunities was great. Chicago, as the railroad center of the nation, was the focus of coloni- zation activity in which The Tribune naturally became a leader. At a dinner in February, 1909, attended by men influential in land development, it was suggested that a great land exposition be held in Chicago the succeeding fall. The Tribune offered to start this exposition, guaranteeing its financial responsibility by a contribution of $25,000. In the first prospectus sent out it was stated: "The rail- road and land interests in Chicago have initiated a move- ment to hold an exposition in Chicago for the exploitation of our country's undeveloped land resources and have arranged with The Chicago Tribune, as a non-competing interest, to assume financial and executive responsibility." A Land Show was held in the Coliseum during November and December. It was generously supported by railways, state departments of agriculture, chambers of commerce, and similar organizations in sections seeking settlers. It 64 SURRENDERS SHOW THEN RECOVERS IT attracted tremendous crowds, not only from Chicago, but from the entire Central West. Nevertheless the deficit which The Tribune was obliged to pay amounted to more than $40,000. The following year The Chicago Tribune, feeling unable to assume such a great burden again, turned the Land Show over to some Chicago business men who felt that they could run it in a manner satisfactory to exhibitors and to the public, and still make a profit. A successful Land Show was held in the winter of 1910 under their auspices and a small profit was made. They undertook to repeat the show in 1911, but 'intro- duced a new element by offering free lots with every paid admission. Each person attending the show was presented with a coupon giving him the right to a lot on payment of approxi- mately three dollars for abstract, and recording fees. More than 40,000 of those attending the Land Show paid this money to the promoters of the show and were given re- ceipts, and promised deeds and abstracts at some future time. The land in Michigan, which the Land Show pro- moters proposed to subdivide into building lots, was inaccessible and covered with snow, so that the surveying and platting of it was extremely difficult. Those who had paid their money became exceedingly impatient as months went by and no deeds were received. Although The Tribune had had no control over the 1910 or 1911 land shows, the institution was popularly known as "The Tribune Land Show," and great numbers of protesting lot owners began calling on The Tribune for their deeds. Exhibitors had also been exceedingly indignant at the lot scheme and their denunciation of the 1911 Land Show in every part of the United States was distasteful and injurious to The Tribune. An arrangement was made, therefore, by which the Land Show was transferred back to The Tribune and its recent owners were put under bond to deliver the lots that had 65 INAUGURATION OF GOOD FELLOW MOVEMENT been promised. The Tribune, having given birth to this unique exposition, was anxious to restore it in the esteem and respect of exhibitors and the public. The Tribune formed a corporation known as the United States Land Show, which held shows in the Coliseum in the winters of 1912 and 1913. In each instance there was a substantial deficit paid by The Tribune. At the 1913 Land Show a large number of Ojibway Indians were brought to Chicago and presented the Hiawatha Legend in pantomime. Exhibitors included the United States Government, the University of Illinois, the Canadian Government, Province of British Columbia, Province of Alberta, State of New York, State of Oregon, State of Alabama, State of Ohio, State of West Virginia, State of Mississippi, and the Great Northern, Canadian Pacific, Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Railroads. During these years The Tribune also conducted in the Sunday paper a "Forward to the Land Bureau" which answered many thousands of inquiries concerning agricul- tural conditions in various sections. * * * In December, 1909, The Tribune received a letter from one of its readers, who asked that his letter be printed in The Tribune without disclosing his identity. The original Good Fellow is still anonymous, but his letter initiated a movement which makes many thousands of children of the poor happy each Christmas. The famous Good Fellow letter as it appeared in The Tribune of December 10, 1909, follows : To the Good Fellows of Chicago: Last Christmas and New Years' eve you and I went out for a good time and spent from $10 to $200. Last Christmas morning over 5,000 children awoke to an empty stocking the bitter pain of disappointment that Santa Claus had forgotten them. Perhaps it wasn't our fault. We had provided for our own; we had also reflected in a passing way on those less fortunate than our own, but they seemed far off and we didn't know where to find them. Perhaps in the hundred and one things we had to do some of us didn't think of that heart sor- row of the child over the empty stocking. Now, old man, here's a chance. I have tried it for the last five years and ask you to consider it. Just send your name and address to 66 MANY NEW DEPARTMENTS OF SERVICE The Tribune address Santa Claus state about how many children you are willing to protect against grief over that empty stocking, inclose a two-cent stamp and you will be furnished with the names, addresses, sex, and age of that many children. It is then up to you, you do the rest. Select your own present, spend 50 cents or $50, and send or take your gifts to those children on Christmas eve. You pay not a cent more than you want to pay every cent goes just where you want it to go. You gain neither notoriety nor advertising; you deal with no organiza- tion; no record will be kept; your letter will be returned to you with its answer. The whole plan is just as anonymous as old Santa Claus him- self. This is not a newspaper scheme. The Tribune was asked to aid in reaching the good fellows by publishing this suggestion and to receive your communication in order that you may be assured of good faith and to preserve the anonymous character of this work. The identity of the writer of this appeal will not be disclosed. He assumes the responsibility of finding the children and sending you their names and guarantees that whatever you bestow will be deserved. Neither you nor I get anything out of this, except the feeling that you have saved some child from sorrow on Christmas morning. If that is not enough for you then you have wasted time in reading this it is not intended for you, but for the good fellows of Chicago. Perhaps a twenty-five cent doll or a ten cent tin toy wouldn't mean much to the children you know, but to the child who would find them in the otherwise empty stocking they mean much the difference between utter disappointment and the joy that Santa Claus did not forget them. Here is where you and I get in. The charitable organi- zations attend to the bread and meat; the clothes; the necessaries; you and the rest of the good fellows furnish the toys, the nuts, the candies; the child's real Christmas. GOOD FELLOW. A corps of clerks are kept busy during the six weeks preceding Christmas each year distributing to Chicago Good Fellows the names of poor children whose cases have been checked by Chicago charitable organizations. If any names remain untaken on Christmas Eve, their owners are supplied with toys and Christmas cheer by The Tribune. Newspapers in other cities have taken up the Good Fellow idea until it is quite impossible to estimate the amount of happiness generated as a result of the publication of the above letter in The Tribune. * * * At this period The Tribune developed with amazing rapidity and success a series of novel departments of serv- ice. Dr. Wm. A. Evans, who had made a splendid record as Health Commissioner of Chicago, was employed 67 R. W. PATTERSON SUCCEEDED BY GRANDSONS OF MEDILL to conduct a daily department under the heading "How to Keep Well." The Marquis of Queensbury was brought from England to write on sports. Laura Jean Libby inau- gurated a department dealing with affairs of the heart, and Lillian Russell told women how to be more beautiful. A department, known as "Friend of the People," offered to intervene with local officials in behalf of the private citizen. These Tribune departments have been widely imitated by other publishers and the idea that a newspaper should not only distribute news, guide public opinion, and offer enter- tainment, but should also render definite personal service is now well established. In 1909 The Tribune began using the sub-title "World's Greatest Newspaper" occasionally in its advertising. It was later registered in Washington as a trade mark and on August 29, 1911, it began appearing as at present on the first page of The Tribune. * * * Early in 1910 R. W. Patterson died. He had been president of The Tribune Company and editor-in-chief since the death of Joseph Medill. For some time prior to his death he had been in poor health and a grandson of Joseph Medill, Medill McCormick, now United States Senator from Illinois, had been in charge as publisher. Shortly after the death of Mr. Patterson, Medill McCormick was forced to abandon his connection with The Tribune because of illness, and he has never since participated in its management. His brother, R. R. McCormick, had been made treasurer of The Tribune Company in 1909 and his cousin, J. M. Patterson, had been made secretary of The Tribune Company the same year. In 1914 they assumed complete control as editors and publishers. * * * Shortly after the death of R. W. Patterson and the retirement of Medill McCormick, a young man, named Charles White, who had been a member of the Illinois Legislature, visited The Tribune for the purpose of selling 68 TRIBUNE SCOOP OPENS LORIMER CASE a story of corruption in the election of William Lorimer, and other legislative acts. Tribune reporters were hastily rushed to various points in Illinois in order to check up as far as possible on the charges which he made. All the information which could be secured seemed to corroborate them, so his story was purchased and published in The Tribune the famous Lorimer and "jack-pot" story. After an unprecedented deadlock, which persisted through the first months of 1909, William Lorimer, Congressman and Republican boss from Chicago, had been elected to the United States Senate from Illinois by a most extraordinary combination of Republicans and Democrats. White, a Democrat, related in detail how he and other Democratic legislators had been promised money for their votes. Part of the money was due the legislators as their share of the "jack-pot" created by contributions from various interests for which bills were killed or passed, and part of it was in direct payment for Democratic votes for a Republican Senator. Investigations were immediately begun by grand juries in Cook and Sangamon Counties. Mike Link and J. C. Beckemeyer, two of the Democratic legislators, accused by White as members of the group paid off at the same time he was, confessed to the Cook County Grand Jury. States Attorney Edmund Burke, in Springfield con- ducting an independent investigation, unearthed many corroborative facts. By representatives of office furniture concerns, he was told that certain state senators had extorted bribes as a condition precedent to the purchase of furniture for the Senate Chamber. He developed the fact that even small fishermen along the Illinois River had been forced to contribute to the "jack-pot" in order to prevent the passage of legislation which would have injured their business. Senator Holstlaw, a Democrat, a banker at luka, Illinois, and a pillar in his church, confessed that he had been paid for his vote for Lorimer and had gone to the 69 LORIMER ISSUE FOUGHT FOR YEARS notorious West Madison Street saloon of a fellow senator to receive the cash. States Attorneys J. E. W. Wayman of Cook County and Edmund Burke of Sangamon County prosecuted the resulting indictments with energy, but every case was lost. The reason was not long concealed. Two Chicago jurymen accused an attorney for one of the defendants of failing to pay them the amounts promised for their votes as jury- men for acquittal. Cases for jury bribing succeeded those for legislative bribing, but without convictions. The charges against Lorimer were brought up in the United State Senate and after an investigation the Senate decided in his favor. The Lorimer case originated as a piece of startling news submitted to The Tribune for publication and daringly published. As the case developed so many additional facts The Tribune undertook to fight for the prosecution of the guilty and the unseating of Senator Lorimer with all pos- sible vigor. Editorials and cartoons aroused not only Chicago and Illinois, but the entire United States. Whether or not Lorimer' s election had been bought became a national issue. The close of 1910 found The Tribune apparently beaten and Lorimer vindicated all along the line. But the fight was not over. When the Illinois legislature convened in January, 1911, The Tribune proposed that it investigate the manner in which the preceding legislature had elected a United States Senator. H. H. Kohlsaat in his Record-Herald printed the charge that a fund of $100,000 had been instrumental in securing Lorimer's election. The State Senate appointed a committee in charge of Senator Helm, of Metropolis, which began seeking evidence along a new line. It endeavored to find out where the money came from with which the corrupt legislators had been paid. Clarence Funk, general manager of the International Harvester Company, testified before this committee that a Chicago multimillionaire had asked him to contribute to 70 IIUIUU I U'U'U'UU I U I U I U'U I U'U'U I U I U'U'U'UU'U'U'U I U I U'U I U I U I UUU'U'UIUL. NORTH front of The Tribune Building at Madison and Dear- born Streets erected in 1902. The greatest Want Ad Store in the world still occupies the corner on the main floor ^ but the press rooms in the basement were outgrown in 1920. 71 UNITED STATES Land Show, held in the Coliseum under Tribune auspices in the winter of 1912. LIBRARY in Tribune Plant. 72 TRIBUNE SECURES PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY a fund for paying the expenses of Lorimer's election. Other evidence of the same nature was developed by the Helm committee as the result of which the case was re- opened by the United States Senate. And, after going into the new evidence, a vote was taken and Lorimer's seat was declared vacant. The Tribune has been highly praised and bitterly blamed for its tactics in the Lorimer case. The vehemence with which it fought on after Lorimer had secured his "vindication" aroused the enmity of Lorimer's innumerable friends. These friends have sought to blame The Tribune for the failure of Lorimer's bank, but it has been clearly shown by trials in the criminal courts that this failure was due to corrupt banking and not to Tribune publicity. To The Tribune, Lorimer was a symbol of a vicious political system which it had always fought and which it is still fighting. Lorimer has long ceased to be a factor, but the fight against all that he represented still goes on. At the time the Lorimer case was at its height a faction of Repub- licans, of which he had been boss, organized what was known as the Lincoln League to fight their battles. Promi- nent in this League were Len Small, now Governor of Illinois; Wm. Hale Thompson, now Mayor of Chicago; and Fred Lundin, boss of the "Thompson" Republicans. Against these men The Tribune is still fighting the war for clean government of which the Lorimer case was one spec- tacular battle. * * * Always enthusiastically for Roosevelt, The Tribune was insistent that he should run for President in 1912. Early in that year, when Roosevelt was consistently refusing to oppose Taft, The Tribune undertook to secure a direct primary in Illinois which would prove conclusively that the people were still eager for "T. R." There was no law providing for a presidential primary in Illinois and the legislature was not scheduled to meet until January, 1913. The Tribune urged Governor Deneen 73 AMAZING ADVERTISING GROWTH BEGINS to call the legislature in special session. Deneen refused. Time grew short. The Tribune hammered away, arousing public sentiment. At last the governor promised that he would call the legislature if, within a specified brief interval, The Tribune secured definite pledges from a two-thirds majority of the senate and house to vote for the desired legislation. The Tribune undertook the task with enthusiasm and determination. At 3 o'clock on the morning of the last day it had two less than the required number of men, but the "final" edition that morning carried the full list of pledged legislators. The law was passed. The primary was held. Roosevelt won decisively over Taft. Then began the fight for progressive principles, and later for Roosevelt, although it never supported the Prog- ressive Party. The Tribune has been steadfastly Republican, but it considered Roosevelt a better Republican under any label than Aldrich with the party organization in his pocket, and it never felt bound to support corrupt local machines simply because their candidates were listed under the Republican circle. # * * Up to this time advertising has figured little in Tribune history. The Tribune's substantial circulation among the best classes of Chicago and the Central West attracted a considerable volume of advertising. The Tribune had always been free to be independent in its utterances be- cause it was a profitable commercial institution. In 1905 there were only seven employees in the adver- tising department. Then a more intensive solicitation of Want Ads was begun. New uses and new users for this type of advertising were discovered and developed. A similar process was undertaken as to display advertising and in 1910 The Tribune printed, not only more adver- tising than appeared in any other Chicago newspaper, but more than appeared in any other newspaper in the six largest cities of the United States. 74 ADVERTISING ADVERTISING BOOMS CIRCULATION Now came a conception of the economic value of ad- vertising its already great and potentially tremendous importance to readers. In the winter of 191 1-1912 a determined effort was being made by large financial interests to revive the rather de- crepit Record-Herald, successor to The Herald, The Record and The Times. Money was being spent like water to secure circulation. Clocks, arm chairs, sets of dishes, etc., were being given as premiums, and Record-Herald circu- lation was soaring. The Tribune had offered premiums in the past to secure circulation, but in this emergency they were discarded and have never been used since. Instead, an entirely novel idea was worked out. This idea was to secure circulation and checkmate the plans of The Record-Herald by advertis- ing Tribune advertising. A splendid campaign was prepared and run not only in The Tribune, but also in three leading evening news- papers. The plan was to advertise the advertising in The Tribune and thereby make it still more productive to the advertiser and more serviceable to the reader. Within six weeks an increase of 20,000 in" Sunday circulation was credited to this advertising. Hundreds of thousands of readers had their attention focused on one division of Tribune advertising after another shoes, bonds, flowers, hats, etc. Volume of advertising soared even faster than circulation and The Record-Herald was definitely and finally distanced. The immediate success of its local advertising encour- aged The Tribune to launch a campaign in other cities seeking advertising from manufacturers. Copy telling of the power of The Tribune in its market The Chicago Territory was run in newspapers in sixteen major cities. A direct mail campaign supplemented the newspaper adver- tising both locally and nationally. 75 MERCHANDISING OF ADVERTISING DEVELOPED As a result of becoming an extensive buyer as well as seller of advertising, The Tribune during 1912 gained 1,600 columns over 1911, and was the only Chicago paper that did score a gain in advertising. Development of advertising solicitation was pushed vigorously. A copy and art department was started to assist local advertisers and a merchandising service depart- ment began the organization of assistance to manufacturers. The work of this department is told in detail in the chapter on the Advertising Division, page 193. By advancing and living up to the theory that retailers should be persuaded to stock any product before it is advertised, not forced to stock it by means of advertising, The Tribune has done much to take the "blue sky" out of advertising. Hundreds of newspapers have studied what The Tribune has done in this field, and have been assisted by The Tribune in developing similar departments for themselves. The Tribune has been a large factor in showing the business world how to "merchandise" advertising systematically and profitably. * * * More care in the censorship of advertising had gone hand in hand with its increase in volume. In three striking instances The Tribune felt it necessary, not only to bar a class of advertisers from its columns, but also to expose them. Crusades, ultimately of national import, were launched against loan sharks, "men's specialist" medical quacks, and clairvoyants. To crush the loan sharks, The Tribune enlisted the assistance of eighty Chicago attorneys who volunteered to give their services free in fighting the usurers. Victims were invited to submit their cases to The Tribune, where the facts were analyzed and recorded. Each one was then assigned to a competent lawyer. Daniel P. Trude, now a judge, headed the group of lawyers and donated practically all of his time to the work for more than a year. Judge Landis, long known as a foe of the extortioners, presided in the bankruptcy court and was a tower of strength 76 AD-CENSORSHIP LEADS TO WAR ON QUACKS to the campaign. One notorious shark committed suicide. A number decamped for other cities. Disbarment pro- ceedings were begun against a lawyer loan shark. Interest payments running up to several hundred per cent were revealed as quite common. Hundreds of unfortunates were released from the jaws of the sharks. Names of victims were not used in The Tribune. News of the battles aroused such public sentiment that the legislature was led to pass remedial laws, and eventually the other Chicago papers even found it advisable to elimi- nate loan shark advertising. After routing the loan sharks The Tribune turned its attention to a group of medical sharks, whose extravagant claims and bearded faces crowded the columns of other papers. Reporters, carefully examined and found physically sound, were sent to call on these " men's specialists." Almost invariably the " specialist" at a glance discovered all the symptoms of venereal disease and sought to terrify his patient into the payment of fat fees. The Tribune's stories resulted in the elimination of this sort of fake advertising from Chicago newspapers, and many of the " quack docs" left the city. The series of stories was reprinted in book form by the American Medical Association and given wide circulation. The Tribune's exposures of clairvoyants led to criminal prosecutions in which it was shown that payments of graft to police and of newspaper advertising bills were their chief expenses. The Tribune's financial censorship was made more and more stringent and extended to Want Ads as well as to Display Advertising. A complete code of rules governing the admissibility of financial advertising was printed, the first code of its kind ever issued. When the Illinois legislature passed a "Blue Sky" law many concerns which had been barred from The Tribune qualified under it and then hastened to The Tribune with 77 COMPETITION INTENSIFIED BUT TRIBUNE WINS i 53 76,73 33> 2O March Statements 1914 1922 Gain Daily Circulation 261,278 499>7 2 5 2 3 8 >447 Sunday Circulation 406,556 827,028 420,472 Considering the increases in rates necessitated by the war, this means that aftersixty-seven years of steady pro- gress, The Tribune doubled its circulation and advertising receipts during the past eight years. The Herald, after 78 1914 TO 1922 SHOW SWIFTEST GROWTH four years of struggle, was absorbed by Hearst's Chicago Examiner in 1918, and the name of the latter paper changed to The Herald and Examiner. Such amazing growth as The Tribune has made during the past eight crowded years is analyzed only with diffi- culty by one so close to it, but it cannot be passed over if we are to give any true conception of what The Chicago Tribune is. FINAL WAR EXTRA VOLUME LXX1IL- NO. 1W. NAVAL BATTLE IMPENDS; BRITISH, SHIP SUNK 'TIAL LAW IN ANTWERP; GERMANS EXPELLED LONDON, AUG.. 5, 5 A. M. A British mine laying ship has been sunk by a German fleet The British torpedo boat destroyer Pathfinder was pursued by the fleet but escaped. ANTWERP, Aug. 5. Serious anti-German rioting occurred today. A mob sacked the German cafes md tore the escutcheon from the German consulate. The police being unable to ch'eck the disorders, the military governor placed the city under martial law and ordered- the expulsion of all German residents. ToW.*lira^ BRITAIN ACTS MCE HURLS DEFIANCE AT GERMAKALUES Won Rod/ to FlgM XnyCortryffich Supports Kaiser. 'REKIERTELIS terns $40,000,00) Patent Panes Bill LONDON, AU,. 4 n tni ^ *te p. ITEILS STAHu ^SHvHJT CREAT NAVAL BATTLE AT HAND; nrrire I *""ORS CLASHMC FLEETS. Utrlw ' tooN..,.,. ,.^-c hMtoM LS. Aif. S,S.fc- .^.^..U^HM toProvitfortindto- 'Chlc.,0 umJ-C,..l Bril.m decUrW paj.Eipen$:$. j ^^-^j-BHSaa-ii-.,..., SErs *L?" TLIT ^ ^ -*~, ~.^?. ^!??-. --^.'^LT i^^ ** VrrV'tw*! *** *** ffr** .Trr** T"^ 1 .. yj^mMatS^^ jf^lyiUir ! "w S MMt -* * <-< =~. -* .'51. 79 The World War and After 1914-1922 DURING the months which immediately preceded the opening of the World War in 1914, The Tribune laid a foundation for new records in circulation and advertising. The first step was to capitalize the soaring motion picture craze for Tribune benefit. This was done in three ways. First, The Tribune originated the idea of printing a daily directory of motion picture theaters and their attrac- tions. Advertising men said it couldn't be done, that a neighborhood theater could not afford to pay Tribune rates to print its program when only a few thousand out of The Tribune's hundreds of thousands of readers are pros- pective patrons. It was stiff pioneering work for the advertising department, but the Motion Picture Directory is now a solidly established feature of The Tribune. It is a service highly valued by readers. It is profitable to advertisers. It brings in more revenue to The Tribune than all other forms of amusement advertising combined. The marvelous development of the motion picture industry is in turn greatly indebted to the large advertising which it used while the older forms of amusement stood conservatively inert. Second, The Tribune originated the idea of printing a serial story in conjunction with its picturization in the movies. The Adventures of Kathlyn was the first serial thus filmed. It was advertised extensively and sent the circulation of The Sunday Tribune swiftly upward. Third, when the World War dwarfed everything else on earth The Tribune not only covered it with staff corre- spondents, but sent its own motion picture photographer to the front in Belgium, in Germany, in Poland and in Russia. These "War Movies of The Chicago Tribune" 80 VOLUME LXXVl^-KO. HUKSDAV. FEBm-AHl 7 "l. M-TOm^ PAOFA "SINK ALL SHIPS'HCAISER mans RnM < abBa Pitting hSa DRAWS DEADLINE ABOUT EUROPE; BA _, BARS VESSELS OF NEUTRALS; ,--,-- i O.S, ALLOWED ONE BOAT WEEKLY" ""^ WHsnMiTFollwTlmt ** SjwIWdltlafSJnt f D^Ri/Ar CH. &*, ,<**. /. jr WwM Hud Paunrh "*" 01 " ** *** *"" "''*' *"** ELieVE BRITISH '*. JCEHSOK HOLDING :.;"! HOLLWEC SPEEC, HOG PRICES RISE, SOGS FOLLOW SUIT All Records Broken Ofyt CEprag* (JrilmrLc iEPLT BT GERMANY TO PiESIBEIT WIHOI'S PEACE MOTE totiCm HERE is the first of a striking series of three pages which review our entry into the War. On February /, /?//, Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare. The Kaiser did not know it, but that edict was summoning three million American soldiers to France. 81 I U1TS-M f ACU THE WOllO'SCICkTUT KITSPAPC FINAL ~- EDITION VOLUME LXXV1.-XO. S. Kiini;.MiY . int If, S. STOPS FOR WAR AMERICAN STEAMER SUNK GERMAN SHIPS SEIZED AN EDITORIAL AT EVERY MASTHEAD WE MUST PREPARE. " ^ [BREAK WITH AUSTRIA IS EXPECTED AT ONCE President Informs Congress II. S. Insists on Ssa Rights and Justice; Awaits Overt Act tor Neit Move. I .,,,., .TS IfjffcW t4tf M rwf *Ai^ - li* LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE THE WEATHER. i! ZZ ----- -|. ON TREACHERY HANG OUT THE FLAG! cu, Fta UM, It 0.11 GET OHSI SAYS, IRE GERMAI CRISIS II A BOtSHELL / AM> MX 50/" I' ^ M T ^_ f .^ i . |ir _ Ci t- t| , OFFER ISjOOO MEH\ NEWSOF BREAK^ ^^ J .K w. f^-TTl Ujw^S^^.. THREE ^YJ /tf/^r, February 4, 1917, The Tribune felt that all possibility of peace had vanished and launched its stirring crusade for preparedness. Every energy and resource of The Tribune from that instant was concentrated on a swift, decisive victory. 82 LXXVI^VO. d. C. IT. APBU. . IMf.-TWUiTY-SIX PACES. HOUSE FOR WAR m * 373 TO 50 UNARMED m OFU.S.AND5 OTHERS FULL POWERS ARE GRANTED TO PRESIDENT IT fcu more than two months later that war was declared. The Tribune s policy was well expressed in this "Resolution" which it printed in the form of a full page advertisement: Whether in undeterred pursuit and exposure of enemies within: In devoted watchfulness over the welfare of our fighting forces: In determined insistence upon efficiency instead of bureaucracy and upon vigorous progress as opposed to unnecessary delay: In ready praise or fearless criticism of those in authority deserving of either, Let us test each thought, each word, each act for its sincerity and help- fulness toward The Will To Win This War. 83 TRIBUNE MILITANTLY AMERICAN THROUGHOUT WAR were shown to vast audiences in all the large cities of the United States as well as in Chicago. As circulation began to soar The Tribune took unprece- dented measures for safeguarding its supply of raw materials. The story of its paper mill and timber lands is told in subsequent chapters of this book. # * * The Tribune's stand throughout these stormy years was militantly American. We fought desperately for pre- paredness, and urged that American rights be vigorously and fearlessly upheld, whether against German submarines or Mexican bandits. In 1916 we published a serial story entitled "1917," which pictured vividly the dangers of unpreparedness. It showed, with military accuracy, how the victor in the European War could overrun the United States. It was hung on the thread of personal adventure and love, but great care was taken that all military statements should be correct. It was a strong influence for preparedness and caused an enormous increase in Tribune circulation. When on February i, 1917, Germany proclaimed unre- stricted submarine warfare, we recognized that war was inevitable and exerted every ounce of strength to insure swift and decisive victory. When war was declared two months later, The Tribune was already driving ahead with full force. It supported conscription, food, and fuel conservation, and the sending of a great army to France. Its editors and publishers were in the vanguard of that army. During the absence of the editors in military service, William H. Field was in charge of The Tribune. * * * "Morale" was a word that came into wide use during the war. The morale of military forces and of civilian populations vastly concerned those responsible for the success of our armies. The Tribune had, of course, been functioning steadily in maintaining the morale of the home folks, but realizing the terrible homesickness of American 84 UNIQUE NEWSPAPER PRINTED IN PARIS doughboys in a foreign country, The Tribune, at the sug- gestion of Joseph Pierson, one of the editorial staff, deter- mined to act in a unique manner to upbuild the morale of our overseas troops. With this purpose, The Tribune began the publication of an English daily newspaper in Paris, known as the Army Edition of The Chicago Tribune. The first number was issued July 4, 1917, the very day that the first American troops marched through the streets of the French Capitol. At great expense and in the face of almost overwhelming obstacles this novel newspaper was printed and distributed. Since it was published mainly to give the boys up-to- the-minute news from home, cable tolls were tremendous. Censorship, both French and American, complicated edi- torial problems. Since the type had to be set by men who understood no word of English, mechanical difficulties were multiplied. Since it had to be delivered each day through a war-torn country to scattered, shifting groups of soldiers whose locations were kept secret by censorship regulations, circulation problems hitherto unheard of were presented. Bundles were delivered to front line trenches by aeroplanes. French newsboys sold Chicago Tribunes wherever American troops were quartered. Soon the Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Salvation Army, and Jewish Welfare Board were enlisted in distributing Tribunes to the units they served. William Slavens McNutt, in Collier's Weekly of July 6, 1918, relates the following experience at the front: I went back up the trench and talked with the men there again. "Anything much doing lately?" I asked after a while. "Pretty quiet. We put over a good raid night before last, though. Got some prisoners." "That so ? Tell me about it. " "It's all in the paper here. Hey, Jim." "Hey, listen: Bring up that paper with the piece in it about the raid here the other night, will you?" A soldier came up and handed me a daily paper. I was at the front. I sat there on a fire step in a front-line trench with that Paris edition of a daily paper on my knees and read mind you, I read the account.of the raid that had started from the American wire from within a short distance of where I sat. 85 "ARMY EDITION" BECOMES "EUROPEAN EDITION" I read it, and looking over my shoulder, eagerly reading it with me, line for line, stood men whose clothes were in tatters, torn by the wire as they had gone across on the raid we were all reading about. So popular did the Army Edition of The Tribune become that notwithstanding all its hardships it eventually made money. When it was started a pledge had been made that any profits derived from it would be devoted to army charities. On November 30, 1918, a balance was struck and it was found that profits amounting to 106,902.87 francs had been made. A check for this amount was forwarded Personal. AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES OFFICE OF THE COMMANDER-' N-CMICF Prance. January 27, 1919. Mr. M. P. Murphy, Manager, The Chicago Tribune , Paris . My dear. Mr. Murphy I received your letter of Januar*- 10th, en- closing the check to my order for 106^.902.87 francs, which represent the profits of the Array Edition of the Chicago Tribune to the end of November, the month in which the armistice was signed, to be used for such purposes, connected 'tfith the r.en of .the Expeditionary Forces, as I my deem wise. I cannot hope to express to yqu adequately the thanks. of the American Expeditionary Forces for this* You have rendered a signal service to us all in tha publication of your newspaper and in your consistently generous and helpful attitude to officers and men in this war. Now you have placed us still. further' in. your debt by your, generosity. It requires some study on my .part before deciding how this fund may best be used in ac- cordance with your desires. I will communi- cate further with you when I have reached a de- cision. Again I wish to extend to you my hearty personal thanks for your generosity. Sincerely yours , f*U .. f, ttmn Scutfifdr!) "-'" I PARIS, FRANCE US & inicorporer ep ^.""-tfmt eer- P^ f*2g*JfS 6 de Von** >S^' ,Drt eoo -JK &9 s&gsB^sr* HE^^SC PARIS, FRANCE [PATRIE [PAR I S, FRANC [WaCcovemcn* AMEK On mande d Watiln : rrlbuno^ quo, aeloo < 4F1 Kl&rxenu* au &ut< gouvrnment dea Sovii fRANCC IHARTRES F ONE JEUNE FIUE 'nm'itr 3f daos ic i u\o pcnsionnaifc ucousw our s'acUeitiT i KM troti n:f Lurcp (iu'\>ri I'avai. ._ . , ; qu&At at) ti I Iricpryman . V. arc * ^''1 rtn !<'***' -; >UVk