The Saint Paul globe., 1905-01-08
!. Very well; I must leave you.'

" ely WSll, IIluSl leave you.
How soon p
just as soon as convenient. I am
in no great hurry, but I must try for
myself. And so did,
It's no use going on with the rest
OF the Pearson career. Whoever reads
this T1t-Bits page of 1t can construct
the rest of it for himself, for it is all
off the same piece.
1t is worth While to stop for mo-
ment, however, to tell one or two
stories of the foundation of Pearson's
Weekly. The young man had it pretty
Well sketched out in his mind before
he asked his employer for that raise in
pay and was at work on it before he
had been out of the Tit-Bits office for
twenty-four hours. He spent the next
four weeks travelling about the coun-
try visiting news agents and scribbling
copy on his knee in the train. He got
$4,000 capital on the strength of the
reputation he had made with Tit-Bits,
and came out with the first number of
Pearson's Weekly, most of which he
had written himself, just one month
and two days from the time he had
left Newnes.
1t was the same kind of paper as
Bits, but was alive with all sorts
OF circulation making ideas, and boom
ed from the Start-boomed so much in
fact, that larger plant was needed in
a few months and more capital re-
quired. Not only was the extra capi-s
tai not forthcoming, however, but the
original investor suddenly found him
self pressed for funds and asked for
the return of the whole of his capital.
1t was a critical moment for the young
editor, but hustle did it, and in few
Gays ne had his supporters paid off in
full and the necessary new capital
raised.
A Too Successful Scheme
Another episode in the career of
Fearson's Weekly arose from the pro-
prietors invention of the missing
word competition, which popped into
his mind one day when he was corerct-
ing proof and trying to guess what
word it was that had been left out of q
sentence.
why not print the paragraph as it
it, said he to himself, "and let the
readers guess the word, Sending in a
shilling each with the clipping from
the paper with the understanding that
every one who guesses the right word
shall have an equal share in the total
sum received
1t is the kind of thing that has been
worked to death since, but it caught
on then in an extraordinary fashion.
The circulation jumped from a quarter
of million copies in a week to one
million and a quarter. The pages had
to, be stereotyped and printed in half
dozen cities to keep up with the de-
mand. The sales agents were fairly
mobbed. In some cases single copies
brought 25 to SO cents each. An enor-
nous staff had to be added. Printers
had to be paid overtime. Advertise
ment rates. which were profitable at
the normal circulation, could not be
made to go up with the increased ex-
penses.
BY the time the paper had paid out
nearly million dollars in prizes it was
discovered that the boom was bringing
ip loss instead of profits, and it was
probably a relief to Mr.. Pearson
that the courts stepped in at this time
to decree that the whole thing was in
the nature of lottery 1t is worthy
of note that after the competition
stopped the circulation of the paper
dropped to only what it would have
been anyway at the normal rate of in
crease, while the competition cost the
inventor something like 100000.
Pearson's Weekly proved itself gold
mine, however, and enabled its pro-
prietor to start, one after another, the
string of Weeklies and monthlies he
now owns. One or two of them proved
to be failures, but most of them sue
SCCuCo7 ~ w Sti stiic1l 1Oui y cstIS7 dSO MI
Pearson was rich and powerful enough
to venture on the most expensive game
in the world-the establishment of u
metropolitan daily.
The Daily Express didn't pay at
first" said Mr.. Pearson. TT had
pretty hard fight, but it kept on grow
ing, SO kept on fighting, until it be-.
came success. My rule, if l find
thing does not grow, is to drop it at
once / would much rather have an
other dash at something else than keep
on fogging dead horse. If the pub