The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1905-08-13
Ho0v Mcclure Non HIS NV Up

icy. staid, dignified. conservative and
uninteresting. 1t is yet for that matter
Mcclure suggested an advertising
scheme for the magazine far out of line
with its policy. The powers that-were
looked 1t over and made this sugges-
ton: You are too CLEVER they said,
''to be working for US. You ought to be
in some business of your own We viii
give you a month on full pay to look
around" Having fired Mcclure accord
ing TO the polite traditions of the office
the powers-that-Were retired again into
their shell. Mcclure stranded and with
only four weeks pay between his
family and the bread line, looked
around Within a week he had incu-
bated the Mcclure syndicate idea Most
of US remember the Mcclure syndicate
stun. 1t has had many imitators since.
In brief it consisted of buying stories.
special articles and other literary mer-
chandise from the author and selling it
for simultaneous production to as many
newspapers as would buy it. Mcclure
had no money, so he stood the authors
of for their stun. Octave Thsnet,
among others. furnished FIVE or six
stories. He could not for long time
find the money to pay her. When he
did he doubled the price originally set.
Il started the syndicate in November -
said he in talking of his ups and downs.
The following June / found that I had
$500 due me and that owed 81. 500. One
Saturday afternoon in the first year of
the syndicate had a wife and two
babies by this time-I discovered that
had not cent to tide me over Sunday
The last mail brought me a check for
80 from an obscure newspaper to which
/ had sold a story. BY the end of six
years had paid hundreds of thous-
ands Of dollars for manuscripts and had
MANAGED TO make a living and save
$4,000
For a long time Mcclure had had the
magazine idea in mind, and in 1898 with
the $4,000 capital he had saved he is
sued the first number of McClure.s
magazine. It's marvellous growth is
contemporaneous history but it was
a thin. aHaemic looking periodical then
and of the first issue of 10000 copies
only 5000 were sold. But the publisher
stuck to his last Manuscripts accurnu-
lated in the syndicate days went into
and made the magazine. 1t was in Nc
Cures that we had our first glimpse Of
Kipling, of Anthony Hope, Ian Nc
Laren, Conan Doyle and some dozens
OF others of the present English school
OF writer's Robert Louis Stevenson first
appeared to the generality of American
readers in the syndicate. Once Mcclure
went Into the north woods TO see Stew
enson about furnishing q serial story
Il should want $4,000 for such a story
said Stevenson IT am always III ex-
NEDA WHcH III dl sea ana want the
money for long sea voyage" ''I win
give you $1,000 replied Mcclure and
the contract was closed. McCIure's
magazine kept off the rocks during the
first years of it's existence only by the
most strenuous endeavor, and it was
$2S7, 900 in debt before. it made a dollar.
&E
Mcclure lives abroad ten or eleven
months of every year. Then he comes
home for a month. plans enough work
10 Keep everybody around the office
busy for a year and goes away again
In his absence Ida Tarbell is the di-
recting editorial hand of the magazine.
Miss Tarbeil is, perhaps, the best paid
woman writer in this country. She gets
a salary of $4,000 a year from Nc
Cures and has an interest in the bust
ness besides. Lincoln J. Steffens is
second in command But s. s Nc
Cure really runs the works-a plain
lndianian of Glengarry descent. who
worked his way through a fresh water
college. married on SO a week. and who
was 10 years later an z intimate of
stevenson, knew Thomas Hardy well
enough TO call him Tom" and went
TO kiphngs regularly for dinner