The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-07-15
Lord Northcliffe Started
 Career As An Office Boy

From office boy to noble and multi 1 millionaire is a rise in the world that | would be sneered at as wildly improb- Alger or Henty novel. Yet truth is occasionally stranger than fiction, and the career of Lord Northcliffe, the Napoleon of British journalism,
 embraces just such rise Alfred Harmsworth, who was destined to fevoiutionize London newspaper meth
 ods and to earn for himself the right | to be addressed as HYour Lordship
 and the ability to write a check for ten millions and see it honored, was | July IS. 1865, { in Chapelized,s county Dublin, Ireland. His father was AL fred Harmsworth, a barrister. Young Harnsworth was given grammar school education, and disnissing the law as profession without future, decided to become a journalist.
 Thirty years ago, at the age of sev- enteen, the ambitious lad entered the office of the Illustrated London News as office boy and general factotum. From the first the business aroused his enthusiasm and in a few months
 he was telling the editors how the paper should be run--which was en- tirely different from the manner in which it was conducted. His ideas | were startling original which was | press had not then escaped from the trammels of tradition. HarmSWorth worked harder than any other person on the staff, but his efforts were not appreciated, and when he left his sal ary was still counted in shillings rath- CT than pounds.
 Tit-Bits, a cheap literary journal ap- pealing to the masses, was Harms worths next connection. There he was confined to routine office work, ! which galied his daring spirit At ] twenty-three he had saved few pounds from his slender pay envelopes, and determined to embark in a pub | fishing business of his own. He start 1 ed a wekely paper called Answers, and had just sufficient capital to pay for 1 the printing of the initial number. i For a day or two he went without l food. until Answers caught on and money began to flow into the office. The weekly publication, while fair | ly profitable from the first, did not afford a sufficient field for the display 1 wanted a daily newspaper, and in 1894 he bought the London Evening 1 News. Immediately that dreary sog- gy. water-logged journalistic craft felt
 I the thrill of life along it's keel. In ! the Daily Mail, morning sheet, he l further developed his plans, and gave 1 the English reading public a paper that was bright newsy and entertain l ing without being sensational Before l Harmsworth's time, London dailies were either slow, conservative and 1 dry-as-dust, or tawdry, sensational 1 and vulgar. Harmworth supplied the l happy medium and gained prestige 1 and influence that soon made him one of the foremost men of England. l The owners of more newspapers and l magazines than one could name in so brief an article, a member of the peer age, an influence in English politics, the possessor of fortune running 1 well up into the millions of pounds all of these things and more Lord Northcliffe accomplished on capf- taI that would hardly buy a dinner in a bon ton restaurant, and in the brief l est space of time on record for such monnentous achievement.