Evening star., 1931-12-13

He will cater to their lust for knowl.
edge. He makes contract with a re,
tired naval captain who has made
money in the fur business. borrow.
$4,000 from him and launches the
weekly (and still extant) Answers te
Correspondents"
Circulation starts at $4,000. In 6
I year Alfred pushes it to 10000 Their
he discovers that the crowd loves COM
petitions and prizes He offers this
new bait and 10! circulation scars in
| two months to 10000. He starts an.
other paper, and another, moves tc
larger offices, gathers young mer
around him. The money comes in fast
He takes over whole building and the
tempo quickens. paper for school.
boys is followed by paper for senti-
mental schoolgirls and boys comic
paper. Such is the beginning of the
Amalgamated Press, the worlds biggest
publishing business, now capitalized at
$40, 100000 and producing 100 different
periodicals (but no longer colony of
the Northcliffe- -Rothermere empire).
Hires Harold as Manager.
So there is brother Alfred, with his
building, his organization, his staff, his
bunch of newspapers, his money com
ing as fast and big but no one he can
trust to look after the finance and bust-
ness generally. The infant business
needs business manager Alfred thinks
OF Harold. He has a sound head. he
| is good at figures, he has all the CAL
culation the imaginative Alfred lacks.
Harold is induced to leave his safe
! niche and embark on the speculative
enterprise launched by his brother.
Thereafter you see Northcliffe supply
ing the enthusiasm, imagination and
drive and Rothermere the calculation
cold Judgment, caution and legal-finan-
cial technique. Northcliffe cared little
for money and was always jumping
into new enterprises without worrying
about the financial end. Sometimes he
got beyond his depth and Rothermere
had to do salvage work. While North
cllfte was gayly committing himself to
millions OF dollars in some new adyen-
ture, Rothermere would be counting the
nlckeS, opposing salary raises sane
toned by Alfred, cutting his brothers
lavish spending program, seeking ways
and means for pruning costs here and
doing things more cheaply there and
driving a harder bargain somewhere
else. He not only saw that profits
were made; he saw that they were in
creased.
Without Alfred. Harold would never
have achieved millionairedom, but with
out Harold, Alfred might easily have
been wrecked by his own impetuositv.
AS 1t was, his great adventure with
the Times cut deeply into his pri-
vate fortune. Rothermere would never
have had the fantastic ambition to own
the Times. The idea was one to
appeal to a journalists vanity, an
achievement to crown a career, 1t was
not business mans idea of a good
proposition. Rothermere personally
was prouder to buy a Northern proyin-
cial newspaper for around $3.50. 600
draw large income from 1t for n1any
years, and then sell it for $500 600
in bull market for newspapers.
1t was Northcliffe's aloofness from
purely business deals of this sort, along
with his concentration upon the jour-
nalistic side of his empire, that kept his
personal fortune running always on
much lower level than his brothers, de-
spite the fact that he was senior partner
and the big noise.
The story OF how these two assured
the raw paper supply of their business
Is illuminating. Rothermere is pessi-
mist. But his pessimism has its con-
structlye side. He always sees obstacles
rising and moves to circumvent them.
He Is so often upset about possible ca
tastrophes that he will start something
against the dark day, build barrier
against disaster.
Thus, while brother Alfred was payly
going ahead with his periodicals-51
had now sprung from the original seed
tconsinued On Fourth Page.l