Evening star., 1935-12-01
BY the Associated Press.

by bH0 hboUClhtCo EACSo'
CHICAGO, November 30-Victor
Fremont Lawson had an audience of
nearly half million newspaper read
ers and threw the world on screen"
but it was said he himself remained
invisible.
This week, however, a full-length
word portrait of the famous Chicagoan
who with Melville E. Stone founded
the Associated Press and for 40 years
was publisher Of the Chicago Daily
News, is presented by Charles H. Den
mis-, his associate as editor for 40 years.
Dennis biography will be published
Tuesday by the University Of Chicago
Press, under the title Victor Lawson
His Time and His Work"
Dennis honors this extraordinarily
modest man" as a newspaper man who
led in bringing on new day of
spacious, self-reliant, self-respecting
journalism" In offering Lawson's life
story Dennis calls the publishers
career of public Usefulness" a power
full rebuttal to the belief that the
press has "sordid motives and unclean
methods"
The News was published somewhere
on Fifth avenue, behind a tree, when
in July of 1875 its editor, young Mel
vile E. Stone, came to Lawson for
rescue.
Debts were so heavy it was doubtful
If the newspaper, seven months old
and the first penny newspaper in the
West, would live to tell another story.
Lawson, who was "a. assumed its
debts over the misgivings of the Law
son family lawyer, who thought it
bad investment. At Lawson's death in
1925 his paper brought what was re-
putedly the highest price ever paid
for an American newspaper.
Dennis gives the figure as $13,671,-
704.30, and says higher bids were re-
jected. From 1866 copies the News
had come to have, under Lawson, the
largest circulation of any newspaper
in the country
Lawson retained Stone, later gen.
eral manager Of the Associated Press,
as his editor, ard each took out $25
q "CCA 4Ol odldl oLoO 44d0 a
one-third interest in the profits, and
sold his interest to Lawson IL years
later for $350,000.
Lawson paid Stone another 100000
for his promise not to engage In the
newspaper business in Chicago for 10
years. AS Stone prepared to sail for
Europe a few months later Lawson
IL
II feel ashamed. Chicago needs
you
Then Lawson tore up the contract.
He would not accept a refund, how
ever, of the 100000.
Automatic typewriters clicking so
Words a minute; bulletin news from
all corners of the world-these COM
monplace marvels of the modern
newspaper are part of Lawson's fame.
1t was Lawson who led small group
Of fellow publishers in a successful
revolt against private distribution of
news, an uprising which ended in the
creation of the Associated Press.
He was officially entitled founder
of the Associated Press" by its di-
rectors after his death.
Middle Western newspapers traded
news through a cooperative system,
but the principal source of Eastern
news, in the middle COS, was private
concern.
When the mid-Western publishers
found it impossible to make terms
with the Eastern organization, Lawson
led them into battle. Dennis, telling
this story from Lawson's letters, calls
it 1.-The fight for the democracy of
the press"
"A corporation organized for profit
." Dennis says of the Eastern
men, "set out to monopolize the news
service of the American press.
Its clients, the newspapers, were
to have no voice in its affairs"
There were towering figures behind