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In advertising lineage the World-Telegram got practically all of the Evening World's. The American got the morning want ads—a juicy chunk of business. Among the others the Times seemed to show the greatest gain, the Herald Tribune, and Daily News ranking next. But the newspapers' excited advertisements in each other's pages, and the Easter trade, made all advertising figures inconclusive.
The New Figures. Extinguishing the dying Worlds brought Publishers Scripps & Howard into strong national relief. Mr. Hearst is aging; his sons are youths. Mr. Ochs and Mr. Reid are great conservative impersonalities. Mr. Curtis never has loomed as a newspaper publisher. Except for Publishers Patterson & McCormick, there are no other national newspaper personages except Chain-publishers Robert Paine Scripps and Roy Wilson Howard.
"Old Man" Scripps, like "Old Joe" Pulitzer used to wear a beard. "Bob" Scripps has been growing one since October. From a dubious trowel beard it has evolved into a handsome spade affair, Messianic full face and like Italos Balbo's in profile. Partner Howard's visage remains the same—chipmunkish, irrepressible, oriental. Quicker to read than their faces are their respective offices, high in the New York Central Building. One office (the door of which is rarely shut) is a harmony of brown oak with beamed ceiling, paneled walls, high bookshelves. The leaded panes of the windows are stained with nautical legends—fish, dolphins; a bit of an ancient maritime chart; a square rigger. A great tapestry alone adorns the walls. Here, at a massive oak desk sits the massive youngest Scripps, editorial director of 25 newspapers, amid a sombre ruggedness that seems a filial translation of the father's hardiness complex.
Farther down the hall, guarded from the main corridor by two secretarial offices, is a flaming lacquer-red door. When this door is thrown open, the scene is like the bursting of a rocket. Dazzling golds, lacquer reds and blacks provide a setting for a wealth of Chinese ornament—scrolls, silks, rare carvings, vases, a golden Buddha. The walls are papered with golden Chinese tea-paper. On the floor is a great rug of gold, red & black with a geometric pseudo-oriental pattern — designed by Publisher Howard and made in China to his order. The furniture is of lacquer red, trimmed with black. At the red desk are red dictaphone, jars of white jade for clips and pens. A circular mirror five feet in diameter, framed in red and black, hangs on the wall behind the publisher's chair.
In a small anteroom, papered in black, are a draped couch, and more oriental curios—among them an opium pipe, trophy of a police raid in Pittsburgh. Adjoining the anteroom is a spacious gold-walled lavatory, the plumbing fixtures of black porcelain. In a corner stands a lacquer red refrigerator with the motor disguised as a gold pagoda.
In neither office will be found the trophies so dear to most newspaper publishers —autographed pictures, framed letters, copies of notable editions of their newspapers. All such are stored away.
In one respect the offices fail as a reflection of their occupants. One would think, especially after seeing the beard, that Publisher Scripps is the older man. He is 35 to Howard's 48.