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The beard has earned for Bob Scripps a good deal of raillery, which he quietly relishes. Driving across the U. S.,* he says, he one day neglected to shave. For amusement he "let it grow," toyed with it from week to week. Amusement it may have been at the start; but the beard is now becoming part of the grave, punditical figure which Publisher Scripps suggests as he pens learned treatises on economics. Once more the organization is getting an Old Man. Something in the atmosphere of the Scripps-Howard offices suggests that this was necessary, that the subordinates feel that Partner Howard's flair has unduly (though unconsciously) eclipsed Partner Scripps's sterling worth. Howard for a story—yes—but Scripps for a policy. The order of their names in the partnership will probably be increasingly justified in the public mind.
Most men working in the Scripps-Howard organization find difficulty in defining where one of their chiefs leaves off and the other begins. Officially, Scripps is president, controlling stockholder (he inherited the 40% ownership from his father) and editorial director. If imagination be stretched he could discharge his good friend Howard, second-biggest stockholder or General Manager Hawkins, third biggest. (The rest is distributed throughout the chain.) But neither aspires to be a dictator. To almost everyone in the company they are "Bob" and "Roy" (Howard particularly feels embarrassment at being "mistered"). Of the two Roy Howard, as everyone knows, is the dyed-in-wool reporter, the scoopster, the man who wants to be where everything is going on—and is. (Last week he returned from a holiday in Havana. Scripps was at his Ridgefield, Conn, estate named "Kinderwall"—"Woods of the Little Children.") Howard is the more inventive; Scripps is the balance wheel that keeps him from wild tangents.
Old Man Scripps once said: "I'm going to have my troubles with Bob, but . . . when he gets his stride, he will be more like me than either Jim or John."
At that time Bob was twelve—gangling, stoopshouldered and over six feet tall. His father had retired from business, entrusted the newspaper management to the late James G., eldest son. From the age of 17 Bob Scripps was either working on a Scripps paper, traveling and studying, or learning directly from his father. When Old Man Scripps died in 1926, Bob was not only qualified to carry on but had fulfilled his father's prediction: he was most like him. He has lived up to the admonition embodied in a letter by Old Man Scripps when the latter embarked on the yachting cruise from which he was not to return:
"I should prefer that you should succeed in being in all things a gentleman, according to the real meaning of the word, than that you should vastly increase the money value of the estate. Being a gentleman, you cannot fail to devote your whole mind and energy to the service of the plain people who constitute the vast majority of the people of the United States."
*He has several cars, usually drives a Mercedes, never takes a chauffeur. Roy Howard, impulsive and impatient, is a "terrible driver," rarely takes the wheel of his Minerva or Locomobile.