Fishing on his 2,000-acre ranch in the Black Hills of Wyoming, Moses Louis Annenberg heard last month that the Philadelphia Inquirer could be purchased by anyone who had a desire to own a large morning newspaper and $15,000,000 in cash. Mr. Annenberg had both. Forthwith he sent one of the five Annenberg sons-in-law to Paris to dicker with the Inquirer's socialite owners, Mme Eleanore Elverson Paternõtre and her sleek son Raymond, onetime Undersecretary of State for National Economy, member of the Chamber of Deputies and publisher of the Paris Petit Journal. Last week the deal went through. From his modest Manhattan offices, Purchaser Annenberg announced that he was taking over active control of the Inquirer at once, that he had no backers, that the Inquirer would continue a stanch Republican sheet.
Philadelphia's oldest morning daily, the Inquirer was founded in 1829 and bought by Colonel James Elverson 60 years later. Colonel Elverson's daughter, an international belle, married French Ambassador Jules Paternõtre in the 1890's, inherited the Inquirer at her brother's death in 1929, sold it within a year to Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis and his stepson-in-law John C. Martin for part cash, part credit.
Under the Curtis-Martin ownership the Inquirer started downhill to failure. Combining it with the famed old Public Ledger failed to slow its descent. In 1934 the Inquirer bounced back on the Paternõtres when the Curtis-Martin interests could no longer pay off their recurrent notes. Still carrying the old Ledger nameplate,* the Inquirer was administered for its absentee owners by Publisher Charles A. Tyler. Morning competition in Philadelphia was supplied by rambunctious New Dealer J. (for Julius) David Stern and his bustling Record (circulation: 221,927). When the Paternõtres sold out for $15,000,000 cash last week, the Inquirer had a daily circulation of 277.994, nearly 700,000 on Sundays. (Peak circulation, in 1934: 295,735.) Philadelphia newsmen guessed that the new management would oust Publisher Tyler and oldtime Editor John T. Custis, keep most of the staff.