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The institution of a central printing service to boiler-plate all but the local news for many little country papers was started when country editors found them selves short-handed due to enlistments in the Civil War. This simple and effective idea was too good to die with the surrender at Appomattox. Various printing &; publishing "unions" were nourishing through out the Midwest when in 1878 a shrewd Vermonter named George A. Joslyn arrived in Omaha to establish a branch of Iowa Printing Co. Two years later he reorganized this branch under the corporate name of Western Newspaper Union. Ten years later George A. Joslyn was president, general manager and principal stock holder of a prosperous syndicate concern. As a lucrative sideline, he sold '"Big-G," a specific for venereal disease. There were many competitors in the country-paper syndicate field, but by 1917 Western News paper Union had absorbed or outstripped all but one. In that year W.N.U. paid $500,000 to rival American Press Association for its plate, mat and photographic service. In consideration of a yearly royalty, American Press Association was to stay out of the country weekly syndicate business for 20 years. The agreement expires in September 1937.
When Founder Joslyn died in 1916. he left the business to his widow, Omaha's famed art patron Sarah Selleck Joslyn. In 1929 she in turn handed W. N. U. over to its executives, most of whom had worked for her husband all their business lives. This deal was brought about by Airs. Joslyn's taking $4,000,000 in cash from the company's $5,000,000 surplus and $1,000,000 in stock from its $6,300,000 capitalization.
Today Western Newspaper Union supplies the features for nine out of ten U. S. weekly newspapers. This material is poured into the weeklies in three different ways: by supplying fibre matrices, which the publisher casts himself; by supplying stereotyped plates already cast: and finally, for extremely lazy or short-handed publishers, by supplying sheets of newsprint with the material already printed on one or both sides.
Local editors have the choice of hundreds of features, including articles on cooking, business, sport, fashions, religion, travel, a "This Week" column assembled from Arthur Brisbane's "Today." Also available are such standard entertainers as Hearst-throbber Kathleen Norris, Funnymen H. I. Phillips, Irvin S. Cobb. columns of Broadway gossip and Hollywood chitchat, "semi-news" stories, an endless assortment of comic strips and photographic layouts.
In charge of selecting this mass of material at W. N. U.'s Chicago editorial headquarters is spectacled Wright A. Patterson. On his judgment nearly 11,000 little editors depend. Editor Patterson provides three editorial services on the New Deal: pro, con and middle-of-the-road.