Hearst is making money again. The greatest vegetable growth in publishing history—which William Randolph Hearst watered with his father's fortune, wrapped in his country's flag and dunged with an unerring taste for the lowest vulgar denominator—is once more full of sap, and blossoming with green and glossy banknotes. Soon the "Hearst empire" expects to be out of hock. From Maine to California last week came the evidence:
In California, 81-year-old Publisher Hearst had moved back into his feudal barony of San Simeon, which had been dark for three years. San Simeon was not what it used to be, for Hearst had been forced to sell 165,000 acres of it to get $2 million he badly needed. But there were still 75,000 acres around the famed Enchanted Hill castle, enough to give him elbow room and privacy.
In Maine this week, busy Hearstlings were wrapping up a big newsprint deal: a $7million purchase of half a million acres of timberland, together with the most modern big pulp mill in the U.S., Maine Seaboard Paper Co.*
Out of the Mare's Nest. Like some other U.S. publishers, Hearst has been saved by the war, which shot circulation up, reduced the size of his papers, and brought him all the advertising his papers could carry. Besides sharing the general prosperity, Hearst has untangled himself from as complicated, a cat's cradle of corporate ties as ever kept a law firm out of mischief.
Five years ago both Hearst and his empire were withering on the vine. Some drastic pruning had to be done. Hearst's imperious orders to his papers ("The Chief says") were sometimes set aside by General Manager Joseph Vincent Connolly. Trustee Clarence J. Shearn, a dry little Manhattan lawyer with complete control of Hearst finances, restricted the Chief to a paltry $100,000-a-year salary. To save what was left, Shearn sold, consolidated or killed papers, and started selling off big chunks of Hearst's enormous collection of artistic junk (bought for $35 million, worth perhaps $15 million).
Now Shearn has been moved out, and Connolly is back where he came from—running Hearst's feature and wire services. A new triumvirate, all businessmen, is running the empire: Martin F. Huberth, Richard E. Berlin, John W. Hanes (onetime SECommissioner and Treasury Under Secretary). And once again old Mr. Hearst is the undisputed editor of all his papers and magazines.
Old Hands, New Face. Bald, shrewd Martin Huberth, onetime Manhattan real-estate dealer, has managed Hearst's eastern land holdings for 40 years. Dapper Dick Berlin, previously in charge only of Hearst magazines, is another old hand, who first won the friendship of Mrs. Hearst in World War I, when he was a young Naval reservist and she was doing something for the boys. The new face in the triumvirate is ruddy-cheeked, fastidious. North Carolina-born, Yale-trained Banker Hanes, 52, who joined Hearst in 1940. Wall-Streeter Hanes once defined himself as a "financial doctor" who did not ask his patient's politics before trying to make him well.