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Despite its still cautious phraseology, the Times often clearly speaks its mind under Sulzberger and Merz. The editorial page has taken a consistent and strong editorial position in favor of the U.S.'s meeting its international responsibilities (e.g., the Marshall Plan). In 1938, in an outspoken editorial called "A Way of Life," the Times said that World War II was coming and that the U.S. would—and should—be involved. The Times also abandoned its traditional "independent Democratic" leanings to support Willkie in 1940, Dewey in 1948. Says Publisher Sulzberger, a registered Democrat: "I wish we could be just 'independent.' "
The Times was also pronouncedly anti-Zionist. Sulzberger's position, which he still holds, was that Judaism is a matter of religion, not nationality, and he thought an American ought to feel that way even though he was (as Sulzberger is) a Jew.
Such departures from the Ochs policy of neutral editorials have troubled Publisher Sulzberger, and he once confided to his wife, "I'm not sure I'm not ruining the Times; we're constantly taking positions." Mrs. Sulzberger advised him to go right on taking them. But the mere fact that Sulzberger was worried showed how long a shadow Adolph Ochs still casts over the Times.
Pattern in Cloth. Adolph Ochs was a small man with an impressive leonine head, an even more impressive manner. Often arbitrary and dictatorial, he was also kindly, paternalistic, full of fun, and he had confidence in Adolph Ochs. Born in Cincinnati, he became a printer at the age of 17. At 20, he bought a half-interest in the Chattanooga Times for $250, built it into such a profitable paper in the next 18 years that he decided to expand.
The New York Times looked like the place. Founded in 1851 by a young (31), black-bearded politician named Henry Jarvis Raymond, who later helped found the Republican Party, the Times flourished until Raymond died. Later it went deeply into debt, by 1896 was losing more than $2,000 a week. Armed with a letter of recommendation from President Grover Cleveland (which he had obtained simply by writing the President and requesting it), Ochs went to New York and bought control of the Times for $75,000. By cutting the price from 2¢ to a penny, he tripled circulation in a year.
Not long after, in 1904, Adolph Ochs made an even smarter move: he lured Night Editor Carr V. Van Anda of the New York Sun to become managing editor on the New York Times. In the next 25 years, Ochs and Van Anda made newspaper legend. It was Ochs who had set the basic pattern: "All the News That's Fit to Print." It was Van Anda, one of the great managing editors of U.S. journalistic history, who cut the cloth to the pattern. When Van Anda finally retired because of ill health in 1932 (he died in 1945), the Times was a great paper.