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"Keep your eye on John Randolph Hearst"—were the words five years ago of John K. Winkler, the one man who has had the temerity to write a book on The Chief.* At 23, Son John ("Jack") is also already a divorce, also remarried. At 19 he was president of The Stuyvesant Co. which holds Hearst's Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, Home & Field, Connoisseur (& International Studio). Then he was moved to the vice-presidency of International Magazine Co. (Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Motor, Motor Boating, American Architect, American Druggist}. He did so well that last autumn his father tried him in a new role—understudy to General Manager Thomas J. White of all Hearstpapers. His current task: administrative economies. Of all the sons, John, a blond six-footer who looks something like his father and something like Britain's Prince George— shows most of The Chief's shrewdness and business sense. As a youngster he used to apportion his allowance to cover special treats, while "Bill" usually spent all of his the first day. His office walls are hung with stuffed sailfishes and drawings of ravishing women which have graced the pages of Cosmopolitan. Also on the walls is framed a three-page telegram addressed to John R. Hearst. It begins: THERE ONCE WAS A LAD AND THE NAME THAT HE HAD WAS EITHER JOHNNY OR JIMMY AND AT ANY RATE HIS REGULAR STATE WAS A CHRONIC CONDITION OF GIMME VERY SELDOM HE WROTE HIS FATHER A NOTE BUT WHENEVER HE DID GOOD GRACIOUS OLD KING COLE THAT MERRY OLD SOUL WHO ASKED FOR HIS PIPE AND ASKED FOR HIS BOWL HAD NOTHING ON JOHN IN THE ASKING ROLE DONT FANCY MY TALE FALLACIOUS. . . etc. For 500 words the doggerel went on, ending with assurance that John might have what he had asked for. It was signed "Pop."
The estate to which the sons will fall heir, no man can appraise. No publisher in history has had such an inexhaustible treasure to draw from. To the vast cattle lands and mines amassed by his father, including the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, richest in the U. S.,* Hearst has added other mines in Peru, mines and oil in Mexico, rich real estate in Manhattan, Chicago, San Francisco; a castle in Wales and warehouses full of antiques. His newspapers alone were worth over $100,000,000 in 1929. But in 1930 William Randolph Hearst, who had never had to consider anything but his own will where money was concerned, began to sell preferred stock in some of his newspapers to the public—and is still selling it. Whatever the real reason for his seeking other people's money (perhaps to make inheritance simpler), the fact alone was significant as a break in the tradition of a rich individualist.