Racing News King New "Notorious Publisher"
LANGHORH, VICTOR
Racing News King New "Notorious Publisher" Annenberg Built Empire on StrongArm Circulation (This is the first in a eerie* ef four articles on M. L. A nnenberg^. newest major United States...
...Ho offered $35,000,000 in cash...
...Old and tired, a veteran of half a century of journalistic wan, Hearst has thrown up the ghost and has retired to the goldfish bowl privacy of his magnificent California kingdom, leaving the running of his newspaper empire in the capable hands of Joseph Vincent Connolly...
...KEEP CORPORATIONS MOM RAIDING LATIN-AMEMtCA TRUE, there are differences between the expropriation of na* t'ona 1 resources and the condemnation of an outworn transit system that couldn't pay taxes, bat there are also many similarities between the two actions...
...It is the mental and spiritual plight of our people, rather than the easily corrected carelessness of our broadcasters, which should command the attention of both social psychologists and statesmen...
...His determination was expressed in the speech at Chapel Hill, S. C, this week...
...Conceivably, the CAS...
...Definitely...
...shell help Mexico to market it...
...And no one ever made it work before or since...
...And oor first shock came when little Salvador flaunted her feelings about it by a bow to Berlin aad Rome and the recognition of Manchukuo...
...The mildest form of mass hysteria is the panic which occurs frequently among soldiers and is well understood by military men...
...RACING NEWS BUILDS WEALTH W7ITH the tremendous growth of legalised " racing, Annenberg soon started identical papers in every town in which a' race track operated...
...But EI Salvador is more independent...
...The Hearst papers attacked the New Deal in vitriolic editorials...
...So one ever had the newspaper business tagged more correctly than that...
...When nature attacks with storm and flood, the radio is or should be the first to warn and to guide the work of rescue...
...newest major United States publisher, who threatens to take over the journalistic niche filled by William Randolph Hearst.—Editor's Note...
...Knowing horse players to be*inveterate "suckers" who hold to the quaint notion that they can beat the ponies for any length of time they wish, he made his papers -so.indispensable to them that to wager on the ponies without a Forum would be like having a theological student showing up at college without a Bible...
...Ho lias libel serfs galore against Mm...
...You must agree," they are prepared to say to the United States delegation, "to control some of your great capitalistic forces/and you must agree, as a government, not to back up those capitalistic forces in any quarrel they may have with us...
...Undoubtedly the preceding September crisis provided the tinder for the explosion of Halloween...
...And now she has gone farther...
...The "War of the Worlds" panic demonstrated the existence of a profound mass fear, tension and psychic fatigue...
...Score one for Germany in the trade and economic war now looming against the United States...
...When he was still a small lad, he sold newspapers...
...What types of behavior did they exhibit and vhat would seem to have been their conscious and unconscious motivations ? general conclusions can be drawn concerning the susceptibility to panic of the American masses and what are reasons for this susceptibility during this period...
...the Annenberg fortune, the bankroll behind his magazines and newspapers...
...ONE Sunday night" recently, the American radio signals were completely blotted out by the Nazi-Fascist radio stations, all declaring that when out great corporations become active hi South America, they do nothing but suck the profits out, leaving the common people impoverished and helpless...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Unlike most people, he did something about it...
...This, of course, will occasion a lot more heart-burning in the breasts of those who feel that they hare some special rights...
...Roosevelt was the "savior of the nation," "another Abraham Lincoln," "a tolerant, kindly soul who would lift the burden of depression from the shoulders of the country...
...They reached an especial intensity during the centuries when Europe was being, scourged by great plagues like the Black Death...
...Severe manifestations if mass hysteria in other centuries have included convulsions lasting twenty-four hours, the eating of live coals, the crucifixion of young girls, dancing manias, nymphomaniac and masochistic practices, voluntary confessions as to compacts made with the devil, these being followed by torture and death by fire...
...The distrust of American motives has permeated Central America...
...But this one example Of Standard OR and Mexico shows, what the Latin-American governments mean when they .say that before they east fully cooperate with as fat defense against Germany, Italy and Japan, we must dean Bp our own he use...
...In collaboration with a group of Chicagoans, he bought control of the Form...
...Badio is not primarily a medium of entertainment...
...A thorough-going inquiry would attempt to answer questions like the foregoing...
...Are there resemblances between what Welles <nd inadvertently and what Hitter and others have done denherately...
...Evidence of this began to appear during the Czech crisis, when radio's lavish coverage of the news became too much for the nerves of the more tender-minded listeners...
...In this series, written under a pao-nama by a man wbo worked for Annenberg far years, the history of the now threat to 4mericen civil liberties Is revealed...
...Radio censorship would scarcely alter the "state of grace" in which many, if not most, of the panic victims were probably formed...
...Epilogue to Panic: Mass Fear Gives Rise to' Hysteria f.-Bw JAMES RORTY AND ¦ iSlilFRED RAUSHENBUSH * jjj jt true that on the night beBaSjsSa Halloween, young Orson I 4re8es and his Mercury Theatre afiS troupe rode the air on H. ells' ancient thriller, "The fffljnr of the Worlds," and scared • mn* thousands or tens of thouIzSjjb of people out of their H Is it true that during that mwl half hour mass hysteria I Isied up all over America, the ''"prof the world seemed at hand, mi in more than one instance people enacted scenes whose like i ms scarcely been witnessed since jag Plague Years of the Middle S-TTes, it really happened, despite ft* determined will-to-forget of the radio industry and its trade press which by this time amounts almost to amnesia...
...The propaganda war is now on in dead earnest...
...It's bred in the bones of the people...
...Max, was head of the circulation department of the Tribune...
...The laws of a sovereign nation, Mexico, provide for the expropriation of the oil fields...
...And a swosbbeckting chainnewspaper owner he is— dnaenberg has^nillions in cosh to smash Ms opponents...
...Many millions of Americans believe that we should do the same thing here...
...From the Herald and Examiner he rose to circulation chief of all the Hearst paper?, then to circulation chief of the Hearst magazines, and finally to publisher of the fledgling New York Daily Mirror...
...The really significant statement the President mads was this: "What I would emphasize is the maintenance of successful democracy at home...
...Second, there are in general two kinds of mass hysteria...
...At any event, when President Roosevelt spoke of external affairs and placed the emphasis on successful democracy at home, he served notice that special interests in this country will no longer be permitted to interfere with the democratic processes of other nations...
...The point appears to be—and all our brighter newspaper and magazine columnists grasped it —that wherever there is too much insecurity there is likely to be mass hysetria, and where there is mass hysteria, the fascist savior will also appear...
...When the devasating Chicago wars were halted (mainly by the violent crystallizing of public opinion), Moe was looked upon as a promising man in the Hearst organization...
...Welles was inesstioas when he needled the original story with simulated news broadcasts, local place names, and other realistic radiotheatric devices...
...In apparent defiance of Washington, El-Salvador has agreed to let Italy train an air corps for her, and it is now reported that eighteen Italian aviators, with experience in Ethiopia and Spain, have now arrived...
...But the fears and tensions go much further back—to the beginning of the depression at last...
...And he was on his way...
...In all but the last named town a Form was issued daily...
...little is ever likely to be...
...Also, spasmodically, there crops up the conviction that the end of the world is at hand...
...Roosevelt will now probably be charged with traitorous conduct toward "American interests...
...The city of Chicago was turned into an armed camp by the Annenberg forces of the Hearst papers and the Annenberg forces of the Tribune, for Moses' brother...
...Yes," they say, "we will gang up with you against Germany, Italy and Japan, but first you must set your own house in order...
...There win be secret discussions about it at Lima...
...HYSTERIA ACCOMPANIES SOCIAL STRAINS A LMOST all students of the phenomena agree on two points: First, it is not only the hysterical individuals in a society who are affected by mass hysteria...
...and above all, the Form was accurate...
...While at the top, the bloody circulation wars between the Hearst papers and the McCormick-Patterson-owned Chicago Tribune broke out...
...Post-war Germany, of course, accumulated terrible strains...
...Nevertheless, President Roosevelt is determined to push "good neighborliness" as a practical matter, and if this entails some restrictions on the Home Guard, so macs the worse for the Home Guard...
...It> is our nwst powerful instrument of .mass-communication, geared very closely to the business of surviving and governing in these times — pai-ticularly governing...
...Gathering about him the best horse experts available, Annenberg soon had the Form a highly respected trade paper -for horse players.' Past performances were..reduced to an exact science...
...In other words, the United States Government must agree to refrain from taking a "big-shot" attitude toward La tin-American governments which expropriate for public ownership the natural resources of their own lands which have been developed by North American capital...
...crack handicappers made selections on a scientific basis for the first time...
...In the process of building up a gigantic circulation unit, Annenberg amassed considerable wealth, for Hearst ever has paid highly for people who produce for him...
...Is it possible, be...
...The October 30th panic, on the other hand, was a direct result of social strain...
...Welles has performed a certain service, and people intelligent enough not to sneer at the phenomenon may learn a great deal from it...
...And now, to capture the full significance of this attitude, place the statements alongside of reported developments at Lima, where the Pan-American Conference, soon to open, will seek to develop a solid bloc of Western Hemisphere nations against Nazism, Fascism and Communism...
...SEARCH FOR A SUCCESSOR POR almost half a century he had molded * public opinion to his own needs (even going so far as to start -the Spanish-American War in order to gain more circulation for the New York Evening Journal), but this time public opinion did not follow his editorials...
...In Cincinnati, Annenberg publishes the American Racing Record, a standard eight-column racing paper...
...For example, there are the oil wells of Mexico, and there is the probability of Chilean expropriation of nitrate fields and of copper and tin mines...
...It happened in 1832 in Germany, where some people entered upon no new business transactions for a year, since they believed the earth was about to be destroyed by collision with a comet...
...ALTHOUGH the literature of mass hysteria is voluminous, it has never been examined with anything resembling completeness by social scientists...
...While still on the right side of thft>tv, he...
...The same thing would happen in other Latin-American nations if we are to permit out "American interests" to interfere with the domestic programs of Latin-America...
...Is the military danger actually present...
...Inadvertently, Mr...
...What followed, still ranks as the most foul period in American journalism: it presaged gangsterism and made Chicago as lawless as a California mining town of 1860...
...It happened in 1736, when following a prediction by a man named Whiston, great crowds gathered to witness the destruction of London, which was to be the beginning of the end, an event satirized by Swift...
...that provoked by indivduals and that provoked by severe social strains...
...censor might have foremen what might happen when an excitable person tuned in celd on what seemed like an announcement by the "Secretary of the Interior" that the army had lam wiped out...
...Washington is thinking this business over rather snxiously...
...Many ef the seen who helped build Ret vast prepf nder - mmmmBMtkt§ empire — radio, movies, aad the press — tram which he has mode millions, ore feae...
...This happened in Europe as early as the year 999, when thousands of people trekked to Jerusalem, and fell on their knees in terror whenever there came a clap of thunder or a shooting star...
...They say that if we agree to that policy, then we are agreeing to abandon defense of American interests...
...Three or four minutes after the result of the race is official, he is told what prices the horses paid...
...but it is worth pointing out that there was a deeper significance, internationally speaking, in what he said, and the time he said it, than appears upon the surface...
...Watson committed selclde, and Moo dnnooboro, king phi of the racing news wire service...
...The Hearst star was at its zenith when - his papers, almost single-handed, made President Herbert Hoover the biggest laughing stock in the land and shoved young Franklin Delano Roosevelt into the White House in 1932...
...However, with all the sales, combinations and leasing of newspaper properties, the Hearst chain still has some strength and might once more regain the pinnacle...
...Some of them, especially the women, were advised by their physicians to stop, listening...
...All of Latin-America is watching to see what Washington dews for the Standard Oil Company in Mexico...
...Our great corporations, which have invested In Latin-America (and of course have drawn out enormous profits, which have not - been shared by the.people who live in those lamas and sera the resources), thane great corporations have always counted upon Washington "to protect their special, almost Divine rights...
...VUILUAM RANDOLPH HEARST is aw old men with a lose yellow josrnalistic eoreer behind him...
...Of course, this service extends from border to border and from coast to coast, dragging in the most gaudy stream of gold any publisher in the world ever received...
...result charts were enlarged and clarified...
...But Washington mast not protect them so lovingly any more, the Latin-American governments say, if we expect them to help us...
...As business increased, he immediately expanded...
...Tlse-mmm fact is that both are fait accompli...
...ABOUT a month ago Orson Wallas, a young theatrical producer, broke lata international headlines by searing the United States out of its ¦igbfelofbos by broadcasting H. G. Well's War of the Worlds...
...On the other hand, the "news" taaouncements spoke of meteors that unscrewed to reveal Martian monsters, who, in another few aJprnS) were straddling the Pulaski Highway with their war uk*1'"" The telescoped time sequence alone should have tipped off any average listener, and if he was still worried, why didn't he tone in another station, since if this country were really being invaded, there would be nothing on the ah* but news ? • • • OUTLINE 0* QUESTIONS (VUB social psychologists have ^ a windfall and should not lisjhny he forgiven if they fail to 4Mb advantage of it...
...i-> Mexico might point even to New York City, where tit* am* nit-ipahty has condemned the Sixth Avenue elevated line over the objections of many stockholders, and Mexico might say: "Washington seeks to deny to us the privileges exercised by s United States city...
...MINDS READY FOR PANIC BIOLOGICALLY, and psycho" logically, we moaerns resemble closely our primitive ancestors, and our world is if anything more perilous than their world was...
...It is...
...probably to the last war...
...U.S...
...It will occasion more and still bitterer attacks on the administration...
...But whereas the shriek of the ape-sentry or the beat of the tribal drums carried only a few miles, the radio can galvanize a continent in a few seconds, since our simian reflexes are still excellent...
...It may have escaped the attention of many that there was a connection between the President's utterances there and the gathering of the Pan-American Conference at Lima, Peru, but the connection was there all the same...
...His brilliance, ruthlessness, and uncanny business sense soon enabled him to climb to the top...
...believed, created, and spread the panic...
...Nationwide, or as it is now known, the General News Bureau, leases wires into all major United States tracks but New York and transmits over telephone wires descriptions of races, entries, selections and results with lightning-like rapidity...
...GANGSTERISM BUILDS ANNENBERG ^*RUCKS were turned over, drivers beaten * until they were maimed for life, newsbeys were crippled, the innocent public was hooliganized—all in the interests of more Circulation...
...The day after radio's Halloween, Senator Clyde Herring of Iowa announced that he would introdfljb a bill in Congress providing for what amounted to radio censorship...
...He went out and earned money...
...that would be a denial of Mexico's right to act as a sovereign' nation...
...To all practical purposes, an Italian air base has now been established in El Salvador in Central America, where the people have long been embittered against us because of our military interference in Salvador's neighbor, Nicaragua...
...How many people were scared ? How do they classify socially and psychologically, as well as by age, as and sophistication level ? Did they take fright at first band from hearing the broadcast, or were they infected by the psriTof others...
...the contagion also spreads to normal" individuals...
...Very definitely there...
...This interference, by special American interests, is the very point that is stressed by the propaganda agencies of Germany, Italy and Japan in the present struggle of the Nazi-Fascist bloc to win certain important South American nations to their side of the coming showdown...
...Radio, served by all the great press associations, gives us not only the news, but the event itself, the sound of history in the making...
...SALESMANSHIP" AT ITS "BEST" •T'HERE is one man, however, big enough, * cold enough, ruthless enough to make the chain a paying proposition again...
...El Salvador is acquiring tile Italian Caproni planes...
...Looking about for some business in which to invest his new-gotten wealth, Annenberg hit upon the Chicago Racing Form...
...By proving the contrary, Mr...
...But it must be done, as a United States defensive measure...
...They have occurred in cloisters and schools subsequent to fasting and other ascetic and masochistic practices...
...Of course, * there still are small signs of life in ttte body, but the Master of San Simeon Is definitely on his way out...
...Justice Cardozo—the kind of change to meet new social and economic needs through recognised processes of government...
...Mm...
...But to step to the top again, a shrewd, ruthless, and daring head for the vast organization must be found to man the helm when the Master passes on...
...owns too RepabJlcan Party of Pennsylvania and recently tried Oo bay the Mow York Tribune so rear he eoaJd crash the Now York CHy fold...
...Powerful financial interests in the United States want protection against NaziFascism in the Western Hemisphere, but they are not likely to smile very sweetly over the price Hispanic-America will ask them to pay...
...We must make the -Good Neighbor Policy" a practice as wsfl as a statement...
...Sitting in a New York poolroom, a horse player now can know instantly the odds -on his horse, when that horse reaches the post, where he is running at each stage of the race, and whether he has come in among the first three...
...By VICTOR LANGHORH "THE Hearst empire ia dead...
...Such interference would be dangerous in the extreme...
...When it is taken into consideration that in the summer of 1937 the State's Attorney in Chicago said there were 7,500 "bookie joints operating with GNB service, which costs from $100 to $500 weekly, the tremendous revenue of Annenberg became apparent...
...That's what all the Hearst papers screamed before the New Deal head took office...
...He did refer to the external policies, but always he reverted to the maintenance of successful democracy at home...
...Something of the sort happened in 1926 in England immediately after the general strike, when one Father Cox broadcast a thriller describing an imaginary Communist insurrection...
...went to work in the circulation department of the Hearst papers in Chicago...
...Not even these interests, themselves, can afford to have LatinAmerican nations open the doors to Nazi-Fascist economy, and possibly the military...
...On the surface, the speech was an exposition of the President's aims, delivered with all the finesse and timing that we have come to associate with the President's radio personality...
...First it was newsstands, then a string of newsstands, then the dealership of Chicago papers, and finally the papers themselves...
...Social scientists writing in the field of mass hysteria have been assuming that major hysterias were no longer possible in contemporary society...
...There are records of thousands of such phenomena...
...One general manager after another has had the mantle of emperor thrown over his shoulders, but never for long...
...In tbo accompanying article James Rorty and Winifred Ransbenbasb look into tbo basic reasons for the ttartlinq hysteria which swept 4marica that night...
...Both have journeyed far: Moses for himself...
...Is America's new ffotorjons peblisher...
...The ears were / predisposed to believe...
...That the senior Hearst has little or no faith in his own children is evident even to the public...
...That war made bitter enemies of Moses and Max, and to this day they have not spoken to each other...
...The most spectacular of these manifestations, according to a German commentator, Willy Hellpach, occurred between 1250 and 1500, and resulted from the strains due to the disappearance the medieval way of life, and the over-stimulation causedby increased communication, discovery, and invention...
...tomorrow he'll onf-Gannett Gansett ana show Hearst ep far an amatear...
...He more than lived up to his promise...
...Offices were opened in New York, Montreal, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Cincinnati...
...That principle: "If there's only one newspaper on a newsstand, it's a cinch to sell...
...Brisbane died lost poor...
...It is GNB which is the backbone of...
...However, it seems to me that the term "Americas interests" is pretty broad...
...the Hearst magazines gave prominent space to anti-New Dealers...
...Thousands of ears believed that quite impossible things were happening in New Jersey...
...Little responsibility ever has been placed in the children's hands...
...Born of humble parents in Milwaukee, Moses Annenberg was haunted by the spectre of poverty...
...When the disaster is man-made, as in the spring of 1933, the voice, speaking with the winning accents of the President, can restore the morale of a population trembling on the edge of hysteria...
...one would not accuse Mr...
...They appear again and again in the course of wars in the train of defeat, hunger and loss of morale...
...Necessarily, democratic methods within a nation's life entail change—the kind of change through local processes described by Mr...
...For six long years, the Roosevelt star gleamed brightly in the political heavens, while the Hearst constellation was dimmed, and almost went out as paper after paper was sold to satisfy mortgages...
...Someone else must be found or the chain will go into complete oblivion...
...The most important development at Lima is this: Several of the great Latin-American countries, including Mexico and Chile—and probably backed by Brazil—have formed a bloc which will say to the United States delegation: "Yes, we will join with you in a semi-military and economic league to defeat the objectives of Germany, Italy and Japan...
...The base is only a few hours from our vital Panama Canal...
...Thus, Nationwide News Service came into being...
...I » * • AS a matter of fact, the real American democratic interests might very well lie with the governments which are expro-r prjating natural resources...
...MOST honest experts on Latin-America will tell you that our Marine invasion of Nicarague had a practical purpose, and was inspired by certain great New York banking houses...
...Soil for Nazis U. S. Trusts Embitter All Latin-America By BRYCE OLIVER News Commentator at WEVD, New York INTERNAL conflict of an intensity surpassing anything that the United States has so far experienced since the Iowa farm riots that preceded the Roosevelt era may be the consequence of Washington's "Good Neighbor Policy" in Latin-America...
...The voice of radio, issuing from big or little boxes in some 27,000,000 American homes, has acquired extraordinary authority...
...Welles and tie Columbia Broadcasting System conducted a great laboratory experiment upon the minds snd hearts of the American people...
...The thousands of stories of mothers trying to kill their babies, newspapermen ready to do and die on their last edition, national guardsmen ready for their last fight aad people smelling tbo poison gos of the Invading Martians, an familiar to tbo reading public...
...When that rift became an open break, Hearst was through...
...Today*Mae Annenberg is fast a name known to the "boys...
...These great financial interests themselves, and the newspaper columnists who see things through the eyes ef these interests, protest that what the Latin-Americans want is a one-way "Good Neighbor Policy...
...One could argue aB day ever the fine points of ethics and law involved in each action...
...It happened on October 30, 1938, when a woman in a nightgown ran out on the street in Greenwich Village, shouting that "the world is coming to an end...
...Annen berg's shrewd knowledge of the horse players' minds made him realise that some faster means of getting information from the tracks to the players than is found in the afternoon papers would pay off handsome dividends...
...Yet, these particular "American interests" are a mere handful of people...
...He is Moses L. Annenberg, the tipster extraordinary who parlayed a simple business principle into the mightiest publishing business on this side of the Atlantic...
...One must hasten to add, however, that the peculiar power of radio as a one-way instrument of emotional communication serves only in paxt to explain the phenomenon...
...cause of what we already know concerning both the nature of .¦"adse and the nature and history of mass hysteria, to make certain general observations...
...But Nazi violence is also provoked by an individual, Hitler, and his propaganda machine...
...Welles of anything more than carelessness...
...Well, as a former correspondent in some of those countries, I mast admit that there is some truth in this...
...Hearst has discarded all of them for one reason or another, leaving Joe Connolly to actively manage the estate...
...And now, while it might be possible for Washington to exercise its vast power to force Mexico to surrender to Standard Oil...
...Already, as a result of Standard Oil's economic pressure, Neighbor Mexico is selling to Germany, Italy and Japan and accepting vague promises of support from those nations . This week there came a report from Mexico City that Germany, not the United States, would build the modern oil refineries for Mexico...
...The only way to defeat the aims of the Nazi-Fascist propaganda is to make democracy work m our own country—clean up the bad spots...
...Of course, Germany takes the oil...
...But not even Connolly, popular as be is with most of the Hearstlings, is big enough to guide the mammoth chain...
...This proposal obviously comes under the head of panic reflexes, and the quicker it is forgotten the better...
...The Form was a wretched tip sheet for horse players, but Annenberg saw the possibilities of such a publication if it were properly handled...
...Max for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Company, where he now works as circulation manager of the Daily News...
...But soon a rift appeared between Roosevelt and Hearst...
...The Supreme Court of Mexico has declared the expropriation constitutional...
...The common people of Nicaragua are slow to forget, but they can do nothing to injure u« because our banks have control of the Niearaguan Government—which was insured by the Marines...
...MUST STOP PLAYING ROLE OF "BIG SHOT" THAT statement insinuated a great deal, especially when taken * in connection with the President's assertion that he was not speaking of the external policies of the United States...
...American interests" implies the interests of all Americans...
Vol. 21 • December 1938 • No. 50
