The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

FRANK A. MUNSEY

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Fire, and The Boy Broker-which kept his magazine
alive. Denying himself everything except food (he
lived in a boarding house at $8 a week) he poured
back every dollar of his receipts into advertising and
promotion and, after five years of incessant struggle, this
indomitable Yankee found himself a pecuniary success.
By 1894, his magazines-he had changed the Golden
Argosy into an adult monthly, the Argosy, and had
founded Munsey's-were earning $70,000 a year. In
1905 the net receipts passed the million-dollar mark.
Mr. Munsey's first newspaper venture was the New
York Continent, a respectable tabloid daily. It was not
a success, and, realizing that the day of the tabloid had
not come, he discontinued it. In 1901 he bought the
Washington Times for $200,000 and the New York Daily
News for $400,000 and in 1902 the Boston Journal for
$500,000. The Daily News was a loser and he sold it in
1904. In 1908 he bought the Baltimore News for
$1,500,000 and started the Philadelphia Evcning Times.
A clihain of 500 newspapers was his drcam.
"Such economics would be effected," he wrote in the
Baltimore News, "that the highest salaries would be mere
details of business, and the product of the combined
genius of the men in control would be the most uplifting
force the world has ever known."
But the dream never approached realization. The Boston Journal was sold in 1913; the Philadelphia Evening
Times was discontinued in 1914. Mr. Munsey had not
lost his interest in newspapers, but he decided that New
York was particularly his field. He could afford to give
daily journalism his personal attention, for his other great
interests-magazines, stores, banking, etc.-were in the