Comeback

"I do not think there are any limits, other than physical, to the potential circulation of the present-day general magazine. It can reach 3,000,000 to 5,000,000. . . . Within the last six years. Collier's weekly has added about 1,400,000 readers. . . ."

If there was a note of pride in the precise voice that uttered those words to the Magazine Club in Manhattan last week, it was pride amply justified. The speaker was William Ludlow Chenery. It was six years since he had left the old New York Telegram-Mail to become editor of Collier's. In those six years the magazine has lifted itself from a quagmire of near-despair to perform what is now one of the marvels of U. S. publishing, a thwacking comeback. The regeneration was essentially an editorial process, planned by Editorial Director Thomas Hambley Beck, executed by Editor Chenery.

Collier's heyday lay roughly between 1905 and 1917, during the editorships of Norman Hapgood, Finley Peter Dunne and Mark Sullivan. ''Everyone'' read the magazine in those days of its rousing blasts against patent medicines, adulterated foods and adulterated politics. Those, too, were the days of the sensational libel suit brought by the late Col. William D'Alton Mann of Town Topics against the late Founder Peter F. Collier and Editor Hapgood (TIME, Feb. 2).

Although the magazine had begun to deteriorate editorially, 1920 found it at the peak (up to then) of its fortunes and with about one million circulation. (It had been bought from the Collier estate by Crowell Publishing Co.) Then came evil days--a business depression, a paper shortage, a printers' strike. For a few weeks the magazine actually failed to appear. By 1922 Collier's, definitely inferior in content, had tumbled to th place in general magazine advertising. In two years its revenues fell off more than 80%. Making matters worse, into the 5f field came Liberty in 1924.

It was in 1924 that Collier's editorial rejuvenation began. Editor Chenery. brought in to succeed the late Loren Palmer who went to the Butterick Publishing Co., and later to Liberty, was given practically a free hand. Most important, he was allowed to spend freely to get and hold good authors. He set about to speed up the magazine, insisting on more and snorter stories in each issue, buying by the story, not by the word. He originated the "short short-story," complete on one page, first of which was written by Octavus Roy Cohen. Four-color illustrations were used in Collier's for the first time by any weekly. Collier's began to recapture some of its old pugnaciousness with special articles which, while they lost some old readers, gained more new ones. One such enterprise was a long series of reports on the effects of Prohibition, with the conclusion that the law was unenforceable. An-other was the expose of alleged graft in Hidalgo, Tex., which resulted in $1,000,000 worth of libel suits by Rentfro Banton Creager, Republican National Committeeman and Texas boss (TIME. Sept. 16, 19291. Collier's won the first suit for $500,000; the second was withdrawn. Above all. Editor Chenery insisted that every feature interest every prospective reader. An article on cosmetics must be so written to interest men; a study of chain-stores must attract the eye of the woman shopper as well as the businessman.

Results of Collier's editorial invigoration: 1) circulation of 2,400,000. 2) Advertising Manager Lee Brantly was able to pass Liberty's advertising revenue in 1929, the Literary Digest's last year, putting Collier's this year in fifth place among all general magazines. Among weeklies it is fourth in pages of advertising, third in lineage, second only to the Saturday Evening Post in revenue.

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