Frank Solution

For six months an unanswered national question has been: Where would the great brain of Glenn Frank be put to work next? Since he was ousted as president of the University of Wisconsin after a bitter dispute with Governor Philip Fox La Follette (TIME, Dec. 28, Jan. 18), 49-year-old Dr. Frank, who once drew up a League of Nations covenant and for four years edited the now defunct Century magazine, has had little more mental exercise than that required to produce his syndicated editorial germinations. Last week the Frank question was answered. The farmers of seven prosperous Midwest States will get the benefits of his brain free of charge to them, but at a good salary for him. He became editor & president of Rural Progress, a monthly magazine distributed free to 2,000,000 farmers. His pay will be several thousand better than the $15,000 a year paid him by the University of Wisconsin, plus a stock interest.

Rural Progress was started in Chicago in November 1934 by Maurice Vallee Reynolds, young advertising man a few years out of Loyola University, and other backers including Frank Arthur Vanderlip. The idea was that farmers were ripe for advertisers, if one could pick the right farmers. The area chosen was Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. A mailing list of 2,000,000 abie-to-buy-thing's farmers was selected, and Rural Progress advertising salesmen were ready to do business. Revenue to date has been $1,500,000 and early this year the magazine was out of the red. A full-page ad now brings $4,800.

Editor Frank, though no farmer, can recall a boyhood in rural Missouri and his part in building up Wisconsin's College of Agriculture. Last week he bought for $40,000 a large residence at Maple Bluff near Madison. Wis. from where he will shuttle to Si from his work in Chicago, His plans for Rural Progress, in addition to continuing its fiction, cooking hints, jokes, illustrated articles in color rotoprint, include "objective dealing with legislation and policies affecting agriculture" and a Frank editorial page. Knowing his instinct for protective coloration, friends expect him to shed his starched shirts at the typewriter (see cut, p. 41).

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