No. I

When a Milwaukee taxicab company once gave each of the city's 27 aldermen an electric blanket for Christmas, most of them gratefully accepted the gift even though the aldermen control taxicab rates. They soon wished they hadn't. Reason: the Milwaukee Journal caught wind of the story, promptly played it on Page One. For Milwaukee, the Journal thought it added up to a major political scandal.

Such front-page ear-boxings have earned the determinedly vigilant Journal the title of Milwaukee's "conscience" or "Dutch Uncle." Though meant as praise, such phrases only serve to rile up the Journal's boss, Harry J. Grant, choleric, determinedly vigilant chairman of the Journal's board of directors. Says Grant : "Damn it, I'm not anybody's Dutch Uncle. I'm just in the newspaper business . . ." Journalist Grant's devotion to the news had brought handsome returns. Last week Media Records reported that the evening Journal (circ. 325,039), led all U.S. newspapers in advertising linage for the first eight months of 1950. Though published in the nation's 13th city (pop. 632,938), the Journal was ahead of the second-place Chicago Tribune by 750,000 lines. Last year the Journal took in $20 million and made $2,000,000 after taxes.

"A Real Hick Town." The Journal dominates most of Wisconsin and swamps its only Milwaukee competitor, Hearst's morning Sentinel (circ. 169,445), partly because it never forgets that Milwaukee, in the words of one Journalist, is "a real hick town." The Journal covers it like a town gossip. No club meeting, ladies' bake sale, wedding or business luncheon is too small to rate a Journal story. But its wide coverage of the town's doings has not made the Journal necessarily loved by all its readers. Independent, sometimes cantankerous and always sharp in its editorial opinions, the Journal has been damned by Wisconsin's Senator McCarthy as the "Milwaukee edition of the Daily Worker." Progressives call the paper conservative. The Journal calls itself "middle-of-the-road independent." In one election alone, the Journal supported a Socialist, a Democrat, a Republican and a Progressive.

Front-Office Punch. The man who made the Journal what it is today is Harry Johnston Grant, a square, muscular dynamo of a man with white hair and bloodshot blue eyes. An omnivorous reader, he is also an overpowering talker with a Walt Whitman-like flood of words (studded with four-letter ones) and a sincere belief that the successful operation of the paper is a public trust. He is purposely unknown to most Milwaukeeans. He declines most social invitations, has few friends, fearing that outsiders might try to influence the paper. He is also an enigma to most of his staff, which has long been baffled by the fact that he can, by turn, be boastful, humble, hard as nails and sob-sister soft. Although he spends six months of the year in his Miami home or in the Caribbean aboard his 71 -ft. cruiser, the High Tide, he is never out of touch with the paper, uses his ship-to-shore phone when necessary.

Born in Missouri in 1881, Grant held a succession of advertising jobs before he went to Milwaukee in 1916 as the Journal's advertising manager. The 34-year-old Journal, under Founder Lucius W. Nieman, had done well as an "outspoken, independent organ of the people against all that is wrong . . ." But shortly after Grant arrived, Nieman's fearless idealism nearly scuttled the paper. Fed up with the pro-Kaiser sympathies of many of Milwaukee's German-born, which persisted even after the U.S. entered World War I, the Journal began to translate and publish verbatim reports of anti-U.S. speeches delivered at pro-German meetings. Circulation plummeted but the Journal kept grimly on. It won a Pulitzer Prize for its campaign, and eventually found new readers to replace the ones it had lost.

In 1919, Grant was made publisher, took over direction of the Journal from the aging, ailing owner and poured all of his tremendous energies into building up the paper. When old Lute Nieman died in 1935, followed a few months later by his widow,* the Journal went on the block.

Grant, who had already bought 20% of the stock, managed to convince the trustees that he alone was the man, by the terms of Nieman's will, "most likely to carry on the Journal tradition" of printing the news, free from all outside influence.

No Favors. He has more than done the job. Once when an advertiser asked Grant for a better break in the Journal's news columns, because of "the $50,000 contract I have with you," Grant snapped back: "You mean the $50,000 contract you had with us." On another occasion, a well-heeled Milwaukee family asked the Journal to play down the marriage of one of its elderly members to his young secretary. The Journal's answer was to spread the wedding story over most of one page.

In general, the Journal frowns on sensationalism. Says President and Editor J. Donald Ferguson: "Circulation will balloon up just as well when it rains and people buy papers to put on their heads as when you dig up a good scandal, and the boost will last just about as long."

Nor is there anything sensational about the makeup. By big-city standards the small headlines, comparatively few pictures and carefully balanced pages look dull. But it is one of the few U.S. papers which prints news pictures in color.

The Journal carries no syndicated political columnists, few syndicated features. "We don't want outside entanglements . . ." says Grant."We're not a menagerie; we'll speak for ourselves."

No Preconceptions. Grant lets Chief Editorial Writer Lindsay Hoben and his five assistants do the speaking for the Journal, rarely knows what the paper is saying until he reads it in print. Says Grant: "[The public] can hate us, they can damn us. In fact, by God, I know we're right when both sides damn us. But whatever they say about us, they can't control us . . ."

On paper, at least, the control of the Journal is not in Grant's hands, but in those of his fanatically loyal and well-paid employees. Shortly after he bought the paper, he set up a plan through which employees could buy stock. They now own 55% of it,* all that is available under the plan. "If they don't like me," says Grant, "they can fire me." But since most of the employees sign over their voting rights as a matter of course, he slyly adds: "I, of course, control 96, 97, 98% of the proxies."

Grant started the plan, says he, because "I've knocked around, seen the capitalists and the bankers and the industrialists, but I've never liked the system. I just believe the workingman should participate in the fruits of his labor." But he also feels it is the best way to make sure "the Journal will live ... If I leave it to a lot of trustees or fat boys in the front office . . . they won't care about it. It doesn't mean their life blood . . . their very bread and water. If I can inspire the employees, then I've got what no one else in the world has got and it will live."

*Who left the bulk of her estate to Harvard, which grants Nieman fellowships to working newspapermen for a year's study at the university. *Of the Journal's 1,200 permanent employees, 731 are stockholders. They have voting rights but can't sell the stock outside the company, must sell it back when they quit or retire. Employee-held stock, which cost $3,805.909, has paid $4,783,500 in dividends, is now worth $6,900,300.

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