Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [45]
“I happen to have been left a great deal of money,” Field once said. “I don’t know what is going to happen to it, and I don’t give a damn. If I can’t make myself worthy of three square meals a day, then I don’t deserve them.”
The late Lloyd Lewis, author, editor, and critic, was one of the many who could testify as to how worthy Field made himself. During the 1930s, when Lewis invited a group of wealthy Chicagoans to a series of luncheons to help campaign for higher salaries for teachers, Field was the only one to accept.
“In fact,” said Lewis, “he was the only one with more than ten bucks who attended those luncheons.”
Field expressed his philosophy in his book, Freedom Is More Than a Word, in which he wrote: “The spirit of man cannot become satisfied so long as there exists any fellow being in want, any disease uncured, any injustice unquestioned, or any pool of darkness unlit by the lamp of knowledge.”
This was the credo by which he lived. No one who knew the man will ever forget him.
Marshall Field III’s son and successor, Marshall Field IV, has built on his father’s heritage – and he has built handsomely.
The elder Field established the Chicago Sun and later purchased the evening tabloid, the Daily Times, to form the morning Sun-Times. Under the guidance of young Field, the Sun-Times has grown into a lively, highly enterprising newspaper that today is giving the Tribune a race for morning circulation. And after the Tribune acquired Chicago’s American from Hearst, Field bought the Chicago Daily News, the leader in the afternoon field. Now, fortified with these two powerful newspapers, young “Marsh” has become the first publisher to threaten the Tribune’s long domination of the Chicago newspaper scene.
I have great respect for Marshall Field IV. He has a steel-trap mind that clamps down hard on facts and figures. He keeps abreast of developments in every phase of his publishing empire; yet he believes in delegating authority and letting each executive run his own department. He has wit and charm. And while he takes his work seriously, not so himself. I recall the time several of us were celebrating his birthday in the offices of circulation director Lou Spear. Field had just turned forty. “Here I am, forty years old,” he commented sadly, “and what do I have to show for it?” What he had was a multimillion-dollar fortune and a publishing empire, but apparently he did not consider these things worth mentioning.
The elder Field, in the process of founding the Chicago Sun, had also established Field Enterprises, which operates the newspapers and which had also acquired other properties, such as The World Book Encyclopedia and Childcraft, Pocket Books (for a brief period), Parade magazine, and a chain of radio stations across the Midwest and Far West. Within a few years, Field Enterprises was a communications empire.
But as is typical of young Field, he soon divested Field Enterprises of its peripheral operations. He considered them too distracting to his main business of publishing newspapers in Chicago. First the radio stations were sold; then Parade, with its headquarters in New York. Marshall Field IV is determined to concentrate his efforts in Chicago.
Young Field’s attitude toward money differs from that of his late father. Whereas the elder Field practically subsidized his newspapers with his vast fortune, Marsh insists that his publications be financial successes on their own. He wants them to operate in the black – not so that he can make a fortune (most of the profits are plowed back into the operation), but because he prefers to be identified with solid, businesslike publications that require no subsidy for their existence. He is willing to work tirelessly to achieve this financial solidity, as his Sun-Times and Daily News executives are aware.
The courage and strength of purpose which Marsh