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By Root 514 0

iridescent publisher and snarled, “Say, you look like that soandso Roy Howard.” Howard seemed thoroughly pleased. In the early years of his career as a publisher, he often accepted appointments to public bodies; he was once, for instance, on the board of judges in a Camelcigarette essay contest. Now, while he is more conservative, he is still receptive to the right kind of appointment. It was the belief of several political writers during the last campaign that he would have liked to be Willkie's Secretary of State. He does not allow his name to appear in the society columns of his own papers, because, he says, “Shucks, I'm not society,” but he is constantly interviewed by other papers climbing in and out of planes, and he used to be a minor staple for shipnews reporters. Mrs. Howard, a tranquil, friendly woman, does not appear at all the gatherings he attends. The schedule would be too rigorous for almost any woman. The Howards have two children, a son and daughter. The son, Jack, was graduated from Yale in 1932 and is now president of ScrippsHoward Radio, Incorporated, which operates two broadcasting stations in Memphis. Jane, the daughter, is married to Lieutenant Albert Perkins of the United States navy.

Howard has paid less and less attention to his outoftown newspapers in recent years. The national headquarters of the chain are in New York, instead of in Cleveland, where they were in E. W. Scripps's day, and editorial conventions are now held in Washington more often than in French Lick, the traditional site. Oldtimers say that the programs at these gettogethers are quite uniform. One of the officers makes a speech denouncing the Reds; another complains about taxes, and a third delivers a rousing plea for more concentrated, punchy writing. After that, everybody plays poker.

The chain's papers have become increasingly orthodox, and they no longer reveal any of the Scripps crotchets about the dangers of monopoly or the right of labor to organize. When ScrippsHoward bought and merged the Denver Times and the Rocky Mountain News in 1926, Howard announced that the chain had come to Denver “to correct a sinister journalistic situation” which was caused by the domination of the Tammen and Bonfils Post. Three years later he told the Denver Chamber of Commerce he was in town primarily to sell advertising. When the chain acquired the Memphis Commercial Appeal, a rich, conservative newspaper, a few years ago, it retained the Appeal's makeup, typography, and syndicate features, as well as its traditional editorial policy and, as a consequence, its advertisers. The ScrippsHoward San Francisco News has supported a referendum proposition to make the franchises of a traction company perpetual. So it goes, more or less, with other ScrippsHoward papers.

One of the publisher's amusements is hunting. “Roy loves to shoot a moose,” William W. Hawkins, the second man in the ScrippsHoward organization, says. Howard democratically plucks the birds he shoots on Bernard M. Baruch's estate in South Carolina and takes pride in the way he dresses a rabbit. Even as a hunter, he is financially conservative. He went to New Brunswick with a group of his associates a couple of years ago, and their guide showed them fine sport. The other huntsmen gathered in the ScrippsHoward offices the day after their return to decide what to send the guide as a mark of appreciation. They had just about settled on a rifle when Howard entered the conclave. “Now, wait a minute, boys,” he said. “Let's not be so splendiferous. Let's call in one of our artists from N.E.A. and have him draw a picture of a moose's head crying big tears. Then we'll all sign it and send it to Jean so he can hang it in his cabin.” The guide got the picture.

Howard's present political course was determined in 1937, the year Franklin D. Roosevelt began his second term in the White House. That year the publisher broke with his old friend Lowell Mellett, the editor of the ScrippsHoward Washington Daily News, who had been something of a final link with the Scripps days. Mellett saw the New Deal