Edward
Wyllis Scripps was born at Rushville, Illinois, on 18th June, 1854.
He worked on newspapers with his half-brother, James Edmund Scripps
(1854-1926) in Detroit before establishing
the Cleveland Penny Press in 1878.
This newspaper was highly successful and by 1887 he also owned newspapers
in St. Louis and Cincinnati.
Scripps' newspapers were aimed at a mass audience, what he called
the "95 per cent". They were low-priced and tended to support
progressive causes and the trade union movement.
He once wrote: "I have only one principle, and that is represented
by an effort to make it harder for the rich to grow richer and easier
for the poor to keep from growing poorer."
In one interview Scripps claimed that he viewed his newspapers as
"the only schoolroom the working people had". He added "I
am the advocate of that large majority of people who are not so rich
in worldly goods and native intelligence as to make them equal, man
for man, in the struggle with individuals of the wealthier and more
intellectual class".
In 1894 Scripps joined with his half-brother, George Scripps and Milton
Alexander McRae, to form the Scripps-McRae League of Newspapers. Scripps
now had a controlling interest in 34 newspapers in 15 different states.
Scripps founded the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1902. This
was the first syndicate to supply feature stories, illustrations and
cartoons to newspapers. Five years later Scripps joined with others
to form the news service, United Press.
His half-sister, Ellen Browning Scripps (1836-1932) also worked in
the business and in 1903 they joined together to found the Marine
Biological Station in San Diego. She later established the Scripps
College for Women in Claremont, California.
In 1922 Scripps transferred his business interests to his son, Robert
Paine Scripps (1895-1938), who three years later joined forces with
Roy Howard (1883-1964), to form the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.
Edward Wyllis Scripps died on 12th March, 1926. A collection of his
unpublished writings, Damned Old Crank: A
Self-Portrait of E.W. Scripps, was published in 1951.
(1)
Edward Wyllis Scripps, Damned Old Crank (1951)
I am one of the few newspapermen who happen to know that this country
is populated by ninety-five per cent of plain people, and that the
patronage of even plain and poor people is worth more to a newspaper
owner than the patronage of the wealthy five per cent. So I have always
run my business along the line of least resistance and for the greatest
profit, and because I have made money more easily than any other newspaper
publisher ever did, and made more than all but a few other publishers,
I am odd and cranky.
For thirty years and more I have watched and studied the great and
popular newspaper, the immediate and the future effect of its teaching.
I believe that few people aside from myself have any idea of the tremendous,
the almost invincible power and force of the daily press. I am one
of those who believe that at least in America the press rules the
country; it rules its politics, its religion, its social practice.
I believe that if all the newspaper editors of the United States were
of one mind on any one matter on what the public ought to do, and
if they had the courage of their convictions, it would only be a question
of a short time before the nation as a whole would think as these
editors think and do that which these editors think it ought to do.
(2)
Edward Wyllis Scripps visted London
in 1878.
I never saw the sun shine (in London) more than one or two days. I
loathed the town, its fogs, and especially its streets crowded with
the poor miserable human beings who constituted probably not less
than ninety-eight per cent of the total population. Vice was not only
rampant but public. The sights in the public parks of London were
horrible. Before I had gone to London I had read Dante's Inferno,
and there had been nothing in Dante's description of Hell that was
more loathsome to me than the sights I could see in London.
(3)
Lincoln Steffens and Clarence
Darrow met Edward Wyllis Scripps at his ranch near San Diego in
1911. Steffens wrote about the meeting in his autobiography published
in 1931.
His (E. W. Scripps) hulking body, in big boots and rough clothes,
carried a large grey head with a wide grey face which did not always
express, like Darrow's, the constant activity of the man's brain.
He was a hard student, whether he was working on newspaper make-up
or some inquiry in biology. That mind was not to be satisfied. It
read books and fed on the conversation of scientists, not to quench
an inquiry with the latest information, but to excite and make intelligent
the questions implied.
(4)
Edward Wyllis Scripps, in conversation with Lincoln
Steffens in 1911.
I'm a rich man, and that's dangerous, you know. But it isn't just
the money that's the risk; it's the living around with other rich
men. They get to thinking all alike, and their money not only talks,
their money does their thinking, too. I come off here (his San Diego
ranch) on these wide acres of high miles to get away from - my sort;
to get away from the rich. So I don't think like a rich man.
They talk about the owner of newspapers holding back his editors.
It's the other way with me. I get me boys, bright boys, from the classes
that read my papers; I give them the editorship and the management,
with a part interest in the property, and, say, in a year or so, as
soon as the profits begin to come in, they become conservative and
I have to boot them back into their class.
(5)
Edward Wyllis Scripps, Damned Old Crank (1951)
The possessor of great wealth may be, and frequently is, corrupted.
No matter how good and moral a man may be, the possession of great
wealth must have a certain amount of corrupting influence upon him.
The possession of great wealth isolates a man to a great extent from
his fellows. This isolation results in a constantly diminishing sympathy
for mankind.
To grow old sensibly, one should always keep one's eyes turned from
the past to the future, and continue to strive with all his might
to serve those who are coming even more efficiently than those he
has served shoulder to shoulder with in the past.
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