Saturday Evening Post Launched from Gazette, August 4, 1821

In his excellent and interesting “A Man from Maine,” Edward W. Bok devotes a chapter to the story of the purchase and development of The Saturday Evening Post by Cyrus H. K. Curtis. This chapter is styled “The Story of the 'Singed Cat.'”

Mr. Curtis was born in Portland, Maine, June 18, 1850. He went to Philadelphia in 1876, and seven years later started The Ladies’ Home Journal.

Mr. Curtis first developed the Ladies Home Journal and then turned his energy and wonderful organization to a magazine for men.

Somehow he fixed his mind upon The Saturday Evening Post as the medium through which he was to realize his pet dream. Mr. Bok is authority for the statement that Mr. Curtis himself does not remember how he came to fix up this old paper, but says that the publication had always attracted him as he met it each week in his exchanges as a legacy left to Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1728, founded the paper under the title of The Pennsylvania Gazette.

Franklin edited and published this paper for a number of years, and then sold it to his grandson. Meanwhile six other papers of all sorts had been born in Philadelphia, all having as part of their title the word Gazette. So in 1821, to avoid a constant confusion of names, the name was changed to The Saturday Evening Post, August 4, 1821.

The spirit of enterprise of that early day must have been put into the venture, for in 1839, it had a circulation of thirty-five thousand copies, the largest circulation of that day of any weekly in the United States. The most famous statesmen and writers of the time were among its contributors, and it ranked as the most important publication of the time.

The Saturday Evening Post, like other old newspapers, frequently passed into various ownerships, nearly all of whom were Philadelphians, but a resident of Brooklyn, N. Y., owned it for a time, although the place of publication remained at Philadelphia, and finally it passed into the 533possession of Albert Smyth, of Philadelphia, whose publication it was when Mr. Curtis went to Philadelphia in 1876, to begin the career which has made him the most successful and most beloved of all publishers in all the world.

During the time that Philadelphia was in possession of the British, under Lord Howe, the publication was suspended, but after the last British “Tommy” marched away, the paper was revived and from that time to this day it has never missed an issue. With this record of over a century Mr. Smyth was justly proud and its ownership was a matter of pride, as well as the distinguished record of long service. He was fond of its history and tradition, and as he and Mr. Curtis were friends, it is not improbable that the latter’s interest in this old paper was fostered during these chats, and he began a little search on his own account for the intimate history of the paper, and before long, Mr. Curtis knew quite as much about it as did its proud owner.

Yet the paper was losing out, the circulation was steadily and surely diminishing, no one seemed to care. The editorship was entrusted to a reporter of the Philadelphia Times, who devoted his odd moments upon The Saturday Evening Post, at the elegant salary of ten dollars a week, and the articles published were just what a ten dollar editor would be expected to use.

A man with the vision and patriotism of Mr. Curtis could not help feeling regret that a paper with such traditions was allowed to run down, and he began to bargain with Mr. Smyth.

True it was only a name, but it had a long history and valuable heritage. Best of all, Benjamin Franklin had founded it, and that was an asset upon which Mr. Curtis could build.

Mr. Smyth went to Chicago, where he was interested in a gas project, and left The Saturday Evening Post in charge of a friend named Brady, but in 1897 Smyth died, leaving a sister as his only heir. She could not or would not finance the publication, and Brady turned to Mr. Curtis for the money to get out that week’s issue.

To Brady’s surprise Mr. Curtis told him that the name of the paper was not protected with a copyright, and that if the sister did not put up the money and an issue was missed anyone could take up the name.

Brady’s lawyer confirmed the statement. Mr. Curtis said he would not do anything like that, but told Brady he had nothing to sell. “However, I'll give you one thousand dollars for the paper, type and all.”

Mr. Curtis became the owner of the paper, and sent a young man in his establishment with a wagon to the printing office to bring away the battered type, and as soon as it arrived, that week’s issue was printed, so as to save the right to the title by continuous publication.

At this time the subscription list was about two thousand and soon as Mr. Curtis improved the paper these few subscribers cancelled their 534subscriptions, when it was learned that the new owner had in fact purchased only the title and name of Benjamin Franklin.

The outlook for the future for this new venture was so gloomy that men in his employ called it “the singed cat.”

Mr. Curtis selected George Horace Lorimer, of Boston, as the editor and he got behind him, even in the face of the most discouraging criticism, but neither Mr. Curtis nor Mr. Lorimer ever for a single moment doubted that the project would make good. A half million dollars were spent upon advertising the periodical, and at one time the loss totalled nearly a million dollars, but during all this period there was being developed just the kind of a paper that Mr. Curtis wanted The Saturday Evening Post to be.

Then the circulation grew and when it reached five hundred thousand copies the advertisers began to use its pages, and Mr. Curtis had now put into the paper a million and a quarter dollars. Then the paper appeared with a “circulation of one million copies” printed on the cover, and the fight was won.

The circulation is now in excess of two million, and is, without a doubt, the greatest publication in the history of journalism.

The Curtis Publishing Company publish The Ladies Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, The Country Gentleman, The Public Ledger and The Evening Public Ledger and the output of this plant is six hundred and fifty thousand complete magazines, each working day, and all this in addition to seventy-three million newspapers each year.

More than one hundred railroad cars each month are required to circulate the magazines, as the Ladies Home Journal goes to one out of every ten women in the United States and The Saturday Evening Post goes into more than one out of every ten homes in this country. Such is the story of not only Pennsylvania’s oldest and best magazine, but the largest and most successful in the world.