Scope and Content Note
The papers of Roy Wilson Howard (1883-1964) span the years 1911-1966, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period after 1920. The collection consists of family and executive correspondence, early letters of the United Press Associations, the office files of Howard's son and business successor, Jack R. Howard, for 1960-1961, and miscellaneous financial and printed matter concerning Roy Howard's career in the newspaper business. The collection is organized in five series: Family Correspondence ; United Press Association, Early Files ; Executive Correspondence ; Jack R. Howard Papers ; and Miscellany .
By far the major portion of the papers consists of Executive Correspondence . Organized largely as received by the Library, the series includes letters, reports, clippings, and related material that Howard sent and received as head of the United Press and the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. New York was Howard's residence, office, and the site of his organization's flagship enterprise, the World-Telegram & Sun, and much of the series centers on the files from this central location. Present as well, however, are extensive records for each Scripps-Howard property. They cover related services such as the Scripps-Howard News Alliance (which in keeping with the geographical arrangement scheme is located under its Washington, D.C., designation), plus daily papers ranging from the Akron Times to the Youngstown Telegram. In addition to documenting the work of the correspondents who wrote for Howard, the files reveal the internal dynamics of a vast newspaper concern. They feature Scripps-Howard management in its various business and editorial levels, treat the breadth and detail of local as well as national and international issues, and give voluminous private and public reaction to nearly every aspect of the news media that Howard directed.
The genesis of the collection is in the decade before World War I when Howard became New York manager of a fledgling news service organization. A native Ohioan, Howard had grown up in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he entered journalism as a newsboy and rose to become sports editor of the Indianapolis News. In 1907, Howard was named by E. W. Scripps to the post of general manager of the newly consolidated United Press Associations. Having climbed to the presidency and then chairmanship of the board of the reorganized United Press, Howard in 1921 become chairman and business director of the Newspaper Enterprise Association and the Scripps-McRae (later Scripps-Howard) newspaper chain. As a reporter, he obtained exclusive interviews with leading European heads of state during World War I, and in the same period he worked to introduce and extend the United Press system abroad. The task involved direct competition with the Associated Press, already powerful in the United States, and also entailed the difficulties of dealing with the information flow of official news services connected to foreign governments.
Evidence of Howard's ability to make as well as report news can be found throughout the collection. In the 1930s he broke barriers by getting audiences with Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Joseph Stalin. These stories made headlines outside the Scripps-Howard orbit, while on another, earlier occasion, his cablegrams from France convinced editors across the United States that World War I had ended on November 7, 1918, several days before its occurrence. Information on these and other episodes is available in relevant chronological or geographical files, with the armistice controversy being highlighted in the United Press Associations file for the war period. Contained in the same series is material on American press reportage from Germany during the United States' neutrality phase before April 1917. Principal correspondents in the United Press Associations series include Carl W. Ackerman and Karl H. Von Wiegand, UP reporters in Germany, plus journalists and notables such as Alfred Harmsworth (Vicount Northcliff), Milton A. McRae, Robert F. Paine, James G. Scripps, and William Allen White.
Issues and events treated in the Executive Correspondence span the rise of Warren G. Harding and the death of John F. Kennedy. Reflected are Howard's evolving political stands over many decades, including efforts he expended on behalf of the Mooney-Billings case in the 1920s; the “breathing spell” for business that he urged on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935; his disapproval of Lend Lease in 1940; the attention he paid to power configurations in the Far East from the 1930s to the 1960s; and his support for General Douglas MacArthur as a presidential candidate in 1948. Campaigns for the nation's highest office are a major topic, including in 1932 when Howard backed Newton Diehl Baker prior to the Democratic convention. Baker's law firm was legal counsel to Scripps-Howard, and it thus appears frequently as a correspondent in the files for Cleveland, either under Baker's name or that of his firm members, Paul Patterson and Joseph Hostetler. The files also show Howard's enthusiasm for Wendell L. Willkie early in the 1940 campaign, and his relationship with Herbert Hoover, whom Scripps-Howard supported for president in1928 and then opposed in 1932, and with whom he later developed a longstanding friendship.
Documented in the papers is Howard's almost daily communication with political opinion-makers across the country. Among the politicians and political observers with whom he exchanged opinions were Bernard M. Baruch, Will H. Hays, Hiram W. Johnson, Alfred M. Landon, and Albert D. Lasker. Important or frequent correspondents included virtually every president and major presidential candidate between 1928 and 1960, most presidential press secretaries, many senators and congressmen, several mayors (most particularly Fiorello La Guardia, whom the World-Telegram backed in the Fusionist campaign of 1933), and regional or issue candidates such as Upton Sinclair during his run for governor of California in 1934. Files from the 1940s contain character appraisals of Texas congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, while correspondence from the1950s documents Howard's attempt, without success, to verify a quotation attributed to Vladimir Lenin by Ronald Reagan at a General Electric Company banquet.
International affairs and American foreign policy are central topics in the Executive Correspondence , as evidenced by the reports and letters throughout the United Press files of Howard's New York office. Noteworthy are the files for the respective countries or region to which Howard, because of impending policy considerations or personal interest, gave the greatest attention. His focus changed over the decades, but concentrated generally on issues and leaders involving the Far East. Especially prominent are Japanese-American relations before Pearl Harbor and the perceived failure of the United States' post-World War II China policy. Major correspondents from Japan include Kensui Horinouchi, Douglas MacArthur (writing as Supreme Commander of American Occupation Forces from 1945 to 1951), Yōsuke Matsuoka, Singoro Takeishi, and Prince IesatoTokugawa; while those from China encompass May-ling Soon Chiang (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and General Chiang Kai-shek, Randall Gould, Nelson Trusler Johnson, V. K. Wellington Koo, H. H. Kung, Hollington K. Tong, Averil and Ernest S. H. Tong, and K. C. Wu. Philippine independence represented another of Howard's abiding concerns; correspondents native to or resident in that country from the 1920s onward were Felipe Buencamino (192-1949), Arsenio N. Luz, Manuel L. Quezon, Carlos P. Romulo, Theodore Roosevelt (1887-1944), and Manuel Roxas. Important European-based correspondents include Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Harry Brittain, Count Rene de Chambrun, General Mark W. Clark, Ambassadors Joseph P. Kennedy and William C. Bullitt, and Florence O'Driscoll, Richmond Temple, and the Duke of Windsor.
The bulk of the Howard Papers, however, is concerned with the newspaper enterprise, its finances, mergers, editorial policy, advertising methods, personnel relations, legal problems, and union policies. The collection documents not only the operations within Scripps-Howard, its subsidiaries, and the New York World-Telegram & Sun, but the practices of American journalism in general and the formation and growth of the Newspaper Guild. Evident in the correspondence are the viewpoints of businessmen and advertisers such as Bernard F. Gimbel and of union organizers and leaders of major cultural institutions. Among the scores of reporters, columnists, authors, editors, publishers, and others in the news media whose correspondence is featured in the collection are Merlin H. Aylesworth, Hugh Baillie, Harry Elmer Barnes, Bruce Barton, Karl A. Bickel, Heywood Broun, Raymond Clapper, Kent Cooper, Theodore Dreiser, Edna Ferber, John E. Golden, William W. Hawkins, Ernest Hemingway, Fannie Hurst, Hugh S. Johnson, Ed L. Keen, Irene Kuhn, Peter B. Kyne, Edward T. Leech, Ray Long, Lowell Mellett, James I. Miller, Webb Miller, May Quirk Osborne, George B. Parker, Westbrook Pegler, Robert P. Scripps, John H. Sorrells, Earl M. Thacker, Lowell Thomas, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, William E. Vaughn, and Lee B. Wood.
The number and location of Scripps-Howard properties varied over the decades, with the peak era being the 1930s. Among the newspaper and their cities represented in the papers are the Akron Times-Press, Albuquerque New Mexico State Tribune, Baltimore Post, Birmingham Post, Cleveland Press, Columbus (Ohio) Citizen, Denver Rocky Mountain News, El Paso Evening Post, Fort Worth Press, Indianapolis Times, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Memphis Press Scimitar, New York World-Telegram & Sun, Oklahoma City News, Pittsburgh News,San Diego Sun, San Francisco News, Terre Haute Post, Toledo News-Bee, Washington Daily News, and Youngstown Telegram.
The Family Correspondence in the papers constitutes a small part of the collection. There are a few letters between Howard and his wife, journalist Margaret Rohe, and more with his mother and son Jack. The series of Jack R. Howard Papers mainly contains executive correspondence from 1960, reflecting the son's role as business successor to his father. The Miscellany includes copies of editorials and news stories by Roy Howard that complement the writings by him in other files.