RIPOSTES
TIME'S
FIFTEENTH
To tens of thousands of potent,
shrewd, able, up-&-coming U. S. citi–
zens last month the postman brought a
formal invitation to become a member
of "The
Time
Community." Less
familiar to sociologists than it should
be The
Time
Community is a micro–
co~m
which has come to have a definite,
independent existence. The invitation
came straight from the able, shrewd,
potent publisher of
Time:
baldish,
bumbling Ralph McAllister Ingersoll,
close relative of the late great Ward
McAllister, of "Four Hundred" fame.
The letter began, "I hope you won't
mind if I make this almost a personal
letter about yourself," continued in a
chatty, intimate vein, concluding with
an excellent facsimile of Publisher In–
gersoll's signature. Many a pater–
familias, in high feather, assembled
his kith & kin to read aloud: "You
have been singled out as one of the
comparatively small group for whom
we plan and edit
Time.
...
But before
I invite you to join ... you may wish
to know more about The
Time
Com–
munity and the other subscribers you
will be joining there."
As every one knows, The
Time
Community (i.e., the 700,000-odd week–
lv buyers of
Time)
is an upstanding,
~ight-thinking
group, as shrewd as they
are able. But few were prepared for
the splendor of Publisher Ingersoll's
revelations. Excerpts: "So far only one
of you has insured himself for $7,000,-
000 and only one of you has become
King of England. Most of you are just
alert, intelligent Americans, quietly suc–
cessful in your own fields or headed
for success. Among you, for example,
arc 30% of the officers and directors of
practically every well known U.S. cor-
poration.... Some 74% of you went to
college ... 43% have been to Europe.
At home you still find plenty to do.
Swimming, of course, and golf and ten–
nis and cards-
60
45% of you make a hobby of
photography
44% of you work in gardens
19% own boats
10% collect books
All told, you entertain 1,640,000 dinner
guests each week."
Small wonder, after such statistics,
if Publisher Ingersoll ended his letter:
"Time
is more proud of its subscrib–
ers than of anything else.... And that
is why we like to think of our sub–
scribers as a unique
community-the
most alert group of men and women
in America.... And now speaking for
the community, we invite you to join
us. The enclosed card entitles you to
enroll in The
Time
Community for the
next eight months at a special guest
rate of only $2.67." Small wonder, too,
if many a U. S. citizen felt that $2.67
was small enough to pay for admittance
into such a fellowship.
Last month The
Time
Community
celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. To
each & every one of its members went
a birthday present: a facsimile reprint
of Vol. 1, No. 1 (date: March 3,
1923) of
Time.
As Timenthusiasts duti–
fully read it through from cover-to–
cover, they found that in its fifteen
years of existence their favorite maga–
zine had changed little. The years have
brought a smoother, slicker technique,
but seasoned Timaddicts (many of them
Original Subscribers) were relieved to
find the old, familiar point of view
flourishing in 1923 as in 1938. As the
major house organ for the American
business class,
Time
has a ticklish edi–
torial task: to give the news an upper–
class angle without appearing to violate
the creed of "objectivity" which that
class holds so dear. The well-fed, well–
heeled members of The
Time
Com–
munity insist that their spokesmen fight
for their class interests by denying the
existence of the class struggle. No one
is more adept at this delicate manoeuver
than kinetic, bush-browed, twice-wed
H enry Robinson Luce, founder and
boss of
Time, Life, Fortune,
and
The
March of Time.
And no more striking
evidence of his talent exists than Vol. 1,
