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Melville Elijah Stone

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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STONE, MELVILLE ELIJAH (1848-), American journalist, was born at Hudson, Ill., Aug. 22 1848. His father was a Methodist minister, of New York birth, who had moved to Illinois in early life and combined his activities as a circuitpreacher with the running of various small businesses, including book-selling and printing. He had English, Scottish and Irish blood in his veins, the Stone family having settled in New England in the 17th century. In 1860, when Melville was 12, his father was made pastor of Methodist church in Chicago, and it was there that he got his schooling. In 1864 he began work as a newspaper reporter, but after sundry journalistic experiences he was set up in business in 1868 as proprietor of an ironfoundry and machine-shop, which incidentally made a specialty of the supply of folding theatre-chairs, etc. In the great Chicago fire of 1871 this was destroyed, and Stone was then for some time occupied in the administrative work of municipal relief and reconstruction after the fire. But in 1872 he again took up journalism, one of the editors of the Chicago Republican (subsequently Inter-Ocean ), and later of the Post and Mail, becoming for several years a political correspondent at Washington. At the end of 1875, having returned to Chicago, he and a colleague started a new Chicago paper, the evening Daily News (see 19.571), and, after he had obtained the help of a new partner in Victor F. Lawson as its manager, their venture soon became increasingly prosperous. In 1878 he and Lawson bought out the Post and Mail, and in 1881 they established the Morning News (later Record and Record-Herald). In 1888 Stone's interest was bought out by Lawson, and he retired, taking a prolonged holiday in Europe. Returning to Chicago in 1891, he took to banking by the foundation of the Globe National Bank, of which he became president, and he kept up this connexion for about ten years; but meanwhile pressure was put on him to take part in the reorganization of the Associated Press, then already a well-known news-agency, and in 1893 he accepted the position of general manager. In this capacity Melville Stone became even more prominent and powerful in the journalistic world than he had been as a Chicago editor and newspaper proprietor. At that time the Associated Press was still struggling (see 19.547) with its competitor, the United Press, but its enterprise now received a new stimulus, and by 1897, under Stone's management, and as subsequently reorganized in 1901, its service knew no rival. Stone had intimate relations with all the leading men of his time and played an important part in the publicity given to events and movements. He held this position until the close of 1918, when he retired. During that period of 25 years the budget of the Associated Press had grown from $50o,- 000 to $6,000,000 and it had come to furnish more than half the news printed in American newspapers.

See the Autobiography: Fifty Years a Journalist (1921).