Monday, April 19, 2021

 

The Wheeler-Nicholson Syndicate, Part IX

 In Part 8 of this series we looked at Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's promise, published in an Editor & Publisher full page ad, of a new and improved blanket service to start in July 1926. But that's not all we learned about his service in that E&P Syndicate Directory. In addition to a full page ad, the syndicate also submitted a list of the specific features to be offered, which were detailed  in the E&P syndicate listings. And what a whopper of a list it was! The syndicate advertised a total of sixty features, a roster which puts them in pretty heady company. 

To give you an idea of how serious a contender this would make them, here are the total features offered by a selection of the major syndicates, showing that Wheeler-Nicholson was gearing up to become a very major player:

Bell Syndicate

77

Chicago Tribune

59

King Features

49

McNaught Syndicate

22

 These major syndicates shown above all offered their wares for individual purchase; the blanket services generally did not list all their features in the syndicate listings. But the blanket service ads sometimes offer us an idea; Editors Feature Service, for instance, listed 33 named or described features in their ad. NEA, the market leader, would have offered more than that, but purely comparing numbers, they probably didn't offer much more than Wheeler-Nicholson. 

Here are the features offered by Wheeler-Nicholson in the 1926 E&P Syndicate Directory, along with credits and frequencies. You'll see a few familiar features from 1925, along with lots of new ones:

Title

Frequency

Credit

A Dish a Day

Daily

Staff

Ambitious Ambrose

Daily strip

Oscar Hitt

Anecdotes, Selected

Daily

Uncredited

Babble from Babylon

Daily

Duncan

Beauty Hints

Daily

Peggy Hopkins Joyce

Behind the Foreign News

Weekly

Rogers

Book Chat

Daily

Staff

Butter and Eggs

Daily panel

Norcross

Champions Past and Present

Thrice weekly panel

Joe Archibald

Charley the Chump

Daily strip

Jim Navoni

College Comics

Daily

College Comics Magazine

Crossword Puzzle

Daily

Uncredited

The Doctor Talks

Daily

Dr. Frederick Damrau

Domestic Economy

Daily

Staff

Duckville Doings

Daily strip

Bill Bly

Editorials

Daily

Rogers Wickes Wamboldt

Epigrams

Daily

Wayne Halsley

Famous Short Story Series

Daily strip

Nicholas Afonsky

The Girl About Town

Weekly

Margery Dykeman

Hi-way Henry

Daily panel

Oscar Hitt

Holding Your Husband

Daily

Lorene Bowman

Hollywood Holidays

Daily

Staff

Interior Decoration

Daily

Staff

Lest We Forget

Daily panel

Joe Archibald

Little Otto

Daily strip

H. T. Elmo

Looney Land

Daily panel

Jim Navoni

Love Confessions of Great Men

Weekly

Joseph Kaye

Manhattan Aisles

Weekly

Staff

The Melting Pot

Weekly

Staff

Men’s Fashions

Daily

Sylvester Martin Zinns

Mike O’Kay

Daily strip

Roberts

Muscle Movies

Daily panel

Staff

My Mother

Thrice Weekly

Joseph Kaye

Mystery & Adventure Series

Daily strip

Nicholas Afonsky

News Cartoon

Daily panel

Staff

Now You Tell One

Daily

Staff

Pa and Abie

Daily panel

Russell

Personality in Dress

Unspecified

Marion Metzer

Problems of Everyday Behavior

Unspecified

Janet Paige

The Romance of Words

Daily

Staff

The Scrap Basket

Weekly

Staff

Serial Story “Sylvia”

Daily

Ninon Romaine

Signs and Charms the World has Believed In

Daily

Staff

Sports Cartoon

Daily panel

Joe Archibald

Squirrel Food

Daily panel

Heck

Stories that Must be Told

Daily

Evelyn Norton

The Story of Home-Making

Daily

Mary E. Wright

Tabloid Short Story Fiction

Daily

Various

Tested Recipes for Long Life

Daily

Staff

They Never Do This But Once

Daily panel

Dunning

Tip Topics

Weekly

Tip Bliss

Uncle Eph

Daily panel

Duncan

Vivian Vanity

Daily strip

Delevante

Vivian Vanity Says

Daily panel

Delevante

What Every Woman Knows

Daily

Gabrielle Forbush

What’s In A Name

Daily

Leslie Gray

Where Are They Now

Thrice Weekly

Joseph Kaye

Why Boys Leave Home

Daily panel

Davidson

Women’s Fashions

Daily

Uncredited

Your Child and You

Daily

Elizabeth West

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We'll talk lots more about the new features in coming posts, but at the moment we need to backtrack a little. I said in a previous episode that I did not have any information about the investors who increased the Major's capitalization to $200,000. That turned out to be the case only because I've been doing lots of searching but not much reading. Luckily I have brilliant readers who come to my rescue. Blog reader Jim Davidson was kind enough to point out to me that there was more information right under my nose, in the same issue of Editor & Publisher I've been discussing for the last two days. For some reason my searches of E&P have not been finding this short item that appeared in that issue:

Maj. Malcom Wheeler-Nicholson this week announced that the capital stock of Wheeler-Nicholson, Inc. has been increased to $200,000. He also announced completion of agreements with the Advertisers' Photo-Engraving Company, the Craft Off-Set Printing Company, and the Shaefer Stereotyping Company, all of New York City, which have merged their services into working arrangements with the Wheeler-Nicholson syndicate and have become minority stockholders.

 While not out-and-out stating that these printing companies are responsible for the increase in capital stock, another reader, E.O. Costello, tells me that it would not be terribly unusual for investors to trade services for stock, and that the issuance of the stock can be considered essentially the same as capital, as long as it is being accepted by a third party as having some worth, which these three companies apparently did. 

Therefore, we are chipping away at Wheeler-Nicholson's financial mystery. It seems now that the Major was probably not actually awash in cash, but rather was relieved of the need for a bunch of cash by convincing a cadre of printing companies to exchange their needed services for stock certificates.  

With all or at least some of his printing needs taken care of, the only other big drain on Wheeler-Nicholson's cash reserves would be to pay his editorial and creative staff. Given the Major's obvious ability to convince people to invest in his new blanket service, could he have paid the creative personnel in the same way, with stock certificates and dreams of riches?



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