User:Woodshed/Charles E. Marsh

Charles Edward Marsh (January 17, 1887 – December 30, 1964) was an American newspaper editor/publisher and owner, philanthropist and an activist for Democrats in Texas and national politics. He assisted in the development of the Lend-Lease Act and was a political adviser for Lyndon B. Johnson and Henry A. Wallace.

Early life
Born in Hartwell, Ohio (in outer Cincinnati), Marsh graduated from Hughes High School around 1901. After his father, a lawyer, left his wife and six children around that time, the family moved to Coalgate in the Oklahoma Territory. Marsh and two older brothers worked in the coal mining industry there.

Beginning in 1906, Marsh attended Haverford College near Philadelphia, where he was involved in debate and athletics. He was elected class president his sophomore year.

After his eldest brother's death in Coalgate, Marsh transferred to the University of Oklahoma and briefly played football at the university while working odd and menial jobs. He soon started playing poker, however, and earned his living that way throughout college. He graduated in 1909. He was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa in 1920.

Newspapers
Aboard a train headed for a teaching job after graduation, Marsh met a classmate who had been hired as a newspaper reporter in Oklahoma. The classmate suggested he apply at the same paper &mdash; either in Muskogee or Okmulgee, according to his stepson.

From there, Marsh moved to the Oklahoma City News and the Cleveland Press, both Scripps papers. In 1911, he was named city editor of the Cincinnati Post and editor of the Akron Press in 1914.

CHECK - That same year - CHECK, Marsh moved to the Des Moines News as editor. There he met E.S. Fentress, the business manager of the paper, with whom he would launch his ownership career. Annoyed with corporate interference, Marsh and Fentress invested $12,500 &mdash; plus $25,000 from Fentress' older brother, the business manager of the Cleveland Press &mdash; and bought the Fargo Forum, an independent newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1916.

Political conservatives in Fargo owned a competing newspaper and, unhappy with Marsh's liberal views, bought out the Forum in less than a year, netting Marsh and Fentress a profit.

Newspapers Inc.
In 1917, Marsh and Fentress moved to Waco, Texas and bought the Waco Morning News from local interests. The next year, the partners bought the non-daily Waco Tribune, consolidated the papers and renamed the product the Waco News-Tribune.

In 1918, Marsh moved to Beaumont, Texas and the pair purchased the Beaumont Journal, a competitor of the crosstown Beaumont Enterprise (then a William P. Hobby newspaper). They bought two nearby papers, the weekly Port Arthur News in 1921 and the daily Orange Leader. With circulation rising, Marsh and Fentress eventually forced Hobby into a merger and emerged from the deal with $500,000 of preferred stock.

Marsh and Fentress acquired two struggling papers in the Texas state capital, buying the Austin American CHECK - in 1921 (Kopper and Anne Austin) or 1919 (Handbook) - CHECK and the Austin Evening Statesman in 1924, publishing a combined Austin American Statesman on Sundays.

Through the 1920s, they also acquired daily Texas papers in Wichita Falls, Breckenridge, Brownsville, Cisco, Cleburne, Corpus Christi, Eastland, Harlingen, Laredo, McAllen, Mineral Wells, Paris, Ranger and Texarkana. The Marsh-Fentress chain, known as Newspapers Inc., grossed $3.5 million a year at this time. Marsh himself had been a millionaire since his early thirties.

General Newspapers Inc.
With Eugene Pulliam, Marsh established General Newspapers Inc. in 1930. In a "frantic spree," the pair traveled the country from August through the end of that year buying 23 newspapers in seven states, logging 42,000 miles. The partners usually financed their purchases without cash, using bonds, stock or agreements to pay out of the newspapers' future profits.

According to Marsh's biography, Pulliam was more interested in running newspapers while Marsh enjoyed the buying and selling of properties and wanted to expand into areas like real estate and oil.

With their sights set on 27 other papers in Texas, Kansas and Nebraska, they found themselves needing more investors as they ran out of money and the Great Depression wore on. After four years together, Marsh and Pulliam broke business ties with Pulliam taking control of the newspapers in Indiana and Oklahoma and Marsh the rest.

During this Depression period, Marsh and Fentress' chain was kept afloat in an unusual deal. Sybil Ashbaugh, widow of the owner of the St. Paul Daily News, was friendly with Marsh and loaned the company $200,000 during the sale of the paper in 1928. The money helped keep Newspapers Inc. above water. In return, Marsh agreed to pay the widow an annuity of $30,000 a year until her death.

Later years and legacy in newspapers
He made wealthy men of loyal employees, among them William Prescott Allen, Don Reynolds and Carmage Walls. Walls, who later founded Southern Newspapers, surmised that Marsh made about 45 newspaper managers multimillionaires by the end of their careers.

In one example, Marsh sold longtime employee Martin Andersen the Orlando Sentinel in a swap for Anderson's portion of ownership in the Macon Telegraph, a typical deal for Marsh. Andersen eventually sold the Sentinel to the Tribune Company for $20 million.

By the end of the 1930s, the Marsh-Fentress company had sold most of its holdings, only keeping the newspapers in Austin, Waco and Port Arthur, making it still one of the largest chains in the state during an era of local, non-corporate ownership of newspapers. Marsh sold his interest in Newspapers Inc. back to the Fentress family in the late 1947 for $500,000.

Ultimately, Marsh owned at least 50 newspapers in his career and was the principal owner in several holding companies and newspaper chains stretching from Texas to the South and New England.

Politics
Marsh moved to Austin in 1921 with his wife Leona when he became publisher of his first newspaper there. There he was mentored by Edward House (a behind-the-scenes adviser to President Woodrow Wilson), and through House he met Franklin Roosevelt and his mother Sara.

During Roosevelt's first campaign in 1932, Marsh would gather observations of the country's economic condition from his travels and pass them on to House, who would forward them to Roosevelt. He also sent his opinions to politicos like Senator Tom Connally and Democratic Party chief James A. Farley of New York.

Oil
Texas oil prospector Sid Richardson was living above a drugstore in Fort Worth when Marsh helped him strike it rich. Richardson had been deep in debt since the late 1920s, with loans and debt guarantees arranged by fellow oilman and friend Clint Murchison. Through the early 1930s, Richardson continued to drill wells that yielded small amounts of oil, but never enough to satisfy his debts.

In 1934, with Richardson's debt approaching $1 million owed to banks in Dallas and Fort Worth, a Dallas bank officer sought out Marsh, who was known to bankroll wildcatters on spec.

Marsh guaranteed $30,000 to the bank, and Richardson drew that money quickly. When he asked for more, Marsh, hesitant about throwing money away, attempted to secure a loan from New York banks for Richardson. Failing to do so, Marsh decided to support Richardson, guaranteeing his debts to the Dallas bank. In return, the bank loaned Richardson over $350,000 in additional capital, much of which went to pay his debts to the Fort Worth bank.

Learning that Gulf Oil was planning a major drilling operation in remote Winkler County, Texas, Richardson gambled on the area and in 1935 used Marsh's capital to buy up as many oil leases as possible. The wells in the area, which came to be known as the Keystone Field, came in strong, producing half a million barrels of oil over two years.

Marsh split the profits with Richardson, who used the remaining money to drill up to 80 wells in the Keystone Field, returning him to financial stability and made him "well-established as a millionaire." For his part, Marsh used his profits to buy a large estate in Virginia named Longlea.

Civic life
In Austin, Marsh organized the Capital National Bank and owned the city's streetcar system.

Under Marsh's direction, the Statesman championed civic reform and improvement such as a low-water dam on Lake Austin, a municipal auditorium, regional water authority and overhaul of the city council. He raised money or advocated for many city projects and served on boards.

Marsh and the Statesman also led a petition drive opposing the move of the University of Texas campus from its original 40 acres.

H-H sources

 * Hugh Morgan, "The Acquisition of Newspapers by Houston Harte" (master's thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1967), p. 64.
 * Freda McVay, The Paradoxical Plainsman, (Lubbock: The Texas Tech Press, 1983), p. 14.
 * Sally Ann Logue Post, "With or Without Offense: Bernard Hanks and the Abilene Reporter-News" (master's thesis, Texas Tech University, 1984)

Perhaps not related

 * Charles Marler, "Frank Grimes West Texas Editor." (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Missouri, 1975), p. 421

Other LBJ sources

 * Erich Leinsdorf oral history interview
 * Lady Bird Johnson oral history, pp. 96-98
 * '48 campaign - LBJ's "brain trust" included Alvin Wirtz, Charles Marsh, the Brown brothers, Tom Miller, Roy Hofheinz. LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, pg. 200
 * Marsh/Johnson politic - pp. 151-152

Drew Pearson
Direct quotes from Pearson:
 * LBJ Reminisces Regarding Old Friend And TV Station, Gadsden Times, pg. 6 - Jan 10, 1965. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19650110&id=de0hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SNUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3178,875576
 * "He had helped to finance Lyndon's first campaign for the House of Representative"
 * "He had sold the Orlando Sentinel to Anderson [sic] for nothing down and at aprice that enabled Anderson [sic] to pay off within a reasonable period of time."
 * "I recalled how when I had reported that Marsh had advanced money for Johnson's campaign, Jesse Jones, then head of the RFC, had pressured a Texas bank to call Marsh's $50,000 loan. The President remembered this vividly."
 * "...the acquisition of the Johnson TV property in Austin, for which the Republicans were then castigating the President."
 * Pearson quoting Johnson quoting Marsh: "Lyndon, you must come up for re-election every two years. Some day politics may catch up with you and you many [sic] not win. I've got a piece of land out there at the Lake Austin Dam which cost me $8,000, and I'll sell it to your wife for $8,000. It will eventually increase in value."
 * "Johnson bought the land, held it for around twenty years, and sold it for $330,000. Marsh, who was not only Johnson's political adviser, but his financial counselor, had also advised him to buy a radio station in Austin which was up for sale. But Lyndon reminded Marsh that Amon Carter in Fort Worth was losing several hundred thousand dollars a year on a radio station, and that the Dallas News was also in the red with its station."
 * Pearson quotes Johnson: "Lady Bird had been studying journalism .. and she wants to acquire a newspaper."
 * "The President said that Marsh had helped him look around for a small newspaper and had found one at Baytown, south of Houston. But it was overpriced, and the Johnsons couldn't afford it."
 * Pearson quotes Johnson quoting Marsh: "Forget the newspaper ... Buy the radio station. Some day it will be worth three million dollars."
 * "The President told how he had bought part of the radio station, with Sid Richardson, a close friend of Sam Rayburn's, as a partner. Later Richardson sold out, and the Johnson family kept the radio station. It later acquired a TV license."
 * "The President never answered the biter Republican charges regarding the acquisition of this TV-radio property. But this was the explanation which he gave to friends, in paying tribute to an old friend — who lay dying and who had perhaps done more than any other man to put Lyndon Johnson in the White House."
 * "It was Charles Marsh who first introduced me to Lyndon Johnson when he was a gangling young congressman from Texas. Marsh was a developer of young men. He helped persuade Henry Wallace to run for vice-president. He helped develop Claude Pepper when he first came to Washington as a young Senator from Florida."

Andersen
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