Word: digest
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Paul; the rest he got from magazines in Manhattan's Public Library. When he visited editors to ask permission to reprint articles, Wallace was so shy that he sometimes took Lila along. Editors readily gave him permission to reprint especially as Wallace assured them that the Digest would carry no ads, would therefore be no competition that...
...future was on them before they knew it. The mail poured in from subscribers, bringing ecstatic testimonials. Wrote "L.M.W." from Pennsylvania: "Its contents seem like nuggets of gold." "The Reader's Digest," announced Editor Lila Bell Acheson in the second issue, "is successful beyond all anticipations." The fifth month brought a crisis; the Digest couldn't pay the printer, and Wallace was plunged in gloom. At first Lila was crushed by these moods, which would "just descend on him like a black cloud. It was all new to me-it just isn't in my nature...
When Wallace bought a huge old desk and moved it-with a secretary-into their already cramped quarters, Lila rented an empty pony shed next to the garage for $10 a month, and turned it into the Digest's office. When Ralph Henderson, a jungle-born son of missionaries, dropped in from nearby White Plains to see what the little magazine was like, the Wallaces hired him as business manager, soon made him an editor. They later hired Harold Lynch, an assistant Episcopal rector, to handle the money. The Digest soon outgrew the pony shed, and spread all over...
...Wallace was still haunted by fears of failure. He had taken great pains to keep the Digest's growth a secret,* and had kept the magazine off newsstands, for fear of attracting imitators. He was also afraid that other magazines would stop letting him reprint articles, and that someone else would beat him at his own game. Some of these fears were justified. When Wallace started...
...make so much money that he began to pay for the articles he reprinted, the other editors woke up to the Digest's size. They started to talk about refusing reprint privileges. Wallace soothed the grumbling magazines by agreeing to pay fat annual fees for reprint rights, in addition to paying for each article used. Imitators of the Digest sprang up by the score-many to wither after one season...