|
Eugene Meyer designed a plan for his life when he was in his twenties: twenty years for schooling; twenty years to gain a "competence," marry, and start a family; twenty years to devote to public service; and retirement at age 60 to grow old gracefully.
By 1933, when he bought the Washington Post, Meyer was only a few years off schedule. He had graduated from Yale, bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange at the age of 26, and made his fortune as a financier. Eugene Meyer left the financial community to do public service as he had promised, ending that phase of his life as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board.
Meyer retired from retirement when he bought the Washington Post for $825,000 in 1933. The Post plant was in shambles, and the paper was down to eighteen pages with only a few pages of ads.
Meyer put his fortune to work making the Post a serious newspaper. In the early years, the newspaper lost more than $1 million a year. However, on the tenth anniversary of his ownership, Post circulation and advertising had trebled and the paper was out of trouble. In 1954, Meyer guaranteed the Post's future by purchasing the Washington Times-Herald.
In the meantime, Meyer had been pressed into public service again. A participant in the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, he was tapped by President Truman to be the first president of the World Bank in 1946.
When the solemn businessman-turned-publisher retired from his third career, he had earned the admiration of his most skeptical audience - the staff of the newspaper. They put up a plaque calling Eugene Meyer "A Newspaper-man of Conscience. "
|
