Robert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick (July 30,
1880 – April 1,
1955) was a member of the
McCormick family of
Chicago who became owner and publisher of the
Chicago Tribune newspaper. A leading non-interventionist, an opponent of
American entry into
World War II and of the increase in
Federal power brought about by the New
Deal, he continued to champion a traditionalist course long after his positions had been eclipsed in the mainstream.
McCormick returned from the war and took control of the
Tribune in the
1920s. Given the lack of schools of journalism in the midwestern
United States at the time, McCormick and
Patterson sponsored a school named for their grandfather, the
Joseph Medill School of Journalism. It was announced by
Walter Dill Scott in
November 1920, and began classes in
1921.
As publisher of the Tribune, McCormick was involved in a number of legal disputes regarding freedom of the press that were handled by McCormick's longtime lawyer
Weymouth Kirkland. The most famous of these cases is
Near v. Minnesota, 283
U.S. 697 (1931), a case championed by McCormick in his role as chairman of the
American Newspaper Publishers Association's Committee on
Free Speech.
A conservative
Republican, McCormick was an opponent of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and compared the New Deal to
Communism. For a period in 1935, he protested
Rhode Island's
Democratic judiciary by displaying a 47 star flag outside the Tribune building, with the
13th star (representing Rhode Island) removed; he relented after he was advised that alteration of the
American flag was unlawful.[
6][7] He was also an
America First isolationist who strongly opposed entering World War II to rescue the
British Empire. As a publisher he was very innovative. McCormick was a 25 percent owner of the Tribune's 50,
000 watt radio station, which was purchased in 1924; he named it
WGN, the initials of the Tribune's modest motto, the "
World's Greatest Newspaper".
He also established the town of
Baie-Comeau, Quebec in 1936 and constructed a paper mill and a hydroelectric power plant there named
McCormick Dam to generate electricity for the mill.[8]
McCormick carried on crusades against various local, state, and national politicians, gangsters and racketeers, labor unions, prohibition and prohibitionists,
Wall Street, the
East and
Easterners,
Democrats, the New Deal and the
Fair Deal, liberal
Republicans, the
League of Nations, the
World Court, the
United Nations,
British imperialism, socialism, and communism.
Besides Roosevelt, his chief targets included
Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson and
Illinois Governor Len Small. Some of McCormick's personal crusades were seen as quixotic (such as his attempts to reform spelling of the
English language) and were parodied in political cartoons in rival
Frank Knox's
Chicago Daily News.
Knox's political cartoonists, including
Cecil Jensen, derided McCormick as "
Colonel McCosmic", a "pompous, paunchy, didactic individual with a bristling mustache and superlative ego."[6][9][10]
In 1943 he told an audience he helped plan a defence against an invasion from
Canada at the end of
World War I. In June
1947 he gave a 100-year birthday party for the Tribune that included a fireworks show called "the most colossal show since the
Chicago fire."[7] Other publications noted that everything about the celebration was called "the world's greatest".
Instead, they said "the Tribune has been made into a worldwide
symbol of reaction, isolation, and prejudice by a man capable of real hate."[11]
Family life[edit]
Starting in the summer of 1904, McCormick spent much time at the homes of his father's first cousin in downtown Chicago and
Lake Forest, Illinois. In his later years and until his death, he lived at his estate named
Cantigny, in
Wheaton, Illinois.
Amanda McCormick (1822–1891), youngest daughter of family patriarch
Robert McCormick, had married fellow
Virginian Hugh Adams (1820–1880) before moving to Chicago to start the McCormick &
Adams grain trading business. Their son
Edward Shields Adams, who was born in 1859, had married the much younger
Amie de Houle "Amy"
Irwin, born in 1872, the daughter of decorated soldier
Bernard J. D. Irwin, on April 15,
1895.[12] However, starting in
November 1913 a bitter family dispute developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_R._McCormick
- published: 26 Jun 2015
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