Had the founder of The Jewelers’ Weekly been merely an idealist, their prophecies would have been justified. But so completely did his new paper cover the activities of the jewelry world that no jeweler could keep abreast of the trade without reading it. Such an indispensable organ was logically a valuable advertising medium, and before long disgruntled advertisers came trooping back with contracts, quite willing to let the young editor determine his own policies. What those policies were may be inferred from a law which owes its presence on the statute books of New York to the activities of The Jewelers’ Weekly. The law is that which forbids a pawnbroker to receive a pledge from any one under sixteen years of age. The need for it was first revealed by an exposé in The Jewelers’ Weekly and its passage was due largely to Mr. Rothschild’s efforts.
Not only was the Weekly a power for good, but its editor, though not much more than twenty, became the recognized “guide, philosopher, and friend” of the trade. He took a friendly interest in the affairs of all his customers, particularly the small men whom it was his delight to nurse along with advice and assistance, helping them often to achieve great success.
In this respect and in several others, Mr. Rothschild showed himself to be no mere seeker after wealth. It is true that he was in business with the avowed purpose of making a competency rapidly, but while in the game he played it as much for its own sake as for the prize. Writing in his diary concerning the famous “Birthday Number,” the finest thing of its day in trade journalism, he said: “My ambition is to make this the handsomest and most readable volume ever issued by a trade publication.” That and similar utterances indicate that his interest in the Weekly was not focused entirely on its money-getting powers.
Because of ill health, his partner withdrew from the firm after a few years, leaving him a free hand in all departments, editorial and financial, and he was able to test his theories to the limit. In the six months following he made the Weekly a landmark in trade journalism besides increasing its value five times. The principle which built his success at this time will surprise most business men. It was: “Give the other fellow a chance to make something too.” In testing this thesis, he worked out what was probably one of the first profit-sharing plans, which, like his other attempts to humanize business, justified itself in dollars and cents.
It was partly this policy of liberality and partly his desire to pave the way for his farewell to business that induced him, at the zenith of his success, to take his one-time partner back into the firm, and with him two other men.
The Jewelers’ Weekly Publishing Company, as it was called, with Mr. Rothschild as president, then took over The Jewelers’ Weekly and the allied publications that he had either started or projected. As long as he remained an active member of the firm, success continued to crown its undertakings, but after he ceased to have a hand in its conduct the splendid publication of which he was so proud, languished.
The failure of his colleagues to continue the work he had so successfully carried on almost single-handed, throws into strong relief his achievements. He had attained financial independence in six years—an independence won at cost to no one else and with incidental benefit to many; he had shown that profits and ethical principles are not at opposite poles of human endeavor; he had proved the feasibility of the profit-sharing plan; he had elevated the tone of the jewelry trade; and he had set new standards in trade journalism.
One would ordinarily feel safe in concluding that a young man who in six years accomplished so many things had not been able to do much else. Yet Alonzo Rothschild found opportunity, also, to keep alive his intellectual interests, to do literary work, and to take an active part in city politics.
While still in newspaper work he had begun making an elaborate card index of his reading in the belief that it would be useful in later literary undertakings. This he continued to enrich during the years that he was building up the Weekly, finding time somehow to do a vast amount of general reading. His active literary work comprised a very excellent monograph on Nathan Hale which appeared subsequently in America, a patriotic journal of the day. The research requisite for the work was considerable and it was only by dogged persistence that Mr. Rothschild could make any headway. All through his chronicle of those busy days one comes across references to the Hale manuscript, triumph at having found time to progress or chagrin at being delayed. One of these passages throws so much light upon his character that it is worth quoting. He writes: “The Hale notes hardly seem to move. I get so little time for them. I am tempted to discontinue them for the present, but I have never yet failed in anything I started to accomplish and I will not begin now. We’ll crawl ahead as best we can.”
Despite the conflicting interests that he complains of, he still found time to do his part in politics. He was one of the founders of the Good Government Movement—“Goo-Goos,” as they were called—and the youngest member of its Executive Council. When the organization was forming, a body of naturalized Germans asked to be affiliated, proposing to designate their branch as German-American. Without any heed to the possible political consequences of such a course, Mr. Rothschild argued against affiliation with any society that maintained a hyphenated character. He said: “There is no such thing as a German-American. These men are either American or they are not. If their patriotism is equivocal and they persist in tying strings to it, we must have nothing to do with them.” Such an attitude in one whose tenderest associations were all in some sense German is strikingly indicative of an unbiased, logical mind.