Dana was gone, but his son remained as principal owner, and his chief writer and most intimate intellectual associate for twenty years was left to form the Sun’s policies as he had moulded them in Dana’s absences and as he shapes them to-day. His publisher, the astute Laffan, was still in charge of the Sun’s financial affairs. Other men whom he had found and trained, like Frank P. Church, Mayo W. Hazeltine, and Edward M. Kingsbury in the editorial department, and Chester S. Lord and Daniel F. Kellogg in the news department, continued their work as if Dana still lived.
With their grief doubt was not mingled. The Sun’s success resulted from no secret formula that died with the discoverer. Half of Dana’s victory came by his attraction to himself of men who saw life and literature as he saw them; and so, in a magnificent way, he had made his work dispensable.
And Dana’s was always the magnificent way. To him journalism was not a means of making money, but of interesting, elevating, and making happy every one who read the Sun or wrote for it. He raised his profession to new heights. As Hazeltine wrote in the North American Review:
One of Mr. Dana’s special titles to the remembrance of his fellow workers in the newspaper calling is the fact that, more than any other man on either side of the Atlantic, he raised their vocation to a level with the legal and medical professions as regards the scale of remuneration. He honored his fellow craftsmen of the pen, and he compelled the world to honor them.
Shortly after the death of his father, Paul Dana, who was then forty-five years old, and who had been on the Sun editorial staff for seventeen years, was made editor by vote of the trustees of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association. In the following year (1898) the younger Dana bought from Thomas Hitchcock, who was one of Charles A. Dana’s associates both in a financial and in a literary way, enough shares to give him the control of the paper.
Paul Dana continued in control of the property for several years and held with credit his father’s title of editor until 1903. William Mackay Laffan, who had been associated with the elder Dana since 1877, next obtained the business control. His proprietorship was announced on February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in 1909.[A]
[A] The following editorial article appeared in the Sun on July 26, 1918:
“Mr. Paul Dana calls the Sun’s attention to what he claims was an error in ‘The Story of the Sun’ as it originally appeared in the Munsey Magazine: the statement that ‘he [Mr. Dana] continued in control of the property until 1900.’ Mr. Dana states that he did not dispose of his controlling interest until 1902. The statement in the Munsey Magazine publication of ‘The Story of the Sun’ was founded upon the International Encyclopædia’s biography of William M. Laffan and also upon a statement published in the Sun at the time of Mr. Laffan’s death in 1909, that Mr. Laffan obtained the control of the Sun in 1900. When the Munsey Magazine articles were reprinted in the Sunday Sun the paragraph referred to by Mr. Dana was changed to read as follows:
“‘Paul Dana continued in control of the property for several years and held with credit his father’s title of editor until 1903. William Mackay Laffan, who had been associated with the elder Dana since 1877, obtained the business control. His proprietorship was announced on February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in 1909.’
“We will let Mr. Dana’s version of this matter stand in ‘The Story of the Sun’ unless some further evidence appears on the disputed point.”