Brief History of Rickard’s time with the Journal
This is a summary of Thomas A. Rickard’s experience at the Engineering & Mining Journal in the early 1900s.
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After Rothwell’s death in 1901, a publisher named John McGraw bought the Journal in September 1901 for $183,000. He resold it three months later to William Johnston for $283,000, which yielded McGraw a $100,000 profit.
William Johnston was a budding entrepreneur who hired T. A. Rickard, a successful mining engineer and a friend and colleague of both Eilers and Raymond. Rickard soon learned that Johnston had run out of money and needed to raise cash to save the Journal. Rickard helped Johnston organize a group of seventy-two investors that included Anton and Rossiter. Johnston was more interested in purchasing additional technical journals than managing and promoting the Journal, but without any capital, he struggled to piece together his empire.
By late 1903, Johnston was in deep financial trouble again and began to court New York publishers. John McGraw approached Rickard to talk about throwing Johnston out and taking over the Journal. Though he was intrigued, Rickard declined. Another publisher was John A. Hill, who, like McGraw, owned several technical journals.
Rickard met with Hill, but found him too brusque to deal with on a daily basis. Eventually, a third publisher, Mr. H. M. Swetland, approached Rickard. Rickard found him sagacious, which he liked.
In January of 1904, Swetland purchased the Journal, but, just nine months later, Swetland sold it to John Hill without informing Rickard. Hill and Rickard’s relationship quickly soured and Rickard resigned. Meanwhile, Rickard purchased the San Francisco-based Mining and Scientific Press.
John Hill and John McGraw would continue to compete before merging their publishing companies in 1909, forming the McGraw-Hill Company. Some years later McGraw-Hill approached Rickard about purchasing the Mining and Scientific Press, an offer Rickard declined.
Also, see T. A. Rickard, “A Chapter in Journalism,” Mining & Scientific Press, May 22, 1920, p. 749-756.