Gardner Cowles was an American newspaper publisher.
Background
Gardner Cowles was born on February 28, 1861 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, United States. He was the son of Rev. William Fletcher Cowles (pronounced "Coles"), a Methodist clergyman, and his first wife, Maria Elizabeth LaMonte. He had an older brother and two half sisters by his father's second marriage. William Cowles, born in Detroit, Michigan, of Puritan-Covenanter lineage, was twice appointed a collector of internal revenue in Iowa by President Lincoln. Gardner's mother, a teacher and a descendant of Richard Gardner, who crossed on the Mayflower, came of a family of northeast Iowa pioneers. She died when the boy was twelve.
Education
He attended Penn College in Oskaloosa for one year, then studied at Grinnell College for two years and, moving again, was graduated with the A. B. degree, from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1882. He later (1885) took the A. M. degree there.
Career
Cowles had taught school, and for two years after graduating he served as superintendent of schools in Algona, Iowa.
For eighteen months (1883 - 1884) Cowles was a partner in publishing the weekly Algona Republican and, briefly, was the editor of the weekly Advance. For most of the next twenty years, however, he devoted himself to the variety of commercial opportunities that abounded in the developing agricultural region.
Maintaining his home in Algona, he was at one time or another a rural mail contractor, real estate dealer, lender on land, and handler of investments, but particularly a banker, with as many as ten banks in northern Iowa under his control.
Local prominence and esteem led to his election, as a Republican, to the Iowa house of representatives, where he served for two terms (1899 - 1903).
His principal career in journalism began somewhat inadvertently. In 1903, at the urging of Harvey Ingham (1858 - 1949), his admired onetime competitor as a newspaper editor in Algona, Cowles bought a majority interest in the Des Moines Register and Leader, of which Ingham was editor. The paper was in debt and had a circulation of only 14, 000. By working long hours, personally answering complaints, handling business matters, and encouraging Ingham to shun partisanship and prejudice and to cultivate assiduously Iowa's opportunities and needs, Cowles reversed the downward trend. Success did not come easily, but in five years the Register was covering the Des Moines area thoroughly and reaching out into the state.
In 1908 Cowles bought the newly established Des Moines Tribune and entered the afternoon field. Continuing this process over two decades, he absorbed two additional Des Moines papers: the Scripps Daily News in 1924 and the fifty-year-old Capital in 1927.
In 1925 the Cowles company engaged a young journalism instructor, George Gallup to survey the preferences of Register and Tribune readers, thus inaugurating the Gallup opinion poll. An early advocate of news broadcasting, he set up the first of his three radio stations in 1928.
In 1929 he was appointed a member of the Federal Commission on Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain.
By 1930 the centrally situated Cowles newspapers had enveloped the Iowa daily newspaper market, morning, evening, and Sunday. Their publisher insisted that his papers be available through home delivery service, and for many years he counted more on revenue from circulation than from advertising, a financial reliance that was most uncommon in American journalism.
Moreover, Cowles rejected liquor advertisements and established a bureau to screen other advertising for false claims and harmful effects and to assure accuracy and fair play.
Journalistic achievement went with business success. Under Ingham and William W. Waymack (1888 - 1960), handpicked by Cowles as managing editor, the Des Moines Register and Tribune were frequently on the Pulitzer Prize and other award lists. His formula, Cowles said, was that "the more honestly a paper is conducted, the more successful it will be. "
Though he believed in vigorous, independent editorial utterance, he believed equally in providing subscribers with ample space for their own opinions. His policies produced a combined circulation of 350, 000 daily and 425, 000 on Sunday.
Under their increasingly active direction, the Cowles company in the 1930's introduced picture transmission by airplane, started the Register and Tribune Syndicate, acquired and developed newspapers in Minneapolis, and in 1937 began publication of Look magazine, which by the time of Cowles's death had reached a circulation of 2. 6 million.
During the banking crisis of 1932 he served as director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
He died at his Des Moines home on the eighty-fifth anniversary of his birth. Following cremation, burial was in Glendale Cemetery, Des Moines.
Achievements
Cowles was the owner of The Des Moines Register and the Des Moines Tribune.
He pioneered in the establishment of employees' group insurance, retirement, and stock purchase plans.
Cowles and his wife created the Gardner Cowles Foundation, primarily to provide financial assistance for twenty-eight private colleges and the principal hospitals in Iowa.
Politics
Cowles served as a Republican in the Iowa General Assembly from 1899 to 1903 as representative from Kossuth County.
Membership
He was a member of the Federal Commission on Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain.
Personality
Cowles was modest and conscientious, quiet and dignified, gentle but also firm. His word was as good as his signature.
He was, in the words of the Davenport Times, "as much a part of Iowa as its waving corn. "
Interests
In later years he became a world traveler.
Connections
On December 3, 1884, he married Florence Maud Call, a member of the teaching staff and the daughter of a local banker. They had six children: Helen, Russell, Bertha, Florence, John, and Gardner. Two of the Cowles sons, John and Gardner, Jr. , followed their father into journalism. The third became a painter.
