Background
William Byron Colver was born on September 26, 1870, in Wellington, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Byron Henry and Josephine (Noble) Colver.
William Byron Colver was born on September 26, 1870, in Wellington, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Byron Henry and Josephine (Noble) Colver.
Colver attended the public schools of Cleveland and later studied law at Ohio State University.
Colver practised law for only a short time, however, before he became reporter on the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1894. From the Plain Dealer he went to the Cleveland Press and in 1898 became New York and Washington correspondent for the old Scripps-McRae League. When Tom L. Johnson, a close personal and political friend, launched his famous three-cent-fare fight, Colver withdrew from journalism for a few years to devote his energy to the civic cause in Cleveland. He served for a year of this period as tax inquisitor for Cuyahoga County, and for another year as secretary of the Municipal Traction Company of Cleveland.
In 1907 he returned to newspaper work as editor of the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Five years later he resigned to become editor-in-chief of the “Clover Leaf” publications of the Northwest. In 1917 he was appointed by President Wilson to the Federal Trade Commission of which he was a member for three and a half years, serving for one year as chairman.
He served also as a member of the Price Fixing Committee of the War Industries Board. In 1919 he organized the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, the Washington editorial bureau for all Scripps- Howard papers, and until his retirement from active work in 1924 he served as general editorial director of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, in which position he assisted in starting or inspiring many of the policies of these papers.
It was in newspaper work rather than in public office that Colver achieved his greatest success. As a writer of editorials which bristled with purpose and were packed with solid and accurate information, he waged many a campaign for public causes. During the Taft administration his editorial skill exposed the celebrated power-site and forest exploitation. He wrote stirring editorials on the Teapot Dome exposures and chided the newspapers that they had done so little to expose the unfair practises for which the public continually suffered and which every newspaper man in Washington knew existed. He was of the firm belief that the publisher and the editor had different functions, and that it was the editor’s duty to get all the news and then really serve the public by giving it all the news in the most readable and interesting way. He preached the gospel of terse, bright newswriting and saw vast possibilities for the tabloid sheets. These, he believed, need not be sensational papers but should offer an attractive economical form in which brevity could be conserved and displays made without waste of material.
William Byron Colver was one of a group of a half-dozen men who, under Johnson’s leadership, fought for the public control of street-car lines and a founder of Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance. While as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, his associates gave him great credit for his practical vision in setting up principles to govern competition and prevent unfair practices in trade.
Quotes from others about the person
“Outstanding in Mr. Colver’s incumbency of the Federal Trade Commissionership were his fight against the excess profits tax which he believed to be uneconomic, and his opposition to the great packing interests which he felt had an unwholesome control of the meat industry. ” - New York Times
In 1897 Colver was married to Pauline Simmons of Cleveland.
