CHARLES S. GLEED

CHARLES SUMNER GLEED was born in Vermont in 1856, and came to Lawrence in 1866 with his mother, Mrs. Thomas Gleed, and his brother, James Willis Gleed. His first definite employment was in connection with newspapers. The possession of a boy's printing plant gave him his first knowledge of the rudiments of the typographical art. In the ten years prior to 1878, for the purpose of earning a living and an education (in high school and the University of Kansas), he did many kinds of newspaper work for the Lawrence Republican and its successor, the Lawrence Journal; the Lawrence Tribune, the Kansas Spirit, the Kansas Collegiate, the Kansas City Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Herald. For the Lawrence Journal he was carrier, mailing clerk, shipping clerk, cashier, reporter, legislative correspondent, city editor, managing editor and editorial writer. For the Tribune he was compositor, mailing clerk and counting room assistant. For the Kansas Spirit he was compositor and writer. For the Kansas City Journal he was news correspondent, subscription and advertising agent and editorial writer. For the Chicago Tribune he was news correspondent and editorial writer on western subjects. For the New York Herald he reported many important events of national interest. His work in Lawrence brought him in close personal relations with T. Dwight Thacher, Noble L. Prentis and Frederick J. V. Skiff, of the Journal; the Rev. I. S. Kalloch, of the Spirit; John Speer, of the Tribune; and ex-Senator Edmund G. Ross and Henry C. Burnett, of the Standard. He also formed the acquaintance of practically all the best-known editors of Kansas. In 1878 Mr. Gleed was employed to look after the newspaper relations of the Kansas Pacific Railway, with headquarters in Kansas City. After the purchase of the Kansas Pacific by the Union Pacific he did the same work in Omaha. In 1880 he took charge of the publicity work of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe in Topeka. For this company he established and edited the Santa Fe Trail, a monthly paper devoted to advertising the commercial and industrial possibilities and the tourist attractions of the states tributary to the Santa Fe lines. In this work he gained an almost intimate acquaintance with a very large proportion of the newspapers and the newspaper men in the southwest quarter of the United States. In 1882, having carried his law studies (begun in Lawrence in the first class of the University law school) to the necessary point, he was admitted to the bar, and entered the law department of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe company as chief clerk to General Solicitor George E. Peck. In 1884 he resigned from the railway service to become editor of the Denver Daily Tribune as successor to Eugene Field. He had brought about the sale of the paper to Mr. T. C. Henry, who in turn induced him to become editor of the paper. In about six months the Tribune and the Republican were consolidated under the control of Senator Hill, and Mr. Gleed and his brother (who had just completed his law studies in the law school of Columbia University, New York) opened their law office in Topeka, where they have continued in business ever since. Naturally, Mr. Gleed had many clients among newspaper men. One of these was Major J. K. Hudson, of the Topeka Capital, and another was Frank P. MacLennan, of the Topeka Journal, to whom Mr. Gleed and his brother rendered varied services, legal and financial. Mr. Gleed was counsel for Mr. MacLennan in his purchase of the State Journal, and for a considerable time carried the property in his own name. In 1896 Mr. Gleed, having been the attorney in many matters for the Kansas City Journal, had an opportunity to purchase the same from its founder, the late Colonel Robert T. Van Horn, and his then associate, Mr. William A. Bunker, For the twenty years between June, 1896, and June, 1916, Mr. Gleed, president, and Mr. Hal Gaylord, secretary and manager, owned and operated the Kansas City Journal company and its several publications. This paper was founded by Colonel Van Horn in 1854, and is accordingly the oldest paper in Kansas City and the foremost Republican paper in western Missouri. While throughout his control of the Kansas City Journal Mr. Gleed was an intensely busy lawyer in connection with numerous railroad, telephone, banking and manufacturing corporations, he never failed to closely direct the editorial policy of the Journal, and did for it a great amount of actual writing. Probably no twenty years in the life of any paper in the United States will show a better grade of editorial opinion than can be found in the pages of the Journal in the twenty years referred to.

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