here, for xanadu's landlord, will be held 1940's biggest, strangest funeral; here this week is laid to rest a potent figure of our century - america's kubla kahn - charles foster kane. in journalism's history, other names are honored more than charles foster kane's, more justly revered. among publishers, second only to james gordon bennet the first: his dashing, expatriate son; england's northcliffe and beaverbrook; chicago's patterson and mccormick;
denver's bonfils and sommes; new york's late, great joseph pulitzer; america's emperor of the news syndicate, another editorialist and landlord, the still mighty and once mightier hearst. great names all of them - but none of them so loved, hated, feared, so often spoken - as charles foster kane. the san francisco earthquake. first with the news were the kane papers. first with relief of the sufferers, first with the news of their relief of the sufferers. kane papers scoop the world on the armistice - publish, eight hours before competitors, complete details of the armistice teams granted the germans by marshall foch from his railroad car in the forest of compeigne. for forty years appeared in kane newsprint no public issue on which kane papers took no stand. no public man whom kane himself did not support or denounce - often support, then denounce. its humble beginnings, a dying dailey -
kane's empire, in its glory, held dominion over thirty-seven newpapers, thirteen magazines, a radio network. an empire upon an empire. the first of grocery stores, paper mills, apartment buildings, factories, forests, ocean-liners - an empire through which for fifty years flowed, in an unending stream, the wealth of the earth's third richest gold mine.  famed in american legend is the origin of the kane fortune.  how, to boarding housekeeper mary kane, by a defaulting boarder, in 1868 was left the supposedly worthless deed to an abandoned mine shaft: the colorado lode. the magnificent enquirer building of today.
fifty-seven years later, before a congressional investigation, walter p. thatcher, grand old man of wall street, for years chief target of kane papers' attack on "trusts," recalls a journey he made as a youth.
that same month in union square -
and yet another opinion - kane's own.
twice married, twice divorced - first to a president's niece, emily norton - today, by her second marriage, chatelaine of the oldest of england's stately homes. sixteen years after that - two weeks after his divorce from emily norton - kane married susan alexander, singer, at the town hall in trenton, new jersey.
for wife two, one-time opera singing susan alexander, kane built chicago's municipal opera house. cost: three million dollars. conceived for susan alexander kane, half-finished before she divorced him, the still unfinished xanadu. cost: no man can say.
one hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble, are the ingredients of xanadu's mountain. xanadu's livestock: the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle - two of each; the biggest private zoo since noah. contents of kane's palace: paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace, shipped to florida from every corner of the earth, from other kane houses, warehouses, where they mouldered for years. enough for ten museums - the loot of the world.
kane urged his country's entry into one war, opposed participation in another. swung the election to one american president at least, was called another's assassin. thus, kane's papers might never have survived - had not the president.
kane, molder of mass opinion though he was, in all his life was never granted elective office by the voters of his country. few u.s. news publishers have been. few, like one-time congressman hearst, have ever run for any office - most know better - conclude with other political observers that one man's press has power enough for himself. but kane papers were once strong indeed, and once the prize seemed almost his. in 1910, as independent candidate for governor, the best elements of the state behind him - the white house seemingly the next easy step in a lightning political career -
then, suddenly - less than one week before election - defeat! shameful, ignominious - defeat that set back for twenty years the cause of reform in the u.s., forever cancelled political chances for charles foster kane. then, in the third year of the great depression.  as to all publishers, it sometimes must - to bennett, to munsey and hearst it did - a paper closes! for kane, in four short years: collapse! eleven kane papers, four kane magazines merged, more sold, scrapped -
then four long years more - alone in his never-finished, already decaying, pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, never photographed, charles foster kane continued to direct his falling empire .  vainly attempting to sway, as he once did, the destinies of a nation that has ceased to listen to him .  ceased to trust him.
last week, death came to sit upon the throne of america's kubla khan - last week, as it must to all men, death came to charles foster kane.