Walter Evans Edge - Business Career

Business Career

In 1888, at the age of fourteen, Edge began working for the Atlantic Review, then Atlantic City’s only newspaper, providing it with news and social notes pertaining to Pleasantville and nearby communities. Later in 1888, Edge took another job with the newspaper, serving primarily as a printer’s devil, but performing a wide variety of other jobs as well. Edge’s position at the Atlantic Review introduced him to many of the hotel owners and businessmen in rapidly growing Atlantic City. Edge moved from Pleasantville to Atlantic City the same year.

At the age of sixteen, Edge took a part-time job with John M. Dorland, who operated an Atlantic City advertising business. Dorland solicited advertising from Atlantic City hotels for Philadelphia and New York newspapers. Dorland was in poor health when Edge joined him and within a few months, Edge was running the business. When Dorland died less than one year later, his widow sold the business to Edge, who was then seventeen years old. Edge financed the $500 purchase price with a note that a hotel owner agreed to co-sign for him. Under Edge’s management, the Dorland Agency grew into multi-million dollar advertising agency, with offices located in numerous cities in the United States and Europe.

In 1893 Edge founded the Atlantic City Guest, a summer newspaper devoted to the activities of the resort’s vacationers. The success of the paper caused Edge to start a similar paper in Jacksonville, Florida during the winter of 1894-1895.

On March 4, 1895 Edge established the Atlantic City Daily Press (now the Press of Atlantic City) as the successor to the Atlantic City Guest. He was twenty-one years old when he founded what was destined to become the Atlantic City area's dominant newspaper. Edge’s income from the Press soon exceeded $20,000 a year.

In 1905, Edge purchased the competing (Atlantic City) Evening Union. He sold both newspapers in 1919 to three employees: Albert J. Feyl, Paul J. O'Neill and Francis E. Croasdale.