William Ralston Balch (pseudonym C. C. C.;[1] December 9, 1852 – March 7, 1923) was an American journalist and author who wrote The Complete Compendium of Universal Knowledge, among other reference works.

Born on December 9, 1852[2] in Leetown, Virginia,[3] he began his newspaper work in the composing room of the Concord Monitor as a boy in 1871.

In this work he secured the co-operation of Rudyard Kipling, whose poem, "The Absent-minded Beggar," which he wrote especially for this cause, brought so much money into the office of the Mail that it was decided to found a veterans' hospital at Portsmouth, England.

[4] Balch contributed to the London Daily Mail an exclusive account of the impending death of Queen Victoria, developed out of a noblewoman's remark to her dressmaker that black would be the fashion that winter.

[4] When he served as a founding editor of The American in 1880, the magazine featured notable contributors like Henry Cuyler Bunner, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Walt Whitman.