Beginning to lose his sight due to glaucoma despite a 1908 operation, Pearson was progressively forced from 1910 onwards to relinquish his newspaper interests; the Daily Express eventually passed, in November 1916, under the control of the Canadian-British tycoon Sir Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook.
Pearson was a close friend of the pioneer of the Scouting movement Baden-Powell, and supportive of his efforts in setting up the movement and publishing its magazine The Scout.