The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-09-25
THINGS I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT NEWSPAPER
 FEATURES

FEATURES
 The California legislature in i89e passed a law prohibiting publica- tion of cartoons in newspapers Only one important daily newspaper doesn't run comic strips-The New York Times {. The most univers- ally popular story, "Robinson Cru soe," and the most influential American novel, Uncle Toms Ca- oin," ct is credited with fomenting the Civil War) appeared first as newspaper serials The first serial in an Amerctan newspaper was Defoe's "A Religious Courtshipg' in @ Pennsylvania gazette. It wasn't completed because the agnostic Ben Franklin took over the paper and threw it out Franklin published the first newspaper cartoon in this country Paul Revere was @ newspaper cartoonist. So were John Barrymore and Gary Cooper.
 Early U. s. newspapers took care of "syndication" themselves. They clipped freely from each other, and anything good that appeared, for example, in Thomas Fleets excellent Boston Post was sure to be re- published throughout the Colonies. Fleet, by the way, put stories told > to his son by his mother-in Jaw, Mrs. Elizabeth Goose, into book and made her the immortal Mother Goose. But Fleets paper printed no story of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in its next issue, be- cause, '"rhe unhappy transactions of last week are so variously related that we shall not at present under take to give any particular account thereof"l American newspaper features are bought by editors all over the world. Popeye, Flash Cor don and Jiggs are better known abroad than Hollywood stars. Jiggs, tor example appears in 2l languages.
 Will Rogers got his column start- cd by telegraphing his news com- ments free to The New York Times, which regarded 1t for while as just a publicity stunt by the actor :. The highest paid regular columnist was Brisbane, but eX-President Coolidge earned $425,000 with his daily comments during the year he syndicated them The biggest lump sum paid by a syndicate was $325o00 for General Pershines memoirs. The Times gave the syndicate $50000 for the N. Y. rights. The ex-Kaiser's syndicated story brought him $250,00o Guess who syndicated the first New York gossip column2 Edward Box, later editor of Ladies' Home Journal. It was called Bab's Babble .. Box got into syndicate business by selling Henry Ward Beecher's sermons to papers King Features prints total of l8,000,000 comic and maga- zinc sections for newspapers each week.
 Baek in 1895, the editor of the Pittsburgh Press, observing the rapid circulation growth of the Hearst newspapers, asked If he could buy some of the Hearst features for The Press. That was the beginning of what is now King Features, big biggest of the syndicates Joe seph v. Connolly, whose colleagues are celebrating his 10th anniversary as head of King Features, 1nterna- tional News Service, International News Photos and General Press, and who personally oversees the produc- ton of news, features and pictures appearing in 2,20o dailies and more thousands of weeklies, started his career as a police court reporter and is still whiz at writing and transcribing shorthand Mark Twain gained his first fame when his Jumping Frog" story was re- printed from the New York Press by hundreds of papers.
 The first newspaper comic strip was the KatzenJ Jammer Kids, which