The Wilmington morning star., 1946-06-04
Editorial Comment
BY WEsTBRoOK PEGLER

tAoA q yGd1 US1OIS Joseph MSulll { w oiAs
who was for a long time one of Roosevelts
most belligerent and insensate supporters but
toward the end Of their lives hated and fought
Roosevelt with the same ardor.
Comparisons would not be entirely compll-
m~entary to either, for Patterson, too, had his
faults and peculiarities but in his personal
knowledge of the American people, which was
Roosevelt's boast, Patterson had it all over
his up-country neighbor. He was a roughneck
by nature who had had street fights in his
early days as a socialist. He wore expensive
clothes but looked like a bum and, for a long
time after he came to New York Just after the
first war to start the Daily News, he spent
hours alone in movies and proving the streets
day and night. Whether he was consciously
''studying'' humanity for guidance in appeal
ing for circulation or just happened to share
those tastes and enjoyed humanity's company
and inexpensive pleasures ! have never quite
decided for myself although I knew him well.
I knew him to be intensely patriotic in the
narrow sense which is now deplored by the
communists and their semi-American friends
as the foundation of Hitlerism because Hitler,
too, was patriotic.
For preaching this patriotism and hating
Roosevelt in his later years, he encountered a
boycott whispered up against him. but Patter-
son was a great puncher who loved a fight
and he never took a step backward, whatever
this conspiracy may have cost him. Another
of his enemies IN his last years was Fiorello
LaGuardia, whom he had praised absurdly
long after he should have realized his mistake
but he replied mostly with silent contempt and
it was amusing in that period to observe La
Guardia's frantic efforts to elicit the publicity
OF some angry reply.
In its early years in an old loft building,
Patterson, called the captain because he had
been a battery commander in the first war
and otherwise Jomp, through a corruption Of
his Initials, J.M.P., the Daily News ran a hap
py and enthusiastic shop. He was a lenient and
generous boss who would spend extravangant-
ly to get a story. distributed lavish bonuses
to reporters as well as executives and some
times cared for the sick ON his staff by per-
sonal advances Of money long after the ex-
haustion of the standard allowance of six
weeks full pay followed by half pay for six
weeks more. Some of his executives he made
rich by bonuses that were gifts.
Charlie Macarthur. whose play, Front
Page" took him out of the city rooms and into
more pretentious company, was a mischievous
young reporter for a time. Paul Calico came
in to review the movies, got fresh and dis
obeyed some order of Jomp's and was made
sports editor and assigned to do a sports
column, apparently as punishment. He came|
to sports with a loose-jointed, naive style, and
graduated, if you would say so, to the sticks,
although I would hold that Patterson's custom
ers got as good Calico Cor two cents a copy.
Mark Hellinger invented the speakeasy run
and was given an expense account to frequent
Tex Guinan's and the Salvin Chain but took
to writing fictionized incidents in the lives of
poop1o hn mot ot niob+ and On a ociIu u hi
confidence given and SO firm his sense of
honor that he sometimes was scooped on
stories that he had known for weeks. Jack
Kirkland, who dramatizeo Tobacco Road"
was 4 desk man and Reginald Marsh did
rather muddy little drawings for stories on
his way to eminent recognition. 1t was Pat
terson's reporter, 1raogene Stanley, who was
sent to Canada bedighted and bedizened at
Jomp's expense and unchaperoned to vamp the
Prince of Wales and. if possible, to dance with
him, and monopolized him with her beauty
and charm at a state ball, to the scandalized
annoyance of the mother of the socially promi-
nent Canadian wall-flowers. and then refused
to write a word about it.
He was a great friend and patron of Ray
mond hood, until then an unrecognized archi-
tect, and some of the most fantastic of the
stories told about Jomp was Rays. When he
designed the new Daily New building, uptown,
Patterson ABRUPTLY decided that ne must nave
his office suite flush with the street on a floor
several stories above the first setback. This
meant redesigning the building with all the
complications of plumbing and structure and
when it was all done, Jomp took an office in
side on a court.
He designed an apartment house SO that
Jomp could have a penthouse and a private
elevator and then, instead Of hiring a decorat-
or. Patterson sent a janitor friend to a cheap
furniture store and had the place furnished, |
complete, in the j%anitor's taste, right off the
showroom floor. When Hood built Patterson's
home at Ossining, Jornp insisted that the
plumbing pipes should be exposed to view be-
cause Hood had once remarked that utility
was beauty and they were useful pipes. Bv a
hard-won compromise, Hood was allowed to
conceal them in the walls but with qlassed
portfolios.
Jomp hunched and edited his comic strins
and his favorite was Moon Mullins because he
lked MS humor low and rough. Accidentally.
l almost caused a calamity in the career of
FRANK Willard, who draws Moon when, during
my sports = writing career with Patterson, /
noted that Aunty Blossom of Gasoline Alley
ana Min Gump were pregnant and wired Will
lard a proposal that Emmy Schmaltz. the
boarding house keeper in the Mullins strip,
should get into the spirit of the time, Pat.
terson got a copy of the wire and ordered
Willard to produce a baby for Emmy, an ED
erly splnster. Frank was afraid editors would
cancel him everywhere for introducing an i'm
m nraI cIlJ1ofi~~ ~~I --r, L.