Winston-Salem

In the "southern tier" of New York State--the lush butter-and-egg and grape juice counties along the Pennsylvania line--they all know Frank Ernest Gannett. He is the big newspaperman of the region; owns seven dailies, in Rochester, Utica, Elmira, Ithaca, Newburgh. He is a sort of little Munsey in his way, having consolidated various competing organs to make up his string, always keeping an eye open for fresh opportunities.

He is thoroughly of New York state; born in Bristol, schooled at Ithaca, where he got his start scrivening for the undergraduate Cornell Sun. But he would have been popular with the New Yorkers no matter where he was born. Smooth-faced, graying a little, just 50, his personality is of the kind that makes trade organs like the Fourth Estate lay it on thick about "integrity," "ideals," "sincerity," "inspiring confidence and loyalty" in explaining his "romantic" career. For three years he has been fighting Publisher Hearst over an Associated Press franchise in Rochester, and though victory is not yet with him, the Southern Tier is stronger than ever for "Spunky Frank" Gannett. Last June, Cornell elected him a trustee.

Small wonder, therefore, that the Southern Tier was astonished when it heard, last week, that Frank E. Gannett's latest newspaper enterprise was far outside of New York State; was, in fact, way down across the Mason Dixon Line. Many people did not realize what Mr. Gannett was up to, by heading a syndicate to buy the Twin City Sentinel, biggest daily in Winston-Salem, N. C. But those who did realize, said: "Well, that just shows you Frank Gannett's vision. He may operate in the Finger Lakes but not by rule of thumb."

Say "Winston-Salem" to any well-informed man and he will snap right back at you: "Biggest, fastest-growing city in North Carolina. Population three years ago, 48,000; now, about 70,000. Home of Camel cigarets and the rest of the Reynolds Tobacco products. Been booming like Billy-get-out lately. Livest town down South."

How far ahead of the boom Frank Gannett was when he made his plans, he alone could say. How long before the most provincial Americano will be thoroughly conscious of Winston-Salem's place in the sun, is also a matter of conjecture. But with a Gannett paper in town, Winston-Salem's light is in no danger of bushel-burial, despite a curious feature of that town which any friend of Mr. Gannett's would not fail to remark should he accompany the publisher down there some day to look things over.

You are struck, on your first visit to Winston-Salem, by the fact that it is off the main railroad line, up in the hills. You have to change trains at Greensboro, a second-rate town (considering its advantages) where, dazzling and unexpected above an ill-kempt street lined with shabby buildings, a single white skyscraper (the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Co., largest in the South, assets, $31,000,000) towers up, its fac,ade handsome with carving, its superior ground-floor shops the heralds of Greensboro's delayed awakening.

A branch line of railroad takes you from the shabby Greensboro station an hour or two back through the hills to a smart, new station. Like as not the Travelers Aid attendant will invite you to use her telephone instead of the pay-booth. She is Winston-Salem's first hostess and sets the pace for hospitality. Climbing a steep green hill you arrive in the city's centre, where a huge factory, trim and modernized, notifies you at once of the city's presiding power: REYNOLDS.

In the marble lobby of the Hotel Robert E. Lee, the illuminated original of Camel's famed advertisement, "Standard Equipment," greets all comers, whose attention is next attracted by a tablet emblazoned with Winston-Salem boom statistics. With those statistics on view, it is natural for many a Winston-Salemite to believe that all the world lives in his prosperous city. But there is a cosmopolitan aristocracy there also, whose spacious country homes you come to while driving out of town on the well-paved roads. There are the Chathams, the Grays, Haneses,* the Reynoldses, whose sons and daughters go north and abroad for school, clothes, weddings. They have a sporty little polo club, foxhunting, golf. You will see the vast Reynolds estate, like an English baronial holding with its tenant church and tenant school. And then you will hear of the finest roads in the U. S., the greatest educational strides in the South. All is orderly, vigorous, progressive. Before you leave town you will know that you have visited one of the country's model communities. You will understand why a percipient chain-making publisher strode so far from his home state to attach its leading newspaper.

Hoax

Edgar Allan Poe once published a triumph of the imagination entitled "The Balloon Hoax," purporting to tell the tale of an enterprising newspaper's fictitious account of a balloon crossing the Atlantic. Poe was a dreamer; he wrote his little fancy for certainly no more sordid motive than profit. Today's dreamers spoof with "The Spokesman Hoax," with the ignoble design of evading responsibility-- nothing more. Gentlemen breakfast, then naturally desire to know what the Chief Executive thinks, for example, about increasing, by Congressional legislation, acreage on Philippine rubber plantations. What do gentlemen read?". . . The Spokesman for the President indicated that the Administration feels favorably inclined toward rubber projects" (TIME, Aug. 16). Gentlemen glance at a Mr. Kellogg headline. ". . . The Spokesman for the Secretary of State can make no comment upon the Mexican situation." There must even be a Spokesman to refuse to comment. Enraged beyond being gentlemen, readers turn to pages where cavort persons who do not hold office. Here, for instance, is a despatch announcing the year-old secret marriage of John Hayes Hammond Jr.: "When confronted, the Spokesman for the Hammond family reluctantly confessed to the match. . . ." (see p. 28).

For many a day U. S. citizens had straw in their hair, honestly believed that this "Spokesman" was a person instead of a quotation mark eraser. Of course, everybody in the U. S. knows the truth now. Only naive Mexicans are still gullible. Last week Mexico City newspapers announced: "The White House Spokesman is a Mr. Paul Smith, who is sojourning with President Coolidge during the latter's vacation in the New York Mountains."

"Zalwar"

What is news?

Though the answer to so broad a question would involve prolixity, it may be stated by way of example that news from India is news of dancing girls.

From the New York Herald Tribune's London Bureau, a typical despatch was cabled last week: the dancing girls of the Maharaj of Zalwar were threatening to strike. Space was not to be had for other news from the journalese "teeming continent."

The fact that there is no such Indian state or Maharaj as "Zalwar" lent to the despatch especial piquancy.

Two days later the Associated Press carried news that the Maharaj of Alwar had just arrived in London, had leased an Irish fishing stream, and a Scottish deer forest, for the hunting season.

Assumedly it was from some member of this potentate's entourage that a careless Herald Tribune newsgatherer gleaned his "dancing girl strike" rumor.

But who is His Highness Raj Rajeshwar Shri Sewai Maharaj Jey Singhji Veerandra Shiromani Dev, Shri Maharaj of Alwar? And what is Alwar? The Herald Tribune informatively and correctly dubbed it, "a state in Central India."

More appropriately Alwar might be called the most amicably Anglicised state in India. When the present Maharaj came of age and was invested with the sovereignty of his late father (1903) he showed at once such a predisposition for things British that his state was the first in India to adopt the British golden rupee with a portrait of the King-Emperor on the obverse.

Since then, the Maharaj has placed his not inconsiderable army at the disposal of Britannia, both in India and in Europe, during the great War. As a reward, 17 British cannon roar whenever he passes a British warship or enters a British port. No sedentary, degustateur of dancing girls, the Maharaj is, instead, an ardent tennis player, huntsman, fisherman, polo player, motorist.

* Knitting Mills (underwear).