"Daily Truth"

Twenty-eight employes, numerous newsboys, four linotype machines and other equipment and the Messrs. F. S. Alexander and P. H. Pace, all assembled on Indiana Ave., Chicago, constitute the only full-size daily Negro newspaper published in the U. S. the Chicago Bulletin. Last week it had survived its tenth day of existence without visible difficulty, thus breaking the record for longevity of U. S. Negro dailies.

Forecasts had been lugubrious. "Race people," cynics predicted, "are not sufficiently enthusiastic to support a race daily, however staunchly they may support race weeklies." But Publishers Alexander and Pace would not be downcast. They composed their Bulletin as an eight-page affair containing society columns, beauty hints, talks to women, amusement notes, a wit colyum and cartoons besides staple news columns-all Negro-executed from a Negro viewpoint. At the end of ten days the Bulletin claimed 4,500 circulation. On Saturdays it planned to issue a magazine section. Of this section, Field Secretary William Pickens of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrote: "Little brown girls, who will read romances, can read some romances about brown girls and bronze-colored 'men and will not be confined to stories about Pola Negri, Peggy Joyce and other white ones."

Mr. Pickens, himself an active journalist, was enthusiastic about the Bulletin. "A race with no daily paper," he wrote, "is helpless to combat the lies told on it every hour by other daily newspapers. My father used to say: 'A lie can travel 40 leagues while Truth is pulling his boots on.' Much worse, then, for Truth, if he puts on his traveling shoes only once a week. . . ."

Negroes have an Associated Press of their own, with headquarters four blocks up Indiana Ave. from the Bulletin office. This service, released weekly, serves 78 newspapers read by some 400,000 Negroes. It confines itself chiefly to news affecting Negroes, who are referred to usually as "our group." No effort is made to duplicate the national and foreign affairs carried by the white press.*

The tone of the Negro news disseminated by the service is one of race calmness. Antagonism and complaining are "played down," even in lynching stories. Stories of violence are, of course, prevalent-as in the white press. Last week's Associated Negro Press release included some 30 accounts of crime and violence-razoring, murder, theft, etc. But education and welfare items totaled about 20. Only six stories contained any trace of racial grievance and none of these approached the sensational tone of less reputable Negro despatches, such as the signed article published last week by the Pittsburgh Courier about a "Mr. X" from the flooded South whose allegations gave rise to the following headlines: "USE GUNS TO ENFORCE SLAVERY. 'Mr. X' Tells Courier Reporter of Horrors Perpetrated in Wake of Disastrous Flood . . . Men, Women Forced into Virtual Slavery."

*Last week's Associated Negro Press release did contain a "stick" (two or three inches of type) on "The Flying Fool" (Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh). A major point made (erroneously) in this item was: "We trust that the cat which flew with him is a BLACK CAT, to wipe out the historic slander against that innocent an-imal." Captain Lindbergh took no cat with him-