Fitz of the P-D

In Missouri, a politician once told a staffer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "I could answer your editorials, but what can you 'do with that guy who draws cartoons?'' That guy is lean (5 ft. 11 1/2 in., 126 Ibs.) trimly tailored Daniel R. Fitzpatrick, 62, whose drawings in broad charcoal-black strokes have probably been more widely reprinted in newspapers and magazines than any other editorial cartoonist in the U.S. This week, with explanatory notes by "Fitz," the best of his cartoon commentary on the last three decades of U.S. history was published for the first time in a book, As I Saw It (Simon & Schuster; $5).

From his first cartoon for the P-D 40 years ago (an attack on wooden railroad coaches showing a train of coffin-shaped cars rounding a bend of track) to his poignant chronicle of the Depression (a beaten, slumped worker standing in front of a soup kitchen--"One Person Out of Ten") and his savage jabs at the Republican campaign (McCarthy, Cain and Jenner waiting at the stage entrance to go on in a show called "Ike's Crusade"), Fitz has drawn with power and simplicity.

The Distillery. Fitz's day in his office off the P-D city room begins with his feet up on his desk, a pad of copy paper in his lap. He sometimes makes many rough drafts before he gets what he likes, often keys his cartoons in with P-D editorial campaigns, and frequently consults the paper's editors for ideas and suggestions. "The whole process of creating a cartoon," he explains, "is one of distillation. All the mash of information and detail bubbles and boils around. The first run should disclose the subject. Then it is redistilled until its essence appears in a clear, simple draft."

Fitz is free to say what he wants, and this P-D contract provides that he never has to draw a cartoon that doesn't represent his full conviction. In 1936, when the mercurial P-D decided to support Alf Landon, Fitz a resolute F.D.R. man, served notice that he would draw no political cartoons, and drew none. He also stayed away from politics in 1948, when the P-D backed Dewey, but he was hand in hand with the paper again in supporting Stevenson in 1952. His own favorite cartoons are chiefly political. Among them (see cuts): a powerful warning in 1935 of the Nazis' designs on Europe ("This Is the House That Diplomacy Built"); a spoof of the British in 1936 over rumors about the romance between King Edward VIII and Wally Simpson. Some of his most popular cartoons are about "Rat Alley," where local crooks and dishonest politicians roam. Once a judge sentenced him to jail when Fitz blasted him in a Rat Alley cartoon. The Missouri supreme court threw out the case.

Oil Wells. Fitz slugs Democrats as hard as Republicans when he thinks they are wrong, e.g., Missouri's Pendergast machine. He likes to say that he is lined up unwaveringly with only one group, "the underdogs," because he started out with them himself. At 15 he was expelled from high school in Superior, Wis. for spending all his time drawing instead of studying. He worked his way through the Chicago Art Institute by sweeping floors, working in a cafeteria, ushering at a theater and cooking on an ore boat. He finally landed a staff job on the Chicago Daily News, and at 22 was hired by the PD, where he has been ever since. Now, earning one of the highest salaries of any political cartoonist in the U.S., Fitz thinks newspaper cartooning has suffered because good artists have deserted it for more lucrative fields. Says he: "Many artists who might have become editorial cartoonists have gone into comic strips, which I understand are comparable to owning oil wells."

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