Denver War

Hot afternoons have been in old Colorado--afternoons saturated with the eloquence of the Denver Post, loudest colloquial newspaper in North America. But better than hot air is gas--the kind that runs automobiles. That was what was on tap, free, last week in Denver.

The Rocky Mountain News started it, an expensive but cunning stroke in the war for readers and advertising that has raged in Denver ever since the Scripps-Howard interests started to compete in earnest with "Napoleon of the Jackrabbits," Gambler-Publisher Fred G. Bonfils of the Denver Post (TIME, Jan. 17). Last week the Scripps-Howard men offered a gallon of gasoline free to anyone inserting a "want ad" in their morning News editions. Publisher Bonfils, irked, ordered a counterstroke and his Post (the morning edition lately established to oppose the morning News), swaggered: "You can't stop us, by cracky! Here we come down the road again and all the strange chickens and stray cats and little fellows everywhere are taking to the tall timber." The Post offered two gallons of free gas to every want-advertiser.

Said the News, calmly: "The Newspapers can always meet anybody else in want-ad results or premiums--and go them one better." The News offered three gallons.

Another swagger, and the Post offered four gallons.

Another quiet statement and the News raised Gambler Bonfils to five gallons.

It was a "field day," a shindig, the kind Denver loves. People scratched their heads to think up things they wanted or did not want. One man offered voice lessons for a tombstone. One wanted to swap a steamer trunk for a suitcase and grip. One wrote: "Will decorate your home as first payment on used car." Another: "Canary, fine singer; sell for $5." Police had to regulate the queues of would-be advertisers. Thirsty automobiles jammed the publishing districts.

Gambler Bonfils was frozen out. The wealth of a farflung syndicate was against him. He did not "call" the News at five gallons but took his beating. The News averaged some 25 columns of want ads per day to the Post's 19.

Nor was this the only beating Gambler-Publisher Bonfils suffered during the week. The Post started to run Chickie, a fiction serial proved by trial in other cities as infallible bait for morons. But the flapper-heroine had scarcely been seduced before the News saved all Denver the petty pace of many tomorrows by flooding the city with Chickie, complete in book form, free with News want ads. . . . The circulation manager of the Post resigned,