Pat

In The Wall Street Journal, published by Clarence Walker Barron, the following words appeared one morning last week:

"Clarence W. Barron, financier, philanthropist, editor, author, philosopher and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, the Boston News Bureau, the Philadelphia News Bureau and Barron's, the National Financial Weekly, is authority for the foregoing statements and certainly there is no man in the United States today better qualified to talk. ... It also might be stated without fear of contradiction that Mr. Barron is one of the most difficult men in Palm Beach to catch for an interview. . . . However, when he was cornered--the word is well chosen--in his sunny apartment in Whitehall overlooking Lake Worth yesterday morning, he graciously consented to talk on anything from Wall Street to the human ear--the latter being one of his absorbing interests at present. . . ."

Wall Street men were amazed that so large and distinguished a person as Mr. Barron should allow himself to receive so large a pat on the back in his own journal. What was the excuse for the story? It was an important excuse--a tremendous excuse. Mr. Barron, in his "foregoing statements," had said:

"Charles E. Hughes is the man who can defeat Al Smith in New York State and be triumphantly elected [U. S. President]--

"And there is little if any danger of a drastic reaction in the stock market as a result of wild trading."

Yes, that was news; but it did not entirely explain the large pat on the back. Keen-eyed readers found the explanation in a by-line in minute type: From the Palm Beach Daily News.

Mr. Barron's journalistic good taste had been vindicated.