Reporter Upshaw

Last week a seam-faced little man on crutches moved up and down hot Manhattan streets. Every so often he stopped a pedestrian, asked questions. "Do you think it right for girls to appear bare-legged in the office?" "Do you favor Mayor Walker for re-election?" Answers received, a photograph posed for, the little man would smile happily and hobble on. It was a new role for him. From 1919 to 1927 he, William David ("Ernest Willie") Upshaw, had been the interviewed, not the interviewer, as he hitched into the offices and halls of Washington's Capitol. Then he was a Georgia Congressman, bitter foe of drinking ("I haven't had a drink in 46 years")*, chief crusader for sober officials." Fortnight ago, no longer a Congressman, just a platform-lecturer on a holiday, Dryman Upshaw arrived in Manhattan. He walked into the offices of the New York Graphic and asked to speak to its publisher and his good friend, Bernarr Macfadden. Publisher Macfadden was not there, so the caller said to Editor M. H. Weyrauch: "This is my vacation and I'd like to be a reporter so I can see what li'l ole New York is really like." Alert for publicity, Editor Weyrauch gave Dryman Upshaw a job as a news-gatherer, told him his salary would be that of a "cub" and then announced in large headlines to Graphic readers: "Ex-Congressman on Graphic staff." With his eye also on publicity, Newsman Upshaw consented to have his stories "by-lined" (signed), his picture placed in the Graphic's pages every day or so. His early assignments were street-corner interviews. His early impressions: "This is bully. Even though I don't know what I'm making, I am getting a great kick out of interviewing. Hard work? I should say so, but then I'm used to it, what with staying in my office in Washington until 12 o'clock almost every night. This experience will be invaluable to me when I start lecturing again in the fall and also will be fine material for a book I'm going to write. Everybody is so kind to me, this is such a polite city, I really enjoy every minute. Why people even get up to give me a seat in streetcars and subways." On his third newsgathering day, he was sent to interview one Lillie Anderson, just arrested on her 24th intoxication charge. After giving dry advice to Drinker Anderson, Newsman Upshaw went back and wrote his story. It was headlined: BOOZE PARTIES LED LIL ASTRAY UPSHAW LEARNS. Personally, Newsman Upshaw has seen no booze parties in Manhattan. "New York is a city of great rectitude," he explained. "I'd heard so much about the wickedness of it before I came here this time that I was greatly interested to see what truth there was in it. Why, I haven't seen a drunken person since I've been here! Maybe there is drinking, but in a city of six million people, it's remarkable that you don't see more of it. Why the Graphic? It's a good newspaper to work for, and just because I'm a Dry is no reason why I shouldn't be on a paper that is against Prohibition. That makes it better." No debutante to the headlines is Newsman Upshaw. Seven years ago, just before Christmas, when President Harding called a meeting of Governors, Congressman Upshaw stood up on the House floor and shouted: "If these Governors who put their feet under the President's mahogany at the White House really wish to get anywhere in their conference for law enforcement, let them remember what the beloved and immortal Sam Jones said: 'If you want to reform the world, begin on yourself and then you will have one rascal out of the way.' "

Correspondents, waked out of Christmastime daydreams, rushed to their typewriters. In dull news season, Congressman Upshaw made many a first page next morning. A few days later, called to task for his gubernatorial criticism, he made them again with these words: "I serve notice now on the Governor of New York [Alfred Emanuel Smith] and all who train with him that he can not roll into the White House on a beer keg and a wine barrel, for the militant manhood and the emancipated womanhood of America will rise in the majesty of their might and smash every jog and break every bottle and roll every beer keg and every champagne barrel into the Atlantic Ocean."

"That was how," chortled Newsman Upshaw last week, "I came to be known as the first man who put the fires under Al Smith. He deserved it, fine man though he is."

* The Upshaw conversion came when be was 16. One night he arrived home drunk. Shocked, his mother put him to bed, told his father he was "sick." "Next day" he tells, "I got down on my knees and promised God I would never drink again as long as I lived. I never have."