Speaking of the Dead

All winter the Chicago Tribune campaigned against Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson with ugly cartoons and comment like this:

Machine guns, machine politics-- Have been Chicago's lot-- Machines to take you for a ride And put you on the spot.

But in its "morgue," against the day when "Big Bill" should die, the Tribune had a Thompson history not so damning. It was prepared by famed Political Writer Philip House Kinsley when the Mayor was near death from appendicitis last November. It was almost an eulogy.

By hook or crook. Big Bill obtained Kinsley's article and last week, with the mayoralty campaign at its hottest and dirtiest, he produced it for Chicagoans to read in a counterblasting pamphlet on "The Tribune Shadow" (see p. 15). It was entitled: A COLORFUL CAREER. It said: "In his three decades of political activity, he has put his unmistakable stamp upon men and affairs. In both . . . the fight over Sunday closing of saloons and the street car strike . . . Mayor Thompson emerged with increased popularity . . . His achievements were such as people could see. . . ."

The article's least complimentary part was gently ironic: "Thus did he add to the gayety of nations, the enlightenment of the people, and win the nomination." Its summary: "There was something of Cole Blease in him, and 'Cotton Tom Heflin, Al Smith and Hiram Johnson. . . . He was a force to be reckoned with." Above a reproduction of the original Tribune galley-proof, "Big Bill's" campaign managers wrote: "This biography . . . undoubtedly represents what the Tribune really thinks about Thompson. It was willing to tell the truth if he were dead. . . ."

To complete the Tribune's discomfiture, Journalist Heywood Broun of the New York World-Telegram devoted a day's column to the obituary, saying: "The incident raises the whole question of what differentiation should be made between criticism of the quick and of the dead. It is familiar journalistic practice to take back a great deal about any opponent as soon as he has safely departed from life. I think this constitutes a faulty method."

Colyumist Broun recalled how the late Editor Frank Irving Cobb of the late New York World, after campaigning bitterly against the mayoralty (1910-13) of William Jay Gaynor, took back nothing when Gaynor died (Sept. 12, 1913). Cobb wrote: "What the World said of William J. Gaynor . . . after Tammany had refused to renominate him for Mayor, it desires to repeat now. . . . Had the Mayor been able to control himself as sturdily as he was able to resist control from the outside he would be a commanding figure. . . . " More violently, William Allen White wrote: "Frank Munsey, the great publisher, is dead [Dec. 22, 1925]. Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meatpacker, the morals of a money changer and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once noble profession into an eight percent security. May he rest in trust."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.