Contempt in Denver

The Scripps-Howard Rocky Mountain News in Denver enjoyed a field day last week at the expense of its arch-enemy Publisher Frederick G. Bonfils of the Denver Post. It seized the opportunity to spread upon its pages with impunity the following allegations about swaggering Publisher Bonfils:

That he "hijacked and blackmailed Harry Sinclair and his associates of $250,000 in 1924 on a threat that he would expose their Teapot Dome activities."

That he conducted a confidence game in the sale of lots in an alleged Oklahoma City, Tex.

That he operated a crooked lottery in Kansas City under different aliases.

That he accepted $40,000 from the Rock

Island Railroad for unethical advertising in the news columns of the Post.

That he "sold shortweight coal in Denver, blackmailing and browbeating customers."

That he bought New Mexico land for $4.60 an acre, sold it at $30 in a fake colonization scheme.

That he conducts a theatre which offers lewd dances, smutty jokes.

That when asleep he requires a constant companion to waken him lest, talking in a nightmare, he reveal some of the shady transactions of his past.

Those statements, and many another, were part of a News petition asking that Publisher Bonfils be adjudged in contempt of court. Reason: He had refused to answer questions-before-trial in his own libel suit against the News.

Publisher Bonfils' $200,000 libel suit against the News, its editor and Publishers

Scripps & Howard, was based on the printing of a political speech by Democratic State Chairman Walter Walker, calling Bonfils "vulture", "public enemy", "slimy serpent", "contemptible dog", etc. etc. Choice excerpt: "The day will come when some persecuted man will treat that rattlesnake as a rattlesnake should be treated and there will be a general rejoicing." Bonfils' lawyer charged that statement was "an attempt to incite the murder of Mr. Bonfils." Less sensitive in earlier days Publisher Bonfils, who boasted of Corsican birth and relationship to Napoleon Bonaparte, never used to protest against printed reviews of his remarkable history; stories of how he hurriedly left West Point, turned Mississippi gambler, ran the Little Louisiana Lottery, took $800,000 and a whole skin out of Kansas City, bumped into Bartender H. H. Tammen at the Chicago World Fair, went with him to Denver where they bought the Post and introduced a blatant, rowdy journalism such as the West had never known. Now, instead of hurling mud at the News, aging Publisher Bonfils (he refuses to divulge his age; Scripps-Howard hints at 72), sued. With evident relish Scripps-Howard went to court, asked Publisher Bonfils a long list of questions which he refused to answer as irrelevant and which the News blithely front-paged. Samples: "What character was given on your discharge certificate when you left West Point?" "Did you always pass under your own name in Kansas City, Kans.?" "Isn't it a fact that you went under the name of ... Bonfeld . . . alias L. E. Winn, on March 21, 1895 and that you pleaded guilty to conducting a lottery?" Some questions were answered in part: A.--I was born in Missouri. A.--. . . I am of legal age. Q.--What was your father's occupation? A.--Don't get in any smart things here. Don't pick on my mother and father. Q.--I am not picking on your mother and father. I thought very highly of both of them. A.--You better not. Attorney Philip Hornbein, for Publisher Bonfils, put a stop to the questions, asked the court to determine whether they were pertinent. The judge ruled that the questioning should continue last week, that he would decide which questions were relevant after all had been asked. Again Publisher Bonfils refused to answer, clapped his derby upon his greying head, walked out on spatted feet. The contempt action followed. Bonfils won a 15-day delay to answer it and to prepare a contempt case of his own against the News for asking impertinent questions.

Fraud in Youngstown?

The cherished and advertised tradition of the Scripps-Howard newspapers includes youthful editors & managers, vigorous liberalism, fearless honesty. Newsreaders were shocked last week to read testimony which, if true, would smirch Scripps-Howard with one of the lowest tricks in the newspaper business--padding circulation figures. The scene was the trial, for fraud, of four officials of Scripps-Howard's Youngstown (Ohio) Telegram. Facts: In October 1931, the Telegram declared its average circulation for the previous six months to be 35,610. Audit Bureau of Circulation investigated, found the figure too high. The Telegram made its own investigation, removed the circulation manager, published in December an amended figure: 34,698. Prosecutor Ray L. Thomas, oldtime enemy of the Telegram whom the paper had tried to have ousted, got indictments against the officials, charging that they well knew the 34,698 figure was still too high "by several thousands." Last week the prosecutor led a procession of Telegram and ex-Telegram circulation wranglers, newsboys, truck loaders, bookkeepers, etc. over the witness stand. Sample testimony: P: District circulators were compelled to take anywhere from 85 to 500 daily copies above the number they could sell. They were not allowed to return unsold copies, but at intervals their debits in extra copies would be charged off to profit & loss. Those debits would be distributed against the names of non-existent newsboys whose names, in one case, were copied from cemetery tombstones with addresses of vacant houses.

P: Distributors were ordered to "eat" what copies they could not sell. "Eating" meant burning the papers, selling them for junk, hiding them in cellars & attics, dumping them in the Mahoning River. P: Newsboys were compelled to pay for unsold copies of a special ''Progress Edition.'' Penalty: loss of route.

Scripps-Howard, admitting the difficulty of keeping circulation straw-bosses honest,

charged a plot between Prosecutor Thomas and the circulation manager of the opposition Vindicator, who had been fired by Scripps-Howard and allegedly vowed to

"get even." He, and several other ex-Telegram employes now working for the Vindicator, were state witnesses.

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