Bulletin vs. Childs

A newspaper's environment is in the public which reads it. It goes without saying that the quality of a newspaper represents the quality of its readers. A great newspaper has often been known to scream in the headlines and grow purple in its editorials about an oil scandal, a Wall Street bomb, a colossal trust or other heinous calumnies. A fortnight ago, the New York Evening Bulletin, moron's caviar, indulged in journalistic bathos.

Childs--the string of 108 restaurants which stretches across the country from Manhattan to San Francisco--recently boasted about its million-dollar maison at Coney Island, built of "rare marbles and mosaics." The Bulletin became bitter, accused Childs of charging the public more for its bread, butter, toast, coffee, beans, ham-and-eggs than most other restaurants.

As regards calories, the Bulletin was irate: "Regarding the system of estimating calories, Childs should offer an explanation, for the bill-of-fare says that bacon contains 300 calories, while bacon and eggs contain 380. That allows 80 calories for eggs. Fried ham alone contains 400 calories, but add eggs and you have only 390, so that eggs lose their calories when fried with ham but preserve them when fried with bacon. On the other hand, Childs tells you that fried eggs alone have 190 calories. Can you figure it out?"

Then, undoubtedly unconscious of the one and a half million odd dollars net profit which Mr. Samuel S. Childs is able yearly to distribute to his common stockholders, the Bulletin suggested that "if Childs proposes to charge the people twice what food is worth, some of the excess profits should go to the people instead of being devoted to Coney Island palaces."

From the latest national case of public corruption to an unimportant and allegedly profiteering string of restaurants is indeed a plunge from the supremely contemptible to the ridiculously insignificant.

Said editors of other journals: "If the public does not like Childs' food, which is understandable enough, it does not have to go there. There are other restaurants."