Aberdonians "Done"

Granite forms the unyielding substratum of Aberdeen, famed as the most characteristically Scotch of Scottish cities. The public buildings are all of hard, white granite. And by popular supposition granite has entered into the dour, shrewd, stingy souls of Aberdonians. Therefore Englishmen were hilarious and incredulous, last week, when the super-Scotch stockholders of The Aberdeen Journal voted 2 to i to sell their newsorgan to the lower of two potent bidders. Cried a dissenting and disgruntled stockholder, ''For once Aberdonians have been done!"

To Englishmen the whole affair appealed chiefly as an excruciating, inverted Scotch joke; but a larger significance loomed in the fact that the two groups which bid for The Aberdeen Journal are the gigantic, rival newspaper trusts headed respectively by Viscount Rothermere and by the Berry Brothers, Sir William & Corner.

It was the Berrys who won, with their lower bid, by promising to carry on the granite founded traditions of The Aberdeen Journal, whereas Aberdonians feared that Viscount Rothermere, though his bid was the higher, would debase the Journal to the level of his blatant London Daily Mail. As everyone knows Lord Rothermere has formed a $15,000,000 holding company to compete with the Berrys in buying up British provincial newspapers. On another day, last week, this rivalry flamed up again at Derby, where the Berrys bought the Daily Express and Lord Rothermere the Daily Telegraph. London newspapers of these potent rivals include: Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Evening News and Weekly Dispatch and the Berry's Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and The Daily Sketch & Graphic