Daily Color

If the Chicago Tribune is not demonstrably, as it boasts, the "World's Greatest Newspaper," it is at least ambitious, enterprising. Months ago it was learned that Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick proposed to introduce color-printing in his daily editions. Lately have appeared Tribune advertisements with two colors at a time worked into them. Last week the colorful Tribune of the future was again sharply foreshadowed to its 813,708 readers by the appearance of a colored cartoon on the Tribune's big bold front page.

The subject of the cartoon (Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, Democratic leader of the Senate, defying Louisiana's loud Democratic Senator Huey Pierce Long) and the caption ("The real issue in Washington . . . Patriotism vs Communism") were not very exciting. But the U. S. flag held by Senator Robinson and a Communist banner brandished by Senator Long, were in vivid, eye-smashing red. The U. S. flag's blue field was not shown; there was no other color in the picture. But the force of the cartoon was immeasurably increased by its red blotches. A patriotic eye could even imagine that the U. S. stripes were less Red than the solid emblem of Communism.

Year and a half ago in an address for the Paul Block Foundation of Journalism at Yale, Publisher McCormick pointed a finger at his audience and declared: ". . . . Your faces contain brown, yellow and pink; you wear green shirts, blue neckties . . . and yet so limited is the newspaper art that it is compelled to depict you in black and white." A moment later he added: ". . . The art of journalism is the adaptation of old methods to mass production."

By chance Henry Alexander Wise Wood, builder of presses, saw a copy of Publisher McCormick's address. The words seemed to him a challenge. Years of experience, from playing with a toy case of type at 5 to constructing the New York Times's giant, silent-running, sextuple Wood press, had taught him all about pressbuilding. He went to Publisher McCormick, an old friend. "I shall give you not only the color you spoke about but also the speed necessary to mass production," said he. Specifically he agreed to produce within 18 months for the Chicago Tribune an eight-roll press capable of printing 25% of its pages in three colors and black, in accurate register, at 50,000 copies per hour.

Reason was added to Publisher McCormick's enthusiasm when Pressbuilder Wood added that with no makeready (careful, costly adjustment of color plates) he would get four-color results far superior to, the finest produced at low speeds. Competitors in the color field were in no hurry to match Mr. Wood's boast. Chief competitors were Walter

Scott Co. which had furnished the Minneapolis Star and Erie Dispatch-Herald with three-color units capable of running at full speed; R. Hoe & Co. (TIME, May 2) which furnished the Seattle Times with two-color units; and Claybourn Co. which gave to the Pittsburgh Press what Mr. Wood promised the Chicago Tribune, only at half the speed.

"We're sportsmen here, not business men!" Pressbuilder Wood exclaimed when it was pointed out that he had lost $250,000 on other press ventures. " 'All right, goddam it,' we say, 'we'll show them we can do it!'" The solution, he believed, lay in adaptation of the design of the fastest magazine color presses.

His chief technical difficulties were: to dry four layers of ink in a fraction of a second; to find color pigments cheap enough to be practicable; to correct "register" at high speed. While Mr. Wood experimented, Col. McCormick was not idle. In an effort to make his pressmen color-conscious he had them experiment with the old fashioned makeready color processes until they could turn out fairly presentable two-and three-color advertisements. Last week's crude red frontpage cartoon was the last step in the Tribune's color education before graduating to the complicated four-color Wood presses.

Pressbuilder Wood was last week prepared to say that not only had he surmounted all "insurmountable" difficulties but that he had found them easier than he anticipated. His promise that he could make the color "deadline" (press time) as late as the black-&-white deadline will be fulfilled. The first Wood color unit will be installed for Chicago's Tribune in September.

Henry Alexander Wise Wood, 66, white-haired, blue-eyed, resolute, has a versatility comparable to that of the famed men of the Renaissance. As an inventor he has over 450 patents to his name, is said to have done more mechanically for modern journalism than any other man. As a sportsman he yachts, flies, once made a canoe trip with his wife from New York to Nova Scotia. He also writes verse.

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