Letter Writers' Holiday

Every day the Nashville Tennessean gets about a dozen letters, prints most of them, runs the day's best under three stars, gives each three-star writer one dollar. For the Tennessean (circulation 64,800) 4,000 letters a year are a lot, and it makes the most of them. From letters the reader-conscious Tennessean gauges the popularity of its features, and letters constitute one of its biggest features.

Last year, pudgy little Silliman Evans--a onetime Texas reporter, onetime airtransport executive, onetime 4th Assistant Postmaster General, publisher of the Tennessean since 1937--thought that he would like to meet some of his three-star letter writers. So he gave a banquet for them. At the old Hermitage Hotel last week Evans welcomed them to the second annual Three-Star letter writers' dinner, which he called "a happy evening of disagreement." Said Publisher Evans: "You are the brain trust of the Tennessean.'"

Writers present numbered 154--prim old maids, competent country women, rednecked dirt farmers, college students, lawyers, businessmen, one boy, a cross section of the Tennessean's State-wide circulation.

Albert Hines, a young columnist from Bucksnort who likes to write about the joys of bachelorhood, was seated at dinner next to Spinster Edith Berryman (pen name: Mary Ann Jones), with whom for two years he has carried on a feud about a tax on bachelors, suggested by Spinster Berryman. A bridal bouquet was awarded to Miss Berryman (laughter and applause), a sewing basket to Bachelor Hines.

The forum opened when an unreconstructed Springfield Republican, William Bell Chilton, told a hostile audience: "I wouldn't vote for anybody for a third term, with the exception of Jesus Christ." Mrs. G. A. Crotts, a Nashville housewife, answered sharply: "I want Roosevelt for a third term, a fourth term or as many terms as he wants." Then she ran the gamut of Presidential possibilities, called Dewey "a little two-for-a-nickel lawyer," Taft "the perpetual whiner of the Senate and No. 1 bore," Willkie "head of the Southern Power Corporation when the companies robbed the few people able to pay for or use electric service."

Rural, red-faced Stewart Andes Maples, a Rutherford Countian, let his dental plate fall twice as he inveighed against "infernal, shameful roadhouses," click-clacked his support of Roosevelt "as a good Samaritan." Back snapped Mrs. W. C. Branch, "I have a little boy . . . who asks for nickels like they grow on trees. Mr. Roosevelt reminds me of my little boy."

A big hand went to Mortimer May, Nashville hosiery executive, when he cried: "Give England and France what they need now and we'll never have to send men abroad."

Publisher Evans had met his readers.

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