Philadelphia Story

Philadelphia Bulletin Columnist Earl Selby started the day in a peculiar manner, came down to breakfast one morning with his face unshaven, and wearing the shabbiest clothes he could find. He sprinkled the contents of a vacuum cleaner over himself, then doused himself with stale beer. Selby's slim, red-haired wife Dorothy was not the least bit surprised at this performance.

Neither were Selby's readers two days later, when they learned from his column that he had been arrested as a panhandler.

But they were shocked by Selby's inside story of the way Philadelphia's House of Correction treated such prisoners (one had died from steam in a "punishment cell"). A few hours after the Bulletin printed Selby's report, the prison's superintendent came to Selby's desk with plans to improve the prison.

By such one-man crusades, and a passion for digging out facts, boyish-lookinp-32-year-old Earl Selby has made his column ("In Our Town") one of the most widely read in Philadelphia.

Until two years ago, Selby was a Bulletin rewrite man. As a vacation fillin, he started to write "In Our Town," which had been merely a collection of amusing miscellany. Selby filled in so vigorously that he kept the column, and transformed it. When a Camden commuter complained about having to pay an extra 3-c- for a transfer on Philadelphia's transit system Selby investigated. He found, to the transit company's amazement, that its cashiers were systematically overcharging everyone. When other readers complained about tenement "fire traps," Selby checked into the city ordinances, and soon landlords of 113 buildings were hauled up for violations. From then on, tips flooded in and Columnist Selby became Philadelphia's Mr. Fixit.

Recently he found 14 mentally deficient children, wards of the city, tied with ropes around their necks in a firetrap farmhouse. The children were removed to a state school and to foster homes. Last month, when Selby learned that Philadelphia's summer music center, Robin Hood Dell, was close to bankruptcy, he raised $56,000 in 22 days.

Last fortnight Selby went down to the Delaware River Bridge, where unlicensed labor contractors were hiring laborers for New Jersey truck farms. Selby found one old man who had been paid 65-c- for eight hours' work, another who had been intimidated when he protested at being cheated. By last week, Pennsylvania state troopers had stopped the illegal practices.

Columnist Selby does not think of himself as a reformer. Says he: "My job is being a reporter and getting the facts. Sometimes, after the facts are printed, reforms are effected."

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