The Press: Hangover

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In the late 1870's a woodcarver named Dirks left his home in Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, and shipped himself, wife and nine children to the New World where he settled down in Chicago's West Side lumber yard and railroad district. One son, Rudolph, soon picked up broken English, discarded newspapers which he sold for 1¢ profit, and a knack of drawing. In time he | drifted to New York, originated in 1897 a color page of comics called "The Katzenjammer Kids," became one of the world's most beloved cartoonists.

In 1900 a Syrian sheik named Monte Bourjaily left his home in the hills of Lebanon for the land of opportunity. Op|portunity knocked. After an education at Syracuse University, he became general manager of United Features Syndicate. Swart, indefatigable, he was chiefly responsible for United Features' growth in business-from $120,000 in 1927 to over a million this year.

Last week Sheik Monte Bourjaily announced that Cartoonist Dirks would no longer draw "The Captain & the Kids," acquired when U. F. S. bought the late World's syndicate contracts. Instead, beginning May 1, a young understudy, Bernard Dibble, creator of "Danny" in the Graphic, would carry on. Rudolph Dirks's "Captain & the Kid's" which began as "The Katzenjammer Kids" (katzenjammer, literally "cat's cry," means "hangover" in contemporary German slang) is the oldest color page with a continuous existence in newspaper history. The World had the first of all U. S. colored comic strips, "The Yellow Kid"—a gamin whose street argot later gave rise to the term "yellow journalism"—produced by the late Richard Felt on ("Buster Brown") Outcault Hearst lured Outcault to the Journal. Meanwhile the Journal's new "Katzenjammer Kids" had struck popular fancy. The World saw its chance to retaliate for the loss of the "Yellow Kid" and won Dirks away from the Journal which, outraged, unsuccessfully sued the World, but won the right to the title "Katzenjammer Kids." Dirks was forced to change the name to "Hans & Fritz," during the War to "The Captain & the Kids." Based on some youngsters familiar to Germans in the famed drawings of Cartoonist Wilhelm Busch, the "Kids," their antics and tricks on the ever gullible Captain and Inspector, amused millions of U. S. children, still retain immense popularity. Dibble's first "comic," indistinguishable from the original, unfolded an elaborate plot involving a weight-reducing machine, whereby the Kids got pies by the dozen, ice cream by the gallon, and put their parents into straitjackets.