The Press: Newsless Butte

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Seven Butte residents had been killed in a motor crash near Missoula.

A ghastly murder had been committed on the Flats below the city!

The White House had been blown up by Bonus rioters!

PRESIDENT HOOVER HAD BEEN ASSASSINATED!

Had such rumors started in any U. S. city save one last fortnight they would have been exceedingly short-lived. But in Butte, these and many another shocking, terrifying story flew through the city, throve and multiplied like bats in darkness. For Butte's 40,000 inhabitants were without a local newspaper for two weeks.

Because union printers refused to take a $1-a-day cut the Montana Standard and Butte Post 'had shut down. Last week the printers yielded and publication was resumed.

During the news shut-down both the Standard and Post kept staffs busy night & day writing bulletins for the office windows. Perpetual crowds filled the streets outside the offices, devouring the brief notices which told them that the White House had not been blown up; that the

President was still whole; that George Denver Guggenheim, 22, son of onetime U. S. Senator Simon Guggenheim of Colorado, copper tycoon, was in town for pleasure, not to stimulate Montana's somnolent copper industry. The newshungry also learned by bulletin what they could about the results of the Olympic Games, the gist of President Hoover's acceptance speech, the trial of Mayor Walker.

Local radio stations, cooperating with the newspapers, made few news announcements. Most publishers in neighboring cities likewise refrained from taking advantage of the situation, even rejected new mail subscriptions, with two exceptions. From Denver, Publisher Fred G. Bonfiis shipped bundles of his noisy Post into Butte. From Seattle came supplies of Hearst's Post-Intelligencer. A Butte Post office boy, en route from the post office with the day's load of "exchanges," was waylaid by news-starved passersby who offered him 50¢ a copy. He was incorruptible.

Hundreds of persons telephoned daily to the newspaper offices to learn the progress of their favorite comic strips.