Religion: Without Charge

Without Charge Jack Hamm of Waco, Texas draws and paints in ink, charcoal, watercolors, pastels, oils or with airbrush. He teaches nine commercial-art courses at Waco's Baylor University, and he has been commuting by air to Houston (160 miles) to run a chalk-talk television program which last week won a prize as the most entertaining TV show in the city. To Hamm, these are just sidelines. His most important job costs him more than $100 a week.

He spends almost every night at it—studying the Bible and drawing cartoons to illustrate biblical events and ideas, two of which are matted and mailed to newspapers each week—without charge. He pays production and postage costs himself. Last week his 108th paper signed up for the service.

Baptist Jack Hamm, 35, began studying at the Moody Bible Institute while he was working his way through art school in Chicago. Later he went to Baylor to prepare for the ministry in earnest. His artistic career finally won out; in 1941 he joined the N.E.A. feature syndicate to work on such comic strips as "Boots and Her Buddies" and "Alley Oop." After Army service in Alaska and the Aleutians during the war, he went back to Baylor for his B.A. and began to teach art there. But the ministry was still on his mind.

About a year ago, Hamm hit upon his religious-cartoon idea. He made an auto tour of five states to canvass newspaper editors, promptly went to work when he found that almost all of them were for it. Their enthusiasm has been hard on the Hamm bankroll. Realizing that with 108 papers to service he can no longer swing it alone, Hamm is currently looking for sponsors to back the enterprise. But he turns down any suggestion that he charge for his cartoons, or invite "contributions" from the newspapers.

"I don't want any gimmicks in this thing," he says. "I've lost the desire to accumulate a pile of money. I just want to do what I can to help the human race and make a living."