Headache Man

Last week Grove Laboratories, Inc., manufacturers of Bromo Quinine, presented Hugh Samuel Johnson in the first of a series of newscasts which will be heard four nights a week over NBC's Blue network. Bromo Quinine is recommended "For colds and simple headaches," and to most observers of the U. S. scene, Grove's choice of General Johnson seemed singularly appropriate. On a vast scale the General has been causing headaches in one quarter or another for the past four years—first to businessmen when he was the Blue Eagle's boss, then to anti-New Dealers in general when he began writing his United Feature column, and currently to the New Deal itself, of which he has become a severe and irascible critic. On his first headache pill program the General gave proof that he had not lost his punch.

"When we reach the day when opinion is controlled either for politics or money, we will be on our way to join Joe Stalin, Handsome Adolph and Maestro Mussolini. With those boys you take what is dished out to you. You not only like it if it kills you—but you also cheer for it—or else. That is the end of free speech which is the end of everything properly called American."

Since the measure of a newspaper columnist's worth nowadays seems to be the amount of time he devotes to the radio, the old cavalryman's advent on the air was accepted by his friends as proof that he had journalistically arrived. Simultaneously United Feature proudly announced that it had sold him to his 49th paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Three years ago the arch-Republican Philadelphia Inquirer would not have printed a column by General Johnson if he had been the last columnist on Earth. In fact, until the General's belligerent attitude toward publishers while NRAd-ministrator had been forgotten, United Feature salesmen did not have too much success selling his column in the newspaper offices they solicited. In the past 60 days, however, as the Johnson bombardment of the Administration has grown to Alcazar proportions, United Feature salesmen have been able to add 13 papers to the General's string. This does not remotely approach the more than 500 papers for O. O. McIntyre, but it brings Hugh Johnson about $25,000 a year.

As he has from the beginning, General Johnson still composes his pieces (in his Manhattan hotel suite, his Washington apartment or his Bethany Beach cottage) while pacing the floor. Faithful Secretary Frances ("Robbie") Robinson sets the harangue down on paper, helps the General whip it into literary shape later. It is then wired to United Feature's Managing Editor William Laas, who deletes the outright libel and graver profanity, sends the copy smoking on its way to the presses.