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THE PEOPLE’S ART:
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THE PEOPLE’S ART: THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S TRANSFORMATION
OF VISUAL JOURNALISM IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

By

Julie Ann Goldsmith

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Media and lnforrnation Studies, Ph.D. Program

2008

ABSTRACT

The People’s Art: The Chicago Tribune’s Transformation
of Visual Journalism in the Early Twentieth Century

BY
Julie Ann Goldsmith

Current practices in visual journalism rely extensively on color images to
enhance credibility and engage viewers” interests in news stories. Despite the
ubiquity of color in visual journalism today, little is known about its historical
development in the first half of the twentieth century. This Chicago Tribune’s
pioneering role in pictorial color was nurtured under the leadership of publisher
Robert R. McCormick from 1911 to 1955.

This cultural case history takes a sweeping look at visual innovations,
extending from the origins of modern color with the Chicago Tribune’s
anniversary edition in 1897 to its visual art in World War II. Pictorial color art in
news editorial, advertising, printing, cartooning, photography, and the
reproduction of fine art are examined. The Chicago Tribune’s seminal role in
modem color took root on the influences of its nineteenth-century publisher,
Joseph M. Medill, and the achievements of commercial printer Theodore
Regensteiner and photoengraving inventor William Kurtz.

The Chicago Tribune’s zenith came in the aftermath of World War I, when
its employees, and those of its subsidiary companies, patented 92 inventions
related to visual color. Two primary inventions changed the visual dynamics of
newspapers. The color rotogravure press, which was invented in 1922 by

Chicago Tribune printer John C. Yetter, advanced two great movements—

American Realism and American Expressionism—through its Sunday features.
The color letterpress, invented in 1932 by Chicago Tribune printer Otto R. Wolf,
modernized newspapers on weekdays. Wolf's invention made possible the
emotive and symbolic use of colors, and resulted in a new, lean aesthetic,
shaped by front-page editorial cartoonist Carey C. Orr. The language of color is
examined through the works of two legendary Chicago Tribune artists, Orr and
John T. McCutcheon.

The first color photograph simultaneously printed overnight with the
accompanying news story was produced by the Chicago Tribune in 1939, using a
custom-made camera with glass-plate negatives.

This case study of the Chicago Tribune examines the quest and the
achievement of the democratization of color that culminated between the two

world wars.

COPYRIGHT BY
JULIE ANN GOLDSMITH
2008

FOR
OSCAR AND MARJORIE HOLMES

ACKNOWLEGMENTS

My first thanks go to the scholars on my Dissertation Committee: Dr.
Lucinda Davenport, for her inspired appreciation of journalism history and her
vision of its importance to current issues; Dr. Howard Bossen for his profound
understanding of visual journalism that has guided this study; Dr. Howard
Chamley, a military historian and an oral historian, whose methods brought
essential insights; Jeanne Drewes, chief, binding and collections care, at the
Library of Congress, whose preservation of America's treasures informed this
study, and my writing a grant to preserve the thousands of color newsprints
investigated in this study.

Dean Charles Salmon has been essential to my education, and I have
appreciated his support. This research has been supported by fellowships and
travel grants from Michigan State University. Janet Ginsburg saved an important
collection of Chicago Tribune newsprint originals, which she donated to Michigan
State in 2006. Her appreciation for the art of newspapers was a priceless gift.

The officers of the McCormick Foundation deserve my great appreciation
for preserving the newsprint originals and the spirited legacy of the Chicago
Tribune artists and inventors. This research benefited greatly from the efforts of
Dr. Paul H. Herbert and Eric Gillespie at the Robert R. McCormick Research
Center, and Diane Gutenkauf at the Robert R. McCormick Museum. I want to
thank Arthur H. Miller of Lake Forest College, Donnelley and Lee Library, and the

library's enthusiastic student assistants.

vi

Key discoveries were made while I was a visiting scholar at the Library of
Congress, Serials & Government Publications Division. Considerable thanks go
to Mark Sweeney, Georgia Higley, and Travis Westley for my study of America's .
rare newspapers. My gratitude to graphics curator Helena E. Wright of the
Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and pianist Panayis Lyras,
an artist-in-residence at Michigan State University, for his musical insights.

The families of two late Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists, Carey
C. Orr and John T. McCutcheon of the Chicago Tribune, illuminated this study:
Orr's daughters, Mrs. Dorothy Jane Cook and Mrs. Henry Carson Jackson;
grandsons, Kimberly Orr Cook and Carey Orr Cook; John T. McCutcheon's son,
cartoonist Shaw McCutcheon, helped my understanding of both his father‘s and
Orr's contributions to art. Thank you to printing expert Jim Bredensteiner of
Bredensteiner Imaging in Indianapolis; Cathleen A. Baker of the University of
Michigan Library for her paper expertise; and graphic designer Jane Palmer at
the lntemational Honor Society of Nursing.

I began considering how to continue the important spirit and art of the
Chicago Tribune employees as far back as spring 2006, and sought ideas on
multi-institutional partnering to secure the perpetuity of these rare artifacts. I want
to thank my brother, Stephen Goldsmith, at Harvard University's Kennedy School
for his invaluable advice. Most especially, I want to thank my mother, Marjorie
Holmes, for her ability to distill complex ideas to their essences and my late
father, Oscar C. Holmes, whose understanding of war intensified my appreciation

of the Chicago Tribune employees' spirited art of color. To all of you, thank you.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
LIST OF FIGURES............... ...................................................... ix
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 1
CHAPTER II: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF COLOR
PRINTING ................................................................................ 16
CHAPTER III: HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY ............................... 47
CHAPTER IV: EARLY INFLUENCES ON THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S
LEADERSHIP IN MODERN COLOR .............................................. 59
CHAPTER V: THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S INVENTION OF THE
COLOR ROTOGRAVURE PRINTING PRESS .................................. 85
CHAPTER VI: SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S
COLOR ROTOGRAVURES—MUSEUMS WITHOUT WALLS ............. 113
CHAPTER VII: FOR ALL CONSUMERS—THE CHICAGO
TRIBUNE 'S ADVERTISING COLOR .............................................. 137
CHAPTER VIII: THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S INVENTION OF
COLOR LE'ITERPRESS—CHANGING AESTHETICS ....................... 151
CHAPTER IX: NATURAL COLOR ................................................ 176
CHAPTER X: SUMMARY: DEMOCRACY OF COLORS .................... 191
APPENDIX A: TRIBUNE COMPANY MEDIA PATENTS .................... 205
APPENDIX B: TRIBUNE COMPANY SUBSIDIARIES PRIOR TO
WORLD WAR II ......................................................................... 213
APPENDIX C: CONTENT ANALYSIS ............................................ 216
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................ 218

viii

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Figure 9.

Figure 10.

Figure 1 1.

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Created by G. Thomas and printed by George C.

Leighton with tints on wood blocks, "Returning From

Church on Christmas Morning” was published in The

Illustrated London News on Dec. 22, 1855 ..................... 33

Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1897 ................................. 60

This halftone from the Figure 2 montage on June 10,

1897, exemplifies the realistic nuances made possible by

using color halftones--a photoengraving method used for

the first time by the Chicago Tribune ............................. 66

American Humorist, a Sunday supplement in the New
York Journal, May 30, 1897 ........................................ 66

"Unknown Soldier," Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1929, a
Picture Section cover ................................................ 89

A forty-five times enlargement of a painting by Walter
Beach Humphrey, printed on a color rotogravure press by
the Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1934 ................................ 95

A forty-five times enlargement of a cartoon drawn by
Carey C. Orr and printed on a color letterpress for the
Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942 ................................ 95

A painting by Walter Beach Humphrey printed on a color
rotogravure press for the Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1934... 96

An editorial cartoon by Carey C. Orr printed on a color
letterpress for the Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942 ........ 96

"The City's Fountain of Youth," by Gustave Flasschoen,
New York Tribune, August 19, 1919 .............................. 106

A painting of the US. Constitution by Nestore Leoni, circa

1909, published by the Chicago Tribune on September

16, 1934, using the employees’ innovations for color

rotogravure printing ................................................... 109

Figure 12.

Figure 13.

Figure 14.

Figure 15.

Figure 16.

Figure 17.

Figure 18.

Figure 19.

Figure 20.

Figure 21.

Figure 22.

Figure 23.

The 1934 Century of Progress official poster painted by A.
Raymond Katz, the muralist and stained-glass artist, was
featured in the Chicago Tribune on April 22, 1934.. ...........

The official poster for the Century of Progress, Chicago
World's Fair in 1933, painted by George Petty ................

The Chicago Tribune published Blue Silhouettes and
Wabash Avenue Viaduct by Richard A. Chase on March
22, 1931 .................................................................

Two paintings by French artist Paul Chabas, Hidden
Away and Twilight, published in the Chicago Tribune,
August 2, 1931 .........................................................

Two paintings by Grant Wood, Daughters of Revolution
and Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, were published by the
Chicago Tribune, September 23, 1934 ..........................

Between Rounds, by Thomas Eakins, was published by
the Chicago Tribune on May 19, 1935. Painted in 1899, it
was exhibited at the 1934 Art Masterpieces Exhibition at
the Chicago World's Fair ............................................

A color rotogravure swimsuit advertisement in the
Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1931 ..................................

An advertisement published in the Chicago Tribune early
in the 1930s for Yardley cosmetics increased sales in the
Great Depression ......................................................

The Inland Printer on May 1938 featured a four-page
story on the Chicago Tribune's pioneering role in color
letterpress, including the reproduction of a typical
advertisement ..........................................................

Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942, a front-page editorial
cartoon by Carey C. Orr .............................................

Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942, an enlargement of an
editorial cartoon in Figure 21 by Carey C. Orr .................

Chicago Tribune, December 23, 1925, an editorial
Christmas cartoon by Carey C. Orr ...............................

117

122

126

127

129

131

142

143

146

161

162

162

Figure 24.

Figure 25.

Figure 26.

Figure 27.

Figure 28.

A feature photo of Shirley Temple was taken by a staff
photographer and published in the Chicago Tribune, Nov.
1, 1936 ...................................................................

Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1939, by a staff photographer,
the first color photo simultaneously printed with its news
story ......................................................................

Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1936, by Chicago Tribune-
Daily News Syndicate photographer Harry Wamecke, a
portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt .....................

Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1929, President Herbert
Hoover, a photo by Godfrey Lundberg, a Chicago Tribune
inventor ..................................................................

Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1934, a painting by Thomas
Moran of the 1893 World's Fair ....................................

xi

181

186

188

216

216

 

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

And life is Color and Warmth and Light
And a striving evennore for these
And he is dead, who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
—Julian Grenfell, English soldier (1888-1915)
Into Battle

On Mother’s Day, 1917, readers of the Chicago Tribune opened their
Sunday papers to a feature section with a painting, In Time of War, reproduced in
color. The painting depicts an exhausted mother with a newborn cushioned on
top of a narrowly folded red blanket. The blanket suggests the painting’s dualistic
intentions. The mother’s head hangs downward in exhaustion toward the blanket.
In the background, two older children sleep in a bed.l The blanket, and not the
mother and children, is the central focus.

A narrow red blanket, like a stream of blood, signifies the father’s absence
and the mother's thoughts of birth and death in wartime. Far from the front lines,
Scottish artist Thomas Faed in the nineteenth-century revealed the realities of
war through this intimate interior. He conveyed his nation’s call to colors, to the
arms of war, as a crisis invoked by streaks of red.

The Chicago Tribune’s unrelenting solemnity on Mother’s Day occurred
six days after the Germans bombed the transatlantic steamer Lusitania and killed
1,198 British and 124 Americans on May 7.2 Five-thousand Chicagoans gathered
in a rally to express their patriotism the night before In Time of War appeared as

a section cover in the Sunday paper, delivered on the doorsteps of homes.3

Twelve men from the Chicago Tribune’s art and news staffs volunteered for

military service that week, nearly two years before President Woodrow Wilson
signed orders for the draft.4 Among the 25,000 men from Chicago who went to
battle, 244 men worked for the Chicago Tribune, not including its war

correspondents.5

 

The call for “colors” at the Chicago Tribune carried dual meanings, one
arising out of patriotism, and the other out of its methods to depict reality with
multiple hues of ink. The publisher employed 50 staff artists, who painted and
drew for either the news or advertising—but not both.

Another painting, titled The Colors—created by the Chicago Tribune’s
chief editorial cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon—appeared soon after the United
States entered Worid War I in 1917. One of the newspaper’s most popular
illustrations, The Colors was republished in color throughout the first part of the
twentieth-century.

The Chicago Tribune’s visual language of color, expressed through
various forms of new art, fine art, and illustrations, contributed significantly to its
media rise. The windows to its Midwestern soul opened through pictorial color.
McCutcheon, born in rural Lafayette, Indiana, in 1872, divided his painting into
four horizontal panels, showing how a single wheat field undergoes changes with
the progression of war. Rows of golden wheat transform, not by the turning
seasons, but war. Wheat stalks are seen as white crosses in the final panel.

Gold and green are the fields in peace.

Red are the fields in war.

Black are the fields when the canons cease.
And white for ever more.6

In Time of War and The Colors are from an extensive collection of
historical Chicago Tribunes that document innovations in pictorial graphics from
1880 to 1949. The reproductions represent its long, visual discourse in color that
spanned decades of social change and came into full fruition in the Great
Depression. The Chicago Tribune’s pervasive use of news color became evident
after Michigan State University received a donation of 5,500 pages of historical
newsprints in 2006. These illustrated Chicago Tribunes offered rare evidence of
modem color generally attributed to news publishing in the late1980s.

Among the early twentieth-century newsprint originals were works by
America’s leading artists, such as Grant Wood, Thomas Eakins, and Mary
Cassatt, and by rising regional painters such as Richard Chase, whose love affair
with Chicago saw grace in construction girders. The Chicago Tribune’s color
news cameras brought detailed images of steel mills, movie stars, and urban
fires before Kodak color films were invented for professional use.

Color advertising art brought readers flawless views of consumer goods
with retouched realism of Campbell’s light red tomato soup, Ivory soap's
sparkling clean baby with tender pink cheeks, Chevrolet's emerald-green touring
car, and luxurious Paris couture in the changing hues of the seasons.

The Chicago Tribune’s culture of color offered disparate images for more
than half a century.7 The central question of this research asks: What linkages
explain five decades of color in the Chicago Tribune, despite their seemingly

disconnected images? In doing so, a common story might emerge, derived

particularly from analyzing the processes that gave rise to printing the pictures,
and partially from studying the subject matter.

After World War I, the Chicago Tribune’s profuse color use in news
graphics, advertising, and finearts contributed to a rapid rise in the largest daily
circulation in the nation (except for a subsidiary it founded to bring readers even
more pictures, the tabloid New York Daily News).

The purpose of this research is to investigate the Chicago Tribune ’8
visual techniques and the cultural origins of color that magnetically attracted
readers. The research focuses on examining the exemplars of its visual color and
conducting a historical case study.

Just as current media companies are major economic drivers, by the
19303, printing was the sixth largest industry in the United States. Chicago led
the nation in color publishing, and the Chicago Tribune led the nation as the
voice of modernity with color techniques. In a speech to editors, Robert R.
McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune from 1911 to 1955, warned
newspapers of the importance of color to survive the Great Depression.

When houses are in colors within and without, when furniture and

clothing and everything else made rivals the rainbow, the

newspaper must take notice. The newspaper printed in somber

black has lagged behind the times.8

This study’s rationale stems from the lack of research on visual color in
newspapers after the Gilded Age. The “Yellow Kid” comics in Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World and in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal have been

widely studied, due to their influential roles in perpetuating yellow journalism in

the 1890s. Little is known about newspaper color across the next half-century.9

This study helps to narrow the gap in newspaper knowledge, subsumed by the
advent of television.

Full-color publishing was a costly investment, and following yellow
journalism, readers were poised to doubt a publisher's veracity if multiple hues of
inks were used. The New York Times ended its publication of a black-and-white
pictorial magazine in 1899, because illustrations were associated with the base
appeals of yellow journalism. The New York Times focused on news writing:

The publication has served its purpose. It seems to The Times that the

collection and printing of news with such editorial treatment as the news

may demand or permit, is a calling worthy to engage all the ability and
energy which its conductors possess. . .. It thinks it will accomplish its
object by issuing on Sunday such a number of pages as the full
representation of all the news may demand, and it is confident its readers
will approve the innovation it makes.'0

As far back as June 10, 1897, the Chicago Tribune reproduced scenic
illustrations of city life and American history by using color half-tones, a technique
rarely used in the nineteenth-century. Amid the culture of yellow journalism—a
culture where sensationalism drove news sales—the Chicago Tribune took a
difficult route to success: one that relied on comparatively reasoned news stories
with colorful art and illustrations, which made it the most widely read newspaper
in the nation by 1922.‘1

The newspaper industry’s materials and news needs differed from
magazines in key ways. For publication of overnight news, dailies required high-
speed web presses with revolving cylinders that could spin out a complete

newspaper in only fractions of a second. A magazine with color cover art and

engraved pictures with the inside text commonly took from three weeks to three

months to publish and used slow, flat-bed presses into the early twentieth-
century.

In keeping with Jacksonian traditions of the penny press, newspapers
have been published on inexpensive grades of paper in order to maximize the
number of citizens in a democracy who can afford the price of the news they
need to be self-goveming. Magazines, with their specialized and elite audiences,
traditionally have relied on highly finished luxury papers with different printing
technologies and methods that can be applied with longer amounts of time
between deadlines. By contrast, newspapers have a traditionally distinct set of
needs based on shorter news deadlines, lower prices per copy, increased
economic diversity, and low-cost newsprint—all of which affect the mass
production of color and the choices of the editorial content.

Pictorial Color In Magazines

As early as 1892, American publishers inserted color pictures into
magazines, but these were printed separately and not impressed on paper with
their texts, according to one of the most influential color experts of that era,
Theodore Regensteiner of Chicago. Photographers, especially, included picture
inserts in their industry journals. The first three-color magazine cover was printed
in 1896 by Regensteiner, who used the color photography method of Louis
Ducos du Hauron and the color photoengraving method of William Kurtz, to
publish the Christian Herald. One year later, Regensteiner used a similar process
to publish the Chicago Tribune’s anniversary edition.'2 The Saturday Evening

Post generously began using color on its covers, beginning as early as

September 30, 1899, when it reproduced in three-color a painting on a ship at
sea.13

A 1907 color photography invention called “autochrome” associated
artistic cultural landscapes with National Geographic’s brand early in its history. It
is worth noting that as early as 1910, National Geographic featured color
photographs, but these were hand-painted, and the circulation was limited to
several hundred geographers. Louis Jean Lumiere and Auguste Marie Nicolas
Lumiere, who invented motion pictures, also invented the autochrome process
for still photography. It was the first commercially available color process,
according to color photography historian Pamela Roberts. Autochromes used
glass plate negatives and were “problematic” and costly to produce, Roberts
noted.” In 1907, L'Illustration, a French magazine, published autochromes taken
by Leon Gimpel, and the following year, Edward Jean Steichen and Alfred
Stieglitz published their autochromes in Camera Work 22 and American Century,
respectively. National Geographic magazine published more than 2,000
autochromes between 1914 and 1938, but these color photos were printed on
non-glossy paper, “losing all the glowing, glassy translucency and personal
intimacy of the original,” according to Roberts.l5

While photography with the autochrome process was noted for its
luminosity, translucency, and vivid colors, the ability to make one print differed
greatly from the mass production of thousands, and perhaps millions, of copies.

Harry A. Groesbeck, Jr., a nationally regarded photoengraver of that era, also

printed autochrome photographs In 1911.‘6 He wrote what is considered a classic

text, The Process and Practice of Photo-Engraving, in 1924 of that period. The
process of autochrome photography sensitizes the glass plates for the three
different primary colors with dyed grains made of potato starch. Groesbeck noted
that autochromes were less sUccessful when mass-produced than when
individually printed, but their use was superior to hand-painted color pictures:
The reproductions are usually very “grainy” in appearance and no
satisfactory means has as yet been found to eliminate this trouble. By
extremely skillful manipulation in making the color separations and in the
subsequent finishing operations, interesting results are often obtainable.
They have the distinct advantage of being direct color reproductions and
are consequently more accurately photographic, both as to image and
colour, than hand-made originals or hand-coloured prints.l7
In the 1890s, according to Louis Walton Sipley, director of the American
Museum of Photography, the city of Chicago was the most active center of color
photoengraving methods for periodicals and commercial printing in the nation.
The reason that color photography development was
far behind photo-mechanical color processes during the ensuing years
may have been due to lack of public appreciation of the use of color for
commercial purposes, or it may have been due to the lack of proper
printing press equipment for making the use of color a not-too-difficult
undertaking.18
Periodicals have relied on many processes to reproduce color pictures,
ever since journals in London began printing art in the mid-eighteenth-century.‘9
Consequently, information that identifies the printing method and characteristics
of the quality of the work, length of time it took for printing, and its practicality are
all essential components in the development of color pictures.20 The subject of

this study is the mass production of modern full color in newspapers. “Modern”

refers to the nuances of lights and shadows that people naturally experience

when they absorb sensations of sight, which fall upon the eyes in a wide range of
tones and not in unyielding blocks of flat color.
Newspaper Inventions

To begin to identify the unique characteristics of the Chicago Tribune’s
color images, this research undertook a patent search for inventions that might
have been filed by the publisher, its subsidiaries, or its employees after 1880,
when the New York Daily Graphic published the first halftone in a newspaper
(Appendix A).21 Stephen H. Horgan’s significant halftone invention used a photo-
lithographic process, which was among a series of discoveries for the
reproduction of pictures in periodicals.22

The patents search for the Chicago Tribune found 94 patents related to
printing. Additional patents identified inventions for new use and reuse
technologies for printing byproducts.

Two of the Chicago Tribune’s patents were primary: the color rotogravure
press (Appendix A: #US1504409 filed in 1920 and approved in 1924), and the
color letterpress (Appendix A: #US1784037 filed in 1925 and approved in 1930).
Many of the patents related to improvements on some aspect of these printing
presses. Others were for new technologies related to newsprint, cameras, photo
transmission, engraving plates, folding machines and pressroom designs to
deliver an incredibly complex printing product with tight deadlines.

Justification
Current visual journalism techniques rely extensively on color images to

involve viewers in news stories. The ubiquity of color images in news—print,

digital, and television—is an indication of how much citizens have come to expect
it in storytelling. Color images extend to viewers a sensory experience that
simulates the world as they naturally know it. The synthetic artifice of news
decreases by including color images that deepen its affinity to reality, and its
believability to viewers. While pictorial color pervades contemporary media and
news products depend on this idiom to render human experience credible, little
historical knowledge has been developed on this phenomenon.

Consequently, this study examines a news pioneer’s development of
pictorial color methods, the Chicago Tribune, with the intent of filling an historical
gap in visual journalism knowledge. The period of interest extends from 1897,
overlapping with the publication of the “Yellow Kid” comics in the New York
newspapers, to America’s entrance in World War II. The Chicago Tribune’s most
fervent period of invention occurred between the two world wars. The
methodology applies a cultural approach to understanding the historical origins
and context of the Chicago Tribune’s use of pictorial color.

This study is not a technological history of newspaper presses. Instead,
the focus has been placed on what these inventions say about the culture of one
newspaper and the meanings that can be imported from the employees’
collective creative strengths.

Art historian Andre Malraux maintained that color reproductions
presented a new form of life experience and, with that, new freedoms.
Reproductions cast away elitism and became “museums without walls” that

brought art to the people, he wrote. They helped seal impressions of new styles,

10

fashions, and artists. Mass reproductions in color not only offer a news
experience to one person, they immortalize the shared feelings of an era and
culture via publication, he wrote. History defines cultures by an aesthetic style—
Greek architecture, French Impressionism, American Realism, the Jazz
Journalism.

Nothing conveys more vividly and compellingly the notion of a destiny

shaping human ends than do the great styles, whose evolutions and

transformations seem like long scars that Fate has left in passing, on the
face of the earth.23

The curators of museums represented the elite “schools” of thought,
comprised of individuals with shared aesthetics, but art that was freely
reproduced opened up the possibilities for new expressive forms.24 Newspaper
art editors were not the counterparts to curators, but rather counterpoints. Dailies
exposed their professional decisions to a broad swath of tastes, and critical
readers could easily reject the paper and switch consumer preferences.

Art, advertising, and news commingle on the news pages and influence
the aesthetics and the readers, instead of being isolated entities that stand alone.
By the end of World War I, the scientific approach to public persuasion had taken
hold in newspapers. The same year that the Chicago Tribune rose to the top in
circulation, Walter Lippmann published the seminal treatise on persuasion, Public
Opinion. The news media forms “pictures in our heads” that we trust, which seem
utterly real, even when they are false, he wrote. The pictures that readers see,

“pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes and relationships, are

their public opinions.” 25

11

Pictures are systemic to the formation of public opinion, Lippmann
observed. The newspaper creates a unique pseudo-environment for people, who
form their decisions based on their perceptions of reality seen on its pages. In
1916, the average business professional in Chicago spent no more than 15
minutes a day reading a newspaper.26 Lippmann’s interest in the role of pictures
in public persuasion addressed the reader’s brief allocation to news needs:
Pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea, and next in
order, words that call up pictures in memory. But the ideas conveyed are not fully
our own until we have identified ourselves with some aspect of the picture.27
Lippmann’s attention to pictures, at the same time the Chicago Tribune was
expansively using color art, shows a trend rapidly building across America in the
inter-war period—the mass production of mediated ideas and values.

The visual pleasure of color is a universally shared experience. Yet
despite this common quality, color still feels luxurious. From the inception of color
theory to its first practical application by the London Illustrated News in 1855,28
more than 2,000 years passed. In the short history of color printing in
newspapers, the Chicago Tribune held a primary role in pictorial news color.

In the lead-up to America’s entrance in World War I, a German embargo
on inks and dyestuffs threatened the economies of the Allied nations, including
the United States in 1914. The Chicago Tribune’s message in its use of color art
stood all the more powerful. Germany’s world monopoly on dye manufacturing

left the world visually bleak and metaphorically appropriate in time of war. The

dye chemicals for clothes, wallpaper, carpeting, car paints, hair dyes, paint, and

12

printer’s inks derived from Germany. The US. Bureau of Engraving relied solely
on German inks, including black, for currency, securities, and postage stamps.29

The elegance of common necessity and the luxury of color converged into
a single unified idea at the ChiCago Tribune in the first part of the twentieth
century. The democracy of color took hold.

Overview of Chapters

Chapter II explains the background and relevant literature related to the
development of color printing and its introduction into periodicals. The
philosophies and theories of the ancient Greeks guided the theoretical
development of color and its application for building empathetic citizens. Chapter
III details the research methodology for building a cultural history case study on
the Chicago Tribune color innovations. Due to the lack of knowledge on pictorial
in newspapers in the first part of the twentieth century, a diversity of fields was
studied in order to ascertain the social needs and forces affecting the Chicago
Tribune. Chapter IV explains the influence of the Chicago Tribune’s nineteenth-
century publisher, Joseph MedilI—printer, lawyer and mayor—on its twentieth-
century publisher, Robert R. McCormick, who spurred color printing. Chapter V
explores the origins and impact of John C. Yetter’s invention of the color
rotogravure press on the reproduction of fine art, which enabled the
democratization of an elite enjoyment. Chapter VI gives attention to the nature of
the content of the images and the effects of color rotogravure on society.
Chapter VII examines the Chicago Tribune’s democratization of color in its

advertising, when it was previously the domain of elite magazines, due to the

13

expensive papers and length of time for printing. Chapter VIII examines the
Chicago Tribune’s invention of the color letterpress by Otto R. Wolf, and its
influence on color editorial cartooning. The Chicago Tribune’s editorial cartoonist,
Carey C. Orr, streamlined his drawing style for color and influenced the
aesthetics adapted by other cartoonists. Little is known about the artist, even
though he won a Pulitzer Prize for cartooning and taught or mentored the
nation’s most famous popular creators. Chapter IX looks at the Chicago
Tribune’s use of color photography and the democratization of news color. The
achievement of overnight color pictures to run simultaneously with news stories
was a stunning achievement before color film was invented. Chapter X
summarizes how, what, and why the Chicago Tribune aspired to renew the art
and science of journalism with pictorial color. The Americanism that arose after
supremacy in World War I undergirded the spirit of invention that modernized

newspapers with color.

 

NOTES

1. Thomas Faed, 'In Time of War,” Chicago Tribune, May 13, 1917. Color Section cover.

2. Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Harper 8 Brothers
Publishers, 1953), 302-304.

3. Chicago Tribune, "5,000 West Side Citizens Rally to Aid War Spirit,” May 13, 1917, 5.
4. Chicago Tribune, "Tribune Staff Answers Call to Colors,” May 13, 1917, 5.

5. Chicago Tribune, "The Chicago Tribune, Our Soldiers 8: Sailors,“ September 9, 1918,
1 1.

6. John McCutcheon, “The Colors,” Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1914, 1.

7. Janet Ginsburg. Letter of Provenance to Charles Salmon, Michigan State University,
August 14, 2006.

14

 

8. New York Times, “Better Newspapers Urged by McCormick," April 19, 1931, 24.
9. William David Sloan, The Media in America (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 236.
10. New York Times, "The Sunday Times, 3 Cents," September 6, 1899, 7.

11. George A. Brandenburg, ”McCormick Directs Tribune under Medill Traditions,” Editor
& Publisher, no. 8 (1947): 72.

12. Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-Five Years (Chicago: The Regensteiner
Corporation, 1943): 216-219, 222.

13. Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1951 ),
17.

14. Pamela Roberts, A Century of Colour Photography (London: Andre Deutsch, 2007),
20.

15. lbid., 32; and Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color, 14.
16. Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color, 48.

17. Harry A. Groesbeck Jr., The Process and Practice of Photo—Engraving (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, Page 8 Company), 197.

18. Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color, 17, 30.

19. Anthony J. Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
England, 1839-1880 (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996), 113.

20. lbid., 56.

21. Frank Luther Mott, American Joumalism: A History of Newspapers in the United
States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941 ), 501.

22. Beaumont Newhall. The History of Photography (New York: The Museum of Modern
Art, 1982), 251.

23. Andre Malraux, The Voices of Silence (Garden City, New York: Doubleday 8 Co.,
1953), 46, 112.

24. Ibid.

25. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Simon 8 Schuster, 1922), 18.
26. lbid., 37.

27. lbid., 105.

28. Bamber Gascoigne, Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859: Wrth a Bibliography of
Nelson Prints (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 52.

29. Los Ange/es Times, "Dyes for Printing Ink," March 12, 1916, 21.

15

CHAPTER II: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
OF COLOR PRINTING

This inquiry of the Chicago Tribune’s innovations in pictorial color that
modernized news, advertising, and fine art images in the first half of the twentieth
century draws on the literatures of diverse disciplines. This scholarly literature
review begins with philosophies of color that preceded modern printing, followed
by historical achievements in newspaper color up to and including the twentieth
century.

Information has been extracted from a broad range of scholarly
disciplines, including printing,journalism, sociology, art, history, and technology,
to understand the cultural contexts that gave rise to color mass-produced in
newspapers. The mass production of full-color images in newspapers differs from
that of other publications, due to the unique needs for high-speed printing to
meet daily or weekly deadlines; low-cost printing to provide the largest number of
citizens access to the news they need to be self-governing; pulp-paper printing to
use the least expensive substrate; and mass production to deliver images and
words with effective consistency.

Philosophies of Color

Science and subjectivity have ideologically commingled to evolve multiple
interpretations of the term color, ever since the ancient Greek philosophers
began documenting their observations of nature. In his Dialogues, Plato recorded
the first theory of colors in 360 80, which was introduced by Timaeus of Locri to

describe the sun's infinite variety of hues and their effects on human health. A

16

Pythagorean philosopher, Timaeus held that the laws of probability would provide
consistent color combinations through a triangulated formula, which remained at
the theoretic stage. He explained that a relationship among three equal light
waves could elicit color changes, such as "flame" created with auburn and dun.
And he described a process known as “tinting," which lightens colors with the
addition of white:1
Red when mingled with black and white becomes purple, but it becomes
umber when the colors are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more
thoroughly mixed with them. Flame color is produced by a union of auburn
and dun, and dun by an admixture of black and white; pale yellow, by an
admixture of white and auburn. White and bright meeting, and falling upon
a full black, becomes dark blue, and when dark blue mingles with white, a
light blue color is formed, as flame-color with black makes leek green.2
In the above, Timaeus treated “black" and “white" as properties of color
and not as we scientifically know them today, respectively, as the absence of, or
sum of, all colors in the spectrum. He extended his suppositions on color
separations and mixtures to theorize that light affects colors inside human
bodies, generating blood and bile, and influencing health and emotion. Whether
light is perceptible, or imperceptible and transparent, people exhibit the effects of
the sun’s colors mentally and physically, he argued. Timaeus wrote that the
senses of sight and touch were similar, for both represented “a power akin to that
of hot and cold bodies." For example, a person's liver could produce “colors like
bile" that could lead to painful contractions and “loathing," or the sight of an
aesthetically harmonious image, such as art, could create pleasure, Timeaus

explained:

When some gentle inspiration of the understanding, pictures images of an
opposite character, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or

17

touch the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural

sweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be right and

smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which resides about

the liver happy and joyful.3

According to Timaeus, an image’s power derived from a systematic series
of interactions in nature, and not by any irrational forces sated on the fakery of
magical icons or amulets. Timeaus' “rational" theory in the Dialogues presented
the first scientific explanation of how light waves altered human disposition and
thought, despite the sun's intangible glow—a substance that could not be held or
bottled. This property could be defined only through the sense of sight.

Of all senses, sight presented the greatest force for enhancing intellectual
skills and increasing human good, Timaeus wrote:

For had we never seen the stars and the sun, and the heaven, none of the

words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been

uttered.4

Grounded ideologically in Platonic theory, color elicited interwoven
emotive, intellectual, and physical experiences of people and their environments.
A decade later, Aristotle took a special interest in color physics and aesthetics,
with ideas for advancing citizenship by educating youth through art. He observed
the phenomena of rainbows and halos and delineated the first principles on light
reflections, which were published in his book Meteorology.5 Aristotle explained
that a rainbow forms on dense vapors in the atmosphere after a rain and
deduced that different mediums act as vapors and also can reflect colors, such
as mirrors, smooth-surfaced objects, and pools of water. In addition,

environmental conditions could change the shape and color of light, he found; for

example, rainbows change in size at different hours. They diminish in size at

18

sunset and enlarge as the sun rises, he wrote. Thus, Aristotle believed the shape
and color of light can be altered by 1) the medium and 2) the conditions
surrounding it.

According to Aristotle, color is not a fixed state in nature but a mutable
form—the sun's glow offers more than one shade of yellow—and light varies by
its medium, i.e., vapor or clouds:

When there is a cloud near the sun and we look, it does not look colored
at all but white, but when we look at the same cloud in water it shows a
trace of rainbow coloring. Clearly, then, when sight is reflected it is
weakened and, as it makes dark look darker, so it makes white look less
white, changing it and bringing it nearer to black.6

Aristotle identified the sequence in a rainbow's colors: 3 red arc on the
outside closest to the sun, green in the middle, and purple closest to the earth,
noting that no more than two rainbows formed in the same area at one time. A
faint outer rainbow reversed the colors of the interior bow. “These are the only
colors that painters cannot manufacture," he wrote in Meteorology,
conceptualizing the first principles of primary colors. Moreover, he laid the
groundwork for future knowledge on yielding secondary colors when he noted
that the red arc juxtaposed next to the green arc gave “an appearance of
yellow."7

Reflected light alters man-made dyes, as well as nature, Aristotle wrote: A
purple thread embroidered on a piece of white wool looks different from the same
thread on black wool; a white cloud turns yellow when a rainbow's red arc fades.8

The exterior sensations of color in art brought viewers closer to the

realistic ideas and emotions their creator intended to convey, Aristotle argued.

19

Artificial pigments mirror reality. “The affections produced are similar though they
lack a name; for art imitates nature," he wrote, comparing changes to human
emotions and foods through cooking to the warmth engendered through colors in
art works.9

Aristotle emphasized the individualized, subjective perceptions of artistic
color; yet paradoxically, he found the social value in its ability to more deeply
connect people to reality. In The Politics of Aristotle, he wrote that the purpose of
education is to build good citizens, and art—music, painting, sculpture, and
poetry—enjoyed by youth can increase empathy for others in a democracy.
Artistic education solidifies the people's civic bonds and respect for individual
circumstances, suffering, and joys. The interests of the state were to perpetuate
it: “The citizens of a state should always be educated to suit the constitution of
their state" to assure permanence.1o Art that cultivates the personal character
and mental acuity of citizens holds a central function for advancing society. “The
shapes and colors presented by visual art are not representations of states of
character: they are merely indications," he wrote.11

The use of colors in art works fostered identification with realistic
situations and emotions, and expanded a person's awareness of others, forgoing
the need to totally rely on experience to understand others in society. A tragic
painting of a maternal death, or soldiers slain in battle, can heighten awareness
of loss without the need to endure the same life crisis. “Now to acquire a habit of
feeling pain or taking delight in an image is something closely allied to feeling

pain or taking delight in the actual reality," Aristotle wrote.12

20

Art as a recreational activity allowed youth to emotionally grow and
experience a multitude of emotions. Even sad feelings carried some form of
pleasure in a synthesized artistic event and shielded people from experiencing
harmful realities in other ways. The dichotomy between seemingly real and
unreal events enhanced the acquisition of knowledge—none of which Aristotle
found more important than habituating youth toward “rightjudgments”13 and
concerns for others in society.

The ancient Greek theorists sustained their authority up until the
Renaissance, when Sir Isaac Newton discovered a band of seven colors in white
light and modernized science, wrote Louis W. Sipley, director of the American
Museum of Photography, in A Half Century of Color.14 Using a glass prism,
Newton divided light into a rainbow of continuous hues—red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, and violet—and recombined them with another prism. Until
Newton recombined the separated rays into white light, the discrete colors were
attributed to properties within the glass. Sipley explained what Newton found in
white light:

At the ends were blue-violet and red, and between, progressing from the

red end, were orange, yellow, green, blue-green, and blue. Each color

blended with the colors adjacent to it in such a manner that no sharp edge
was noticeable as a dividing line between any two colors. This band of
colors produced by the dispersion of white light was named the
spectrum.15

Newton found white light to be pure—separating and recombining light did

not alter the rays' shapes and colors—wrote Pamela Roberts in A Century of

Colour Photography: “From this finding—that light is the source of all color—

21

comes our basis for understanding the concept of color and thus color
photography."16

According to Roberts, science advanced after Newton's 1666 seminal
experiment. His contemporary, Christiaan Huygens, found that light moved in
wavelengths, with red as the longest and violet the shortest. Huygens described
how human perception takes place through receptive nerve fibers in the retinas
of eyes that are sensitive to red, green, and blue light. Consequently, light is
individually experienced, yet it can also be objectively quantified.17

Joseph S. Friedman wrote in his History of Color Photography that
Newton invalidated Aristotle's view that white and black were single colors.18
Newton's discovery of three main primaries and seven visible hues ran contrary
to Leonardo da Vinci's view. Based on his work with pigments, the Reformation
painter and scientist mistakenly proposed that red, yellow, green, blue, white,
and black were primaries, Friedman explained. Scientists had not yet found that
there were theoretic distinctions between mixing light colors by adding different
wavelengths and mixing pigments by subtracting different hues. “We may
therefore infer that the seventeenth and eighteenth century scientists did not
distinguish between the additive and subtractive colors,"19 Friedman wrote.

These early failures of attempting to mix colors in painting that matched
reality foreshadowed the difficulties that modern printers would experience in
reproducing pictures.

In Optics, Newton’s mathematical treatise on light, he reported differences

in the reflective qualities of various mediums, i.e., paper, combs, soap bubbles,

22

or red liquor in a cone-shaped drinking glass.20 Newton found that a painter's
leaded pigments applied to white paper decreased its luminescence, compared
to shining light rays on white paper:

If red lead, for instance, and a white paper be placed in the red light of the

colored spectrum...the paper will appear more lucid than the red lead, and

therefore reflects the red-making rays more copiously than red lead doth.

And if they be held in the light of any other color, the light reflected by the

paper will exceed the light reflected by the red lead in a much greater

proportion. And the like happens in powders of other colors.21

Newton mathematically computed variations in colors by their wavelengths
and argued that primary colors have musical equivalents in sound. The vibrations
of wavelengths of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet “are to one another very
nearly as the sixth lengths of a (musical) chord, which sound the notes in a sixth
major, sol, la, mi, fa, sol, Ia."22 In other words, the physics of sound waves and
light waves share relative elements.

Just as the physical science broadened, so too, did subjective knowledge.
Sipley, Roberts, and Friedman all cited Thomas Young of England and Helmholtz
from Heidelberg, Germany, for finding that human color perception involves both
psychological and physiological processes.

Because the subject of this research is color, understanding the definitions
and various meanings of the term will benefit the principal knowledge about how
and why the Chicago Tribune was effective. The Chicago Tribune was known for
its conservative editorial tone, yet the appetite for color pictures may have been

far greater than the cognitive discord experienced by people who did not agree

with its views.

23

Definitions of Color

The current literature on color conceptually integrates the long journey of
light discoveries and combines these into the denotative and connotative
definitions.

The term “color" derives from the Greek word “chromos,” used in music to
describe the chromatic scale with 12 ascending and descending half-tones,
according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music.23 The same phraseologies
applied to the incremental tones and harmonic compositions of music are also
commonly used to describe visual color.

Yale University color expert, Faber Birren addressed the duality of the
sensory experience and the linguistic usage in his book, The Story of Color.
Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60, composed for piano
and orchestra, included a special organ that activated different color lights as the
respective keys were played. Scriabin and his fellow composer, Rimsky-
Korsakoff, saw colors when they heard music. “Color and music have much in
common," Birren wrote, “Both strike emotional chords—and human emotions
have a surprisingly universal quality about them.“ Walt Disney’s Fantasia, a 1941
animated movie inspired and accompanied by symphonic music, captivated
American audiences with its synchronistic pictorial dramas.24

A classic textbook for printers written by Kenneth F. Hird, Offset
Lithographic Technology, addresses the complexities of color in his definitions.

Color is light and light is a form of energy that travels in waves. Therefore,

our perception of color is determined by the type of light source, behavior

of the light (refraction, reflection, scattering, or interference), and the
sensitivity of the viewer—be it man or machine.25

24

Color is perceived through the eye's twelve million rods that discern black,
white, and gray, and seven million cones that chemically mix three primary hues,
according to Hird. “Even the smallest amount of radiant energy stimulates" a
person's retinas, he wrote. The perception of color is affected by the quantity and
quality of light—for example, directly transmitted light, or indirectly transmitted
light off an object, such as paper.

The Encyclopedia of Imaging Science and Technology defines “color" as
an “attribute of visual sensation and the color appearance of objects depends on
three components that can be thought of as a triangle," depending on 1) a visible
source of electromagnetic energy to initiate the sensory process; 2) an object to
be imaged by the eye; 3) an observer.26

The Oxford English Dictionary lists 56 different ways in which the word
“color" is commonly used as a noun and verb, including the term “off-color"
remark. Colors define experiences either by their superficial qualities of
appearance or by deeply held emotions and beliefs. The dictionary addresses
the subjective element within the first usage:

The particular color of a body depends upon the molecular constitution of

its surface, as determining the character and number of the light-vibrations

which it reflects. Subjectively, color may be viewed as the particular
sensation p7roduced by the stimulation of the optic nerve by particular light-

Vibrations.

Color is used interchangeably with “hue" to denote a specific quality of
visible light, and it also is used in the figurative sense to tinge a remark with

emotion, connoting falsity or concealment. The long etymological association

with pure qualities of light rays gives the word “color" virtuous connotations when

25

representing a particular group, emblem, flag, military unit, or nation, such as “to
come out in one's true colors,” or “to go out with colors flying and drums
beating."28

Definitions of color encOmpass physical characteristics of light, the human
capacity to perceive different wavelengths, and individual and commonly shared
meanings. Color refers both to superficial appearances resulting from surface
reflections and intrinsic emotions.

Color Printing In Newspapers

Turning from the theoretic development of color to the application for
printing uses, a transformative period was marked by centuries of dormancy until
the nineteenth century. Since the mass production of full-color images at the
Chicago Tribune is the topic of this study, a review of the landmark printing
antecedents follows.

Hand-painted colorings in literature and fine arts were the norm long after
the invention of the first printing press in 1446. A decade after his invention,
Johannes Gutenberg applied red ink to decorate capital letters when he printed
the Bible, the first book published using moveable metal type, as British printing
expert Bamber Gascoigne described in his Milestones in Colour Printing.” By
1487, Ehrard Ratdolt in Germany etched a picture of a bishop into four separate
wood blocks to print a frontispiece of a religious book. He inked each wood block
separately in black, yellow, olive-brown, and red, and overlaid the colors as he
repeated the printed impression four consecutive times. Gascoigne wrote:

Color printing was slow and expensive. An extra four passages through
the press, with all the inking of the blocks, would cost much more than a

26

person roughly applying some patches of paint; and this would continue to
be the economics of the case until the nineteenth century.30

In the 16‘h century, the color prints continued to be etched in wood blocks,
and ink tints were applied to give images an illusion of original drawings with
watercolors added. Johannes Teyler of Holland created the multicolor intaglio
method that carved pictures beneath a hard surface. He used a single copper
plate—not four—and pushed different ink colors into the crevices of different
areas of the picture. The process, a la poupée, wrapped fabric at the top of a
stick to look like a doll, which the printer used to dab ink into the crevices. The
printer cleansed the surface of the plate, left the ink in the crevices, placed paper
over it, and rolled a press across.

In Britain, engraver Elisha Kirkall successfully used a new technique to
print a collection of botanical art works. He varied the depths of the carvings
beneath the surfaces of the copper plate, and the changes in depths created
different intensities of ink color, Gascoigne noted. A single hue in one picture
varied from pale green to dark green-black and presented the illusion of multiple
colors.31

German engraver Jakob Cristof Le Blon created a four-color intaglio
process with copper plates. This process achieved middle tones in pictures that
could contour images with depth and perspective. The method, called mezzotint,
roughened the surface of the metal until it looked like sandpaper with “toughs
and peaks in the metal," according to Gascoigne in How To Identify Prints.” King
George I awarded Le Blon the royal patent for color printing, which was primarily

directed to the reproduction of oil paintings by Italian masters. A large investment

27

by financial speculators established a Picture Office with mezzotinters, engravers,
printers, colorers, and frame-makers, which went bankrupt shortly after its
establishment. Le Blon's color art works represented significant advances,
according to Gascoigne:

Their quality is varied, but his reputation is secure as the originator of the

three- or four-color method which was eventually to prove, in its twentieth-

century form, the basis of all commercial color printing.33

Art historian Antony Griffiths in Print and Print Making noted that Le Blon's
oil paintings never fully succeeded because of impurities in the inks and the
printer's inability to match different hues.“ Developing sufficient primary colors in
pigments continued to slow the progress of color printing in future decades. Le
Blon chose blue, red, and yellow primaries, when “they should have been cyan,
magenta, and yellow," Griffiths wrote, because they were man-made pigments,
not pure light. While pigments reflect light, they are not comprised of light. The
miscalculations in formulating the most sensitive pigments to use for light filters
and inks seriously held printers back, for the end results often appeared
laughable or unreal. Finding formulations that could record colors as natural as
life was the goal.

By the next century, the mezzotint process was widely used for the
reproduction of portraits and paintings in black and white, and it was “given a
new lease on life when steel was adopted as the support" by itself or in

combination with copper plates to extend durability for long print runs, according

to photography historian Anthony J. Hamber in his book, A Higher Branch of the

28

Art.35 The use of steel in place of intricate hand work increased mass production
and derided its value to the elite.

The invention of the lithographic method in 1798 by Alois Senefelder in
Bavaria became the basis for today's most widely used mass-produced process
of color printing, known as off-set lithography.36 With the hope of printing in relief,
Senefelder failed in his use of limestone for this purpose, but he found a new way
to print on a flat surface. Gascoigne described Senefelder's landmark finding:37

He made the much more revolutionary discovery that it is possible to print

from a flat surface. The process depends on the antipathy between oil and

water. In over-simple terms, Senefelder discovered that if greasy marks

are made on a stone, and the stone is then wetted, the greasy ink on a

printer's roller will stick to the greasyamarks but will be repelled by the

surrounding wet areas of the stone.

This flat-surface medium with greasy inks gave artists far greater facility in
manipulating their images, and the process of reproduction more closely aligned
with methods for creating original paintings and drawings. Senefelder published
the first color lithograph—known as a chromolithograph—in 1818. He printed 20
plates with multicolor initials imitating historic letters of the 1457 Mainz Psa/ter,
the second book with color letters after the Gutenberg Bib/e. Senefelder used two
lithographic stones, one for black ink and the other for red and blue inks,
Gascoigne wrote.39 Printers across Europe widely adopted the process, and
“chromolithography came of age" in France when a patent for multicolor printing
was awarded to Godefroi Engelmann in France.40 Engelmann used four different
stones, one each for black, blue, yellow, and red ink impressions. By the end of

the nineteenth century, chromolithograph printing reproduced pictures in fine art

books, literature, and art for framing. The reproductions were costly but

29

affordable, according to Gascoigne. For the price of about five shillings (about
one dollar), the English printer Joseph Hullmandel, for example, printed
chromolithographs of the landscape paintings of Thomas Shotter Boys, and
“framed on the wall, these really do look to the eye like very accomplished
watercolors,“ wrote Gascoigne.41

English printers employed the oldest form of pictorial printing in
monotone—etching on wood blocks, which began in China in 868 A.D.“2—and
refined its use to bring color art into periodicals in the nineteenth century.
Hamber's Higher Branch of Art, ‘3 Griffiths' Prints and Printmaking,“ and
Gascoigne's How to Identify Prints"5 recognize artist Thomas Bewick as the
innovator who modernized wood engraving for periodicals:

By restoring the relief block to a state of excellence, Bewick paved the

way for the mid-nineteenth-century explosion of books and magazines

with illustrations on the text pages. But the craftsmen churning out
thousands of wood blocks to meet the deadlines on the4presses were not
themselves the originating artists, as Bewrck had been.

Bewick carved pictorial vignettes, some as small as an inch, to enliven
literary materials with birds, landscapes, and animals. His wood carving
processes blended speed, according to Hamber, with low-cost materials that
made magazine and book illustrations affordable to the “middle markets." New
processes in papermaking smoothed the printing surfaces and heightened the
details in pictures for periodicals."7 Woodcuts were not economical for multi-color
uses until a method of electrotyping was created in the mid-nineteenth century,

which enabled the carved wood blocks to be rapidly reproduced with chemical

processes. With fine art available to the middle classes by lithography and

30

intaglio, British publishers of the penny presses aspired to bring color to their vast
numbers of readers.

“Returning from Church," a Christmas picture depicting a family, published
by the London Illustrated News on Dec. 22, 1855, became the first full-color
illustration in the periodical literature."8 Mason Jackson, a nineteenth-century
journalism historian, wrote of publisher Herbert Ingram’s desire to set his paper
apart from the highly competitive London press by including a free festive gift
with his weekly paper. Ingram used a hand-operated press to publish what
Jackson described as an “ordinary" woodcut with tints."9 The first color images in
a newspaper were flawed, yet popular, and Ingram turned to a London art printer
to improve the quality, Jackson wrote.

Ingram's subsequent Christmas issues ranked “among the best work of
the kind" and were printed for the Illustrated London News by Leighton Brothers
printing house, which had established a reputation for printing color art book
illustrations.50 The festive Christmas editions could not keep pace with consumer
demand for Ingram's newspapers with color art. At a time when there were 80
London newspapers and 300 others in the rest of England, the publisher found a
means to compete and thrive:51

That of “Little Red Riding Hood," after J. Sant, R.A., published in 1863,

was reprinted again and again, until the (wood) blocks were utterly worn

out. They were then re-engraved, and again reprinted. The Christmas
picture issued in 1882, “Cinderella," was specially painted by Mr. Millais,

R.A., at the price of 3000 guineas. When it is noted that the large colored

reproduction of this picture, together with seventeen highly finished full-

page engravings by some of the best artists of the day, were sold for a

shilling, it will be seen that the pictorial press is no unimportant factor in
diffusing the purifying and softening influence of art.”

31

The genre of fantasy, and not the gritty realism of news, captured the
focus of these illustrations that served to uplift and entertain readers, and carry
their imaginations beyond everyday concerns. A fairy tale illustration of
“Cinderella" maintained its printing viability, without cracking the wood blocks and
necessitating re-carving, through 425,000 news copies of the 1882 Christmas
edition.

Hamber's A Higher Branch of Art and Gascoigne's Milestones in Colour
Printing attribute the first printing of “Returning From Church" to the Leighton
Brothers, not the newspaper publisher's own print shop. All three historians
concur on the achievement. “Returning From Church" was, most likely, first
attempted on the in-house press and subsequently printed by Leighton Brothers
(Figure 1). Hamber wrote:

The tradition of cheap wood-engraved illustration was the hallmark of

possibly the most influential illustrated periodical of the nineteenth

century.53

The growing popularity of art reproductions in books and as individual
framed pictures was a key incentive for Ingram to maintain high-quality printing,
Hamber contended. Pictures in the London Illustrated News were also sold by
Leighton Brothers as separate prints for framing. Hamber attributes great
significance to The London Illustrated News and another weekly periodical, The
Penny Magazine, by a different publisher, to increasing commentary and visual
information on art:54

The Penny Magazine and The Illustrated London News were ostensibly

aimed at the level of the general reader and not at the “articulate" classes

which included the establishment. Yet the more people read, the more
articulate they were likely to become, and this, coupled with the increased

32

urbanism, the wealth brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and the
growth in access to public collections of art, helped to create a market for
the specialized art periodicals that began to appear in the 18405.55

Ingram, a member of British Parliament, died not far from Chicago harbor,
along with 330 others, one September night in 1860 on the schooner Augusta,
when it struck a first-class steamer. The traditions of color printing continued at
the paper after his death. The Chicago Tribune reported the loss to the
publishing industry in a Sept. 11, 1860, news story on its front page:

But sunk though he be, like Lycidas, to whom these words were first

applied, his memory will long survive in the grateful hearts of his admiring

countrymen, and perhaps more than one will live to own his sense of
obligation to Mr. Ingram that the (wood) cuts of The Illustrated London

News first awakened in his young heart a love and a devotion to the
beautiful and the true.56

 

Figure 1. Created by G. Thomas and
printed by George C. Leighton with
tints on wood blocks, “Returning
From Church on Christmas Morning"
was published in The Illustrated
London News on Dec. 22, 1855, and
was the first color picture in a
newspaper. News stories are printed
on the back. (In the author's
possession.)

33

Color printing advanced in American newspapers and evolved with
photographic inventions that could be used to etch and engrave metal plates.
None of the new photographic methods were able to unite pictures with words,
unless the pictures were sent through one printing press and the texts through
another, and the two were bound together on different pages, according to
Beaumont Newhall.$7 The use of pictures with words—including color—emerged
late in the nineteenth century.

The process known as “photoengraving" was invented by French
lithographer Louis Nicephore Niepce in 1826. Niepce used chemicals to burn
images into metal plates, instead of carving images with sharp engravers’ tools.58
Niepce's photoengraving process even preceded the 1835 invention of
photography by his partner, Paris scenic designer Louis J. Daguerre.59 Louis
Flader and J.S. Mertle's Modern Photoengraving, Harry A. Groesbeck Jr.’s The
Process and Practice of Photo-Engra ving, and Beaumont Newhall's The History
of Photography consider the transformative effects of chemical engraving and
etching on picture-making.

The first photoengraving was a portrait of a candidate for pope, French
Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, whose image was burned into a light-sensitized
pewter plate. This pewter negative was made into a positive image with the aid of
petroleum, acetic acids, and bitumen. A long series of inventors in Europe and
America refined photographic imaging. Firmin Gillot of France in 1852 etched a
portrait of Gutenberg onto a lithographic stone, transferred the image to a zinc

plate, and etched it in relief with nitric acid. This process differed little from the

34

traditional ink lithography, but chemicals brought greater accuracy and ease to
making negatives.

British scientist William Henry Fox Talbot discovered a process of
engraving pictures with a system of dots, called “photogravure,” which involved
sensitizing steel plates to light with a solution of bichromated gelatin. This
process was considered the first to create pictures by dividing a printing surface
into dots that gave the illusion of continuous tone. In addition to steel, he used a
fabric commonly worn by French ballerinas, tulle, to form a screen of holes.60

Color reproduction advanced when in 1859, James Clerk Maxwell of
Britain discovered a process that used three-color negatives on wet glass plates
immersed in colloidin, a highly flammable chemical found in alcohol and ether.
And France's Louis du Hauron developed three-color prints for images with a
process using carbon tissues sensitized to the primary colors in light.

Talbot's system of dots was refined for printing pictures etched in relief on
metals and was developed into the “halftone" method by Max Levy, Frederick
Ives, and Stephen Horgan in America, and George Meisenbach in Germany,
according to Newhall.61 William Kurtz of New York took a full-color picture of fruit
that was printed in an 1893 issue of Engraver and Printer. His photo, reproduced
with a three-color process using zinc plates, employed a method similar to
Niepce's method of 67 years earlier. Kurtz, a German-born lithographer,
succeeded in meeting the modern quest for color and introduced the international
community to his realistic images at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in

Chicago. Flader and Mertle wrote:

35

It is not necessary to deal with the lengthy and involved history of the

halftone process, especially when the invention of the process cannot be

credited to any one individual—it is the result of a series of discoveries

and inventions by many workers and students in different parts of the

world.62

lncrementally, color printing moved fonrvard, striving to recreate life with
verity, ease, and precision.

Rationale

The rationale for discussing the science, theory, and application of color is
to show how little was accomplished in the reproduction of pictures until the
twentieth century. Theorists had great difficulty with the practical application of
the basic science. The Chicago Tribune’s accomplishments are all the more
significant, not because the employees developed the basic science, but
because they had the incentive to apply it, following centuries of dormant activity.

Additionally, the Chicago Tribune’s motivation to invent methods for the
reproduction of color pictures had greater affinity with ancient Greek philosophers,
who believed the central role of education was to build better citizens. The
Chicago Tribune ’5 advocacy for communicating news through color pictures had
far more in common with the philosophers of antiquities than with the era
immediately preceding and coinciding with its own—yellowjournalism.

Journalism Literature on Color Printing

Histories of American newspaper color have concentrated on the era of

yellow journalism, which began in the 18905 with William Randolph Hearst's New

York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. The research conjoins color

with sensationalism by using the metaphor of the Yellow Kid comics, created by

36

Richard Outcault in 1896. His cartoon about the urban antics of a boy from a
New York tenement received its name from the yellow nightshirt he always wore.
The comic was published first by Pulitzer as Hogan's Alley, until Hearst “lured"
the cartoonist to bring the popular comic to his paper, according to The Media in
America, edited by historian William David Sloan.63

Sloan provided no discussion of the press or the method for color,
although linked by association, he cites Hoe and Co.'s 1883 web press for
accelerating the speed of printing and folding.64 The Media in America uses
phrases such as “colorful style of news writing" and “picture-writing" to describe
the 19205' era of “jazzjournalism” during prohibition, but makes no mention of
color printing. The New York Daily News, an illustrated tabloid owned by the
Chicago Tribune, was known for its “emotional mix of sex and crime news."

Similarly, Centuries of American Media, by journalism historian Lloyd
Chiasson Jr., dwells on the sensational Yellow Kid comics in the 18905 and the
“lurid" stories in The New York Daily News, and the management by Robert R.
McCormick and his first cousin, Joseph Medill Patterson: “With an emphasis on
crime and illicit sex, the Daily News soon became known, as historian Sidey
Kobre described it, as the ‘daily erotica for the masses.” 65

Media Now, written by Joseph Straubhaar and Robert LaRose,"‘3 and
Media Impact, edited by Shirley Biagi, ascribe color to the Yellow Kid comics and
to newspapers in the late twentieth century that attempted to resemble “television

news more and more, emphasizing color photography."67 Stanley J. Baran's

Introduction to Mass Communication attributes color to contemporary

37

newspapers “softening" their literacy with photos that appeal to nonreaders and
younger readers.68

Understanding Mass Communication, written by Melvin L. DeFleur and
Everette E. Dennis, lends attention to the purposes of journalism. The book
incorrectly credits USA Today for pioneering newspaper color in the late
twentieth century as a result of market-based news.69

Historian Frank L. Mott's American Journalism, published in 1941, gives
attention to a four-color press at Chicago's Inter Ocean newspaper in 1892, and
a five-color press at the New York World in 1893, both of which were built by
Walter Scott 8 Co., and a multicolor press for the New York Recorder, built by R.
Hoe & Co. in 1893.70 Mott identified specific publishers and printers in the early
twentieth century:

Press manufacturers all worked with the color problem through the

thirties—R. Hoe 8 Company, Henry A. Wise-Wood, Scott, 6055, and

Duplex. Publishers stimulated their advertising by use of run-of paper

color, commonly using color attachments. Multicolor presses of eight or

sixteen cylinders were installed by some papers. Color roto, begun as

‘tintogravure' in the New York Sunday World in 1923, showed a

considerable development in the late thirties.71

Mott cites an incorrect date for the first spot news color photo, which he
believed to be June 7, 1939, when a Chicago Tribune photographed Franklin D.
Roosevelt and King George VI with its “single-shot," color camera. The Chicago
Tribune sent it by wire through the Associated Press the same day. However, the
Chicago Tribune took the first spot news color photo nearly a month earlier of a

grain-elevator fire in the Chicago, and published the color photo overnight for

publication with its story the next day."

38

Historian Alfred M. Lee's 1937 book, The Daily Newspaper in America,
gives attention, without citing specific publications, to the use of four-color rotary
newspaper presses in the 18905, and the publication of color comics in response
to the competition of radio.73 American dailies printed advertising with color inks
beginning in 1906, Lee wrote, although he did not specify the newspapers. By
1936, as many as 328 newspapers in 243 towns included some degree of color
advertising on weekdays.74

The earlier historians, who examined phenomena closer in time to their
lived experiences, documented some of the Chicago Tribune’s accomplishments.

Chicago Tribune Historical Literature

Biographies and historical literature on the Chicago Tribune and publisher
Robert R. McCormick have focused on politics, family, personality, and business.
Lloyd Wendt in his book, Chicago Tribune, discusses color rotogravure and
letterpress inventions by the newspaper’s employees.75 While Wendt’s dates and
details sometimes differ from those documented by primary sources (for example.
he cites the Chicago Tribune for achieving the first half-tone engraving on a
rotary press in 1898,76 and the newsprint original confirms 1897"), he
recognized the importance of visualjournallsm to the paper: “Color has remained
an integral part of the Tribune, used widely by advertisers both on newsprint and
roto presses." 78 Wendt acknowledged the Chicago Tribune's printers, John
Yetter and Otto Wolf, for inventing the first color rotogravure in America, which

made the newspaper competitive with national magazines.79

39

Jerome E. Edwards examined McCormick's isolationism in his book, The
Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick ’5 Tribune 1929- 7941, and considers the
publisher’s business model of self-sufficiency as a response. Relative to the
study of color, he noted the pUblisher's “pioneering use of color" and how it
served as an advertising magnet.80 He also gave some attention to foreign policy,
as scrutinized through the lens of the editorial cartoons that were published in
color.

Frank C. Waldrop's biography, McCormick of Chicago, does not discuss
color, but he referred to the editorial cartoons for their scope of influence through
syndication.81

McCormick's vertical integration, including making newsprint and
realigning the printing presses for efficiency, are addressed by Richard Norton
Smith in his biography, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R.
McCormick.” He clearly establishes McCormick's tireless drive for innovations,
but, color remained unexamined:

Eager as always to beat the competition, McCormick authorized
construction of an experimental four-color press in 1920.83

Discarding the conventional grouping of five or six printers, each weighing

thirty tons, interspersed for greater efficiency with half a dozen folding

machines.84

The biographies address the era of “personaljournalism,” typified by
McCormick’s proclivity for slanting the news to serve his political views —
conservative Republican and isolationist. He is uniformly derided for not only

referring to the Chicago Tribune as the “world's greatest newspaper," but for

printing it millions and millions of times over as the front-page slogan. The

40

climate of braggodoccia often colors the attitudes on color, as author John
Tebbel conveys in his biography, An American Dynasty.

Tribune enterprises, including charities, are overwhelmingly publicized as

part of the Tribune's perennial campaign to glorify itself. Some

Chicagoans assert facetiously that the paper has a bureau called the

Glorifying-the-Tribune Department. Probably no other American

newspaper has published more books, pamphlets and promotional

material about itself. An example of routine clarification is the exhibit of

Tribune color photos which opened early in 1945.85

The Chicago Tribune’s and the McCormick Foundation's publications have
illuminated some printing press technologies and basic institutional facts, and
these have been significant as a point of reference to compare and contrast other
literature. These books include: The History of the Chicago Tribune 1847 to 1922,
published in 1922; Pictured Encyclopedia of the World ’5 Greatest Newspaper,
published in 1927; War Cartoons Reproduced from the Chicago Tribune
December 7, 1941-September 28, 1942, published in 1942; and Robert R.
McCormick: A Celebration of His Life and Legacy, published in 2005.

Summary

Beginning with the ancient Greeks, mankind has explored the scientific
and subjective foundations of light and its properties of color. Timaeus in Plato's
Dialogues and Aristotle in Meteorology introduced concepts of color mixing and
separation. A distinguishing aspect of color, Aristotle argued, is its ability to
engender an illusion of reality through art, and in doing so, carry the potential to
impart empathy in the interests of the common good in a democracy. Sir Isaac

Newton found all colors to be inherent in white light in 1666, and the discovery

served as the basis for color printing experiments in the centuries that followed.

41

The Oxford English Dictionary lists 56 different uses for “color," and the
definition shares a commonality with descriptions of music, resulting from its
etymology in the Greek word “chromatic.“ Color refers to the infinite varieties of
tones that change with the wavelengths of light in the electromagnetic spectrum.
The term also refers to how people “shade" their language and interpret
situations, events, and characterizations. Color can indicate virtue in character,
as applied to the military and national loyalties, or deception.

American historians have brought attention to the negative qualities of
newspapers during the era of yellowjournalism in the 18905 and with market-
based contemporary media. British historians of the art of the book have noted
the significance of color by the penny press in popularizing the fine arts.

The introduction that follows will provide an overview of the Chicago
Tribune’s color printing achievements, and the influences of democracy and war

in pursuing inventions to survive.

Notes

 

1. Plato, in The Dialogues of Plato, ed. B. Jowett. (Indianapolis, IN: Online Library of
Liberty, based on Oxford University Press, 1892, 360 BC).
http://ollJibertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php?title=767 8chapter=9381 7&layo
ut=html8ltemid=27.

2. lbid.

3. lbid.

4. lbid.

5. Aristotle, Meteorology, trans. E.W. Webster (350 BC; reprint. Whitefish, MT:
Kessinger Publishing, 2006), Part 4.

6. Plato, in The Dialogues of Plato, ed. B. Jowett.

7. Aristotle, Meteorology.

42

 

8. Ibid.
9. lbid., Book 4, Part 3.

10. Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Ernest Barker (347 BC: reprint, London:
Oxford University Press, 1974), 267, 332-334.

11. lbid.. 344.
12. lbid.
13. Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, 334.

14. Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1951), 1.

15. lbid., 5.

16. Pamela Roberts, A Century of Colour Photography (London: Andre Deutsch, Carton
Publishing Group, 2007), 10.

17.Ibid..10.

18. Joseph S. Friedman, History of Color Photography (Boston: The American
Photographic Publishing Company, 1944), 1.

19. lbid., 2.

20. Sir Isaac Newton, Optics, 5th ed. (Cambridge: Royal Society, 1675; reprint, Chicago:
Encylopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), 342-455.

21. lbid., 438.

22. lbid., 465.

23. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne, Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. (Oxford
Music Online: Oxford University Press, 2007-2008),
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy1 .cl.msu.edu.

24. Faber Birren, The Story of Color, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: The Crimson Press, 1941)

25. Kenneth F. Hird, Offset Lithographic Technology (Chicago: Goodheart-Willcox
Publisher, 2000), 148.

26. Mark D. Fairchild, “Human Visual System—Color Visual Processing," review of
Encyclopedia of Imaging Science and Technology, May 28 (2002).

27. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008)
28. Ibid.

29. Bamber Gascoigne, Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859: With a Bibliography of
Nelson Prints (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1

43

 

30. lbid., 2-3.
31. lbid.. 7.

32. Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 2nd ed. (London: Thames 8 Hudson Ltd.,
2004). 15-17.

33. Bamber Gascoigne, Milestones in Colour Printing, 9.

34. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1996), 118-119.

35. Anthony Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
E ng/and, 1839- 1880 (Documenting the Image) (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Breach
Science Publishers SA, 1996), 47-48.

36. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 118-119.

37. Bamber Gascoigne, Milestones in Colour Printing, 21.

38. lbid.

39. lbid., 2.

40. lbid., 30.

41. lbid., 36.

42. Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 5.

43. Anthony Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
E ngland, 1839-1880 (Documenting the Image), 48.

44. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking (Berkeley. CA: University of California Press.
1996), 24-25.

45. Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identity Prints, 2nd ed. (London: Thames 8 Hudson Ltd.,
2004), 6.

46. lbid.

47. Anthony Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
E ngland, 1839- 1880 (Documenting the Image), 4849.

48. lbid.. 113.

49. Mason Jackson, The Pictorial Press (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885: reprint, New
York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 303-304.

50. Anthony Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
E ng/and, 1839- 1880 (Documenting the Image), 49.

51. Chicago Tribune Press Service, "First Picture Newspaper: An Idea Paid Off," Chicago
Tribune, May 20, 1967, sec. A, 9.

44

 

52. Mason Jackson, The Pictorial Press, 304.

53. Anthony Hamber, A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in
E ngland, 1839-1880 (Documenting the Image), 1 13.

54. lbid.. 115.
55. lbid.
56. “Herbert Ingram, Esq., M.P.," Chicago Press and Tribune, September 11, 1860, 1.

57. Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art,
1986), 251 .

58. Louis Flader and J.S. Mertle, Modern Photoengraving (Chicago: Modern
Photoengraving Publishers, 1948), xxxvii.

59. Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, 78.

60. lbid., xxxiii.

61. Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography, 251.

62. Louis Flader and J.S. Mertle, Modem Photoengraving, xxxix.

63. William David Sloan, The Media In America (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 236.
64. lbid., 235.

65. Lloyd Chiasson Jr, Three Centuries of American Media (Englewood, Colorado:
Morton Publishing Company, 1999), 198.

66. Joseph Straubhaar and Robert LaRose, Media Now, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson
Wadworth, 2008), 94-95; and in Shirley Biagi, Media Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media
(Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2003), 83.

67. Straubhaar and LaRose, Media Now. 94-95.

68. Stanley J. Baran. Introduction to Mass Communication, 2nd ed. (Boston: McGraw
Hill, 2002), 167.

69. Melvin L. DeFleur and Everette E. Dennis, Understanding Mass Communication
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 88.

70. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United
States through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), 600-601.

71. lbid.. 685.

72. lbid.; and “The First Spot News Color Picture," Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1939, G2;
and “A Color Photo That Made Newspaper History,“ Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1939, G1.

73. Alfred M. Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (New York: The Macmillian
Company, 1937), 369.

45

 

74. lbid.. 370.

75. Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper (Chicago:
Rand McNally 8 Company, 1979), 486-488.

76. lbid., 486.

77. Frederic Remington, “Her Calf," (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1897), 29.

78. Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper, 487.
79. lbid.

80. Jerome E. Edwards, The Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick's Tribune, 1929 - 1947
(Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1971), 36.

81. Frank C. Waldrop, McCormick of Chicago (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1966), 21 1 .

82. Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick,
7880 - 7955 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 235-239.

83. lbid.. 239.
84. lbid., 237.

85. John Tebbel, An American Dynasty (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 8 Company, Inc.,
1947), 139.

46

CHAPTER III: HISTORICAL METHODOLOGY

Since the intention of this study is to understand the origins and
development of the Chicago Tribune’s pioneering role in pictorial color,
this research seeks both qualitative and quantitative evidence. Three
classic aspects of historiography for an academic paper or scholarly book
are evidence, interpretation, and narrative. The first three research
questions address evidence, and the fourth question seeks insights to
interpret and convey the narrative.

A collection of full-color, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
newspapers was donated to Michigan State University in 2006, which enabled a
rare opportunity to view historical materials normally seen only on black and
white film. The gift by Illinois donor Janet Ginsburg offered evidence of the
Chicago Tribune’s full-color publishing.‘ The provenance of this historical
Chicago Tribune collection identified that the largest portion of the artifacts was
discarded from the publisher's archives in the 19805.2 These newsprints,
numbering 5,506 pages3 of illustrated originals, represent single pages, whole
graphic sections, and some complete newspapers printed by rotogravure and
letterpress. They present primary evidence of color inventions not described by
scholarly literature.

Background on Newspaper Archival Reductions

Beginning in the 19505, Eugene B. Power, president of University

Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan, encouraged libraries to microphotograph their

periodical collections as a space-saving innovation. One hundred pages of

47

newsprint could be photographed with 35- and 16-millimeter films and stored on
a plastic spool for as little as 90 cents.‘l Microfilm solved the difficult dilemmas
librarians faced when choosing what to save and what to discard to make room
for new books and periodicals. Through the use of microfilms and microfilm
projectors, old newspapers could be photographed and viewed with magnifying
projectors, saving institutions space for growth.“5

The universal adoption by newspaper publishers and librarians of
microphotography techniques by the 1980s led to most institutions discarding
their periodical collections in favor of modern methods.6 Consequently, little
research has been possible on newspaper color, because periodicals—with rare
exceptions—have been given broad access with black-and-white
microphotography.

Chicago Tribune Newsprint Search

To ascertain the universe of historical Chicago Tribune newsprint originals
for potential study, and make cross-comparisons to understand their cultural
contexts, an exhaustive global search of libraries and museums was conducted
to discern if there were duplicates, and also if there were illustrated color
newspapers by other publishers.

This search relied on the two most comprehensive online databases for
accessing information, Online Union Computer Library Catalogue (WorldCat) and
the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). Neither revealed any newsprint
originals under the proper names “Chicago Tribune" and “Chicago Daily Tribune."

Recognizing that catalogues do not list entire holdings, the researcher contacted

48

libraries and museums by telephone to talk with directors and researchers in
charge of holdings.

In Illinois, the Chicago Historical Society, responsible for the National
Endowment for the Humanities' Newspaper Preservation Project, had no
newsprint originals after 1871. The Chicago Public, University of Chicago and
University of Illinois libraries had no Chicago Tribune holdings, and the Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Library had three single black-and-white newspapers
published in 1849, 1861, and 1863. Newberry Library had private papers, cartoon
scrapbooks and original art of John T. McCutcheon, the chief editorial cartoonist
at the Chicago Tribune in the early twentieth century, but no newsprint originals.

McCormick Research Center, the former home of the Chicago Tribune’s
publisher, Robert R. McCormick, in Wheaton, Illinois, had few newsprint originals,
and held the Chicago Tribune’s archives and publisher's papers. Lake Forest
College held the archives for the New York Daily News, a Tribune Co. subsidiary,
but had no Chicago Tribune newsprint originals.

Outside of Illinois, Syracuse University had original art boards by Carey C.
Orr, the Chicago Tribune ’5 chief editorial cartoonist in the mid-twentieth century,
but it held no newsprint originals. The Ohio State University Cartoon Library held
newsprint originals by McCutcheon and nineteenth-century color newsprint
originals published by Hearst in the late 18905. Purdue and Northwestern
universities held original art boards and private papers but no newsprint originals.
Duke University's American Newspaper Repository held a collection of Chicago

Tribune comic sections.

49

The Library of Congress held a collection of William Randolph Hearst's
full-color American Humorist magazine supplement from the New York Journal
and Advertiser newspaper in the 18905, and the New York Tribune ’5 full-color
gravure supplements in the early twentieth-century.

The search showed no redundancy and presented a critical necessity for
research on primary sources, given the absence of previous research and the
limited number of newsprint originals.

Research Questions

The Chicago Tribune’s self-reports on inventions, combined with
biographical data on the publisher's hyperbolic self-promotions, invite marked
skepticism. A methodological issue has been how to study undocumented visual
history with the validity necessary. Without previous Chicago Tribune studies on
pictorial color, and little data cited in historical literature, the research
methodology led to an inherent and extensive reliance on primary sources.

Secondary sources could augment the interpretive and narrative frames.
The three elements of historical study—evidence, interpretation, and narrative,
delineated by historians James D. Startt and William David Sloan—provided a
classic framework for the research methods.7 Consequently, the first research
question sought objective evidence on the derivations of the color technologies:

Research Question #1: Who participated in the invention of the color

technologies at the Chicago Tribunes during the late nineteenth- and early

twentieth-centuries?

50

Methodology: International and US. patent searches were conducted

between 2006 and 2008, using multiple archives and databases.

The patent searches included: the online advanced search database of
the European Patent Office;8 the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Patents
of the United States;9 the online advanced search database of the United States
Patent and Trademark Office;10 the Google Patent Search Beta database;“
personnel files of the Chicago Tribune archives at The Robert R. McCormick
Research Center, Wheaton, Illinois.

Patent numbers and inventors' names obtained in historical printing books
and tradejournals offered classification and cross-reference listings, and these
included: Harry A. Groesbeck, Jr.'5 book, The Process & Practice of Photo-
Engraving,12 in 1924; Louis Flader's and J.S. Mertle's book, Modern
Photoengraving,13 in 1948; Theodore Regensteiner's book, My First Seventy-five
Years,” in 1943; H. M. Cartwright's and Robert MacKay's book, Rotogravure,15 in
1956; The Inland Printers monthlyjournals from 1893 to 1930. Significant key
word searches were conducted for potential inventors and applicants, using the
terms “Tribune“; “Chicago Tribune"; “Chicago Daily Tribune"; “Tribune Publishing
Co.“; “Tribune Co."; names of its subsidiary companies (see Appendix B); and
employee's names obtained from newspaper articles.

Visual Analysis

The second goal of the research is to describe the exemplars of color

printing and conduct a visual analysis on primary sources. Consequently, the

second research question focuses on the manifest content and qualities that

51

characterize the illustrations, which include the aesthetic composition, purposes,

and mechanics:

Research Question #2: What Chicago Tribune color pictures exemplify
characteristic qualities of its content and printing quality?

Methodology: A visual analysis of different genres will include 1) data on
the creator, 2) mechanical process, 3) context, 4) how color is used, and

5) ideological and emotional import.

Research Question #3: What impact did the Chicago Tribune’s printing

have on the organization, news industry, and readership?

Methodology: A literature search will include industry trade literature,
circulation data, and comparative research. In October 2007, on-site
comparative descriptive research was conducted at the Serials and
Periodicals Division of the Library of Congress on newsprint color originals
published by the New York Tribune in 1919 and the New York Journal and
Advertiser’s American Humorist in June 1897.
Contextual Framing
To provide the cultural context for the Chicago Tribune’s visual
journalism, the research will draw on both primary and secondary sources of
the period. The research seeks to explain how the Chicago Tribune engaged in
color printing in the inter-war period. While significant sources involve

significant analysis of the newsprint originals, other primary sources include

52

personal letters, business records, autobiographical data, patents records, and
oral histories of artists and relatives related to the Chicago Tribune’s employees.

Secondary sources, such as printers' and publishers’ trade
journals, and historical military, eConomic, social, and journalism literature
provide cultural context.

Research Question #4: How did the innovations affect the

culture? And how did culture affect the innovators?

Methodology: An interdisciplinary cultural approach will be

applied to understand the governmental, economic, military,

societal, artistic, and personal dynamics influencing the Chicago

Tribune’s development and use of color.

In-Depth Interviews

The oral history instrument and historical research consent form was
designed to meet ethical criteria for the participation of human subjects. The
ethical instrument adhered to “The Principles and Standards of the Oral History
Association" for gathering and preserving lived events, as delineated by Donald
A. Ritche in Doing Oral History. ‘6

The relatives and associates of the Chicago Tribune’s visual journalists
and printers were sought based on genealogy searches. The printers'
descendants with knowledge of their forbears could not be located. Five in-depth
interviews were conducted with immediate family members of the Chicago
Tribune’s two chief editorial cartoonists, John T. McCutcheon Jr. and Carey C.

Orr, both of whom won Pulitzer Prizes.

53

The instrument design involved semi-structured, in-depth interviews to
obtain details, emotions, values, anecdotes, and unexpected data and encourage
free associations during recollections. The interviews lasted approximately one
hour, and short follow-up converSations and e-mail responses were initiated by
the interviewees, as memories arose, and by the researcher to confirm details.17

Closed-ended and open-ended questions were used, generally with the
former sequenced at the beginning or end, enabling uninterrupted, free-flowing
conversations.18

Six relatives in four different US. cities participated in twelve in-depth
interviews by telephone. Contact was made first by telephone calls, followed by
letters of explanation about the research intent. The interviews were conducted
one-on-one between the interviewer and interviewee; however, two interviews
included an adult relative, whojoined the discussion to assist the senior relative.
The assistive relative was also a participant in the study.

With their written consents, participants' interviews were recorded and
conversations were transcribed. Interviews were semi-structured to give
participants a high degree of control to express themselves as they freely
remembered events long past in their own time frame.19 Questions evolved
around themes: personal information, family relationships, work relationships,
pictorial artwork, and developments with color.

Validity and Reliability
The validity of the in-depth interviews will be triangulated and

systematically cross-compared among sources for the discovery of repetitious

54

themes and facts. Primary and secondary sources will include visual
communication literature; histories of printing press technologies; biographies
and autobiographies of Chicago Tribune employees; analysis of art; news
editorials; news stories: U.S. and‘intemational historical literature and social
science literature; artistic artifacts; and aesthetic literature.

The rationale for using multiple sources and multiple methods for evidence
derives from Robert K. Yin's principles to maximize construct validity and
reliability in case studies.20 As a single-case study of the Chicago Tribune’s
pictorial color, the construct validity can be secured through multiple data
sources. The primary and secondary data include government documents,
personal letters, business records, oral histories, and newsprint originals in the
special collections and general resources of: Michigan State University; The
Library of Congress; Butler University, Special Collections and Rare Books, Gaar
Williams-Kin Hubbard Collection; Historical Society of the Tonawandas; Indiana
Historical Society, J. F. Mitchell Collection; Lake Forest College, Donnelley and
Lee Library, Joseph M. Patterson Papers; McCormick Research Center, Chicago
Tribune Archives; Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Alexander R. Katz
Papers and Eleanor Jewett Papers; Smithsonian's National Museum of American
History, Graphic Arts Collection.

The diversity of methods, archives, sources, and perspectives enabled the
extensive triangulation of, in addition to the use of direct observation of,
newsprint originals. The data were cross-referenced and checked for matching

patterns to validate facts and characterizations.

55

Diverse perspectives were sought through consultations with experts,
including at Michigan State University: Dr. Lucinda Davenport, professor and
journalism historian; Dr. Howard Bossen, professor and visual journalism
historian; Dr. Jeffrey Chamley, professor of American Studies and oral historian;
and Panayis Lyras, professor of piano and Artist-in-Residence in Plano.

Experts outside of Michigan State University, included: Jeanne Drewes,
chief, Binding and Collections Care, Library of Congress; Dr. Cathleen A. Baker,
senior conservator, The University of Michigan, University Library; James E.
Bredensteiner, printing expert, Bredensteiner Imaging 8 Associates; Helena E.
Wright, graphic arts curator, National Museum of American History.

Results for patents were based on government-issued documents and
cross-compared with Chicago Tribune archives, tradejournals and printing, and
news stories published in ProQuest Historical Newspapers, including The New
York Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post, and APS Online periodical database.

A convergence of evidence sought five of six classes of data to discover
facts, per Yin's prerequisites of construct validity and reliability: 1) direct
observation; 2) documents; 3) archival records; 4) open-ended interviews for
insight; 5) focused interviews (with diverse experts). The sixth classification
consisting of survey methods was inappropriate to this research.21

Primary and secondary sources will be evaluated, and oral histories will be
conducted to broaden insights into the environment that led to widespread use of

color by the Chicago Tribune.

56

Summary

The methodology for this historical research seeks to understand the
Chicago Tribune’s pioneering role in visual news color between the two world
wars and seeks valid and reliable evidence based on primary sources. This study
involves the three classic constructs of historiography: evidence, interpretation,
and narration, and strongly relies on primary sources.

The research questions seek to identify the seminal figures in the
development of color by the Chicago Tribune; to identify the characteristic values
inherent to exemplary pictures; to understand the implications of the Chicago
Tribune’s pictorial color on its own organization and on society; to understand
how culture and the social forces of the era affected the development of color by
innovators.

Diverse methods and sources will be used to strengthen the reliability and
validity of the results, with the intention of building a base of knowledge on
pictorial color in the early twentieth century. Therefore, this study examines a

seminal news leader in the development of color pictures.

 

NOTES
1. Chicago Daily Tribune, "Golden Anniversary Edition," June 10, 1897.
2. Janet Ginsburg, “Provenance Statement on Historical Chicago Tribunes“ to Charles
Salmon, August 14, 2006. (Michigan State University, College of Communication Arts 8 Sciences,
East Lansing, MI).

3. Julie Goldsmith, Michigan State University's Chicago Tribune Historical Collection -
Report on Box Quantities (Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 2008).

4. Eugene B. Power. "The Use of High Reduction Microfilm in Libraries,“ American
Documentation 3, no. 1 (1950): 139.

5. Nicholson Baker, Double Fold (New York: Random House, 2001), 16-19, 26-28, 267.

57

 

6. lbid.. 31-35.

7. James D. Startt and William David Sloan, Historical Methods in Mass Communication
(Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2003), 2-3.

8. European Patent OrganisatiOn, European Patent Office, Advanced Search, Worldwide
(1920 - 2007), http://ep.espacenet.com/.

9. Commissioner of Patents, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents,
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880-1925).

10. US. Department of Commerce, U. 3. Patent and Trademark Office Databases Online,
Advanced Search (1 880-1 955), http://www.uspto.govlpatftl.

11. Google Inc., Google Patent Search Beta Database, http://www.google.comlpatents.

12. Harry A. Groesbeck Jr., The Process & Practice of Photo-Engraving (New York:
Doubleday, Page 8 Co., 1924).

13. Louis Flader and J.S. Mertle, Modern Photoengraving (Chicago: Modern
Photoengraving Publishers, 1948).

14. Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-Five Years (Chicago: Regensteiner
Corporation, 1943).

15. HM. Cartwright and Robert MacKay, Rotogravure (Lyndon, KY: MacKay Publishing
Company, Inc., 1956).

16. Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide, 2nd ed. (Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 252-255.

17. Arthur Asa Berger, Media Research Techniques, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1998), 56-58.

18. Richard A. Krueger and Mary Anne Casey, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for
Applied Research, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2000), 41-47.

19. Berger, Media Research Techniques, 57.

20. Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 2003), 97-100.

21. lbid.. 100.

58

CHAPTER IV: EARLY INFLUENCES ON THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE ’S
LEADERSHIP IN MODERN COLOR

Influences of Joseph Medill on Printing

Printing and democracy evolved together in American history, and this
chapter examines how innovation in pictorial color grew out of this tradition.

At dawn on June 10, 1897, the Chicago Tribune’s newsboys hawked for a
penny newspapers with color photographs. By ten o'clock in the morning, they
hiked the price to a nickel, and next a dime, quarter, and by noon, they sold out
except for a few held back to sell at even higher prices to collectors.1

“Luss-tree-ous Trib, only five cents," newsboys yelled, reported the
Chicago Tribune in its coverage of the event. Hundreds of Chicagoans blocked
downtown traffic as they stood at the publisher’s headquarters and tried to buy a
paper.2 The United States was not at war. President William McKinley did not
settle problems with Spain, only the “hope" of Cuba's independence from the
European aggressor. The US. debt crisis was not resolved, but senators had
proposed taxing chewing gum.3

The newsboys were the first to realize that color pictures sell newspapers.
On the Chicago Tribune’s golden anniversary, the penny paper made news. The
Tribune’s publisher, Joseph M. Medill, lived long enough to savor the success. A
printer, lawyer, and former Chicago mayor, Medill lifted the morale of citizens
after the great fire of 1871, and imparted a new vision. “Cheer up!" he wrote,

despite the Chicago Tribune losing its own building in the flames. The ailing

59

publisher was in the last two years of his life, and the specialty printing event was

managed by his son-in-law, Robert W. Patterson Jr.

 

J “" 377*" - *~ .Q, , . . . ., .
Figure 2. Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1897. This vignette, created for
the newspaper's fiftieth anniversary in publishing, represents the
earliest examples of color halflones printed in a newspaper with a
Miehle Co. flatbed letterpress (Michigan State University; Reprinted
with permission by Chicago Tribune).

“v . 1 ‘ . ' '-\ r-

Printers and democracy in America emerged from the same ideological
landscape, impelled by the natural need for freedom. The printer-patriot Paul
Revere published one of his engravings, the “Bloody Massacre," to incite
colonists to rise in revolt against the British in 1770.‘ Printer Benjamin Franklin

popularized the slogan “Join, or Die" in 1754, with the publication of a picture in

60

his Pennsylvania Gazette, which depicted a snake cut in eight pieces to signify
Britain’s destruction of America.5

Medill published a small newspaper in Coshcocton, Ohio, before gaining
part interest in 1855 of a Chicago newspaper he made famous. By its fiftieth
anniversary, the Chicago Tribune was the city's second largest paper with a
circulation of approximately 110,000, and was rivaled by the Chicago Daily News.

With every piece of Ieaden type they gripped and set, American printers
physically experienced the meaning of freedom of speech. Medill stood against
slavery and helped engineer the successful Republican nomination and election
of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 campaign for US. President. Freedom of speech
was not an abstract idea for patriot printers—rather, it was a profound right
registered daily with ink, paper and mechanical presses.6

Almost a year to the day of the Chicago Tribune ’5 fiftieth anniversary,
Medill decided to honor the sacred trust that printers hold in democracy. He
commissioned a bronze statue of Benjamin Franklin that towered 22 1/2 feet in
height. The Franklin statue, dedicated in Chicago's Lincoln Park, was a gift to the
Old-Time Printers' Association the first week of June in 1896.

The Sunday Inter Ocean, a competitive daily, lauded the event the
following day and reported that the dedication drew thousands of people to the
park. The guest of honor was a descendant of F ranklin's:

As Mr. Medill ceased speaking, he motioned to a young man in a white

flannel suit to come to him, and then introduced him to the assemblage

with the following: ‘I have the honor of introducing Mr. Rene Bache of

Philadelphia, the great-great-grandson of the immortal Dr. Benjamin
Franklin, who is blood of his blood, and spirit of his spirit.’7

61

To Franklin’s descendant went the honor of unveiling the statue hidden
under an American flag. The “stars and stripes fell," revealing the tall bronzed
figure of Franklin. The crowd's cheers nearly drowned out the military band's
performance of the national anthem, Sunday Inter Ocean reported.

The fine art of American printing is historically linked to democracy in
concept and practice. Dailies, although consumable items tossed out soon after
they are read, introduce different concepts of democracy with the eclecticism of
their news stories. The diversity conveys a picture of democracy for readers to
define and redefine daily. Fine printing registers the value of freedom in the
common language of a community's comings and goings and affairs of social
governance. Poor construction of a newspaper suggests that the publisher's
words and pictures carry no import, and the citizens are of no consequence in
self-rule.

Adulation over the finely prepared anniversary edition resounded with
superlatives by other publishers. The Los Ange/es Times attributed the Chicago
Tribune’s success to the strength of Medill. Boards of directors and corporations
cannot make a great newspaper, it reported:

On June 10 that great newspaper, the Chicago Tribune—one of the

greatest in the world—celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its founding by

issuing one of the most elaborate, beautiful and comprehensive numbers
ever published by anyjournal in any land.8

A national trade paper, The Journalist, attributed the Chicago Tribune ’5
success to Medill's integrity:

The color and half-tone work is especially fine, and called forth most

enthusiastic praise from newspapers all over the country. Letters of
congratulation from friends, neighbors and readers poured in and

62

evidenced the high esteem in which the Tribune is held. I am writing within

bounds when I say that the Tribune is probably the most profitable piece

of newspaper property in the United States, but it has done more than

make money during its fifty years of existence; it has established a

reputation for honesty and fair dealing, for enterprise and fearlessness. ...9

Despite the need to hire outside printers, the Chicago Tribune’s decision
was heralded. The paper contracted with printing experts in three commercial
houses, with the color expertise managed by Theodore Regensteiner of Photo-
Colortype Co.1o He printed popular magazines that featured artistic color covers,
such as The Century and Collier’s in 1896 and 1897.

Regensteiner could apply color theories that inventors could not bring to
full fruition for commercial application. His techniques were based on two
inventors: Louis Ducos du Haron of France, who produced color prints by using a
subtractive process that superimposed images on tricolor carbon tissues (three-
color process) in 1869,11 and William Kurtz of Philadelphia, who created halftone
prints in color with zinc plates.

The Kurtz plates were sensitized with asphaltum, a naturally sticky
mineral, His technique updated the black-and-white photoengraving invented by
Joseph Niepce of France in the early 18005. A Kurtz associate, color
photographer Max Lau,joined Regensteiner’s practice in 1894.12 Eight years
later, Kurtz and Regensteiner also opened a color printing business together, the
American Colortype Company of New Jersey.13

The Chicago Tribune’s color triumph drew impressive outside talents, who

were ahead of printing trends because they invented them. In the twentieth

63

century, a new generation of publishing talents led by Medill's grandson, Robert
Rutherford McCormick, collectively cultivated this formula at the Chicago Tribune.

On the Chicago Tribune’s fiftieth anniversary, sixteen-year-old McCormick
saw the first modern color pictures published in a newspaper:

1897 Golden Anniversary Issue

Four color paintings, cut into seven cameos, create a montage of Chicago
night scenes in Part B. A rescue team rows through turbulent waters to a
steamer in distress in Lake Michigan. The Chicago Tribune’s headquarters sits
across from a theater that well-dressed concert-goers leave after a performance.
Orange flames of the pig-iron furnaces flank the headquarters and theater. A
train terminal at Halsted Street reflects the electric lights on pools of rainwater
and wet railroad ties. A fire at the back of the terminal spews red and ashen
flames into the dark air. The Chicago Tribune's placement in the picture
centralizes its key position in city crises, cultural affairs, commercial life, and
communications.14

The traditional method for creating color pictures in 1897 was for an artist
to create line drawings with black ink. A craftsman would then cut colors from
prefabricated transparent sheets (the Ben Day method) and artistically place
them in the picture. The images were etched on thin copperplates. The Yellow
Kid cartoon, published in the New York Journal, typifies this popular method (see
Figure 4), which can create the appearance of a watercolor. The illustration

technique lacks the nuanced colors reflected off objects, as naturally seen.

These transparent tints that were cut and pasted are flat monotones, however
beautifully prepared.

This color section was part of the Chicago Tribune’s forty-eight-page
edition, separated in four sections. Six of the forty-eight were full-color pages.
The first two sections contained the city and local news. Part One included both
local and international news, display ads, and two pages of classifieds in its
twelve-page section. Part Two, also twelve pages, was the editorial section with
congratulatory letters from publishers, features, news, display ads, and a front-
page reprint of the Oct. 11, 1871, Chicago Tribune. On that special day, the
Chicago Tribune went to press two days after the Great Fire consumed its
building, and Medill urged citizens to cheer up and rebuild.15

Part A contains the first anniversary section, consisting of eight pages with
four pages in color. A color frontispiece depicts a drawing of Miss Chicago in a
blue gown. Above her, spanning the horizontal width of the page, is a mural of
miniature scenes of the 1893 World's Fair. An American eagle, American flag,
and picture of the Chicago Tribune’s headquarters are in the main portrait with
Miss Chicago. James Whitcomb Riley, the popular American folk poet, added
words of congratulations at the bottom of the painting. The inside pages contain
historical articles on lllinoisjournalism, the formation of the Republican Party, and

Lincoln's rise in government.

65

 

 

Figure 3. This halftone from the Figure 3 montage exemplifies the realistic nuances
made possible by using color halftones—a photoengraving method used for the first
time by the Chicago Tribune. Readers could see light reflected off rainwater at a
Halstead Street railroad terminal at night (Michigan State University, Reprinted with
permission of Chicago Tribune).

 

Figure 4. American Humorist, a Sunday supplement in the New
York Journal, May 30, 1897. Richard Outcault created The
Yellow Kid, a cartoon with stock tints cut and applied to a line
drawing. The completed illustration was etched into a metal plate
for printing on a Robert Hoe Co. letterpress (Library of Congress,
Reprinted with permission).

66

These pictures and stories confirm to readers the importance of local
American culture. When the Chicago Tribune believed it had achieved
remarkable tone and details with black-and-white photographs, it printed a
western landscape, Frederic Remington's Her Calf, on a half-page in 1897. But
the publisher could not yet mass-produce realistic full color in-house.

A Southern publisher wrote a letter to the editor of The Inland Printer: “A
few weeks ago I saw the Sunday Tribune of Chicago, and it contained a page of
half-tones [sic] that looked fairly well for newspaper work. How is it done?"16

Scientific Advances in Photoengraving in the 18905

An economic depression that swept the nation in the late 18905 left little
nostalgia for rural life. The industrial greed that ruined farms and small towns
remained unchecked until 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt enacted
anti-trust initiatives into law.17 At the start of the twentieth century, half the
nation's population moved to the cities,18 and consumer demand for dailies
rapidly expanded.

Scientific discoveries advanced through the widespread use of electric
power. The refinement of photoengraving inventions by the 18905 spurred the
growth of periodicals that could print photographs. The number of dailies in the
United States steadily grew: In 1880, there were 410; in 1890 there were 1,500;
in 1900, there were 2,000.19 Increased demand offered only the positive side of
the growth. In 1901, the Chicago Tribune faced ten other competitors.20 Thirty-

two Chicago dailies failed from the time the Chicago Tribune was founded in

67

1847 to 1901.21 Before the turn of the century, Hearst's sensational war coverage
and his popular Yellow Kid comics took the New York Journal’s circulation to
more than one million. The New York Times’circulation remained less than
100,000. The Chicago Tribune’scirculation in 1897 was 111,000.

By 1895, American inventors had surpassed the rest of the world in the
quantity of their inventions and accounted for more than half of all new patents.
U.S. inventors filed 6,139 patents for printing and 1,545 for photography.22 After
New York and Philadelphia, Chicago filed the most patents. The 1893 World’s
Fair—the Columbian Exposition—brought attention to the modern marriage of
science and art. Because of Kurtz's color halftone methods, fair-goers saw art
reproduced at the heels of science.

McCormick and Medill

Robert McCormick was the descendant of two famous innovators—Medill,
who built the Chicago Tribune in the nineteenth-century, and Cyrus McCormick,
the inventor of the reaper in the 18‘h century. Medill and Robert McCormick drew
close in the last three years of the publisher's life. “In my younger days, he didn't
talk to me," McCormick said. Yet he and his older brother, Medill McCormick,
lived with their parents in the publisher's mansion when they were not at
boarding schools.23 Their parents—Katherine, the daughter of Joseph Medill, and
Robert S. McCormick, ambassador to Russia and France—had little interest in
the newspaper business but savored the power it yielded:

Toward the end of his life, my grandfather worried about the future of his

daughters and grandchildren and contemplated selling the Tribune. I have

forgotten to whom....ln an article in the Review of Reviews of June 1895,
Willis J. Abbott, an unreliable writer, stated that “Mr. Medill recently

68

refused $4,000,000 for his paper." The price I heard mentioned was six

million dollars. Mr. R.W. Patterson was very much opposed to the sale,

which would deprive him of the editorship and my mother wanted to use
the paper to obtain a diplomatic post in Europe, so they combined and
persuaded him against the sale....lnstead, his stock was left in trust with

R.W. Patterson, my father R.S. McCormick, and William Beale, as

trustees for his daughters and their heirs. The plan was carried out.24

McCormick's uncle, who was Patterson, brought each day's paper to the
publisher's home. McCormick observed: “If the paper was over twelve pages
daily, or sixty-four on Sunday, he had to explain why."25 Eighteen-year-old
McCormick was the only relative who remained at Medill's bedside in the final
months of his life. In winter 1899, Medill traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to
rejuvenate during winter in a hotel with his grandson. On March 16, Medill died
there.

Later in his life, McCormick emulated Medill's passion for printing and the
independent role newspapers have democracy. Like his grandfather, he became
a lawyer, obtaining a degree from Northwestern University in the early 19005,
after graduating from Yale University.26 A prodigious author of books, speeches,
and pamphlets, McCormick dedicated his first book to his foremost pursuit, What
Is a Newspaper?, which investigated the forces of good and evil in journalism,
and the potential of dailies. Mankind’s greatest discovery was the printing press,
McCormick argued.27 A journalist and a printing press were like a railroad and its
passenger. “It is his machine and not the man that makes the speed," he wrote.
His perspective placed the reader in a passive role, while the publisher

dominates control of the machine:

l have asked a few friends to answer instantly the question—which is the
greatest of all inventions and discoveries? The majority have said the

69

steam engine or two of its manifestations—the steamboat and the steam

locomotive....But, gentlemen, greater than any of these, far more powerful

than steam, more explosive than gunpowder, more world-encircling than
steam or sailboat, was the epoch-making invention of the printing press.28

The press can foment revolt and spread contempt among people. Without
the press, the Reformation, Napoleonic wars, American Revolution and World
War I could not have occurred. “The discontent of the subject peoples of Europe
could not have been fanned into flame without this machinery," McCormick
maintained. Yet with all its destructive abilities, McCormick defined a modern
newspaper based on its virtues for spurring commerce, modernizing civilization,
and asserting a check on government.”

His questions about the function of newspapers were not proposed as
theoretical considerations, but for the materialization of those values. He cited
the Chicago Tribune ’5 7 million letters of type cast each week to print the words
in the Sunday paper, the 393 domestic news reporters, and 29 foreign
correspondents, the distribution system for 1 million people, and the 200 miles of
forests used to make paper. McCormick’s vision of the newspaper was informed
by Medill's practices.

In 1869, when country publishers in Indiana invited Medill to one of their
meetings, he instructed them on how to print an attractive newspaper. Invest in
high quality ink and paper, he advised:

The nearer pure white the paper is the better. Next, get good black

ink; for every cent you save by purchasing inferior ink you will lose

ten. Buy the best no matter about the cost, for your ink bill is a

small item by comparison with other expenses. The next thing is

good press-work, and this is a thing too much neglected by most

publishers. The press-work of a majority of country newspapers is
perfectly disgraceful to the noble art of printing.30

70

More than sixty years later, McCormick similarly addressed the American
Society of Newspaper Editors about the need to improve newsprint quality. He
advocated against tariffs on better grades of paper:

The paper we use is wretched. It is out of date. It is inferior to the paper

used by the inferior newspapers of Europe....We have a poor sheet of

newspaper partly because we have been indifferent, partly because we
have been parsimonious and have dwelt on price rather than quality, and
partly because our paternal government, in its endless interference with

business, forbids the importation of a better sheet without paying a

prohibitive tariff.31

In another book written by McCormick, The Founding Fathers, he ranked
Benjamin Franklin above all other American patriots in significance to the nation.
“He began life as a printer, and long before the other revolutionists, had felt the
lash of oppression,“ McCormick wrote.32 It was Franklin's versatility that found
favor with McCormick. The statesman-patriot discovered electricity, created
system for navigation at sea, invented bifocal eyeglasses, published and wrote
popular literature, and was a contributing author of the US. Constitution.

Medill represented one significant maternal influence on McCormick, and
his paternal legacy, another. The American system of manufacturing took root in
the genius of McCormick’s forebears. Historians attribute the 1831 invention of
the Virginia Reaper to McCormick's great uncle, Cyrus Hall McCormick. The
reaper machine was showcased at the forefront of the Crystal Palace Exhibition
of the Industries of All Nations in London in 1851, and won the fair’s first prize.
The European press sneered at the agricultural invention, wrote Cyrus

McCormick's grandson with the same name as the inventor: “The young United

States had developed little art of its own, so it could show nothing except those

71

useful products it had provided to make its own daily life more tolerable,“ the third
generation Cyrus Hall McCormick wrote. He was Robert R. McCormick's
neighbor.33

Three central elements of the reaper relate to inventions at the Chicago
Tribune. First, the reaper exemplified the early characteristics unique to
American mass production—namely, the interchangeability of parts and the
specialization of parts. A part could be removed if broken or improved if
modifications were foundf"4

Second, the marketing and not the monetary gain from patents built the
reaper's success, Cyrus H. McCormick, the grandson, explained. The inventor
was at the point of losing an extension on his patent and “resented the fact that
an unkind government had denied him further protection just when his patent
rights were beginning to be valuable." In 1859, when he lost his patent rights,
William McCormick wrote his brother, Cyrus, a letter to appeal to salient function
of the reaper: “Your money has been made not out of your patents but by making
and selling machines."35 The McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. made
extensive use of fine color lithographs to publicize the reaper to farmers through
posters, catalogues, and display art in the nineteenth century.36

The bickering over patent rights was contentious not only among the other
reaper inventors, the McCormick descendents squabbled about it, too. An angry
Katherine McCormick wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune on the
occasion of a tribute to great Americans being celebrated in Urbana, Illinois. The

tribute was to include Cyrus H. McCormick. She wrote that he deserved credit for

72

the reaper's financial success, “but any overzealous laudatory who puts forth the
claim that C.H. McCormick invented the reaper would be guilty of a preposterous
error":37
The reaper was invented by Robert McCormick of Rockbridge County
Virginia, in the early ‘305 and he manufactured with the help of this third
son, Leander J. McCormick, fine working, serviceable machines, which he
sold to the farmers of Rockbridge county and neighboring counties in
goodly numbers until he died in 1845. His machine was never patented.
After his father’s death Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, following some serious
business vicissitudes in various localities, came to Chicago and with his
brothers, William B. and Leader J. McCormick, established the Chicago
Manufactory of the reapers invented by their father, which enterprise
brought success and fortune to all three of them.38
Katherine named her son after his great-great grandfather—Robert
Sanderson McCormick. Later, she changed “Sanderson" to “Rutherford." Two
McCormick relatives, Robert Hall McCormick Ill and Elizabeth Day McCormick
commissioned a new family history in order to attribute the reaper to Robert, and
not Cyrus. They published the book themselves in 1957—the McCormick-
Hamilton Lord-Da y Ancestral Lines.39
The dissension over patent rights and the claim of creative genius evoked
an unpredictable response later in life by McCormick, when named president of
the Chicago Tribune in 1911. Thereafter, for four decades, he championed,
cheered, bragged, wrote about, and paid high percentages of profits to the
Chicago Tribune’s employee-inventors. He said little about his own ten patents
that made the employee's subsequent inventions practical to use for publishing a

daily. The employee's received from twenty-five percent to fifty percent of the

profits or savings, whichever was greater.40

73

They were extended family. Among them were John C. Yetter, inventor of
the color rotogravure press; Otto R. Wolf, inventor of a color letterpress to run
paper editorial cartoons and advertising; William H. Wisner, inventor of a means
for transmitting pictures by telegraph wire; Godfrey Lundberg, inventor of color
camera advancements; and Theodore Schultz, inventor of color rotogravure
registration parts and other specialty press mechanisms (see Appendix A).

World War I

In 1910, the greatest problems facing the Chicago Tribune were its
potential sale and the newspaper circulation wars. When Patterson died in 1910,
the stockholders considered selling the Chicago Tribune to the Chicago Daily
News."1 McCormick, a conservative Republican, and his first cousin, Joseph
Patterson, a socialist, persuaded the board to let them co-manage the
newspaper. Each month they exchanged responsibilities for overseeing the
editorial board meetings until 1919, when McCormick took full charge of the
Chicago Tribune and Patterson, full charge of the Tribune Co.'s newly pictorial
tabloid, the New York Daily News.

In 1910, William Randolph Hearst positioned his paper, the Chicago
Examiner, to take the lead in the circulation wars. He slashed the price in half,
down to a penny, to undercut the Chicago Tribune’s two-cent paper.“2
McCormick felt the only way the Chicago Tribune could survive would be to have
a dependable supply of inexpensive newsprint and not make the cost dependent
on fluctuations in the paper markets. The Chicago Tribune became the first

publisher to own its own paper mill, the Ontario Paper Co. in Thorold, Canada,

74

and began manufacturing by 1913. McCormick spent a large amount of his time
for two years in Canada with a leading paper mill designer and engineer, Warren
Curtis Jr. The mill's hydroelectric power initiated a new level of mass production
in paper making and prepared the Chicago Tribune to battle competitors.

World War I was underway in Europe for three years before the United
States committed its troops to the battlefront to aid its losing Allies—the British
Empire, France, Russia, and Belgium. The Russians were engaged in
overthrowing the czar, and the British and French forces were failing.

The poorly funded American Expeditionary Force, ill-suited for modern
warfare, was sent abroad in 1917 under the command of General John J.
Pershing."3 On July 9, 1917, Pershing noted in his diary:

Had conference on Thursday with Colonel Thornton, British Army,

regarding transportation problems. Cabled Washington Friday asking for

1,000,000 men by May. Wrote Secretary of War today giving resume of

situation.“

The Allies estimated 500,000 soldiers would be needed, but at the
battlefront, Pershing determined otherwise. He received promises from France
for the US. Calvary's 100,000 horses, but ranchers refused to sell their animals
in anticipation of a postwar market glut. The American infantrymen were suffering
from trenchfoot, respiratory diseases, exhaustion, and atrocities from chemical
warfare:

The low state of Allied morale was already well-understood. While the
full extent of defection in the Russian armies was not realized at this time,

enough was known to lead to the conclusion that they could not be
counted on to give much further assistance to the Allies.45

75

America entered the war with only 285,000 rifles, 400 light field guns and
150 heavy field guns.45 The US. soldiers lacked warm clothes, helmets, horses,
automatic rifles, and training, and France, which needed to arm her own military,
was not prepared to offer supplies.“7 “Thus the deeper we went into the situation,
the more overwhelming the work ahead of us seemed to be,“ Pershing wrote.“8
The United States did not begin tests to manufacture machine guns until after the
war began and still needed to manufacture 2million rifles.

Germany initiated chemical warfare in World War I at Ypres, France, in
1915. Taking advantage of an early evening breeze in April, they unleashed
deadly clouds of gas pumped from pipes placed near the French and English
trenches.49 Thereafter, the British trained 6,000 soldiers and the Americans 3,400
in chemical warfare. The open trenches offered little protection.50 Americans
struggled to use French and English gas masks, which frequently failed.51

McCormick, who was pro-war before his military service and an extreme
isolationist aftenNard, offered to help advance the nation's cause in a private
meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1917, after Germany launched
submarine attacks. Roosevelt, a former classmate at the Groton prep school,
was then the US. undersecretary of Navy.“2 Based on a discussion of war needs
over lunch, McCormick followed up by placing a one-page advertisement in the
Chicago Tribune that called for men to enlist in the Illinois Calvary, where he held
the rank of major. For men who worked at the Chicago Tribune, McCormick

promised to hold theirjobs for their return.

76

In a letter to Pershing, McCormick offered his fluency in French, honed
during his father's ambassadorship. His older brother, then-US. Senator Medill
McCormick, solidified a plumb position for him as an intelligence liaison officer to
Pershing.53 After a few months or intelligence assignments, McCormick, 37,
asked to be reassigned to the front lines in the first brutal battle of World War | to
liberate France. As major, he set off to lead a battalion of 800 men in combat.54
His commanding officer, General Charles P. Summerall, wrote that in April 1918,
McCormick "marched his battalion with the First Division to the Cantigny Sector,
where he occupied one of the most exposed positions. He participated in the
assault and capture of Cantigny on May 28.55

The peril to American soldiers struck deeply at McCormick's being. The
man accustomed to privilege discovered no amount of money could achieve
safety on the lethal road to Cantigny in the first series of battles that turned
around the war.

McCormick commanded a battalion of 800 men in the American
Expeditionary Force's 15“ Division. In his army diary, McCormick described one
assault on February 9, 1918:

Clear Like early fall. Shells began to fall near command post at lunch.

Engineer officer from Gen. staff said, “Quite an experience for a staff

officer." I replied, “Yes, now the staff can put a star in its service flag."

Shells began to center of 158. I started out there. Capt. Ruberg said

impossible. We watched firing which set powder magazine on fire. We

reported what we took to be the gas shells. After firing went to battery. I

was first in it. Could not use gas mask because too dark.56

Because of the lack of weaponry, McCormick as a commander exploited

the use of deception as a fighting tool and made up for what the Americans did

77

not have. Where he positioned the weaponry and when the soldiers fired were
used to deflect the challenge. In mid-May 1918, the Germans held higher ground
at Cantigny. Pershing decided the 1st Division should improve its position.57 The
artillery fire was heavy in the Cantigny area, and the casualties heavy on the
front lines as men advanced and constructed trenches, Pershing wrote.58
The 1St Division prepared for attack under “great difficulty.“ McCormick's
battalion began firing on May 28 at 4:45 am. Two hours later Cantigny was “one
mass of smoke," his adjutant officer wrote. They advanced over a hill and dug
themselves in “against steady German fire at twenty-second intervals." Pershing
sent French General De Chambrun to meet with McCormick in preparation for
the attack that day. The German offensive was tremendous, he said.
McCormick's quick actions saved troops at a criticaljuncture.59
Howitzers were necessary to lob shells into the German trenches and
break up their resistance. The infantry was not used to working with these
guns which splashed up a huge amount of debris, and we received word
that the shells were falling short. The moment that report reached
McCormick’s dugout he grabbed a portable telephone and ordered the
bombardment shifted 150 yards to the right and 150 yards increased
range. As it developed, none of our shells fell on American infantry. The
fire of his batteries was so precise that the doughboys then marched
forward, cleaned out the German trench system...6
The Germans bombarded the front lines. McCormick was sent to a
hospital by noon. At the battlefield, Chicago Tribune correspondent Floyd
Gibbons described the enemy's relentless pounding with gas shells loaded into

eight-inch projectiles. “In his choice of ammunition he [the Germans] manifested

a preference for gas, delivering apparently a half and half mixture of his two

78

favorites—yperite mustard and phosgene," Gibbons wrote. He saw ambulances
carrying Americans to hospitals that had treatments for toxic chemicals.61

“I spent hours in gas in World War I without permanent effect. No gas can
be as bad as the large fragments of explosive shells," McCormick said,
describing the battle thirty years later.

The 1St Division successfully took Cantigny and 240 prisoners in the first
major action that changed the direction of the war.62

Biographers have questioned McCormick's May 28 activities. The
surviving military records are scant. Biographer Frank Waldrop maintained that
McCormick never fought on May 28. The adjutant officer, Arthur Schmon, filed
the official battle report for McCormick, his commanding officer. Schmon was
never able to recall additional facts other than those he officially reported. The
most detailed historian of McCormick's life, Richard Norton Smith, argued that
enough documentation established the publisher's courage.63

After the war, McCormick placed Schmon in charge of the Ontario Paper
Co. Schmon managed two paper mills and 4,800 employees and produced
400,000 tons of newsprint annually. Yet, he could not fully recall the activities of
his commanding officer on May 28—an historic day of violence.64

Three months after the battle, a Chicago Tribune editorial reported that
McCormick stayed with his battalion at Cantigny until he was “sent to the hospital
with trench fever and shell shock."65 Whatever happened, McCormick returned

home a colonel, honored with a distinguished service medal.66 He also returned

79

home disillusioned by Europe's weaknesses and America's inadequate
preparations for war.

McCormick stood six-feet-four-inches tall, and in 1915, he weighed 219
pounds. His imposing stature dOminated a room, and his vulnerabilities, he hid.
In an era without antibiotics, McCormick experienced repeated bouts with life-
threatening diseases: scarlet fever and bronchial pneumonia in his teen years,
and brutal battle diseases as an adult.67

He continued to fight the war the rest of his life and positioned the Chicago
Tribune as his cause worth fighting for. The efficacious trenches he dug for the
Chicago Tribune’s survival were the adrenaline of high morale and the speed of
modern technology. The lessons of Cantigny aided his fight through two postwar
economic depressions.

He introduced the slogan “1921 Will Reward Fighters" to bolster the spirits
of the Chicago Tribune’s advertising salesmen in the depression of 1920 and
1921. The sentiment motivated people in varied occupations.

We live on a large farm and have always depended on our hogs and to a

large extent, besides the corn and seed, of course. This year the drop in

all these and no sale for wool at all has almost put us out of
commission....l cut out the slogan, hung it in my kitchen, and several
times a day l glance at it and say to myself: Keep fighting and saving and
working, and perhaps there'll be a reward some day.68

Several thousand tenants are expected to go to Springfield on March 16

with a petition of more than 100,000 names asking the passage of the

bill....A.E. Jessurun, secretary of the league [Chicago Tenants' Protective

League] has adopted for that organization the slogan “1921 Will Reward

F lghters."69

Banks everywhere realizing that the days when they could wait for
business to come in have passed—that business will only come to those

80

who go and get it—well selected is the Chicago Tribune ’5 slogan 1921 will
reward fighters.70

The fighting spirit resulted in Chicago Tribune salesman Walter J. Merrill
selling a one-year advertising contract in 1920 for 104 pages of color, totaling
$122,000.71

The science and art of color mass production signified modernity in the
19205. On leave from the battle's front lines, McCormick traveled to the city once
known for its gaiety and fashion. He recalled the shrouds of destruction in his
memoir:

During the war everyone in Paris wore black, even the cocottes [sicz

coquettes]. I remember, as a guileless youth, pitying the women in Ciro’s

restaurant as young war widows. With the end of the war, riotous colors
came in light signs, the Eiffel Tower, women’s clothes, men’s neckties.72

He returned home poignantly aware of the gravity of war, but he looked

inward at his strengths and began re-invigorating the Chicago Tribune through

the democracy of color.

 

NOTES

1. Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-Five Years (Chicago: Regensteiner
Corporation, 1943), 233.

2. Chicago Tribune, "Join in the Jubilee," June 11, 1897, 1.
3. Chicago Tribune, “In Arms at a Gum Tax,“ June 10, 1897, 23.

4. Peter Marzio, The Men and Machines of American Journalism (Washington, DC: The
National Museum of History and Technology, The Smithsonian Institution, 1973), 29.

5. lbid.. 22.

6. Philip Kinsley, The Chicago Tribune, Its First Hundred Years Vol. I(New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1943) 71-110.

7. The Sunday Inter Ocean, “New Statue in Place," June 7, 1896, 1.

8. Los Ange/es Times, "The Chicago Tribune's Golden Jubilee,“ 1897, 6.

81

 

9. Allan Forman, “The Chicago Tribune's Golden Jubilee,“ The Jouma/ist, 1897, 71.

10. Chicago Daily Tribune, "Golden Jubilee Edition. The Chicago Tribune Is 50 Years Old
Today," June 10, 1897, 228-238.

11. Louis Flader and J.S. Mertle, Modern Photoengraving (Chicago: Modern
Photoengraving Publishers, 1948), xxxix.

12. Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-Five Years (Chicago: Regensteiner
Corporation, 1943), 98.

13. lbid., 218.

14. Chicago Daily Tribune, “Golden Anniversary Edition," June 10, 1897, 37 (Box 2,
Michigan State University Communications Archives, East Lansing, MI).

15. Chicago Tribune, "1871 Fire Threatened City,“ June 10, 1947, A9.
16. The Inland Printer, 20, no. 4, "Review of Specimens Received“ (1897), 524.

17. Richard 8. Morris, ed. Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Harper 8
Brothers, 1953), 274.

18. US. Census Bureau, Historical Census Browser (1910),
http:/lfisher.lib.virginia.edu/colIectionslstatslhistcensus/php/county.php.

19. William David Sloan, The Media in America (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 2005), 224.

20. Chicago Newspapers (Chicago Public Library),
http://www.chipublib.org/0085ubject/OOSgenref/gischron.html.

21. Chicago Tribune, "Tribune's Roots Go Ever Deeper as Scores of Others Falter, Die,"
June 10, 1947, A5.

22. “Annual Report for the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1895," (Washington.
DC: US. Government, 1896), vii.

23. Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick,
7880 - 7955 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997)

24. Robert R. McCormick, “Memoirs" (Robert R. McCormick Research Center, First
Division Museum, Cantigny, Wheaton, Illinois, 1954), 231.

25. Ibid.

26. Frank C. Waldrop, McCormick of Chicago (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1966). 45. 50.

27. Robert R. McCormick, What Is a Newspaper? (Chicago: The Tribune Company,
1924). 4-5.

28. lbid.. 4-5.

29. lbid., 12.

82

 

30. Joseph M. Medill, "The Country Press," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1869, 3.
31. “Better Newspapers Urged by McCormick," New York Times, April 19, 1931. 12.
32. Robert R. McCormick, The Founding Fathers (Chicago: Tribune Company, 1951), 11.

33. Cyrus McCormick, The Century of the Reaper (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press,
1931), 38-45.

34. Robert McCormick Adams, Paths of Fire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1996); Marzio, The Men and Machines of American Journalism, McCormick, The Century of the
Reaper, 150-151 .

35. McCormick, The Century of the Reaper, 35.

36. Wisconsin Historical Society, Advertising, McCormick Harvesting Machine (Wisconsin
Historical Society), http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/feature/mccormickladvertising.asp.

37. Katherine McCormick, “Voice of the People: Invention of the Reaper,“ Chicago
Tribune, 1909, 12.

38. lbid.

39. Robert Hall McCormick and Elizabeth Day McCormick, McCormick-Hamilton Lord-
Day Ancestral Lines (Chicago: Twentieth Century Press), Lake Forest College, Donnelley and
Lee Library.

40. John C. Yetter, April 1, 1924, Agreement, and in Otto R. Wolf, December 29, 1927,
Letter to D.M. Deininger, McCormick Research Center, Wheaton, Illinois, Series X- 26, Box 5,
Folder 9, Office of Corporate Secretary, John Yetter Patents 1912-1932.

41. Arthur A. Schmon, Papermakers and Pioneers (New York: The Newcomen Society in
North America, 1963), 11.

42. Carl Wiegman, Trees to News (Toronto: McClelland 8 Stewart Ltd., 1953), 8.

43. Tom McGowen, The Battle of Cantigny (New York: Grolier Publishing Co., Inc.,
2002), 5.

44. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, Vol. I (New York: Frederick A.
Stokes Company, 1931), 94.

45. Ibid.

46. lbid., 26.
47. lbid., 66.
48. lbid., 28.

49. Donald Richter, Chemical Soldiers: British Gas Warfare in World War I (Lawrence,
KS: University of Kansas Press. 1992), 6-10, 200.

50. lbid., 200.

83

 

51. Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 7 880 - 7955.
52. lbid., 201.

53. lbid.

54. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, 101.

55. Charles P. Summerall, November 1941, Letter to T.R. Waring. McCormick Research
Center, Wheaton, IL. Series l-58. R. McCormick Military Record.

56. Robert R. McCormick, “Diaries,“ McCormick Research Center, Wheaton, IL, Series I-
63, Box 10, Robert R. McCormick Personal Correspondence 1921-1955, no. 1, January to 1 April
(1918).

57. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, Vol. II (New York: Frederick A.
Stokes Company. 1931), 55.

58. lbid.

59. Adelbert De Chambrun, April 1, 1955, Letter, McCormick Research Center, Wheaton,
IL, Series l-58, R. McCormick Military Record.

60. Ibid.

61. Floyd Gibbons, “U.S. Big Guns Deluge Enemy With Gasses," Chicago Tribune, May
30, 1918, 3.

62. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War, 60.
63. Schmon, Papermakers and Pioneers, 8.
64. Chicago Tribune, "F055 and Loyalty,“ September 9, 1918. 6

65. lbid.; and in Robert R. McCormick, “Progress in the Last Fifty Years," Chicago
Tribune, February 5, 1950, 16.

66. David M. Kennedy, "1 3 July,“ New York Times, 1997.
67. McCormick, “Memoirs,“ July 22, 1954, 5, 25.

68. J.J. of Arcola, IL., letter to editor, “Voice of the People," Chicago Tribune, March 15,
1921. 8.

69. Chicago Tribune, "Legislators Take Step to Solve High Rents Problem," March 10,
1921. 2.

70. Bankers' Magazine, “Our Service to You," June 1921, B14.
71. The Trib, “Color Pages Sold Year in Advance," April 1920, 8.
72. McCormick, "Memoirs,“ 252.

CHAPTER V: THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE ’S INVENTION OF THE
COLOR ROTOGRAVURE PRINTING PRESS

After the war the world flamed into color, not only neckties and
shirts and other articles of apparel, masculine and feminine, but
table linen, tab/e ware—e verything turned toward color excepting
the backward newspapers. —Robert R. McCormickl

In the wake of human suffering and loss following World War I, pictorial
color in newspapers signaled the revitalization of American daily life, and the
restoration of normalcy. World War I cast a long shadow that visually subdued
color on the home front, out of respect for the fallen and for practical reasons. By
the war’s end, Americans hungered for color.

A German embargo on dyestuffs, which began in 1914, intensified the
psychological urgency for color. The German manufacturing companies had
already perfected the dye-making machines for inks that maintained their historic
leadership in printing. With a global monopoly on the dye-making industry,
Germany revealed an international dependence on color that affected the
fashions, carpeting, wallpaper, home and manufacturing paints, and beauty
products. Critically important were the US. Bureau of Engraving's needs, for it
wholly depended on German inks in order to print national securities and postage
stamps.2

The Bureau's monthly purchases totaled 40,000 pounds of yellow, 8,000
pounds of red, and 10,000 pounds of blue inks—the critical primaries required for
mixing all other colors. Vegetable extracts have long been a temporary source for

dyes, but their colors did not last. The inclusion of various intermediary chemicals

with dyes was found to create permanence and unmatched color brilliance.3

85

Germany's chemical industries added aniline distilled from tar to mix red; potash
to mix blue; chromate and lead sulphate to mix yellow; and charred refuse from
its vineyards to mix black.4

lnk prices soared from 300 percent to 3,000 percent, depending on the
color. Yellow, with a lead base needed for munitions, cost the most and blue the
least.5 Metals for etching pictures in newspaper art departments were redirected
to the military, raising the price for the limited supply from four dollars a pound to
fifty dollars. Before the United States entered the war in 1917, the State
Department and president were pressured to negotiate with the enemy to help
US. industries.

Over British protest, the United States negotiated with Germany and
Austria for dyestuffs and chemicals in exchange for cotton.6 Americans'
persistent pressure on President Wilson reached an international fever pitch until
Britain erupted in anger. The royal navy set up blockades to prevent any trade
with the enemy—cotton or contraband, it did not matter. England's newspaper
publishers defended their citizens and pummeled selfish Americans in editorials:

The British empire, which is shedding blood and not ink for vindication of

“neutral rights," has reached a stage in the conflict where technicalities will

not be allowed to restrain the legitimate use of all its weapons of warfare.

Our right to prevent supplies form reaching the enemy is absolute...7

President Wilson took full control of the nation's railroads in 1917. As a
result, goods transported for military need were given priority over other
shipments. Saving fuel for battle was another goal. Federal officials indirectly

deterred the growth of domestic ink companies by deterring the shipping of raw

materials from the fields to factories.8 Inks for publishers did not rise to the critical

86

mass. Home-made ink recipes made news. The Indiana Farmer’s Guide reported
growers in war-ravaged France made ink from mushrooms. They bottled the
fungus they called the “ink stand," and it decayed in a few days into black pulp.9

The Chicago Tribune's invention of the color rotogravure press in 1919
was all the more remarkable, considering the short supply of ink products.” The
need for self-sufficiency resulted in the Chicago Tribune manufacturing its own
ink by war's end. The pre-eminent method of high-speed color engraving
manifested the values of patriotism and pride in national culture by its sheer
inventiveness. And, the energy that forged the machinery for color fomented
creative living through the images of America it printed.

On the brink of World War I, The New York Times successfully received a
new German rotogravure press and was the first newspaper in America to
publish rotogravure in single tones. The Philadelphia Public Ledger, The Boston
Sunday Herald, and the Chicago Tribune all ordered German rotogravure
presses before the embargo.11 The Chicago Tribune ’5 presses arrived
dismantled and parts were missing. With no chance of obtaining parts, the
newspaper's printing foreman, John C. Yetter, studied the German machine with
the hope of rebuilding it and making it work. Instead, he built a new machine to
mass-produce color in newspapers by engraving.

Yetter eliminated a problem that had hindered color reproduction for
decades—how to print at high speeds and stop wet inks from blurring and
streaking across paper. His tight control over ink registration resulted in visibly

flawless reproductions. The yellow, red, and blue printing plates aligned their

87

colors and prevented defective images. The primaries imprinted color images
with precision.

The Chicago Tribune saved its black ink for news stories and turned to
real sepia, a rich brown fluid contained in cuttlefish, for color rotogravure art.12
The fish's natural fluid rendered soft flesh tones and a verity to light in the
portraits and paintings the Chicago Tribune reproduced. Yetter's one multicolor
press could print more pictures faster, easier, and better than four single presses,
and wrote:

In intaglio [engraving] in which say, three colors were employed, it was

customary to use one press and to print but one color at a time in said

press. Cut sheets of paper were run through this press that had but one
impression and one etched cylinder, and these sheets, after they had
dried were then run through the impression and etched cylinder of a
second press, or the same press in which a new etched cylinder had been
introduced then, after being dried a second time were run through
cylinders of a third press, or through the same press in which another
etched cylinder had been inserted....lf the same press was used...this
required very careful adjustment and expert manipulation and it was
seldom possible to print more than 1200 color pictures an hour by the
intaglio process.13
Color rotogravure densely covers news pages with inks that suggest the image
has continuous tones, instead of visible dots, broken lines, and white spaces that
appear artificial to viewers. The high saturation of color inks on the news page
reflects more light. Color is light, and light is energy that enlivens an experience
as it travels along the electromagnetic spectrum. Energy, magnetism, and
renewal—all are dimensions of color. As light bounces from an image, the
sensitive nerve cells of human retinas respond and interpret, and the personal

ownership of color transpires. Color absorption is sensually effective, even in

experiencing tragic images. This sensory dialogue of receiving and interpreting

88

light is an expression of freedom similar to free speech. The visual freedom of

democracy gathers energy in the constituents of light (See Figure 5).

 

Figure 5. “Unknown Soldier," Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1929, a Picture Section
cover. This painting by Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist Gaar Williams was
mass-produced on a color rotogravure press invented by John C. Yetter of the
Chicago Trlbune, who also made the inks (Michigan State University Collection,
Reprinted with permission, Chicago Tribune).

89

The process of printing a color rotogravure picture involves carving an
image beneath the surface of a thin metal plate. The images are not formed by
metal tools—instead, indentations are made by photo-chemical burning.
Thousands of microscopic indentations that look like cups or cells hold the inks.
Four copper plates with the same image are made for the yellow, blue, and red
inks, and for sepia. The plates are then wrapped around spinning cylinders.

The inks in the sub-surfaces of the copper plates are poured into 20,000
microscopic cups per square inch of the rotogravure, which is the size of the
news page. The cups have three different depths to impart gradations of light—
highlights, middle tones and contrasts—instead of two-dimensional effects typical
of letterpress.

These complex plates roll their images directly across each news page at
a speed of 928 completed twelve-page sections per minute with a registration of
mom"1 of an inch. Yetter's first machine measured two feet wide and ten or
twelve feet long, and printed 200 completed eight-page sections per minute.”

Letterpress is an etching method with images in relief that can carry light
amounts of ink. A rubber stamp uses the etching method. Only a light amount of
ink can be carried on the surface of its raised letters after it is pressed on a pad,
and it stamps only a light amount of ink onto paper. The etching process of
letterpress is the oldest method in news printing, and the minimal ink used
typically speeds the drying process (Figures 6-7).15

The key advantages of color rotogravure stem from its ability to reproduce

images with realistic subtlety, achieve cost efficiencies for long press runs, and

90

print well on cheap paper—newsprint.” More uniquely, it imparts the quality of an
original drawing, even though mass-produced. The dense application of ink
creates a sensory experience that is not equal to seeing an original painting or
object, but one that, nevertheless, is satisfying.

The special press required fast-drying inks to prevent smearing, and
Yetter designed and mixed the brilliant inks used for color rotogravure (See
Figure 5). One year after the machine was invented, the Chicago Tribune built an
ink plant for Yetter's manufacturing process and a paper mill for the color
rotogravure newsprint at North Tonawanda, New York.” Creative ideas for new
and better methods were drawn from foreign correspondents throughout the
world.

Sigrid Schultz, the Berlin correspondent, passed on ideas for de-inking
and reusing newsprint to the Chicago Tribune management. In 1930, she met
German inventor Hans Scheele, who patented a method for taking inks of any
color off the surface of newspapers. In one of many letters to McCormick and
other managers, she wrote:

The pulp and colloidal solution are churned for an hour or two after which

the old newspaper can be found in the churning vats in three layers. At the

bottom Scheele says he finds the black of the ink or other color
pigments—they can be used again—on top of this a whitish mass—paper
pulp ready for use—and way on top oil, or whatever greasy stuff has been
used to bind the black color elements.”

McCormick traveled the world himself to determine if any other newspaper
was more innovative. On a trip to Paris and Berlin in 1923, McCormick awakened

to the idea that the entire Chicago Tribune organization needed to be reshaped

to successfully achieve a culture of color in news. The Chicago Tribune needed

91

artists, he said, who were versed in color illustration and photographers versed in
color techniques. Before leaving Paris to study the newest color cameras in
Berlin, McCormick wrote a letter to his cousin, Joseph Medill Patterson, co-
publisher, about the systemic changes needed at the newspaper:

We seem to need improvement in our color work in three different lines:

First, better artists for the originals; that is quite apparent here where

artists are as common as they are rare at home. The artists, furthermore,

to be successful, must obtain knowledge of the technique of three and four

coloroto reproduction. It is impossible to have ajourneyman obtain the

same effects as an artist and yet not use the artist’s original colors. Then,

we must improve our reproduction processes.”
As a result of the need for news talent fluent with color, the Chicago Tribune
hired fifty full-time staff artists by 1927. The staff artists still could not keep pace
with readers' demand for color art, and the Chicago Tribune commissioned
outside artists to create some of its Sunday section covers.20

The Chicago Tribune '5 printing nurtured a new epoch in American culture
based on a visual discourse of color accessible to all people. American
expressionism, an art movement that distills the emotional essences and ideas of
an experience, was made possible through the symbolic use of color. Through
various shapes and colors, new visual meanings constructed another view of the
American landscape (Figure 5).

Gaar Williams, a popular Chicago Tribune artist, drew humorous cartoons
on family life, such as “Among the Folks in History," serialized in black and white.
This expressionistic painting extended to readers a view of national suffering

after war that could only be communicated through color. 2‘ The glow of

moonlight diagonally pours from the upper left to the right and focuses on a

92

solitary woman who appears to be kneeling at the tomb. Partially hidden by a
shadow, she stands to place a wreath on the tomb. The soft, blue moonlight
implies a dense fog or moist atmosphere that often shrouds the national
cemetery. The tomb's shadow falls upon the grass to form a rectangular carpet,
representing death. She steps on the carpet to show her respect. The pink tomb
expresses bloodshed. But she is not alone or without hope, as indicated by the
tall emerald trees that rise on the right side of the moonlight.

The subtle infusion of patriotic pride underpins this mother's grief. The left
side of the tomb glows in white; red flowers cover the tomb's granite lid; and the
blue wash of moist night air gently engulfs her. The text of a poem by V. Valerie
Gates, "Unknown Soldier," is in a box, as if a headstone, placed in the lower left
corner of the page. The last two lines of the poem read:

Come softly at dusk. “My bravest one!
Such a grand, grand grave for my little son!"

A male guard, perhaps a relative, on the left side of the streaming moonlight,
obscured by night air, walks toward her. Even in her grief, the mother does not
stand alone, but in honor.

Expressionism emphasizes emotional truths that may not be possible to
depict through realism or any other genre. Art historian Sheldon Cheney in the
19305 explained that American Expressionists reacted against imitations of
nature, which characterized the Post-Impressionists who preceded them. There
were three wings of expressionism in the early twentieth century that developed
new interpretations with color, according to Cheney. One leaned toward

decorative expression with sensuous patterns and colors; another saw rhythmic

93

patterns in abstract shapes; and a third, like Williams, imported emotion into an
image. The muscular vigor of color signified this fervent inter-war period, known
as the Jazz Age and Machine Age.

Color Rotogravure and Color Letterpress Microphotographs

The authenticity of the Chicago Tribune’s two primary printing methods
was validated by a leading national expert on paper and printing, Dr. Cathleen A.
Baker, senior paper conservator at the University of Michigan Library. In
laboratory conditions commensurate with conservation standards, Dr. Baker
scrutinized under magnification some of the exemplars of the Chicago Tribune’s
newsprint originals on March 19, 2008. Using magnification levels set at forty-five,
fifteen, and twelve-and-a-half times normal vision, Dr. Baker found color
letterpress and color rotogravure indicated by their characteristic inked and non-
inked areas. (Figures 6 - 9).

A microphotograph of a painting by Walter Beech Humphrey of a boy
reading an Encyclopedia Britannica was printed on a color rotogravure press on
May 6, 1934, (See Figure 6) and revealed white tracks, which are non-inked
areas on the etched printing plates, Dr. Baker reported.

A photomicrograph of a Chicago Tribune editorial cartoon on the front
news page, by Carey C. Orr on January 9, 1942, shows relief printing created
from a halftone of the drawing, and use of a zinc plate, according to Dr. Baker.
The large spaces between color dots reveal the decreased ink densities. What

appear to be seamless tonal areas are, in actuality, ink dots of varying diameters.

Color mixing can be seen in the red dots overlaying yellow ink, and the black

dots, overlaying blue and red (Figure 7).

 

Figure 6. A forty-five times enlargement of a painting by Walter
Beach Humphrey printed on a color rotogravure press by the
Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1934.This detail shows a brown area
immediately above the head of a boy reading in Figure 8. (Photo
by Cathleen A. Baker, Senior Paper Conservator, University of
Michigan Library.)

 

F lgure 7. A forty-five times enlargement of a cartoon drawn by
Carey C. Orr and printed on a color letterpress for the Chicago
Tribune, January 9, 1942. This detail shows the blue-gray boot
above the head of a Nazi soldier pictured In Figure 9. (Photo by
Cathleen A. Baker, Senior Paper Conservator, University of
Michigan Library.)

95

    

Figure 8. A painting by Walter Beach
Humphrey printed on a color rotogravure
press for the Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1934.
A magnified section is pictured in Figure 6.
(Michigan State University Collection,
Reprinted with permission, Chicago Tribune)

 

_ \fi ‘17:.
Figure 9. An editorial cartoon by Carey C. Orr printed on a color
letterpress for the Chicago Tribune. January 9, 1942. A magnified
section is pictured in Figure 7. (Michigan State University

Collection, Reprinted with permission, Chicago Tribune)

96

Significance of the Color Rotogravure Press

The color rotogravure press enabled art and photographs to be finely
reproduced for the masses. For the five-cent cost of a Sunday newspaper,
readers could regularly enjoy news art and fine art with the credibility of color.
Access to printed literature in color, previously viewed in expensive art books,
journals, and museums, was routinely available in the Chicago Tribune in the
early 19205.

Because the Chicago Tribune could reach a broad cross section of
consumers, color rotogravure turned into an advertising elixir. Soon after the
Chicago Tribune introduced the press in 1920, the advertising space was sold
out through 1921, and a one-year waiting list was begun.22 Yetter's high-speed
engraving method helped businesses popularize their products and helped
consumers visualize what they might purchase in true-to-Iife colors. By 1922, the
Chicago Tribune achieved the highest circulation of any daily in the nation and
remained the leader until 1955, when the publisher died.23 The machine was a
long-awaited victory for printers' aspirations for mass-produced visuals with
natural perspective and tone. The Inland Printer in 1922 wrote:

While newspaper publishers everywhere wondered whether rotogravure in

colors would ever be possible for Sunday supplement, the Chicago

Tribune produced one for the first time on April 9, 1922....The superiority

of rotogravure lies in the exceedingly great amount of ink it piles on the

paper in the shadows and the soft gradations it can give in the
highlights....The photographing, etching and presswork, particularly the
register, on these rotogravure supplements in color are deserving of the

highest praise.24

Editor 8 Publisher reported the Chicago Tribune invention:

97

Early in the ’205, the Tribune announced the invention of a color
rotogravure press and began the use of such color in the Sunday paper. In
1926-27, the modern era of newsprint color printing began with the
Tribune publishing a house ad in two colors on Dec. 31, 1926. Later the
Tribune pioneered advances in color photography, introduced full color
news pictures, along with daily color cartoons on the front page.25
The Chicago Tribune had found the means for remaining competitive
against magazines, with the luxury of time to use slow presses and coated
papers, and against new media—film and radio. After the war, consumers longed
to re-establish their lives and gain a sense of normalcy. They purchased
automobiles, radios, and clothes on the time payment plan. Newspaper
advertising and editorial stories increased purchases by helping consumers learn
about and differentiate among modern products.

Between 1915 and 1929, newspaper advertising across the nation
increased from approximately $275 million to $800 million.26 The advertising
success was not the Chicago Tribune’s singular goal. The Chicago Tribune
intended to transform its entire newspaper through modern color printing. After
succeeding in the 19205, McCormick brought together the nation's publishers a
decade later in an attempt to transform the entire industry.27 The Chicago
Tribune’s editor for the Sunday newspaper, AM. Kennedy, told publishers that
news color was the priority.

The value of color seems to be lost in the rather weak material selected as
the subject matter....We have made news the first consideration in our

use of color. We try to make our color pages a very vital part of the
newspaper and not merely a decoration.28

98

The high-speed engraving method removed a visual barrier that enabled
readers to collectively share images similar to the world they actually viewed.
Currently, color rotogravure publishing remains the pre-eminent method for
mass-producing fine art and piCtures. Effective for large press runs requiring high
quality, color rotogravure accounts for 19 percent of the US. periodical market
and 60 percent of the European market?9

John C. Yetter and the Chicago Tribune

Yetter's family legacy at the Chicago Tribune extended back to Medill.
Born in Indiana, Yetter was from a family of printers. His father, Miles L. Yetter,
was a printer and news correspondent who covered the Civil War for the Chicago
Tribune. His mother, Frances, was married to a prominent small-town publisher,
William Mitchell, of the Hancock Democrat in Greenfield, Indiana.

Sympathetic to the Union, the Hancock Democrat’s print shop survived
several attempts by Southern sympathizers to burn it. Yetter visited his uncle
often, exchanging printing ideas, and he swam in the Indiana creek glamorized in
the poem “The Ole Swimmin’ Hole," written by nineteenth-century poet James
Whitcomb Riley.

Mitchell lived next door to Riley, who commemorated the Chicago
Tribune’s 1897 anniversary by writing a verse for one of its color section covers.
The Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News syndicated Riley's most famous
poem, “Little Orphan Annie," which became a national comic strip with the same

name in 1924. Prior to the advent of professional film, Mitchell used a

99

photography and photoengraving process for color with glass plate negatives, as
the Chicago Tribune did.30

The Chicago Tribune hired Yetter in 1899 to print a color comics section.
By 1912, his weekly salary was $50. Following his invention of the color
rotogravure press, he earned 25 percent of the profits on the patent in exchange
for selling his rights for $5 to the Chicago Tribune. And his weekly $50 salary
doubled. 3‘ Yetter's oldest son, Louis, worked at the Chicago Tribune’s ink plant
with his father. His youngest son, Frank, started the color rotogravure print shop
for Pulitzer's St. Louis Post-Dispatch,” which celebrated its golden anniversary
with 72 pages of color rotogravure art.33

Single-Tone Rotogravure

The word “rotogravure" combines two printing methods that include
rotating cylinders to achieve high speed and slow gravure to impart perspective.
Rotogravure for a single tone of ink was invented in Germany by Ernst Rolffs and
Eduard Mertens, who found the means of carving images beneath the surfaces
of pliable metal plates that could wrap around a rotating press cylinder. Revolving
cylinders produced the speed in newspaper printing that was unachievable with
flat-plate printing presses.

The single-tone rotogravure in 1910 first was used by a German
newspaper, Freiburger Zeitung, and in 1912, it was used by the Illustrated
London News.“ Mertens' and Rolffs' press used three different depths of
microscopic cups that held the ink. The varying depths enabled highlights, middle

tones, and shadings to be applied to images at a high rate of speed for the first

100

time. Natural shadows, which imparted depth and perspective, were possible, but
only in one color.

An earlier process created to print calico cloth with this sheet-fed method
was invented by Karl Klic of Germany;35 but he kept this gravure press secret for
many years. The Klic gravure did not make use of rotating plates, 3 critical
instrument in the mass production of newspapers. Until the invention of single-
tone rotogravure, newspaper pictures were limited to two-dimensional line
drawings and low-resolution photographs. The world according to newspapers
was flat—a vision that differed from the natural experience of life.

Multicolor Rotogravure

The military supremacy of the Allies inspired confidence in America's
science, higher education, and technology, but the same pride did not transfer to
art and culture. Americans had no style, said Herbert Hoover, secretary of
commerce in 1925. He declined an invitation for America to participate in the
Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts, a major industrial fair where artists set trends
for the next two decades. The international event featured designs for consumer
goods, home products, and defined modern styles.36

Hoover's art emissary, Louis Rorimer, appointed a US. commission to
take lessons from Europe, instead of promoting the American lifestyle in a
pavilion. The New York Times wrote:

While he regretted this, (not sponsoring an American pavilion) he felt that

the United States really had nothing of particular value in original design to

offer, and said this country must continue to follow the lead of the French,

German, Scandinavian and Slavic originators of design. U.S. artists were
largely “copyists,” but they had made “great strides," he said.37

101

Another indicator of American's cultural inferiority was found in the
amount of art imports following the war. Purchases of art from Europe steadily
climbed and reached an all-time high of $33 million in 1923—only $4 million of
which was art by Americans liVing abroad, such as in the colonies of Paris.
Imported works were generally at least 100 years old.38

Could a melting-pot nation not regarded as a pioneer of culture innovate
and not imitate Europeans with aesthetic traditions (and elitism) that spanned
centuries? The Chicago Tribune employees had a fighting spirit to succeed and
define a new place for themselves in news. Unprecedented to newspapers, they
collectively invented whatever they needed to succeed. The goal was to achieve
pictorial color.

If a process was available, but not technologically ready for mass
production, they improved it, such as a mechanism for portable color news
cameras by Godfrey Lundberg, who used glass filters long before film was
available. (See Appendix A, US1624959). The Chicago Tribune published color
news photos regularly in the 19205 and 19305—long before Eastman Kodak in
1946 introduced color film that professionals could develop themselves.39

The inter-war period marked the Chicago Tribune’s most fervent creative
activities. In the 19205, employees filed 26 patents; in the 19305, they filed 37
(See Appendix A). Yetter conducted his initial experiments to develop color
rotogravure in a series of experiments between 1914 and 1919. He continued to
refine it over the next two decades. The color rotogravure and other color

technologies affected the entire continuum of printing and newspaper work: press

102

room design, raw materials, newsprint, inks, advertising, distribution, and original
content.

Before the color rotogravure could function effectively in the press room, a
system was needed to prevent 5top losses—that is, stopping other presses to
insert unique sections. The Chicago Tribune’s complex newspaper consisted of a
magazine, small comic book, black-and-white news sections of varying page
amounts, and various color sections.

How to print, fold, and insert them together without stopping a press run
was important to labor and material expenditures—and for meeting news
deadlines. The press room design, called the McCormick Press, became the
industry standard in printing plants across the nation. This was not one machine,
but an installation method that allowed all printing presses in a newsroom to
perform different tasks simultaneously without waste and work stoppages (See
Appendix A, US1581132).”

Theodore Schultz, an engraver, began working at the Chicago Tribune in
1892. He invented methods to improve rotogravure registration problems caused
by the moisture changes in the newsprint, humidity controls in the pressroom,
machinery heat, etc. (See Appendix A, US1538908).‘l

The new color rotogravure press required the invention of new ink and
paper technologies. Yetter designed and made the inks to work with the color
rotogravure press. McCormick featured Yetter and Schultz on the company

newsletter's front pages as quickly as the work was done. The successes were

103

shared. Recognition and a percentage of the profits spurred intense creativity by
the Chicago Tribune’s employees:
Ted Schultz and John Yetter thought they could solve the problem and at
great expense the experimental machinery was built and the process
perfected, making possible on a high speed press the wonderful
reproduction of pictures in color. These two men had to work out a system
for drying the ink of one color before the next color was applied, a second
or two later. ".42
John Yetter and Ted Schultz have worked together for many months
figuring out a practical method of coloroto. The success of the Tribune’s
coloroto work has surprised and interested publishers throughout Europe
as well as America.43
Privately, McCormick had his doubts. He could not afford to be wrong with
Hearst's competition in Chicago. Six months before praising Yetter and Schultz in
1922, he questioned if the presses could compete with Hearst's and confided in
Joseph Patterson:
We have both been successful: ourselves in roto and Hearst in color. Our
own efforts at color advertising have been handicapped by poor printing. I
hope our new press is as much better than Hearst's as his press is better
than our old one. I hope so because I do not know just how good our new
press is.. . .“
Hearst appealed to racism in the cartoons published in color at the turn of the
century. Ethnic insults permeated Hearst's vi5ual art, such as the weekly cartoon
about an African-American family named “Blackberry" at the turn of the century
(See Figure 6). The negative stigmas, situated in daily living, pervaded cartoon
depictions: “The Blackberries Go to the Country" and “The Blackberries Go
Bathing."

The circulation of Hearst's New York Journal with its American Humorist

cartoon insert exceeded 900,000 before the turn of the century, but his fabricated

104

news illustrations during the Spanish-American War in 1898 began diminishing
the number of readers. Yellow journalism poised color illustrations as dubious
news. A struggling New York Tribune’ tried including color art to boost its
circulation, but did not succeed. The approach was not integral to its journalism
strategy.

A 1919 “Gravure Section“ featured commissioned paintings finely printed
on heavy grade paper, not newsprint. “The City's Fountain of Youth" by Gustave
Flasschoen depicted New York on a hot summer day (Figure 6). Art was used
briefly in an attempt to boost circulation. Sales stagnated and by 1924, the New

York Tribune and New York Hera/d merged."5

 

‘ The New York Tribune printed color gravure art with a sheet-fed press in 1919.
With magnification ten times the normal vision, this researcher found no discrete
characteristics of color rotogravure by the New York Tribune: 1) There were no holes in
the printed paper caused by the mechanical grippers on the rotogravure's rotating
cylinders; 2) A high-grade paper was used as indicated by its weight and texture instead
of newsprint. The New York Tribune in Figure 6 is a broadsheet with heavy paper stock,
typical of sheet-fed presses.

One other periodical, the New York Times, published a small, limited edition of
full-color art on Easter (March 29, 1914). The New York Times used either a German-
made press created for one color of ink, necessitating the need for stopping the presses
to clean the machine, and re-ink it for each primary color. Or it used a sheet-fed, flatbed
gravure press, which also had to be stopped and cleaned between applications of
primary ink colors.

105

 

Figure 6. “The City's Fountain of Youth,"
by Gustave Flasschoen, New York
Tribune, August 19, 1919. (Library of
Congress, Reprinted with permission).

Chicago Tribune Newsprint

The Chicago Tribune’s milling techniques brilliantly reflected color inks
from the newsprint. Mill designer Warren Curtis Jr. of the Ontario Paper Co.—
influenced by his father, inventor Warren Curtis, and Julius Jaeger of North
Tonawanda—created novel papers and often consulted with the Chicago
Tribune’s artists and printers to test the effects (Appendix A)” The freshly milled
paper was used by the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and a short-lived
magazine, Liberty, founded to compete with the Saturday Evening Post.”

The newsprint consisted of a mix of New York hardwood trees, birches,
and poplars and soft Canadian spruces and balsams, cooked with bleach to a
pulp. The hardwoods kept enough ink on the surface of the paper for luminosity,

while the softwoods added some absorbency to prevent smearing. A higher

106

proportion of softwoods in the rotogravure paper would increase absorption of

the inks, as if it were cotton, and the luminosity would be lost as well. The
Chicago Tribune's goal was never to produce the most expensive and best paper.
The goal was to make the finest possible newsprint in the least expensive way.

At one point the Chicago Tribune used as many as ten different types of trees
and several different paper-making recipes.48

The customers continually asked for more brightness in the sheet, but

more brightness always brought with it an increase in “show-through," the

condition where the printing on one side could be seen from the other. The
customers objected to excessive show-through as much as they
complained about lack of brightness.”

The reflections of light waves off these elegant inks and newsprints
respond similarly to the reverberations of sound waves that emanate from a
Steinway grand piano. Musical tones are created when the action of the keys
causes the hammers to strike the copper-wound and steel strings, resulting in
complex sound waves that are amplified and enriched by the soundboard, made
only from the spruces of Sitka, Alaska.

Rich, deep tones slowly rise and reflect off the lid, which is composed of
hardwood trees, and the faster, direct sound waves travel over the audience. The
deep, slow waves and the fast, direct waves mix, creating the rich sonority that
uniquely characterizes the Steinway grand.50 The color rotogravure pictures were
mass-produced art and news. The comparison is not between the Chicago
Tribune and the performance of a sonata or concerto, or to the Steinway grand

piano, but to the actions of light waves and sound waves with similar properties

in the electromagnetic field that bring stirring effects.

107

The Chicago Tribune’s mill designs, newsprint research, development of
hydroelectric power for precision milling, use of freshly baled trees, inventions for
milling and testing, and novel chemical formulas were unprecedented by a
publisher.51

Science brought precision, and color rotogravure treated readers to
exquisite details, enhanced through printing registration. One outcome among
Chicago Tribune employees was further national pride. Yetter frequently teamed
up with his assistant, Otto Wolf, a machine designer and inventor from Germany
(Appendix A, US1504409). Wolf worked for printing press manufacturers Robert
Hoe Co. and 6055 Co., beforejoining the Chicago Tribune in 1920.52

Ever since the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in
London in 1851, examples of new forms of printing have been displayed in
international fairs.” The Chicago Tribune celebrated printers, the free press, art,
and science as one on Constitution Day in 1934. On Sunday, September 16,
they published an illuminated manuscript of the US. Constitution (See Figure 8),
and printed an extra 300,000 copies to place in the hands of Chicago
schoolchildren. The double-page spread carried the complete text of the US.
Constitution and detailed pictorial engravings of the American Revolution. The
flip pages carried the US. Amendments. Nestore Leoni illuminated manuscripts
in Italy before immigrating to the United States at the turn of the century. Around
1909, he painted the US. Constitution in the rare, intricate style of the sixteenth-

century.

108

The cobalt blue inks coated President George Washington, red inks
scrolled around pictures of hard-wrought freedom, and clean, white paper
gleamed under the sepia-printed words. Visitors to the World's Fair opened their
newspapers and held a piece of American history, and the art and science of the

Chicago Tribune ’5 employees.

 

i1:
. "J...“ . - . , ,1 “a“. “WE-w
Figure 9. A painting of the US. Constitution by Nestore Leoni,

circa 1909, published by the Chicago Tribune on September 16, 1934,
using the employees’ Innovations for color rotogravure printing.

109

NOTES

 

1. Chicago Tribune, "Proceeding of the Newspaper Color Conference," 1936.

2. The Washington Post, "US. 'Comers' Ink Pigments," July 19, 1915, 3; and Los
Ange/es Times, "Dyes for Printing Ink," March 12, 1916, 21.

3. Current Opinion, "Why the Shortage in Dyes Interests You,” 1915, 362.

4. Los Angeles Times, ”Dyes for Printing Ink,” March 12, 1916, 112.

01

. The Washington Post, "Leap in Printing Costs," 1916, 14.

6. New York Times, "Make Plan to Open Trade to Germany," October 29, 1914, 7.

\J

. The Washington Post, "British Press Bitter," January 16, 1916, 8.

8. The New York Times, "Printing Ink Shortage Threatens Publishers," December 23,
1917.

9. indiana Farmer’s Guide, April 6, 1918.14.

10. Alfred M. Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1937), 128.

11. The New York Times, “The Times's Rotogravure Presses," April 15, 1914, 12.
12. Chicago Tribune, "Tribune Tour No. 3," December 4. 1914, F8.

13. John C. Yetter, "Method of and Press for Multicolor Printing in lntaglio," ed. United
States Patent Office (United States: Yetter, John C., 1920)

14. H.M. Cartwright and Robert MacKay, Rotogravure (Lyndon, KY: MacKay Publishing
Company, Inc., 1956) x; and Bamber Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 2nd ed. (London:
Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2004), 39a-c-39d-1; and Pictured Encyclopedia of the World's Greatest
Newspaper, (Chicago: The Tribune Company, 1928), 668; and John Park, "Report on Color and
Roto Presses: Page Combinations & Capacity," (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1921); Lake Forest
College, Donnelley 8. Lee Library, MSS Collection, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Series 2, Box
51, Folder 4; Chicago Tribune, and IN "Proceeding of the Newspaper Color Conference," 4.

15. Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints, 1 .

16. Cartwright and MacKay, Rotogravure, 256.

17. Robert R. McCormick to Joseph M. Patterson, January 20, 1923, Lake Forest
College, Donnelley and Lee Library, Joseph Patterson Papers, Box 51, Series 2, Folder 6,
(Chicago Tribune).

18. Sigrid Schultz to George J. Scharschug, November 4. 1930, McCormick Research
Center, Series I 62, Box 8, Folder 9,

110

 

19. Joseph M. Patterson to Robert R. McCormick. February 9, 1923, Lake Forest
College, Donnelley 8. Lee Library, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Miscellaneous Papers, Box 51,
Series 2, Folder 6.

20. Pictured Encyclopedia of the World's Greatest Newspaper, 17.

21. Irwin Library Special Collections and Rare Books, Butler University, "Gaar
Williams/Kin Hubbard Collection," in Gaar Williams (Indianapolis: Butler University, 2007);
Chicago Daily Tribune, and IN "Gaar Williams, Famous Tribune Cartoonist, Dies," January 16,
1935. 3.

22. The Trib, “Color Pages Sold Year in Advance," April 1920, 8.

23. Editor & Publisher lntemational Year Book (New York: Editor & Publisher
International Year Book, 1922-1955).

24. The inland Printer, 69, no. 3, “Rotogravure in Colors on Newspapers," 1922, 368.

25. George A. Brandenburg, "McCormick Directs Tribune under Medill Traditions," Editor
& Publisher, no. 8 (March 1947): 72.

26. Liz Watts, "The Flying Newsboy " Journalism History 28, no. Winter (2003): 4.
27. Chicago Tribune, "Proceeding of the Newspaper Color Conference.”
28. lbid., 10.

29. Maryann E. Suero, 1996. "Characterization of Rotogravure Press Emissions and
Prediction of Press Worker Exposures," PhD dissertation, Northwesthem University.

30. The Trib (Robert R. McCormick Research Center, First Museum Division, Wheaton,
IL) November 1939, 9.

31. lbid.

32. Bruce Starner Yetter, "Descendants of Samuel Yetter," e-mail message to author.
June 29, 2007; and the New York Times, "John C. Yetter," 1947, 28: and US. Federal Census
1910, John F. Mitchell; US. Census Federal Census 1930, Frank E. Yetter; and1860 US.
Federal Census, Miles L. Yetter; and Mitchell-Fleming Printing, Inc., Papers, Indiana Historical
Society: and Herb Galewitz, ed., "Great Comics Syndicated by the Daily News - Chicago Tribune"
(New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1972), xii.

33. The Washington Post, "Newspaper Prints 232-Page Edition," December 9, 1928,
M21.

34. Anthony Hamber, "The Oxford Companion to the Photograph: Photomechanical
Processes," ed. Robin Lehman. (Oxford University Press, 2005),
http:llwww.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t207 .e1 21 5.

35. Martin W. Sandler, Photography: An Illustrated History (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 93.

36. Steven Heller and Louise Fill, Euro Deco: Graphic Design between the Wars (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004), 8.

111

 

37. lbid., 8-9.
38. "Art Imports Back on Pre-War Basis," New York City, March 25, 1923, E7.

39. Pamela Roberts, A Century of Colour Photography (London: Andre Deutsch, Carton
Publishing Group, 2007), 104.

40. George A. Brandenburg, "McCormick Directs Tribune under Medill Traditions," Editor
8. Publisher, no. 8 (March 1947), 72.

41. The Trib, "Two Tribune Men Develop Coloroto" 1922, 1-2.

42. lbid., 1.

43. lbid., 2.

44. lbid.; and Robert R. McCormick to Joseph M. Patterson, March 30, 1922, Lake Forest
College, Donnelley and Lee Library, Mss Collection, Joseph Patterson Papers, Series 2, Box 51,

Folder 5 (Chicago Tribune, 1922).

45. Harry W. Baehr Jr., New York Tribune since the Civil War (Octagon Books, 1972),
375.

46. Carey Orr Cook, (grandson of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr).
Telephone interview by author with transcript, November 9, 2006.

47. Joseph M. Patterson to Robert R. McCormick, February 9, 1923.

48. Carl Wiegman, Trees to News (Toronto: McClelland 8. Stewart Ltd., 1953), 105.

49. lbid., 319.

50. Arthur A. Reblitz, Piano Servicing, Tuning, and Rebuilding for the Professional, the
Student, the Hobbyist (Vestal, NY: Vestal Press, 1985), 18; and Panayis Lyras, interview by
author, April 5, 2008.

51. Wiegman, Trees to News, 16, 105, 312-320.

52. Chicago Tribune, "Otto Wolf, 74. Printing Press Genius, Is Dead," March 1, 1959, 39.

53. Ofiicial Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue: Great Exhibition of the Works of
Industry of all Nations (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1851), 2-3, 12-15.

112

CHAPTER VI: SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE ’S COLOR
ROTOGRAVURES—MUSEUMS WITHOUT WALLS

Color is a democratic thing and a scientific thing, just as well
as it is an emotional and exclusive thing.
—Faber Birren, Printer’s Ink Monthly, 19291

At its depths in 1933 and 1934, the Great Depression left one quarter of
Americans unemployed.2 Violence erupted throughout the nation, as labor unions
clashed with employers over low pay or no pay for workers.

In an exchange of tear gas and bullets, a bloody riot on the San Francisco
docks pitted 10,000 Iongshoremen and 15,000 marine workers against the
National Guard.3 One thousand striking hotel and restaurant union workers with
their children and wives battled police in New York at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.‘1
In Chicago, 5,000 school teachers marched to protest eight months of work
without pay. “When do we eat,” the teachers' placards read.5 And in Taylorsville,
Illinois, a mine workers' protest led to the bombing of a free soup kitchen for
children.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic solution, the National
Industrial Recovery Act, known as the New Deal, was enacted in 1933 but had
not yet taken effect. Adolph Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933 and began
building concentration camps to conduct his ethnic cleansing program.

The world was falling apart faster than it was coming together in the early
19305. An editorial in the Chicago Defender newspaper asked why women are

never seen at soup kitchens or bread lines. They would rather starve than lose

pride, the editorial concluded.6

113

The luxurious color paintings on the covers of the Chicago Tribune’s
rotogravure section uplifted the spirits of bruised souls and delivered some
escapism. A 1932 survey conducted by George H. Gallup found that the
rotogravure sections of newspapers, including those printed in single colors,
were the most read sections, and three times more likely to be seen by readers
than any other section.7 The Chicago Tribune’s circulation soared during the
Great Depression. Families not interested in art, could enjoy comic strip
characters like detective Dick Tracy. “ The Tribune is not only high class and low
class, it is ‘highbrow' and 'lowbrow,'" quipped publisher Robert R. McCormick.

For the mere cost of a newspaper, Chicago Tribune readers became
owners of art reproductions that they could frame to decorate their homes.
Readers could also purchase framed reproductions that had no folds at the
newspaper's offices. The Sunday newspaper editor, A.M. Kennedy, reported that
he was surprised that the extra printed art without folds always sold out:

We began selling framed reproductions of art in glass in 1934 without a

fold on them. They were 40 cents over the counter... At the time of the

pennant race we offered prints of the Cubs—as we did of these movie
girls—but nobody seems to care much for the movie stars, at least not
enough to hang pictures of them in their homes.8

The newspaper's mass-produced art was essentially a “museum without
walls." Individuals could respond with their likes and dislikes, and they were not
as dependent on the authority of museum curators who chose art works for the
permanent collections of institutions.

The impermanence of newspapers greatly benefited the democracy of

color experienced through diverse art reproductions. But were newspaper art

114

editors the equivalent of curators? And if they were, would readers yield full
control and allow editors to be the arbiters of the public's impermanent
collection? One quarter of Chicagoans in 1930 were white persons born in other
nations,9 and included a number of artists with varied approaches and styles.
Whether artists were emigres or native-born, their works helped shape the
American culture and art editors could detract or elevate their expressive forms.

With a circulation of 858,000 in 1932 (not including the syndicated art and
stories), the Chicago Tribune’s art choices were the mainstream cultural diet of
daily living.10 Yet among the publisher's own relatives, no consensus formed on
what constituted art. The publisher's cousin, Eleanor Jewett, was art editor with
considerable power to elevate or diminish creative works. McCormick
underscored the art editor's limited authority in a Chicago Tribune memo:11

March 22, 1933

Dear Eleanor:

The Tribune has no sacred cows anywhere. Our criticisms will be based

on the merits. I am sending back the enclosed photographs. I have seen

the original.

Sincerely,
Bert

The creative work in question is not known, but McCormick's tacit control
shifts attention to the significance of art to major metropolitan newspaper, and to
the publisher, whose friends and relatives are major collectors.

The decision to feature the expressionistic painting of Hungarian-born
artist, Alexander Raymond Katz, on Sunday, April 22, 1934, launched his career

and helped advance American expressionism. His painting won first prize in the

115

Chicago World's Fair poster contest, and his aesthetics broke tradition. The
Century of Progress, colloquially known as the Chicago World's Fair, employed
10,000 people, attracted 27 and 21 million visitors in 1933 and 1934,
respectively.” McCormick hoped the privately funded venture would serve as a
model, wholly different from the New Deal's government-funded approach to
recovery. Ironically, Katz was a beneficiary of both private and public initiatives.
Before his rise as a stained-glass muralist, he painted for the WPA in order to
survive.
The 1934 World's Fair Poster

Miss Chicago donned a doughboy's helmet and stretched her attenuated
arm like an octopus tentacle up and around her head, and pointed to the opening
date of the 1934 World's Fair.13 At first glance, she appeared as an aquatic
wonder, swimming in a cobalt blue sea, adrift in emerald and gold algae. “See.
Hear. Play," she invited Fair-goers with words painted in gold (See figure 12).

Miss Chicago's doughboy's helmet in the 1934 poster reflected the pride
Americans felt about the war—the military’s ingenuity in battle and civilians’
resourcefulness in supporting the effort on the home front. In peace time, the
same creative energy fulminated into “the machine age" and the newly acquired
pleasure of speed—transcontinental air travel, news wires transmitting global

information, mass-produced cars, and high-speed newspaper presses.

116

WORLD’S
. ~ _,_‘Q. I“ c A. 1; k:
“i b 4

orrrcw; "rrbs'r " ‘ .' fit “his in? o ‘ u.

     

Figure 12. The 1934 Century of Progress official poster painted by the muralist and
stained-glass artist, A. Raymond Katz, was featured in the Chicago Tribune, April
22. 1934 (Michigan State University Collection, Reprinted with permission of
Chicago Tribune).

117

She directs the reader’s attention to what is not gold algae but an electric
lamppost that radiates light in four directions over fertile earth. Her left hand
gracefully shapes a “U” and extends under her chin to direct readers to the Fair’s
opening day, “May 26.” The “U” signifies “Cheth,” the cursive eighth letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, to represent infinity and life’s animating force. Spiritual
meaning embedded in colorful shapes was one component of Katz’s expressive
palette."

Through Miss Chicago’s symbolic gesture, Katz compared scientific
knowledge achieved through the discovery of electricity to the light of wisdom
achieved through the human transformation of the mind.15 The picture’s focal
point is a streetlamp at the center that lifts viewers' eyes along the light,
emanating in four directions to the canvas” edge and suggests infinity, and
unlimited pursuit. The stars and electric lights commingle.

The artist’s vantage point is from a distant place in the night sky, and
readers can see one-half of the earth’s rounding horizon. Flames shoot in a
horizontal line above the text, “World’s Fair,” inscribed in the lower-right corner.
The flames convey Moses” Biblical journey out of Egypt and his spiritual
awakening. In the wilderness, he came upon a burning bush that never could be
consumed in fire. He interpreted this as a sign of belief, and his ability to find a
pathway out of oppression to lead others to a land of milk and honey.16

The deep blue night expresses sublimity through the stars and lamppost.
A ragged gold line beneath the burning bush represents a serpent’s tail that

horizontally races under the flames. In “Exodus,” Moses grabbed the serpent’s

118

tall and turned it into a walking stick to engender others to believe that he could
guide them out of adversity.'7
His was not the poster aesthetics of Europe with cool rigid geometric
forms. Katz captured the spirit or the Chicago World's Fair theme with a free form
as if the figures were at sea. Color signified modern living and hope in the depth
of the Great Depression, and his emerald and cobalt blue shapes interpreted that
for viewers. The program book introduced the importance of color to the Fair and
in daily living:
Bold splashes of color seem almost articulate with the spirit of carnival, a
flaming expression of fun, frivolity which, after all is said and done, is of
the very essence of a Fair. Joseph Urban, famous architect and stage
designer, sought to achieve a harmony of color on building exteriors that
might also express the Exposition’s deeper, more lasting implications and
purposes....Were one to pose as a prophet, he might well say that here is
suggestion of a future American color harmony, distinctive, bold, that
could change neutral sections of cities and towns, bring cheer and
liveliness to workers in factories, perhaps revolutionize in time the
conception of color effects in homes.‘8
The Fair collected the latest innovations in science and art from other
nations, and it displayed creative possibilities for future innovations. While the
1893 Columbian Exposition, known as the “White City,” glowed with 93,000 white
lights, the twentieth century fairs in Chicago offered pools of neon colors lit with
gaseoustubes.

The 1934 Fair was a “miracle of light” with electrified colorful floodlights
that simulated “fountains, cascading waterfalls, or brilliant skies at sunset.“9
Visitors were welcomed to the greatest display of lights:

As you mingle with the throngs at night, you stand in the greatest flood of

colored light that any equal area, or any city of the world, has ever
produced.20

119

Color infused everyday living with an excitement that could be seen in
newspapers, magazines and home decor in 1the 19305. The first color movie,
Becky Sharp, premiered in an experimental stage in 1935, but Hollywood was
abuzz with talk of color innovations as early as 1914.2| Eastman Kodak Co.
mass-produced flexible color film for amateur photography in 1935, yet pictorial
color had been anticipated ever since inventors in Chicago and Berlin had
conducted successful experiments in the 18905.22

The poster for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair conformed to the austere
aesthetics set at the Paris Expo in the previous decade. Artist George B. Petty’s
prize poster the previous year adopted the rigid style that was commensurate
with the norms of world-class designers (Figure 13). He divided his canvas in
four horizontal panels with monotones, from top to bottom in white, red, white
and black.23 A stoic face of a native-American Indian chief with an eagle-
feathered headdress is at center left and spans the two upper panels. The tribal
chief represents Chicago in 1833, and has pinkish skin to diminish the image into
the background. The face of Miss Chicago of 1933 is the focal point at center.

Petty’s vision has Miss Chicago with the same face as the tribal chief, but
her crown is that of the American eagle, emblazoned with the city’s motto, “I
Will.” An emotionless portrait, she looks more like a statue or a coin. She curls
her left finger, inviting people to the fair. “Come! Chicago World’s Fair,” read
large white block letters against the black panel. The total lack of movement, the

rigid forms locked inside the horizontal panels, characterizes this poster.

120

Deco aesthetics, like Petty’s art poster, drew on a myriad of art
movements: Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus School, for
example. Streamlined geometric forms, dominant block letters, bold colors and
an emotionless severity were representative of European Deco designs. The
Deco style permeated all types of commercial ventures, including architecture,
furniture, advertising, fashions, and magazine covers.24

That Petty created according to the ascribed expectations of the design
community, as the critical eyes of the international community viewed his work,
was not surprising. More surprising is that Katz broke away from European
aesthetic domination to express his vision with an independent American voice.
At age 38, Katz entered the Fair’s poster and mural competition after architect
Frank Lloyd Wright’s encouraged him to do so. In a retrospective of his career
years later, the journal, American Artist called him a “master of mixed
techniques,” and the inventor of mixed media techniques.25

The chairman of the Fair’s art committee, Chauncey McCormick, was a
cousin and neighbor of the Chicago Tribune’s publisher, Robert McConnick.“
Amy McCormick, the publisher’s wife, an amateur painter, entertained the Fair’s
art committee judges in her home. A collector of European art, Amy purchased
painting by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas, as gifts to her
husband, who gave primary attention to American artists in the newspaper. 27

The 1933, the Fair awarded Katz a commission to paint a modern
religious mural, “Ten Commandments,” which integrated spiritual meanings of

the Hebrew alphabet.28

121

An Art Editor’s Power and Demise
Jewett opposed the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration's art
program 29 and many of its artists, but not Katz. She reported news of his
exhibits, even after he moved to New York in 1938. She wrote:

A. Raymond Katz, a talented Chicago artist, enjoyed a one man exhibit at
the Edgewater Beach hotel recently of line drawings, tempura and water
colors. Mr. Katz is imaginative and clever. His work is invariably intriguing,
and this last show of his is no exception. It closed Friday to the regret of
many visitors, who found in it much subtle and decorative work.30

Each one is truly an adventure into imaginative composition. There are
some frightening compositions among them and some that are delightful.
The artist's flair for color and line never leave him.31

 

DJ' FAI R

 

Figure 13. The official poster for the Century of Progress,
Chicago World's Fair in 1933, painted by George Petty
(Chicago History Museum, Reprinted with permission).

122

Opposed to modern works that appeared chaotic and abstract, Jewett also
took exception to artists known to be dissolute. A national movement known as
“Sanity in Art” formalized opposition against modernism, and she championed
the cause. Founded in 1936, the Sanity in Art organization was headed by Mrs.
Josephine Logan, whose husband, Frank, headed the Art Institute of Chicago.
The group’s intentions, she said, were to bring “rationalism, sanity and
soundness’ back into art and “censure modern art” against the grotesqueries that
masquerade as art.”32

Jewett also served on the Sanity of Art board and, in adherence to its
tenets, she militated against surrealism and artists like Pablo Picasso, Paul
Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. When Picasso’s mural, “Guemica,” on the atrocities
of the Spanish Civil War went on display in Chicago in 1939, she reported
“distinct disappointment."

It is like a huge unfinished cartoon, the product of a juvenile brain, sick

from an overdose of fairy stories in which ogres and dragons have played

too conspicuous a part.33

Editor and critic, Jewett joined the newspaper in 1917 and guided its
visual arts for 38 years. A sensitive poet, Jewett was married to the Chicago
Tribune ’3 color photographer and inventor, Godfrey Lundberg. Her sister, Emita,
married to symphony conductor Karl Krueger, was murdered in Hollywood,
California, in 1938.34 With marital discord at home, she depended on a protective
world buoyed by compliments and courtesies from her public position.

My dear Miss Jewett:

For several years now I have admired your art criticism, but you have
done it this time! I think the courage and nerve you have shown...35

123

Dear Eleanor Jewett:

In all this confusion many an artist who otherwise would lose heart, finds

encouragement in the support you have all along give to the true

standards in art. I feel that the artists of Chicago in particular have much to
be thankful to you for also taking up their cause—trying for more fairness
and impartiality on the part of directors and juries...

The social disparities of the era aligned artists with labor, and the WPA
artists opposed their low wages and conditions. New York police jailed 83 artists
for protesting their meager subsistence wages for painting public art.37

The WPA art project began in Illinois in 1935 with projects to create
posters on safety and murals for the Chicago Public Library?8 A Chicago art
show mounted by WPA artists in 1940 found no dulcet words in her review. She
reprinted a review from the Milwaukee Journal on WPA artists, adding, “It is as
true for Chicago as for Milwaukee, and as true for the rest of the nation.”

One activity of the government which has been a sore spot with those who

care for creative art has been the so-called art turned out by WPA

projects. In the Chicago region a little that is good has been achieved, but
the vast majority of the pictures and sculpture turned out has been of
inferior quality...lt was a mess that interested persons found at the airport.

There were murals of the Wright brothers in Russian peasant costume,

there was a likeness of Joseph Stalin done into one composition, the red

star was used as a symbol on some navy planes...the murals constitute
propaganda.”

WPA artists levied a prolonged postcard campaign against Jewett, who
read the complaints without expecting any backlash. She was standing up for
democracy, she explained in a pastoral consultation at the Winnetka
Congregational Church on December 19, 1940. 4° An art patron observed Jewett
in demise, while hearing her speak at a luncheon in 1941.

She referred to an avalanche of WPA propaganda or protest cards which

were descending on the Chicago Tribune to discredit her....At that time I
sensed something very tense about her, as if she were under some great

124

strain....As for the insane crudities and the manifestations of disordered

minds as shown by WPA projects (in general) please, please You Chicago

Tribune save us therfrom [sic]“l

Despite the company of like-minded patrons, Jewett plunged into a
psychic crisis that left her incapacitated and institutionalized in a series of
sanitariums and hospitals for more than a year, before she returned to work. One
physician wrote Jewett “presented the typical flight of ideas which points to a
psychosis.”42

With and Without Walls

Despite Jewett’s antipathy to abstract and surrealistic art, her pictorial
choices increased access to major works—and often controversial ones. Both
before and after Sanity in Art was founded in 1936, she awakened readers to the
dramatic role artists bring with their interpretations of American culture. The art
elided by her editorial work cannot fully be known. How Jewett sanctioned and
censored art can be seen through a negative review of Richard A. Chase, a
portrait artist, she, otherwise, extolled.

Chase rendered elegant oil paintings of Chicago civic leaders and
socialites. His goal was also to paint urban scenes of working Chicago with its
industrial steel vitality, and the Chicago Tribune created color rotogravures of
many of his realistic paintings. As late as 1949, when modernism was
mainstream, by then, she addressed his exploration, as if he were a child:

Mr. Chase has had a good trip into the realms of the Arabian Nights. His

painting reminds one of Maxfield Parrish in their imaginative, spun sugar

quality, figures moving thru French and Italian landscapes where castles

are a commonplace and gardens taken for granted. We really prefer Mr.
Chase in his usual concise, realistic manner dealing with steel works,

125

bridges, or street scenes, and we like his portraits. This present holiday of
his, however, must not be held against him. At least he had fun.43

 

Figure 14. The Chicago Tribune published Blue
Silhouettes, top, and Wabash Avenue Viaduct by Richard A.
Chase on March 22, 1931 (Michigan State University
Collection, Reprinted with permission of Chicago Tribune).

From Columbus, Kansas, Chase worked behind a soda fountain, following
high school graduation and saved his wages to enroll in the Art Institute of
Chicago in the 19303. The Wabash Avenue viaduct (Figure 14) depicted men
with jobs in the Great Depression—men climbing ladders, raising steel girders,
seeing billowing clouds in white, pink and blue. He spent 60 years painting

Chicago and building a legacy of regional art.

126

A painter who needed reviews by the Chicago Tribune would need to
create realistic or expressionistic art to obtain any attention at all. The
inconsistent values displayed in the Chicago Tribune, were to the public's
advantage.

The differences on art within the McCormick family favored the Chicago
Tribune’s readers with some pluralism. Chauncey McCormick, a trustee and
leader at the Art Institute, opposed the Sanity in Art movement. Amy
McCormick’s modern painting by Cezanne, The Bathers, was reminiscent of
numerous water scenes painted by Paul Chabas, although the genres differed

(Figure 15).

 

Figure 15. Two paintings by French artist
Paul Chabas, Hidden Away, top, and
Twilight, published in the Chicago Tribune,
August 2, 1931. His works were once the
subject of censorship in Chicago and New
York. (Michigan State University Collection,
Reprinted with permission of Chicago
Tribune)“

127

In 1931, the Chicago Tribune reproduced two French paintings of nude
pre-adolescent girls bathing in lakes. Created by Chabas, Hidden Away and
Twilight were among many nude paintings published by the Chicago Tribune on
Sunday section covers.

Chabas’ most famous painting, September Mom, was also a nude portrait
of a girl in a lake, and it was at the center of a judicial firestorrn in 1913. Chicago
officials, believing September Mom was indecent took a local art dealer to court,
for placing it in a storefront window. A judge found Chabas’ painting to be art and
not vice.45 By publishing the similar Chabas works, the Chicago Tribune
increased awareness about the artist and challenged personal values about
nudity. His painting, Mirthful Frolics, won the first prize of the Paris Salon in 1899,
a leading international exposition. The moral controversies about his paintings

increased their reproductions and his acclaim.46

128

 

Figure 16. Two paintings by Grant Wood,
Daughters of Revolution, top and Midnight Ride of
Paul Revere, were published by the Chicago
Tribune, September 23, 1934. The 1934 Art
Masterpieces Exhibition at the Chicago World’s Fair
featured Daughters of Revolution. (Michigan State
University Collection, Reprinted with Permission of
Chicago Tribune).

In association with the Chicago World’s Fair, 25 museums and 225 private
collectors contributed masterpieces to what the New York Times noted was the
“most important art exhibition ever held in this country.” Managed by the Art
Institute of Chicago, the exhibition mounted masterpieces dating from the
thirteenth century to the twentieth century and different works were displayed in
1933 and 1934.47 One of the most controversial American paintings in the first
part of the twentieth century, Daughters of Revolution by Grant Wood of Cedar

Rapids, Iowa, drew the most viewers.

129

Created in 1932, Daughters of Revolution diminished the patriotism of the
Iowa members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but introduced a
national conversation on different views of patriotism. The artist, a member of the
American Legion, depicted three DAR members smugly sipping tea, while they
stand indifferently before one of the most famous paintings of the American
Revolution—Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze.“ The
Chicago Daily News’ art critic, Clarence J. Bulliet wrote:

A political satire is ephemeral, and is apt to be forgotten after the next
election. But a social lampoon, like this, has in it elements of eternity.49

The artist's spare two-dimensional realism brought a modern update to the
eighteenth-century American Colonial style of painting that portrays figures
glumly facing directly front without perspective. American Gothic is Wood’s most
famous painting, and was featured the previous year at the World’s Fair.

Few newspapers had the capability of publishing color rotogravures, and
American Gothic was not mass produced in color until after Daughters of the
Revolution, and even then, it was produced by a magazine. The Chicago Tribune
treated art as news, and Daughters of Revolution was an implicit suggestion for
viewers to consider the nature of democracy and Midwestern art. Wood told
Chicago school children: There is just as much art to be put on canvas right in

our little towns of 5,000 as there is in the Latin quarter of Paris.”50

130

x ;. 4v “.‘Iuhg. flush“

 

Figure 17. Between Rounds, published by the Chicago
Tribune, May 19, 1935, by Thomas Eakins was painted
in 1899 and exhibited at the 1934 Art Masterpieces
Exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair (Michigan State
University Collection, Reprinted with Permission of
Chicago Tribune).

American realism provides a genre that is intrinsic to joumalism—
paintings with photographic details. Amid royal commissioned paintings by
eighteenth century Spain's Francisco Goya, and England's aristocratic portrait
artist, Thomas Gainsborough, were the ruggedly independent American realists.
The Chicago Tribune’s publication of Thomas Eakins' Between Rounds dignified
the sweat of hard-working Americans competing in a boxing match. The Chicago
Tribune’s mass production of the Eakins’ painting was a political statement, not
as overt as the editorial texts, but one more readily accepted. Newspaper editors

deliberate and carefully consider the art and graphics that are featured to

131

respond to readers’ interests and current events. For example, the editors
realized the popularity of paintings of seafaring ships, because its public service
office repeatedly sold out the hundreds of extra single sheets printed just for
framing. As a result, the Chicago Tribune reproduced a series of sea vessels
painted in watercolors by Frank Vining Smith to enable collectors to decorate
their homes with a framed set.51

Between Rounds in subtle browns challenged the long-held beliefs of
readers’ concepts of beauty (Figure 17).52 The American realists with the direct
honesty of their artistic visions demanded attention, and the Chicago Tribune
listened. When asked about how the newspaper rose to its success, publisher
McCormick retorted: “It ain't Orphan Annie. It’s the hair on our chest.” The
original content of the Chicago Tribune sought realities, not abstractions of
surrealistic images of a chaotic world.

The Chicago Tribune principal concern in the Great Depression was
stabilizing the economic base of the city to remain in business. Any pictorial
depictions of extreme behavior, poverty, labor riots, radicalism, and changing
mores could appeal to the disintegration of form in the arts and society.

By the late 1920s, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch began publishing color
rotogravures with the help of Yetter’s youngest son, Frank. The Washington Post
printed color gravures on a sheet-fed press in 1927, and imitating the Chicago
Tribune’s slogan, “World’s Greatest Newspaper,” used its art to advertise itself as
the “Capital’s Greatest Newspaper." Readers were encouraged to frame the

Washington Post’s art reproductions: “Pictures you’ll frame and name.”53 The Los

132

Angeles Times published color rotogravures of California missions and other
regional art in the late 19303.S4

Mass reproductions of art became individual museums without walls but
built communities through a shared culture, namely American artists shaping new
aesthetics. The art that went unseen and unheard due to censorship, or simply
different values, was also part of the ethos of building a culture for the plurality of
Chicagoans. The people who were framing mass produced art printed by the
Chicago Tribune were members of the working classes, many of whom were
émigrés, seeking inspiration in the culture of a new homeland, and trying to

better themselves.

 

NOTES

1. Faber Birren, "Color Strategy in Advertising," The Printer’s Ink Monthly 18, no. 2
(1929), 40-41.

2. Robert Vangiezen and Albert E. Schwenk, “Report on the American Workforce:
Compensation from before World War I through the Great Depression,“ in Compensation and
Working Conditions (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001 ), 69, 70.

3. Chicago Tribune, "Troops Called at Frisco to Quell Violence,“ 1934.1.

4. The New York Times, "Riot at Waldorf Quelled by Police,", February 6, 1934, 1.

5. Chicago Tribune, "5,000 Teachers Stage Parade Through Loop,“ 1934, 6.

6. Chicago Defender, “Why Women Become Hoboes," 1934, 14.

7. George H. Gallup, “Survey of Reader Interest in Various Sections of Sunday
Newspapers“ (Chicago: Kimberly-Clark Corporation, 1933).

8. AM. Kennedy, “Color in the Sunday Newspapers," in Proceedings of the Newspaper
Color Conference, McCormick Research Center, Wheaton, IL, Series XI, Box 12, Folder 4,
Business Manager's Files, 1926-1955 (Chicago Tribune, 1936), 9.

9. US. Government, U. 8. Census (University of Virginia Library, Historical Census
Browser, 1930), httpzllfisher.Iib.virginia.edu/colIections/statslhistcensuslphp/county.

10. NW. Ayer, ed., American Newspaper Annual & Directory (New York: N.W. Ayer 8.
Sons, 1932). 223.

133

 

11. Robert R. McCormick to Eleanor Jewett, March 22, 1993, Smithsonian Archives of
American Art, Washington, DC, Eleanor Jewett Papers (1933).

12. Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper (Chicago:
Rand McNaIly 8. Company, 1979), 560-561.

13. Alexander (Sandor) Raymond Katz, “Official Poster of 11161934 Wortd's Fair: Century
of Progress,“ Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1934.

14. The New York Times, “A. Raymond Katz, 78, Muralist and Religious-Art Painter,
Dies,“ March 26, 1974, 44; and Dolores Ashcroft—Nowicki, Illuminations: The Healing of the Soul
(St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2003), 100: and Shoshonna Cohen, 10-minute
Kabbalah: Blessings, Wisdom and Guidance From the Tree of Life (Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds
Press, 2003) 136.

15. Richard Seidman, The Oracle of Kabbalah (New York: Thomas Dunne Books: St.
Martin's Press, 2001), 61.

16. The Holy Bible: Old Testament, Exodus, 3:4-3:4 (Camden, NJ: Thomas Nelson 8.
Sons, 1952).

17. lbid.

18. Official Guide; Book of the Fair 1933, (Chicago: A Century of Progress, 1933), 20.
19. lbid., 29.

20. lbid.

21. Frank Zala, 'Camera's Eye Is Made 'Color Conscious' in New and Wonderful Ways,“
The New York Times, June 2, 1935, B5.

22. Kodak Corporate: Milestones - Chronology, 1930-1959 (2007),
http:IIwww.kodak.comlglobal/en/corp/historyOModakH 930.jhtml?pq-path=2700; AND in Chicago
Tribune, "Talks on Photographic Work," May 7, 1899, 8; The New York Times, “Prof. Miethe Dies,
Modern Alchemist," May 23, 1927, 6.

23. George B. Petty, “Official Poster for World's Fair "Century of Progress" (Chicago:
Chicago Tribune, 1933).

24. Heller and Fill, Euro Deco: Graphic Design between the Wars (Vancouver: Raincoat
Books, 2004), 15-27.

25. Margarita W. Dulac, “Raymond Katz Master of Mixed Techniques," American Artist
(1969), 58.

26. Art Institute of Chicago, “Trustees and Officers for 1930" (Chicago: The Art Institute of
Chicago, 1930)

27. Judith Cass, "Mrs. McCormick's Paintings to Be Put on Display," Chicago Tribune,
1940,23.

28. Alexander Raymond Katz Papers, 1927—1974, (Smithsonian Institution Research

Information System, 2007), httpzlisiris-
archives.si.eduIipac20lipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~l209846!0&term=.

134

 

29. “Western Newspapers Are Alert to Color Printing,“ Chicago Tribune,1931, 25.

30. Eleanor Jewett, “Clash of Theory Results in Vivid Art Show Here," Chicago Tribune,
July 7, 1935, E4.

31. Eleanor Jewett, “Casein Painter to Be Guest at Autograf Party,” Chicago Tribune,
May 22, 1951. A4.

32. Sue Ann Prince, ed., The Old Guard and the Avant-Garde (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990), 112; and Marcia Winn, “Sanity in Art Group Formed by Mrs. Logan,“
Chicago Tribune, 1936, 19.

33. Eleanor Jewett, “Picasso Mural Is Called Work of Juvenile Brain,“ Chicago Tribune,
October 3, 1939, 19.

34. Chicago Tribune, “Wife of Noted Musician Shot by an Assassin,“ August 20, 1938, 6.

35. C. Thomas to Eleanor Jewett, March 8, 1930, Smithsonian Archives of American Art,
Eleanor Jewett Papers, Washington, DC.

36. Harry Pink to Eleanor Jewett, 1930, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Eleanor
Jewett Papers, Washington, DC.

37. Chicago Tribune, "Jail 83 WPA Artists as They Demonstrate for Pay in New York,“
August 16, 1935, 4.

38. Chicago Tribune, ”Artists to Begin Daubing Federal Cash Next Week," November 2,
1935

39. Eleanor Jewett, “Art Projects of WPA Hit as Propaganda,“ Chicago Tribune, August
4. 1940, E4.

40. Samuel Harkness to Robert R. McCormick, December 19, 1940, Robert R.
McCormick Research center, First Division Museum, Cantigny; in Series l-61, Box 13, Folder 6.

41. Mrs. Grace M. Lammedee to Robert R. McCormick, March 13, 1941, Robert R.
McCormick Research center, First Division Museum, Cantigny; in Series I-61, Box 13, Folder 6.

42. Irving S. Cutter, MD, to Miss Burke, January 19, 1942, Robert R. McCormick
Research Center, First Division Museum, Cantigny; in Series l-61, Box 13, Folder 6.

43. Eleanor Jewett, "Three Chicago Artists‘ Works Are Interesting," Chicago Tribune,
March 11, 1949.

44. Arthur F. Rice, "Censorship of Pictures,“ The New York Times, May 14, 1913, 10.

45. Sue Ann Prince, ed., The Old Guard and the Avant-Garde.

46. The New York Times, "Paul Chabas Dies: A Noted Painter," 11 May 1937.

47. ”Chicago Amassing Huge Art Exhibit,“ The New York Times, March 29, 1933, 17; and

Steven Biel, American Gothic (London: WW. Norton 8. Company Ltd., 2005), 108; and Arthur
Millier, "Edward G. Robinson Insists He's Not an Art Collector,“ Los Ange/es Times, 1935, 1.

135

 

48. Biel, American Gothic, 108.

49. C.J. Bulliet, 1934 Art Masterpieces in a Century of Progress Fine Arts Exhibition at
the Art Institute of Chicago, Vol. 2 (Chicago: Sterling North of Chicago, 1934), 50.

50. Katherine Kelley, “Paint America, ls Grant Wood Plea to Artists,“ Chicago Tribune,
1935, 15. ‘

51. AM. Kennedy, “Color in the Sunday Newspapers," Proceedings of the Newspaper
Color Conference, 14

52. Thomas Eakins, “Between Rounds,” Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1935, Picture Section,
cover.

53. "A Picture You'll Frame—and Portraits You'll Name—Advertisement," Washington
Post, March 24, 1927, 1.

54. “Watch for Color Rotogravure,“ Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1937, 1.

136

CHAPTER VII: FOR ALL CONSUMERS—THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S
ADVERTISING COLOR

As the U.S. economic structure destabilized, and unemployment and labor
riots arose over the subsistence wages paid by the Work Progress
Administration’s trade programs, the potential for color newspaper ad sales
appeared unlikely. Black-and-white images had been a newspaper industry
mainstay.

The competition for newspaper color advertising was not with other
dailies, but with magazines that could offer businesses a national marketplace for
consumers with money to spend. In 1930, the color advertising revenue for the
Saturday Evening Post was $29 million. That same year, the combined color
advertising revenue of the 35 magazines that published color ads, including the
Saturday Evening Post, was $84 million.‘ Magazines had a 20-year legacy of
successful color advertising. Butterick publications printed the first color
advertisement in an American magazine in 1904, and it led to an increase in its
dress pattern sales.2

Despite vast poverty, a U.S. Department of Labor consumer survey
conducted between 1934 and 1936 found that 60 percent of American families
had surplus cash after meeting their necessities. The average family income was
$1,524 in 1932.3 Newspapers could potentially fill a void in advertising markets,
and reach across cultures and economic strata. But most newspapers were
resistant.

The magazine publishing industry technically supported and cheered for

color advertising. After World War I, Printers’ Ink Monthly, a leading trade joumai

137

CHAPTER 7: FOR ALL CONSUMERS - THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S
ADVERTISING COLOR

As the U.S. economic structure destabilized, and unemployment and labor
riots arose over the subsistence wages paid by the Work Progress
Administration's trade programs, the potential for color newspaper ad sales
appeared unlikely. Black-and-white images had been a newspaper industry
mainstay.

The competition for newspaper color advertising was not with other
dailies, but with magazines that could offer businesses a national marketplace for
consumers with money to spend. In 1930, the color advertising revenue for the
Saturday Evening Post was $29 million. That same year, the combined color
advertising revenue of the 35 magazines that published color ads, including the
Saturday Evening Post, was $84 million.1 Magazines had a 20-year legacy of
successful color advertising. Butterick publications printed the first color
advertisement in an American magazine in 1904, and it led to an increase in its
dress pattern sales.2

Despite vast poverty, a U.S. Department of Labor consumer survey
conducted between 1934 and 1936 found that 60 percent of American families
had surplus cash after meeting their necessities. The average family income was
$1,524 in 1932.3 Newspapers could potentially fill a void in advertising markets.
and reach across cultures and economic strata. But most newspapers were
resistant.

The magazine publishing industry technically supported and cheered for

color advertising. Alter World War I, Printers’ Ink Month/y, a leading trade journal

138

of the publishing industry, routinely reported on the psychology of color
advertising, benefits of color, press techniques, designs, and profits. The
headlines of such articles read: “Color Strategy in Advertising;" “The New Spirit in
Color Advertising;" and “Colbr Sells Color."4 Propaganda techniques developed
by President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information advanced
public opinion at home. Leading academic researchers shaped methods to sell
Liberty Bonds to fund the war effort, and the successful scientific model replaced
spurious sales techniques.5 Persuasion replaced yellow journalism's base tactics
of fraudulent advertising.

For example, a blind survey of 5,172 college students conducted by John
Scott & Co. of Seattle, Washington, for Jantzen Knitting Mills included a key
question that enabled them to foreshadow future sales: What would make you
buy a bathing suit? The study found that 58 percent of the college students
named the Jantzen brand, and 48 percent said named brands were important to
their buying decisions (See Figure 16).‘5

As a result, the Jantzen name received prominent attention in the color
rotogravure advertisement published by the Chicago Tribune in 1931. The design
was an Americanized treatment of the Art Deco style set by European designers
at the Paris lntemational Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in
1925.7 The streamlined style removed extraneous details to heighten shapes and
colors. The curvilinear, sensual shape of the woman in a bathing suit merely
offered a hint of the European debauchery associated with the Art Deco style.

Instead, the Americanized form, appropriate for newspapers, associated Jantzen

139

with modern aesthetics. The art depicted the figure outside of water, because a
large proportion of those surveyed indicated that they sunbathed and did not
know how to swim yet. While current survey research in advertising is routinely
undertaken today, in 1929, Jantzen Knitting Mills and Printers’lnk Monthly
modeled industry standards with ajournal article on its methods.8

While photography was rarely used in magazine advertising prior to 1920,
it dominated campaigns by the next decade. Art historian Patricia Johnston found
that national advertising firm J. Walter Thompson Company began using
photographs in 60 percent of its designs for mainstream magazines by 1930.9
Approximately three weeks were needed for the preparation of color photographs
for publishing. Magazines could work far in advance, since their articles did not
involve breaking news. Coated paper suited half-tone printing and made
magazines conducive to photography. The Chicago Tribune’s color rotogravure
could publish photographic art, but it also required several weeks to prepare.

Yardley Cosmetics steadily increased its sales during the Great
Depression using color rotogravure advertising in the Chicago Tribune. Sales
rose by 201% in 1930; 199% in 1931; 185% in 1932; and 272% in 1934 (See
Figure 17). However, national campaigns were difficult to distribute in
newspapers. Following a series of Chicago Tribune color rotogravures in 1927,
the Shaeffer Pen Company, with great difficulty, pieced together a campaign for
33 city newspapers that had varied mechanical differences.10

In 1931, Editor 8. Publisher conducted research to assess department

store attitudes toward newspaper color advertisements. A retailer who favored

140

full-color newspaper advertising for special sales events offered a commonly
spoken hesitation regarding printing equipment:
I think that the mechanical devices and procedures employed in producing
color advertisements deserve considerable improvement and it will be
necessary for newspapers to brush up on this phase of the situation. This
is absolutely vital so that stores can secure more dependable support in
the handling of their color advertising.ll
A retailer cited newspapers for being “backward" and not modernizing
typography. Was modern design only to be associated with elite and fashionable
magazines?‘2 The purpose of the International Paris Exposition was to bring fine
design into the mass production arena and democratize artistic elements in
industry and decorating. However, Johnston observed that the rhetoric was
egalitarian, while modern design itself was limited to high-end products in the
19305.13 Social stratification in the visual discourse separated elite magazines
and egalitarian newspapers by outdated presses and the agency of advertising.
The Chicago Tribune possibly had become too much of a maverick and
far too innovative for its own survival. The American Photo-Engravers'
Association erroneously predicted in 1923 that color advertising in newspapers
would “be in vogue in a year or two.“” But as late as 1936, only 11 out of more
than 1,700 U.S. dailies were equipped to sell advertisements with color
rotogravure.15 Consequently, in the early 19305, the Chicago Tribune had a
three-pronged integrated model for advertising growth: 1) build morale of all

employees with internal and external publicity; 2) innovate and invent more color

technologies; 3) encourage national newspaper standards.

141

Morale

The fighting spirit that uplifted the Chicago Tribune during the 1920 and
1921 economic depression was used once again to survive the hardships of the
19305. Color printing increased the number ofjobs at the Chicago Tribune, and
color advertising increased color printing. Internal publicity in the employee
newsletter, The Trib, and in the Chicago Tribune promoted the employees and
the product. For every new page of color advertising sold, one more press
machine was required, and one more employee was needed to run it, the
Chicago Tribune reported. Each page of color required an artist, engraver, and
other specialists at the pre-press stages for pictorial printing.16

The Chicago Tribune's 2,288 employees in 1934 could read about their
colleagues, or themselves, in the daily newspaper. Their friends and neighbors
could read about the Chicago Tribune’s modernism: “Color! A Drama of Printing
New Sunday Tribune. Ingenuity Finds Way Out of Depression."17

At a time when economic recovery appeared dismal, the Chicago Tribune
trumpeted its innovations, not only to inform the public, but to remind themselves
they would survive. In The Trib, the employee newsletter, a feature story on the
expansion of its color photographic studios noted thejobs:

The story of color goes on and on and on. More men are employed in

every Tribune department to handle the extra work involved in the color

process. New equipment is installed. Special paper and ink are

developed. The improvement of machinery now in use is followed by the
invention of new devices—all to make a better, more colorful Tribune.18

142

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. lyficalIyJadzen in II: Individuality .

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-~'¢ ..... In": ..‘

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.1..--‘ '.
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Figure 16. A color rotogravure swimsuit advertisement in the Chicago Tribune, June 28,
1931 (Michigan State University, reprinted with permission of Chicago Tribune).

143

“fixed

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5‘ ‘
i': . V.‘

 

Figure 17. An advertisement pulished in the Chicago Tribune early in
the 19305 for Yardley cosmetics increased sales in the Great Depression

(Michigan State University, reprinted with permission of Chicago
Tribune).

Relying on his World War I experiences to lead the Chicago Tribune
through the Great Depression, the publisher presented his two-part plan to the
advertising force. The first part was the product worth fighting for, and the
second, the self-confidence they could succeed. The Chicago Tribune’s rate for a
one-time showing of a full-page advertisement printed by color rotogravure

section was set at $5,500. If a company contracted for 52 repeated showings of

the same ad, the total cost amounted to $225,000, even with a discount of $700
per ad for the multiple placement.19

Robert R. McCormick, however, envisioned color advertising in
newspapers as the means for regenerating all businesses, including
newspapers. At an annual sales banquet in 1931, McCormick told his advertising
staffs they could be counted out of society or be counted in, and fight to save
themselves and businesses.

It [Chicago Tribune] was never as vital as it is today. Its literary quality was

never as high. It was never so prolific of ideas. One idea, alone, color In

the daily paper has opened a whole new world to our selves and to our

advertisers. Your mission is to go out and give to doubtful and sometimes

weak kneed businessmen the light of hope and the assurance of success.

Then years have passed since, during a depression, our slogan “1921 Will

Reward F ighters” was invented. It is more true today than it was then.20

The Chicago Tribune’s color rotogravure sales peaked in 1929 but
plunged in 1934; however, the newspaper added two new advertising streams for
color. A lively, low-cost printing method gave businesses a window in the color
comics section. Beginning in 1929, the color comic section became an active
area for advertising family breakfast foods, and sales increased eightfold by
1935.21

Color Letterpress

A decade after the invention of color rotogravure, the Chicago Tribune
introduced full color in the daily news section (See Figure 18). The high-speed
method of etching brought color editorial cartoons to the front page and

advertising inside the news section. The Inland Printer described the event as the

pinnacle of “artistic perfection" with newsprint. The Chicago Tribune ’5 full-page

145

advertising gave the appearance of a magazine ad, yet it was printed on the least
expensive form of paper.

Otto R. Wolf, often called a "printing press genius," invented the color
letterpress and a series of innovations at the Chicago Tribune by conducting
experiments with his co-workers in multiple areas that were involved with the
mass production of color pictures. Wolf's invention teams brought the Chicago
Tribune 14 patents for printing improvements or new processes. The creation of
the color letterpress was significant for four reasons: 1) Overnight news
deadlines were still met, even while color art was added to the black text; 2)
Color editorial cartoons could be featured on the front page, and these were
routinely used to build community spirit and raise funds for charities and war
bonds. The color cartoons became the window of the newspaper's conservative
editorial tone, which provoked public discourse; 3) Letterpress applied less ink to
pictures than color rotogravure, enabling a less expensive advertising product,
but one that met daily retail needs; 4) Time was saved in the etching process,
because steel cylinders that held the etchings no longer had to be ground and
polished between pictures (See Appendix A, US1784037).22

Wolf teamed with John Park, the production manager; Edgar Mahar, chief
of the pressroom; Louis Racicot, head of engraving and the first engraver hired at
the Chicago Tribune in 1887; Leo Loewenberg, composing foreman; and Robert

Longmore, stereotyping foreman (See Appendix A, USl 784037).23

146

business man waits for some one else to discover it, we may have a long

time to wait. Meanwhile, each manufacturer and business man can help if

not by developing new products then by refining and improving old ones.

The Chicago Tribune regards its new color process as its contribution to

the recovery.26
Oddly, the first color cartoon published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune
on May 5, 1932, with the new letterpress excoriated the patriotism of U.S.
Senator Huey Long, a Democrat from Louisiana. The cartoon depicted Long
carrying a red flag to identify him as a Communist.27 A series of irritating political
actions by Long culminated in his passing a law to tax newspaper advertising. By
1936, the U.S. Supreme Court found the advertising tax unconstitutional,
Grosjean v American Press Co., 1936.28

Born in Leipsig, Germany, in 1885, Wolf worked as a machine designer
and as an apprentice draftsman after his education at Leipsig University. He
emigrated to the United States after the turn of the century. In his early twenties,
Wolf took a position at the Robert Hoe Co. as a draftsman and engineer. His dual
understanding of machines and drawing later gave him insights into the mass
production of art. He worked for Seymour Press Co. in Boston, Goss Press Co.
of Chicago, and American Can Co. before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1920,
where he made his home inventing for 37 years.29

One of Wolf's most popular inventions was his 1941 color comic book,

printed on newsprint and inserted into the Chicago Tribune’s complex Sunday

paper

147

Industry Change

The Chicago Tribune conducted a survey of 1, 942 dailies in 1931 and
found that only 14 percent of dailies printed in two-color—one color with black
text. Of the 901 publishers Who responded, most began using color after 1926,
and the majority began after 1930. The newspapers that used color printing
were: in the Midwest and West: 49 in Midwest: 41 in West, 26 in East; 9 in South.
Forty-six dailies used some form of color in advertising.”

Following the survey findings, the Chicago Tribune convened 100 of the
nation’s largest publishers to a two-day conference on color printing. The
Minneapolis Journal reported on the need for standardization of inks. Den Dalgin
of The New York Times pointed out difficulties with building national advertising
campaigns:

If an advertising agency has three points in which they would like to

advertise—let us say, Chicago, New York and Detroit, and they have one

piece of copy, Chicago wants thirty days to prepare the plate, New York
twenty days, and I believe Detroit twenty days. It takes quite a while for
the copy to travel from one point to another. By the time it reaches the
third point, the advertising is stale.“

Advertising was one central element of the proceedings on color printing
in newspapers. Collectively, publishers began considering pictorial color graphics
in relation to all sections of their newspapers. And the Chicago Tribune had

almost achieved its goal of making color as common in newspapers as it is in

everyday life. The Chicago Tribune’s color photography was its next horizon.

148

NOTES

 

1. W.J. Bymes, “The Growth of Color Advertising in Newspapers," McCormick Research
Center, Wheaton, IL, Series Xi, Box 12, Folder 4, Business Manager’s Files, 1926-1955, in
Proceedings of the Newspaper Color Conference (Chicago Tribune, 1936), 4-6.

2. Paul E. Watson, “Recent Changes in Advertising, Proceedings of the Newspaper Color
Conference,“ (Chicago Tribune, 1936), 19.

3. Kathleen P. Utgoff, “100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending,“ (Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Labor, 2006), 15.

4. Faber Birren, “Color Strategy in Advertising,“ The Printer’s Ink Monthly 18, no. 2
(1929), 40; and IN W. Livingston Lamed, “The New Spirit in Color Advertisng,“ Printers' Ink
Monthly 6, no. 6 (1923), 131.

5. Stanley J. Baran, Introduction to Mass Communication, 2nd ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill,
2002) 313.

6. Irwin S. Adams, “The Consumer Answers Some Questions for Jantzen,” Printers' Ink
19 (1929), 49-50.

7. Steven Heller and Louise Fili, Euro Deco: Graphic Design between the Wars (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004), 6; and IN Steven Heller and Louise Fili, Deco Espana (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997), 13.

8. Adams, “The Consumer Answers Some Questions for Jantzen,“ 49.

9. Patricia Johnston, Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography"
(University of California Press: 1997), 27.

10. John Hansel Jr., “The Use of Color in Newspaper Advertising," N.W. Ayer & Son, Inc.,
McCormick Research Center, Wheaton, IL, Series Xi, Box 12, Folder 4, Business Manager's
Files, 1926-1955, in Proceedings of the Newspaper Color Conference (Chicago Tribune, 1936),
25.

11. AA. Snyder, “Retail Advertisers Are Apathetic to Prospective Use of Color,“ Editor &
Publisher (1 931 ).

12. lbid.

13. Johnston, Real Fantasies: Edward Steichen's Advertising Photography, 130.
14. The New York Times, "Color ’Ads' for Dailies,“ 1923, 13.

15. Bymes, “The Growth of Color Advertising in Newspapers,” McCormick Research
Center, Wheaton, IL, Series Xi, Box 12, Folder 4, Business Manager's Files, 1926-1955.

16. Chicago Tribune, “Real Agents of Prosperity,“ 1931, 14.

17. Robert M. Lee, “Color! A Drama of Printing New Sunday Tribune," Chicago Tribune,
1934, 1.

149

 

18. “Tribune Photo Studio, Specializing in Color Work, Moves to Spacious Quarters on
20th Floor,“ 1934, 5; Philip Kinsley, “Men Who Make Tribune Make It a Life Career,“ Chicago
Tribune, 1934G3.

19. Chicago Tribune, “Chicago Tribune General Advertising Rates: Revised August 1,
1931“; McCormick Research Center, Wheaton, IL, (1929).

20. Chicago Tribune, “Go Out and Fight, ls Col. McCormick's Word to Business“,
January 9, 1931, 6.

21. Bymes, “The Growth of Color Advertising in Newspapers, McCormick Research
Center, Wheaton, IL, Series Xi, Box 12, Folder 4, Business Manager's Files, 1926-1955,“ 7.

22. Chicago Tribune,“ Something New in Printing,“ February 23, 1932, 12.

23. lbid., 12.

24. “Four Colors—on News-Print,“ The Inland Printer 101, no. 2 (1938), 42.

25. “Real Agents of Prosperity,“ 14; and IN Kinsley, “Men Who Make Tribune Make It a
Life Career,“ G3; U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Census Browser (1910),

fisherJib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/county.php

26. Chicago Tribune, “Something New in Printing,“ 12; and IN Charles Leavelle, "Tribune
Makes Vast Strides in Pictorial Field,“ Chicago Tribune, 1942.

27. Jerome E. Edwards, The Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick's Tribune, 1929 - 1941
(Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1971), 91.

28. Edwin Emery, History of the American Newspaper Publishers Association
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1950), 222-223.

29. Chicago Tribune, “Otto Wolf, 74, Printing Press Genius, Is Dead,“ March 1, 1959, 39.

30. W.J. Bymes, “Survey of Two-Color Run-of-Paper," McCormick Research Center,
Chicago Tribune Archives, Xi Business Manager Files, 1926-1955. (Chicago: Chicago Tribune,
1931)

31. Round Table Discussion, Proceedings of the Newspaper Color Conference,

McCormick Research Center, Chicago Tribune Archives, Xi Business Manager Files, 1926-1955
(Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1931), 37, 46-52.

150

CHAPTER VIII: THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE’S INVENTION OF
COLOR LETTERPRESS—CHANGING AESTHETICS

Given the popularity of the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday newspaper with art
reproductions and photographs, it also added color to its front-page political
cartoons on weekdays and increased circulation in the Great Depression.‘ Made
possible with Otto R. Wolf‘s invention of the multicolor letterpress in 1932, color
cartoons caused a paradigm shift that streamlined news graphics (See Appendix
A).

The first front-page color cartoon was designed by editorial artist Carey C.
Orr on May 5, 1932, and he was central to changing the genre to evoke quick
reactions in readers.2 With Orr’s sleek new style based on the symbolic language
of colors and shapes (See Figure 23), he initiated the end of a cartoon method
influenced by centuries of woodcuts, abundant in details, bearing thought,
attention and time to discern their meanings (See Figure 24). In his 46-year
tenure at the Chicago Tribune beginning in 1917, Orr served as a chief editorial
cartoonist, received a Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and mentored dozens of artists in
news and entertainment cartooning.3

Woodcuts Influenced Early Photoengraving—A Passing News Genre

Up until the 18903 when photomechanical engraving allowed illustrations
to be mass-produced, pictorial journalism relied on the art of woodcuts for
recreating pictures in periodicals. Ever since the first woodcut was published in
an English broadside in the sixteenth century,4 publishers have employed
craftsman to use this ancient Chinese art form. The lapse in time from the first

woodcut in China in the ninth century to its mechanical employment in printing in

151

England seven hundred years later was due primarily to inadequate paper
making.5

A comparatively inexpensive art, the woodcut evolved into wood-
engraving—the most popular method used by newspapers and periodicals
between the 18303 and 18803. (It was called “engraving,” but it was the relief
method of etching).6 Wood-engraving used by the popular press required only a
block of hard wood, usually from the boxwood tree, and a graver—a steel rod
with an oblique, sharp edge. Working across the grain, the graver would shape a
basic image and create details with narrowly cut raised lines in the wood block.
The printer coated the relief image with ink and pressed paper against it.

An artist created perspective and contrast by employing a range of
techniques that varied the quantity, length and direction of lines. One technique
known as “crosshatching,” for example, is used for shading an area. An artist
drew two sets of diagonal lines: one set of diagonal lines slanted one direction;
Another set of diagonals were drawn on top of the first set, slanting the opposite
direction. This resulted in a dense set of crisscrosses in an area and produced
textured qualities, and a deepening of tones.7

Photoengraving in the latter part of the nineteenth-century used acid
chemicals and gelatine to replace the graver tool, and zinc and copper plates to
replace wood blocks. The chemical images on metal plates still stood in relief.
Newspapers routinely duplicated their metal plates in order to run several
presses at the same time. A paper mache mixture was pressed down into the

crevices between the raised areas of the images to form a mold, known as a

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“mat" or “matrice,” which was curved in the shape of a rotating cylinder. The mat
was baked, and then metal castings, known as “stereotypes,” were made from
the curved molds to duplicate the original plates.8

Relevant to this study and the color letterpress, stereotype plates and
mats did not produce high-quality halftones. Low- and mid-quality halftones were
abundant in newspapers in the first three decades of the twentieth century and
were pervasive in the Chicago Tribune, but their inadequate effects were not
employed for the central focal point of the newspaper. An illustrated line drawing
produced a faster, more effective overnight picture on the front page than
unrefined photographs. The line drawings could roll off the presses thirty-minutes
after being created, while a high-resolution halftone required a metal stereotype
plate and lengthier press preparations.9

The average daily Chicago Tribune in the 19203 used fifty small editorial
halftones on its inside pages and approximately 25 editorial illustrations
dominated its section covers and features. The Sunday paper contained
approximately 150 halftones and 50 illustrations.10 Consequently, the Chicago
Tribune’s 1932 color letterpress invention needed to integrate the complex
elements of halftones, headlines and stories, and not slow down production. A
simpler method that applied tone with blocks of color inside line drawings was
called for, and shading through the crosshatching technique became obsolete.

To place color over an area already deepened with crosshatched lines
would have been redundant, and the two techniques—color blocks for a modern

aesthetic and dense black Ink lines from a dated technique—would have yielded

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competing effects. Additionally, since black ink does not reflect light, the greater
the density of black ink in an area combined with colors, also results in reduced
color. Color is light. And ink colors combined with black reduce the amount of
reflected light waves that are electromagnetic energy. The greater the color, the
greater its energizing effect on readers.11 As a result Orr interpreted the
invention’s intended aesthetic to: 1) reflect colors that convey the emotional and
ideological essence of the editorial message; 2) reduce the competing effects of
two discrete drawing techniques—wood-cuts versus modern color; 3) minimize
details to facilitate understanding; 4) differentiate meanings and increase
understanding with multiple colors.

In other aspects of the art world, aesthetics were modernizing, however
contentiously. This was the age of Pablo Picasso, whose simplicity of line drove
modern thought. Cartoons were evolving, along with the social forces affecting
the rest of the nation. Photography critic Henry Holmes Smith observed that at
the turn of the century art teachers in America were found “napping,” for they
missed the individual expressiveness of the modernist movement.

During the same period that Picasso, Braque, and others became the

laughing stock of America—sophisticated, prewar America with its Turkey

Trot and its Bunny Hug and Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan—two

tremendous folk media sprang into public favor: the comics and the

movies.12
Drawing Them Into Democracy—Opposites Attract
Orr drew readers into the democratic discourse of public affairs by

polarizing the issues. If readers disagreed with his conservative political views,

he provoked them; If they agreed with him, they relished in his humor. The use of

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moderate subtle caricatures would have imposed on readers the necessity to
pause and study pictures. Thus, he employed a figurative “vehicle" to transport
his visual ideas. Animals and family scenes were most often the vehicles of
choice, due to their familiarity to most readers.

A complex idea, then, was translated into a simple action, or antic, of an
animal, family matter or other familiar situation. For example, Orr attacked lavish
spending practices during President Harry Truman’s Administration by dressing a
colt in a mink coat, interpreting the clothes horse as the Democratic Party’s
symbolic equivalent of a donkey. These figurative vehicles employed the
metaphorical art of the synecdoche, which allowed a part to stand for a whole
situation or condition.” A fierce black bear epitomized the Soviet Union’s
dangerous level of aggression; a sitting lion characterized England’s resolute yet
passive grandeur.

The impact of simple lines and colors brought a stunning break with the
past to capture the essence of an editorial view of a turbulent, complicated
environment, altering the domestic and lntemational fronts. Orr reduced the
Soviet Union's hunger for more territory to a synecdoche of an animal in the wild
feeding on prey. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon in 1960, The Kindly Tiger,
he interpreted the expansion of communism with its promises of good will in
Africa, as a ferocious, salivating animal poised on its haunches.”

He viewed editorial cartooning, as a news editorial article that was
reduced to a one-sentence caption.IS While Orr could draw a cartoon in fifteen or

thirty minutes, he labored over the captions, said his youngest grandson, Carey

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Orr Cook, retrospectively considering the artist’s creative process. An avid
reader, Orr brought perspective into his cartoons by routinely studying
etymological dictionaries to discover the roots and essences of word meanings,
and he explored political and Biblical histories for analogous conditions and
figures.

He would reflect on historical events — the French Revolution and the

...history of Rome in ten volumes, and when he was finished, he would go

back and read the first one [volume]. The ideas would show up artistically

as the gates of the Roman Coliseum, or as Pericles, or as a reference to

Corinthians.’ 6

Shaw McCutcheon, who served as an editorial artist for the Spokesman-
Review in Spokane, Washington, after Orr mentored and taught him cartooning
in the late 19403, observed his use of large figures in the center of a composition,
and that “his war cartoons were very powerful type of cartoons that color could
enhance."'7

Orr was very good and very fast. He knew how to get an idea and how to

plan it out. It’s a one line editorial. No if’s and an’s. The govemment’s

action was good. The government’s action was bad. The more you knew

the people you were drawing, the more helpful it was to do the cartoon

about them. '8

The sleek oppositional aesthetic melded with the ethos of the strife-ridden
Jazz Age and the powerful dynamics of the Machine Age.

The Discomfort of a New Paradigm

Shaw McCutcheon was the son of John T. McCutcheon, the chief editorial

cartoonist at the Chicago Tribune, whose leadership of the artistic team preceded

Orr’s.l9 The elder McCutcheon won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for his black-and-

white cartoon, A Wise Economist Asks a Question. His cartoon version of a

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Great Depression economist was a squirrel, whose sagacity was implied through
its instinctive conduct of hoarding a bounty of nuts for the winter months. The
wise squirrel conversed with a down-and-out man seated on a park bench,
whose savings did not survive the 1929 Stock Market crash.

John T. McCutcheon was born in 1870 and began cartooning for the
Chicago Tribune in 1903, after working at the Chicago-Record.20 His drawings,
lnjun Summer and The Colors were among the most popular cartoons in the first
half of the twentieth-century. Orr, who was twenty years younger, was hired at
the Chicago Tribune on the brink of World War I, in 1917, to increase the editorial
cartooning staff, and he rotated the daily responsibility for creating the front-page
picture with McCutcheon.“

When Shaw McCutcheon returned to Chicago in the late 19403 after
military service in World War II, he asked Orr to give him drawing lessons, as the
elder McCutcheon was retired and ill. Orr completed his daily cartoon by three-
o’clock in the afternoon, and the hopeful artist dropped by once a week for a
drawing lesson. A former student at Harvard University and Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, the young McCutcheon felt impelled toward art with the
individual expressiveness that arose In wartime and romance. He was poised
between the paradigms of two eminent cartoonists: His father’s influential talent
with the aesthetic of wood-engraving and woodcuts, and his mentor, Orr, a
pioneer in the reductive language of modern color. Shaw McCutcheon contrasted
t22

his father’s complexity to Orr's spare modern treatmen

When he (John T. McCutcheon) used colors, and he was not a color man
himself, it was pretty much flat colors. Santa Claus had a red jacket, and it

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was just red. The sky was blue, so it was blue. Carey Orr was more color
conscious, so he used variations of a color. Rarely a flat color and that
would go very well with his cartoons. But the cartoons, such as my fathers,
which had 50 or 100 little characters in them, colors aren’t going to add
anything to that.23
The elder McCutcheon believed that color distracted from the newspaper’s
editorial concepts interpreted with cartooning, his son said. Shaw McCutcheon
observed:
I think my father didn’t do the color work on that cartoon [The Colors] or on
other’s, too. It was done by the engraving department with, maybe, a
notation of what colors to use. Whereas, Carey Orr did the color work
himself in his office. He sent the cartoon down, and the engraving
department made a print of it and sent it back up to him on a glossy piece
of paper. And he—with watercolors—would put in the color with the great
color gradations, and send it back down to the engraving department.24
Orr’s affinity for modern aesthetics was commensurate with McCormick's
vision that “color must be as commonplace in the newspaper as elsewhere in
life."25 Orr, who was reared on a farm in Ohio, and spent his teen years working
at his father’s lumber mill in Washington State, also embodied a value important
to McCormick. “My grandfather was a Western man of self-sufficiency, and I think
he tried to embrace the colonel’s [McCormick] attitude in that regard,” his
grandson, Kimberly Orr Cook, said.26
The proliferation of the cartoons with oppositional contents spurred friends
and foes, and the Chicago Tribune often drove the news agenda. Time magazine
noted the Chicago Tribune’s ranting opposition to President Roosevelt’s New
Deal economic program and the Works Progress Administration. In a Time news

story, October 3, 1938, Grasshopper Bites Publisher, the Chicago Tribune’s

criticism of the WPA garnered national attention. Specifically, WPA Assistant

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Administrator Howard 0. Hunter offered a heated response to McCormick and

Orr’s editorial attacks:

Mr. Hunter’s real target was rich, Roosevelt-hating Publisher Robert
Rutherford McCormick, whom he brashly labeled “vicious” and “irrational.”
Other item: One Tribune article told of “Johnny," a young Italian “who has
never known any work but WPA“....WhiIe Chicago newspapermen
circulated the Hunter rebuttal among their friends, famed Tribune
Cartoonist Carey Orr continued to picture WPA as an improvident little
grasshopper, dressed in a high hat and picket sign. Aching to prove he is
no grasshopper, Georgia-bom, 430-year-old Howard Hunter, who has
spent one-third of all Federal money allotted to WPA in the last three
years, made a wisecrack worthy of Harry Hopkins by disclosing he
attributes his perfect complexion to the Tribune. “My stomach functions
perfectly and I never take salts," said he. “I just read the Tribune every
morning.”27

The Chicago Tribune generally published letters to the editor with

delivering the pros and cons of the New Deal. One sent Nov. 15, 1934, defended

Orr:

I noticed in the Nov. 10 issue you allowed several of the New Dealers to
run off at the mouth and give Carey Orr a good tongue lashing. In view of
this evidence that Orr is able to get under the skin of these dumb clucks, I
think he deserves a raise in salary.28

Cartoons At-A-Glance Cartoons: Trouble With The Weather

Orr could ably boost morale for the war effort for readers, skimming their

morning papers and quickly reviewing the front-page cartoon. On January 9,

1942, he set an upbeat tone and agenda for the readers with his depiction of a

turn in events for the Allies (See Figures 23 and 24). The central placement of

the cartoon under the headlines tells readers the high priority of the editorial

message and the artist. A reader is more likely to look at the cartoon before

reading the headline, depending on the literacy level or interest, but at a glance,

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both can be observed. The cartoon attracts viewers’ by its colors and the actions
of the figure, and the content can be grasped with low literacy abilities.

A caricature of Old Man Winter is formed out of snow to represent the
Allied forces with moral authority'and righteous virtues. A soldier in a green
military uniform and a red insignia represents Germany’s expansion of Nazi evils
and totalitarianism. The cartoon’s caption is placed like a third headline on the
front page, and it runs horizontally across the top of the picture’s rectangular
window. The cartoon spans four news columns. Set in capital letters the caption
dealt with the Allies victories in Russia, having thwarted Germany’s march to
Moscow: “GOING TO HAVE A LOT OF TROUBLE WITH THE WEATHER
FROM NOW ow”

The main and secondary headlines focus on different theaters of the war,
the victorious assault on the Japanese fleet at Wake Island in the northern
Pacific Ocean: “Full Diary of Wake Heroes!" and the secondary headline: “Navy
Reveals story of Defenders: Jap Losses: 7 Warships.” The latter subhead
minimize the enemy with a pejorative treatment of the Japanese.

The cartoon sits within the context of other war stories providing details of
the victories: Day By Day Epic of ‘Last Stand’ on Pacific Isles and U. S.
Submarine Sinks 4 More of Fee’s Craft are positive but introduce the possibility
that the United States could be invaded. A news roundup of war briefs is on the
immediate left, and the story’s lead opens with more successes on Wake Island.
Only the second to the last paragraph discusses the victory at Sevastopol in the

Soviet Union—the topic of the drawing. Articles on Sevastopol require jumping to

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the inside pages. The only negative news has been buried at the bottom of the
news roundup. The escape of the Axis powers’ in Libya were due to the rains
and “howling sandstorms" that set back the British.

The story of the far left, "House Divests La Guardia of Defense Power,"
deals with a U.S. Congressional struggle between the civilian and military sector
for control of defense funds. Underneath the drawing are two domestic stories:
one offers melodramatic news about a teen-age divorcee who commits suicide,
while her two canaries sing. Another, reports on suggested delays in milk
delivery to save money on labor and fuel.

In short, the intellectual and emotional content surrounding the cartoon
support the thrill and strength of a turnaround for the Allies at war, and negative

news requires a closer look amid the buoyant headlines.

    

Figure 21 . Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942. An
editorial cartoon created by Carey C. Orr and printed
on a color letterpress invented by Otto R. Wolf, and his
colleagues at the Chicago Tribune.

161

t ’4‘; Indr- ar noun: my tummy»; ».

m‘ 4 .‘
. x
\

   

Figure 22. Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1942. An enlargement of the editorial
cartoon in the above picture, created by Carey C. Orr to bolster morale for the
Allies as they pushed back Germany’s march to Moscow during Worid War II.

 

 

1925. An editorial cartoon created by Carey C.
Orr, in a style influenced by woodcuts and
wood-engraving. The picture depicts the
artist’s faml and house in Wilmette, Illinois, at
Christmas.3

162

Inside the Cartoon Window

The topic of the cartoon was the Allied victory against Germany’s drive
across Europe straight into Moscow (See Figure 24). At Sevastopol, the Allies
and the brutal Russian winter beat back Germany. Without being literate, a
viewer can easily see a green military uniform on a soldier with a red Nazi
insignia, and see him falling helplessly toward the fires of hell, with a pitchfork
facing him. A red scarf around the Nazi's neck directs the viewer’s eyes to the
central area of the cartoon. Old Man Winter is not caricatured as feeble but as
representing the Allies indomitable force, and the natural authority of winter: The
text “Moscow winter” has been written on his white coat.3|

The emotional tenor is inscribed on the sign tied to a pitch fork and reads
“The Give ‘Em Hell Spirit." Another sign, driven into the snow on a stake,
“America Turning on the Heat,” reclaims the invaded territory. Old Man Winter
bearded in snow kicks the Nazi into Hell. The Nazi’s green military uniform and
his red neck scarf are the predominant colors seen against white snow.

Only two large figures are in this cartoon, set against a wash of an icy
white oceanic background. The snow at the bottom of the drawing rest on pink
and red flames of Hell, and pink streams in the snows in the middle suggest the
blood of thousands of Allies fallen in the campaign against Germany. The blue
boots worn by Old Man Winter and the blue sky offer hope and suggest martial
strength, compared to the pink, red, and yellow inferno facing the weakened
Nazi. Old Man Winter’s icicle runs on a diagonal line from the upper right corner

to his left boot, and the Nazi falls toward the left comer of the page. The cartoon

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has two separate areas, that are not overtly noticeable, but nevertheless, the
diagonal separates the white snows of moral purity from evil green Nazi and the
fires of Hell. The cartoon celebrates the thrill of hard-won victories.

At a glance Orr’s watercolor draws an editorial message about America’s
will to win after the crushing attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941. A black-and-white
cartoon could not have suggested blood and fire without the spare brush strokes
of pink and red, or readily differentiate a Nazi soldier from an American soldier
without scrutiny. The colors effortlessly frame the forces of good and evil, and
right and might against inhumanity and weakness. Thus, colors are a tool to
symbolically design an editorial on America’s will to win and the realization of
victory out of that spirit. The colors exude an energy that wakes up readers to the
moming’s editorial view of a better world.32

Carey C. Orr’s Rise and Influences

Two months before the United States entered World War I, the Chicago
Tribune anticipated its needs for increased graphics on foreign affairs and hired
Orr, a young fire-brand from the Nashville Tennessean. Newly graduated from
the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Orr had saved up his earnings from playing
semi-professional baseball to attend art school. He had already published
cartoons as a free-lance artist for national magazines, and an intern for Chicago
Record-Herald.

U.S. Senator Luke Lea owned the Nashville Tennessean, and he used the
paper to attack his leading opponent and news competitor, Major E. B.

Stahlman.33 Orr drew 91 cartoons in a row against Stahlman in 1912, and the

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victimized publisher whose paper had the larger circulation at the time, launched
a bitter character attack against the artist. Readers ran to buy the Nashville
Tennessean to see Orr’s cartoons themselves, and its circulation doubled. Front-
page editorial cartoons struck emotional chords and meant big business.

McCormick, who believed that cartoons “presented their political
messages much more quickly than did editorials,” hired Orr to draw readers into
critical public affairs issues.34 The Chicago Tribune’s editorial cartoons were
central components of each news section’s cover page. Orr's post followed on
the heels of the second-most noted cartoon crusade against political corruption in
the United States—the purchased election of U.S. Senator William Lorrimer, a
Chicago Republican Party boss.

The Chicago Tribune’s chief editorial cartoonist, who took on Lorrimer,
was McCutcheon, who was broadly popular for his gentler human-interest
drawings. He speared Lorimer for several years before the U.S. Senate finally
removed him from office. While other periodicals gave considerable attention to
the corruption, such as Cosmopolitan’s noted literary series, “Treason in the
Senate,” the Chicago Tribune’s work stood alongside Thomas Nast’s cartoons on
Tammany Hall in the nineteenth-century, for they successfully pictured the
essence of the corruption.” With that kind of success, McCormick redoubled his
pictorial thrust.

Orr attacked Chicago’s organized crime syndicate, and its best-known
leader, Al Capone in the late 19203 and early19303. Hi3 cartoons placed his

family and McCormick’s at risk. Orr's youngest daughter, Mrs. Henry Carson

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Jackson, recalled the dangers the cartoons brought to her family and to the
publisher, although she paid little attention to it as a child:

I can remember how impressed I was when the Colonel would be driven

up to the Tribune, because he had a bullet-proof car. I can remember

when l was in first grade, Daddy did some cartoons about the gangs there.

They wrote to Daddy and told him, if he didn't stop they were going to get

his children. I remember mother one time started taking us to school, and

the school was three blocks away. And children teased me, because I was

such a baby that Momma had to take me. I told my mother, ‘I didn’t like

that a bit,’ because they were teasing me. And she said, ‘All right. Just

know if anyone comes up in a car, you get as far away as you can. ...But

they threatened Daddy. I remember mother taking me for a while [to

school].36

The criminal gang leader, Alphonse Capone, was convicted of tax evasion
in 1931, and although he fought the ruling, he was sent to jail, prior to the global
community's convergence on Chicago to attend the spectacular 1933 World's
Fair.’7

Daily Editorial Board Meetings

McCormick's enthusiasm for Orr’s cartooning was unquenched, and he
spontaneously delivered the artist his ideas in memos, even though they
conversed daily at editorial board meetings. Orr shared the publisher’s political
sentiments, but not his cartoon ideas. The artist‘s talent energized McCormick.
The atmosphere was fervent with creativity, even if some of the ideas made the
artist cringe. Orr’s oldest daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Jane Cook, said that the
publisher and Orr had a deep respect for each other, and her father’s art was
never censored or altered prior to publication.

They had an editorial conference every day, and my father was there and

talked about the events of the day, and what was coming up, and no one
ever told my father what to do, or suggested it. But every once in a while,

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the colonel would have some [artistic] thought...and my father would say

with a twinkle in his eye, that he was trying to draw something

[the colonel conceived].38

McCormick did, however, derive so much enjoyment from his own
spontaneous cartoon ideas, that he frequently offered them to Orr. He noted
them in memos, with the figurative analogies. He imagined a prohibition figure as
an old-maid aunt on June 25, 1928: and wanted to contrast a competent woman

driver compared to incompetent captains and workers on ships in the 19203:

Dear Cary: [sic] Has anybody used the character “Aunty" for such
organizations as the anti-saloon league—the anti-rodeo league?39

Six weeks later, Orr attempted an “Aunty Saloon League” idea and
introduced the cartoon character once, and she did not reappear again in 1928.
The Aunty Saloon League cartoon showed the aunt receiving a bouquet of roses
with exaggeratedly long thorns from President Herbert Hoover. The thorns
represented organized crime, implied by their snapshots hung on her living room
walls. “Ouch," read the caption.

The concentrated attention on editorial news pictures, became too intense
for readers, and content broadened in the 19303. While McCormick was
vacationing in Aiken, South Carolina in the 19303, he sent Orr a note asking him
to create a political cartoon only every other day. That led to color cartooning to
increase war bonds, and funds for veterans, the American Red Cross, Chicago
Boy Scouts and indigent children and families. The Chicago Tribune published
thousands of extra copies of his color cartoons to give away to uplift spirits of
workers in factories supporting the war. In 1955, the Freedoms Foundation

honored Orr for his “contributions to American life."40

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Influences of Orr’s Childhood on Art

Orr’s first and most important art lessons came during his childhood,
where he strengthened his talent by drawing the animals on his family’s farm,
and the citizens of nearby Uniopolis, Ohio. Orr’s rural background shaped his art,
and In turn affected his talent for guiding aspiring cartoonists. The unsettled
forests of west central Ohio in the late nineteenth century spilled over with wild
life that far outnumbered the hunters, lumberjacks, and farmers. Wild turkeys ran
amid the deer and raccoons. The gray squirrels—and some black squirrels
jockeyed up the walnut trees. Wild ducks dove for fish in the Scioto and Hog
Creek marshes teeming in rattlesnakes."I

Carey Cassius Orr was born in rural Ada, Ohio, on January 17, 1890, to a
sawmill owner, Cassius Perry Orr, and Martha A. Rinehart. The chief business in
Ada was lumbering. The forests lands were plentiful, and residents felled the
finest beech, ash, and hickory trees to burn in winter months. At age eighteen,
Martha married Cassius in her hometown of Uniopolis, twenty-five miles
southwest of Ada, where her parents owned a farm. While Martha survived
childbirth in 1890, she died one year later of an illness that caused her to choke.
Cassius left his youngest boy, the future artist, to the care of his diseased wife’s
parents. The local sawmill was no longer thriving, and Cassius P. Orr pushed
westward to seek his fortune and a new life.42 Two-hundred people lived in
Uniopolis, and to the precocious boy, the little town delivered a rich source of
stories. Looking back on his early influences, Orr noted In a rare autobiographical

essay:

168

There was a blacksmith In Uniopolis, an amazing fellow. He was able to

repair anything; and how he could make the sparks fly. A hotel was there,

also a restaurant, two general stores, two churches a large grain elevator,
and a barber shop, where on Saturdays farmers met with townspeople to
discuss politics, swap lies, and tell jokes...There also was a saloon in the
village, well patronized by the owner himself, and women folk always
walked past it on the opposite side of the street.”

Orr was reared by his grandparents, Arnold and Rebecca Rinehart, on
their farm. As soon as he was old enough, he Ieamed to strap a horse to a
wagon and handle tools and machinery. The boy felt needed and useful.“

The farmhouse was built one-half mile back from the turnpike to avoid the
migrant laborers and hoboes that strayed through the countryside, and knocked
on doors. One homeless and hungry drifter knocked on the Rinehart farmhouse
one evening before dinner and asked to stay. There was a rule against letting
strangers in the house, but Orr noted that he and his grandmother, asked him to
stay. The stranger carried paper and crayons as he traveled, and he began
drawing a portrait of Jesus at the farmhouse. Excited by the man’s talent, the
family offered him dinner. Orr received his first art lesson at age seven or eight
from this important stranger, and the youth went on a drawing “binge" that never
left him: “I was enthralled by his ability to draw. I would rather have been that
tramp than President Grover Cleveland," Orr wrote, reflecting on the inspiration
he received from an indigent and hungry man."5

Orr drew the people of Uniopolis and the animals he found. Without formal
studies and the resource of artist models, the muscularity and action of wild and

domestic animals offered a steady stream of superlative substitutes. His

grandson, Kim Cook, said his preference for animals was evident in his

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discussions on art and in his cartoons. “Drawing animals was good for an artist,”
Orr advised.“5

Carried away by his creativity, Orr's young life was dealt a challenge he
kept hidden from public attention. While he was whittling with a long tree limb, his
accidentally ran his narrow spear against a tree trunk and It snapped backward
and punctured his left eye. The young artist’s eye was surgically removed, and
Orr wore a glass eye throughout his life. His artistic compositions never favored
one side of a page. His grandson, Kimberly Orr Cook, was in awe: “It was
amazing what he could do with one eye.“7

By his teen years, Orr’s father in Spokane had established himself, and he
asked his boy to move West. Orr played baseball at Spokane High School, and
he joined a semi-professional team, where he was a star pitcher. In 1911, he
earned $75 a game for the semi-pros. By high school graduation he saved $650,
and enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied cartooning
with Frank King, creator of a popular comic strip, Gasoline Alley.48

When Orr was hired at the Chicago Tribune in 1917, he also taught art
one night week at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Young Walt Disney, 3
student at McKinley High School in Chicago, aspired to be an editorial cartoonist,
and his model, was Orr. l-le enrolled in Orr’s course.49 In 1918, when Disney
volunteered to work for a Red Cross Ambulance Unit In France in World War I,
he bought a Collie pup and named him “Carey,” and slipped him into the
bandage bag he carried on emergency runs,50 according to Disney biographer,

Bernice Selden. Disney spoke frequently about Orr’s influence on his life. In

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1961, Orr was featured on the NBC television show, This Is Your Life. Disney
attended a party afterward for Orr given by the Association of American Editorial
Cartoonists. Disney spoke with Shawn McCutcheon about Orr, the elder
McCutcheon, and how much he had wanted to be an editorial cartoonist. Disney
said in a news interview:

It was while I was art editor of the McKinley High School paper, Voice, that

Carey Orr was doing a strip in the Tribune called ’The Tiny Tribune.’ I

copied him closely and called my strip ’The Tiny Voice.’ Later, as a

student at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, I’d bring my work to the

Tribune art department for criticism from Orr and the other cartoonists.

Their encouragement did the trick. I’ve been cartooning ever since!51

Orr’s modernism shaped the style of dozens of entertainment artists. He
mentored his niece, Martha Orr, and helped her conceive Apple Mary, based on
the life of an indigent woman during the Great Depression, who sold apples at
the Chicago Tribune. Apple Mary later evolved into another successful series,
Mary Worth.”

He helped Chester Gould envision his successful comic strip Dick Tracy,
by encouraging him to work from real-life characters. After work, Orr took Gould
to the Chicago police station to observe the people and actions for the famous
detective strip. Thereafter, the two artists made frequent visits to the station after
work.53 Joseph M. Patterson, editor of the New York Daily News and co-publisher
of the Chicago Tribune in the 19203 and early 19303, cultivated Dick Tracy and
other syndicated comics. For artistic questions, the creators commonly
consulted, Orr, the senior cartoonist. “He would have two or three artists around

the dining room table. That’s where he would be teaching...l would walk through

and see them,” Mrs. Dorothy Cook said.54

171

Creativity thrived at the Chicago Tribune on and off the job. Orr’s
daughter, Mrs. Dorothy Cook, recalled:

I remember my parents taking me to Chester Gould’s country home out in

the suburbs in the 19303. We passed a graveyard, where he had buried

all the people he had killed in his comic strip. There was Gravel Gertie! 55

The Chicago Tribune’s employee-inventors kept their imaginations active
after the workday ended. Orr had a noted woodworking shop at home, and he
used it for civic and national causes, as well as for making toys. He built a gun
that shot a lasso instead of bullets, and he used It for hunting a mountain lion in
1929. He captured a small lion and donated her to Chicago’s Brookfield 200.56
By World War II, Orr’s woodworking shop had received ample attention. A
physicist at Northwestern University visited Orr in his workshop in the evenings.
Dr. Paul E. Klopsteg and Orr worked for months — through an operative of the
U.S. govemment—on a project for the British government in need of a novel
weapon to soundlessly shoot lethal darts.57

Orr and his Inventive Chicago Tribune colleagues placed no physical and
intellectual boundaries on their creative talents. Creativity thrived among the
employees at the Chicago Tribune in the post-World War I era. And Orr, unable
to serve in the military, routinely inspired his grandsons with patriotic comments
on the greatness of democracy and American citizens, who pulled together to
help one another.58 Orr brimmed with a Midwestemer’s hopeful outlook, and

persisted, despite the personal and political weathers of fate.

172

 

Notes

1. Jerome E. Edwards, The Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick's Tribune, 1929 - 1941.
(Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1971), 1, 36.

2. Carey C. Orr, “The Real Issue in Washington,“ Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1932.

3. Chicago Tribune, “The Kindly Tiger,“ May 5, 1960; and IN Vincent Butler, “Carey Orr
Wins Pulitzer Cartoon Prize,“ Chicago Tribune, 1961.

4. Mason Jackson, The Pictorial Press (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885; reprint, The
Pictorial Press. New York: Burt Franklin,1969), 4.

5. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1996), 16.

6. Ibid. (Berkeley, CA), 6.
7. lbid., 22-23.

8. Pictured Encyclopedia of the World’s Greatest Newspaper (Chicago: The Tribune
Company, 1928), 706-706; and IN Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 16.

9. Pictured Encyclopedia of the Worid's Greatest Newspaper (Chicago: The Tribune
Company, 1928), 706-709.

10. lbid., 227.

11. Kenneth F. Hird, Offset Lithographic Technology (Chicago: Goodheart-Willcox
Publisher, 2000), 148.

12. James Enyeart and Nancy Solomon, eds. Smith, Henry Holmes, Collected Writings
1935-1985 (Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1986), 3.

13. Arthur Asa Berger, Media Research Techniques, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1998), 69.

14. Orr, “The Kindly Tiger.“

15. Shaw McCutcheon (son of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist John T.
McCutcheon), Telephone Interview with transcript, September 17, 2007.

16. Carey Orr Cook, Telephone Interview with transcript, November 9, 2006.
17. McCutcheon, Telephone Interview, September 17, 2007.
18. lbid.

19. Shaw McCutcheon, (son of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist John T.
McCutcheon), Telephone interview with transcript, December 1, 2006.

20. Chicago Tribune, “J.T. M’Cutcheon Lays Pen Aside for Retirement,“ April 29, 1946.

21. Chicago Tribune, “Carey Orr, 77, Tribune Cartoonist, Dies,“ May 17, 1967, 3.

173

 

22. McCutcheon, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 17, 2007.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.

25. Jerome E. Edwards, The Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick's Tribune, 1929 - 1941
(Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1971).

26. McCutcheon, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 17, 2007.

27. Time, “Grasshopper Bites Publisher,“ http:IIwww.Time.Comi'lime/MagazinelArticle/
0,9171 ,760265,00.html, October 3, 1938.

28. H.E.P., “Voice of the People,“ Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1934, 12.

29. Carey C. Orr, “Going to Have a Lot of Trouble with the Weather from Now On,"
(Chicago: Chicago Tribune,1942), 1.

30. Mrs. Henry Carson (Cherry Sue) Jackson (daughter of Chicago Tribune Editorial
Cartoonist Carey C. Orr), Telephone interview by author with transcript, May 8, 2008.

31. Carey Orr, “Going to Have a Lot of Trouble with the Weather from Now On,“ January
9, 1948, 1. See Note #29—which is correct?

32. lbid.

33. Carey Orr, "48 Years as Cartoonist—Orr’s Memoirs,“ Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1960,

34. Jerome E. Edwards, The Foreign Policy of Col. McCormick’s Tribune, 1929-1941
(Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1971 ).

35. Chicago Tribune, History of the Chicago Tribune (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1922),
72; and IN James Weber Linn, James Keeley Newspapennan (Indianapolis: The Bobbs—Merrill
Company, 1937), 158-159.

36. Mrs. Henry Carson Jackson (daughter of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey
C. Orr), Telephone interview by author with transcript, 2006. Says May 8, 2008 in #30

37. Paul S. Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 201 ), 104.

38. Dorothy J. Cook (daughter of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr),
Telephone Interview with transcript, September 22, 2006.

39. Robert R. McCormick Memo to Carey C. Orr, June 25, 2008. McCormick Research
Center, First Division Museum, Wheaton, IL. Series I-63, Robert R. McCormick Personal
Correspondence 1921-1955, Box 10, Diaries, 1928.

40. New York Times, “Carey Orr, 77, Tribune Cartoonist, Dies,“ May 17, 1967, 47; and IN
Chicago Tribune, “Two “Freedom Awards’ Won by Tribune," February 23, 1954, 16; and IN
“Baseball Led Him to Life Career as Cartoonist,“ May 2, 1961, 3; and IN Chicago Tribune,
“Inspiring Cartoon,“ February 25, 1942, 1; and IN Chicago Tribune, “Tribune Color Pages Play

174

 

Large Role In Boosting War Effort,“ August 12, 1942, 4; and IN Chicago Tribune, Help for
Bataan,“ December 5, 1943, 9.

41. Henry Solomon Lehre. “History of the O.N.U.", ed Kelly A. Wacker (Ohio Northern
University, 1888) httpzllwww/onu.edu/library/onuhistory/histomu/index.htm.

42. Mrs. Dorothy J. Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 22,
2006.

43. Carey C. Orr, “48 Years as Cartoonist—Orr's Memoirs,“ Chicago Tribune, May 28,
1960, 8.

44. lbid.
45. lbid.

46. Kimberly Orr Cook (grandson of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr),
Telephone Interview by author with transcript, October 22, 2006.

47. lbid., 27 October 2006.
48. Ibid.

49. Larry Wolters, “Disney Goes Like 60 on 60th Birthday,“ Chicago Tribune, December
7, 1961.

50. Bernice Selden. Walt Disney: An American Original (New York: Dell Publishing,
1989), 23.

51. Savage, “Tower Ticker,“ Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1949,26.
52. Ralph Edwards, This Is Your Life. (Los Angeles: WNBQ-NBC-TV, May 11, 1961).

53. Kimberly Orr Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript (grandson of
Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr), April 13, 2008.

54. Mrs. Dorothy J. Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript (daughter of
Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr), March 11, 2008; and IN Chicago Tribune,
“Carey Orr Makes Debut A3 Cover Illustrator,“ December 2, 1951, K6.

 

55. , Telephone Interview with transcript, June 18, 2008; and IN Mrs. Henry
Carson Jackson (daughter of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr) Telephone
Interview by author with transcript, September 22, 2006.

56. Chicago Tribune, “Orr’s Lion Hunt a Failure: Gun Broken by Bear,“ August 8, 1929, 8.

57. Mrs. Dorothy J. Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 28,
2006; and IN Kimberly Orr Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 28,
2006; and IN Carey Orr Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript,September 28, 2008.

58. Kimberly Orr Cook, Telephone Interview by author with transcript, September 28.
2006.

175

Chapter IX: Natural Color

To extend to readers visual experiences that were once enjoyed only by
the elite in society, the Chicago Tribune became the first to publish color pictures
on newsprint. The publisher, photographers and inventors went to extraordinary
lengths to use the finest color cameras long before color film was invented. Its
color photographs made with glass-plate negatives set news records: the first to
publish a color photo on newsprint; the first to publish a color photo
simultaneously with a news story; the first to combine the luminescence of color
rotogravure with a color camera known for its sensitivity to the colors of light.I

The Chicago Tribune painted with light and ink, combining a process of
three-color printing with three-color picture techniques with the BermpohI-Miethe
camera that captured images on glass plates. The Chicago Tribune heightened
the Image quality with talented color photographers, refined newsprint and vividly
mixed inks for the 5-cent price of a Sunday paper. This chapter surveys the
photography milestones and the context, from 1897 to its work In the 19203 and
19303. Visual historians Anthony J. Hamber and Louis Sipley have noted that
color photography drove color printing, but each process depended on the
other’s widening popularity. Nevertheless, the Chicago Tribune was not an
inventor of cameras, but Its talented photographers, such as Godfrey Lundberg,
improved components (Appendix A). The newspaper’s primary contribution was
to the art of making and reproducing color pictures. The pictures were critical to
breaking news, entertainment and charitable causes — all of which helped

democratize color.2

176

The industry publications, Editor 8 Publisher and the Inland Printer
accorded the Chicago Tribune the “pioneering” role for bringing color
photography to newsprint. The inland Printer, whose editor was the halftone
inventor, Stephen Horgan, went even further to address the Chicago Tribune’s
“technical and artistic perfection.”3 Time magazine described the publication’s
“imposing technical virtuosity."4

Twentieth Century

Photographer Edward H. Johnson was seen running from the Chicago
federal court house after it was bombed, September 14, 1918. As he fled to
develop his pictures a Secret Service officer tripped Johnson, who was mistaken
for the criminal. The photographer’s glass plates shattered on the courthouse
ground. He was nineteen years old, then, and an apprentice photographer for
several Chicago newspapers.S Twenty years later, after rising through the ranks
of the Chicago Tribune’s color photography staff, Johnson would still be using
glass plates, and not film, to take his pictures.

Sheets of color film were not widely available for professionals to process
In their own studios until 1946, when Ektachrome by Eastman Kodak, and Ansco
Color film by General Aniline and Film Corporation, became widely available.
However Eastman Kodak introduced Kodachrome, ten years earlier, for
amateurs who mailed the film for processing to the company’s headquarters in

Rochester, New York.6

177

Amateur photography was a burgeoning business with miniature cameras,
faster lenses, and color films. Eastman Kodak Co. introduced black-and-white
film for amateurs in 1901, In conjunction with its Brownie camera for $1, and the
Kodak camera, from $5 to $75. '

In 1910 a monochrome portrait developed on paper could be purchased
for $10, which amounted to two-and-a-half day’s wages of a typesetter, who
earned 50 cents an hour.7 Photographers in the early tvventieth-century made
monochrome prints on porcelain, or 24-carat-gold or platinum plates (or other
metals) and laboriously add tints by hand to the hair, face and clothes. The costs
ranged from $150 to $450 in 1931.8 But the invention of color film for amateurs
thirty years later brought a leap in photographic activity.

Between 1932 and 1938, camera clubs in the United States leaped from
100 to 500. The camera clubs attracted physicians, lawyers, business leaders,
and housewives with the leisure and means to devote to an expensive hobby.9
Miniature camera clubs were forming all over the nation in the mid-19303. Sipley,
observed the noted the phenomenon of Kodachrome in 1936:

The impact of Kodachrome on the professional field was both sudden and

far-reaching. At that time the Leica 35mm camera was enjoying its

greatest popularity, and miniature enthusiasts were spending thousands of
dollars on lenses, gadgets.”

Color images made by amateurs and the introduction of the first full-color
movie In 1935, “Becky Sharp,” preceded the film Inventions manufactured for
professionals and added pressure on publishers to meet consumers’ interests.‘I

Color film for professional use was invented by Eastman Kodak's

subsidiary in Germany in 1938, marketed as “Agfa Color” made by I. G. Farben,

178

and an affiliate, Ansco, in the United States. The U.S. government interceded
with Eastman Kodak’s work to escalate the processes of invention with
government chemists in order to cultivate color film production for military
purposes. By 1946, the U.S. military released the products for civilians.l2

With the invention of film for professionals the era of three-color glass
plate photography ended, and with it a cumbersome but highly sensitive method
of capturing natural light. An lntemational resurgence in three-color glass plate
photography has been rekindled in the twenty-first century, as artists and visual
historians gain appreciation for the relative purity of glass in its response to the
purity of light.‘3 The additive process of mixing primary colors with glass plates is
the same method used for projecting images on computers — both brilliant and
captivating achievements. ‘4

Unlike film that binds the three color filters together in one strip, glass
plate photography relied on the stillness of an image in order to form a sequence
of images. If the Chicago Tribune’s glamorous color photography studio had
made a portrait of eight-year-old Shirley Temple in 1935 instead of 1936, she
might have needed to hold her breath between the exposures of glass-plate
negatives (Figure 24).'5 But in 1936, the Chicago Tribune’s introduced its newest
custom-designed camera made in Berlin, and It could capture a color image with
one snap of the shutter, instead of three photos taken in succession.” A slight
movement of the person being photographed could change the picture
composition, and the separate Images, taken one at a time for each primary

color, could not be combined to create the illusion of one moment in time.

179

Until 1936, a color photo consisted of a series of three pictures taken in
succession with different light filters for red, green and blue.17 In the end, the
filtered light images would be added together to create “natural colors," as they
were once called, because they were true to life. What is simply called “color"
now, was once so rarely reproduced, it was called “natural color.” When the
Chicago Tribune purchased the first of many custom-built German color cameras
in 1921, the length between each color exposure was as long as 10 or 15
seconds, while the photographer changed glass filters and film plates. The
subsequent images needed to match.18

Glamour and secrecy surrounded the Chicago Tribune’s innovative color
photography studios in the 19303. The cameras were designed by one of the
foremost inventors of color photography, Adolf Miethe, and were built by Wilhelm
Bermpohl. After Miethe’s death in 1927, Bermpohl improved the registration,
which enhanced mass production of images created with his polychromatic
cameras that used dry glass plates.19

The first to reproduce color pictures on newsprint, beginning in 1897, the
Chicago Tribune guarded Its trade secrets.20 Although competing for readers’
attention with the advent of color movies, the Chicago Tribune reversed the
condition, and Hollywood depended on the newspaper for Its entertainment
listings, movie advertisements and features to popularize actors.

The photograph of Temple (Figure 19) gives an impression of a
transparent image. This Is due, In part, from the bleaching agents added to the

paper during manufacturing, which thinned it. The thin paper also shows the

180

printed ink from the back, but more importantly, the smooth, white paper reflects
more light waves directly off its surface, building the rich intensity of color. The
unique Bermpohl-Miethe camera, in the hands of a talented photographer, could

record true colors without distortion and reveal brilliant red tones (Figure 19).

 

Figure 24. A feature photo of Shirley Temple was taken by a staff photographer
and published in the Chicago Tribune Nov. 1, 1936. The Bermpohl-Miethe
camera was designed for the Chicago Tribune to tight registration.

The Chicago Tribune’s innovative photographers used cameras invented
by Adolf Miethe and custom built by Wilhelm Bermpohl in Berlin in the 19203 and
19303. Miethe was an evolutionary in color photography, according to visual

historian Pamela Roberts, who referred to his being one of the few inventors able

181

to capture colors representative of life.21 The Chicago Tribune undertook a
complex process requiring exacting accuracy. Roberts described the dozens of
steps used in the lengthy photographic process that did not include the
photoengraving and printing:
Tricolor printing processes on paper in the 19203 were not for the faint-
hearted, being complex, fiddly and largely un-automated. Although there
was a flourishing trade in color in portrait studios for those who could
afford it, color generally was expensive and the public was largely
disinclined to pay for it when a hand-colored monochrome portrait was
cheaper. Professional photographers usually stuck to monochrome rather
than master a multiple-exposure camera, involving two or three black-and-
white negatives shot through different-colored filters which then had to be
printed or laminated together to form an assembled color Image. The
various processes often involved more than 80 precise and exact steps
none of which could be omitted, and it could take up to 10 hours to make a
single print. Apart from the complex technology of the tricolor processes
there was also the expense.22
Photochemists Miethe and Arthur Traube in Berlin in 1902, discovered
that by using a red-violet dye on glass plates, known as ethyl red (made with
isocyanin, quinolin red, ammonia and water)23 that it was possible to correctly
balance all the tonal relationships of the three primary colors. Previous
photography was hindered by color distortions. Art historian Anthony Hamber
observed that it was not until Miethe that photographers were able to use
panchromatic plates to record oil paintings, and It was a milestone in art history.”
Experimental color portraits for the Chicago Tribune studios were first
taken with a camera that made autochrome pictures, which were used as guides
for assessing how the final product would look when taken with the Bermpohl-

Miethe camera (See Chapter I on autochromes in magazines). The weakness of

autochromes were their inabilities to withstand mass production and the reduced

182

quality on non-glossy papers, according to photography historians.25 The
Chicago Tribune’s publisher, Robert McCormick, regularly traveled to Europe to
assess cameras and other technologies, and see if there was a product the
newspaper could improve. He wrote his cousin, co-publisher Joseph Patterson,
in 1922:

I’m leaving tonight for Berlin to see still another three color camera and

also some method of etching colors the nature of which has not been

discussed to me. The Hamberg etching process apparently will not
stereotype [a processes necessary to newspaper production].26

With foreign correspondents’ and news photographers’ offices in Europe,
the Chicago Tribune established a pictorial syndicate, Pacific 8. Atlantic Photos.
Employees of Pacific 8. Atlantic Photos, in combination with inventors at the
Chicago Tribune, launched a series of inventions in 1919 to transmit trans—
Atlantic pictures by wireless (Appendix A, Patent US1538916), which were
patented in 1925.

Godfrey Lundberg, photographer and inventor, was Instrumental to the
Chicago Tribune ’3 color pictures. Married to the Chicago Tribune’s art critic,
Eleanor Jewett, he frequently traveled to Paris and Berlin to discover new and
better methods of color photography after World War I. His 1928 Invention
moved light filters through the camera more rapidly and enabled faster on-the-
scene color news photography (Appendix A, CA278601.)

He used the power and authority of color pictures to engage the public in
supporting civic charities. For example, In 1923 the Chicago Tribune started the

Golden Gloves amateur boxing matches to raise funds for disabled veterans of

World War I. To encourage readers to donate to the Dempsey versus Tunney

183

match In 1929, Lundberg published a color landscape of a wooded park that was
going to be founded for veterans' respite care with donations and attendance at
the match.27 Lundberg’s supervisor, Inventor John Park, described the
photographer’s activities in a memo to the publisher, who was in need of the
photographer's inventive mind in 1925:

You asked me yesterday what Mr. Lundberg was doing. He has made

several photographs of movie stars who have been in Chicago within the

last few weeks; he has also made a couple of color photographs for the

advertising Department to be used as examples. The above, of course,

are only occasional duties. His laboratory time has been taken up with

experiments of color prints on paper and revolving mirror ideas in his color

camera.28

Color Photography Spans Two Centuries

The Chicago Tribune featured three-color photography, beginning in the
nineteenth-century, using a similar method as the ones used in the 19203 and
19303. Glass plate color photography created the Chicago Tribune’s 1897 golden
anniversary edition that feature pictures of paintings. The three-color camera
used an additive process of primary colors with glass plates for its negatives.
This three-color photographic process was subsequently printed with a three-
color printing process on a flatbed press.29 The photographer for the Chicago
Tribune’s 1897 edition was Max Lau, previously assistant to inventor and
photographer William Kurtz, who demonstrated his technique for reproducing
color pictures in 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Sipley, director of American Museum of Photography in 1951, noted that

Horgan and Kurtz attempted to reproduce a color picture In the New York Herald

in 1894, a newspaper published by William R. Hearst. “Unfortunately presses in

184

newspaper use at the time were unsuited for color work," he observed in his
book, Half Century of Color.” Photography with glass plates for professional use
was carried into the twentieth-century.
Spot News

The Chicago Tribune’s photographic team spent three years trying to cut
down its color processing time to develop pictures overnight for publication the
next day. They experimented with photographing wildflowers in the spring 1937,
and adjusted the shutter speeds and glass-plate sensitivities for faster
exposures. In the course of three years, they were able to reduce the process of
photography and photoengraving down to twelve hours, instead of the customary
ten days to two months (Figure 25).” On May 11, 1939, the Chicago Tribune
photographed a $4 million grain elevator fire, which took the lives of nine men.
The story and photo were carried in the paper the following day, which was the
first time a color picture simultaneously was published with its textual news. The
photograph of the fire was reproduced the following month (Figure 25). The
photographers overcame the fury of the heat and wind, and turned a camera

created for still pictures into a force for news.32

185

I: ----- - ------ I (WW- WJW IEE

A COLOR PHOTO 'IHAT MADE NEWSPAPER HISTORY
F77 ”’“W‘” “Y

 

Inn-a. g. ”7'
héwmw-rfiuurt:m:g§- i.1...".;.~..::

.-_...... “a... .. ........_. _.

Figure 25. Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1939, by a staff photographer. The first
color photo that was printed simultaneously with its news story was published
May 12, 1939, and republished as seen above. At the base of the picture are
on-lookers.

Social Realism for Another Era
The Chicago Tribune’s Benin News Chief, Sigrid Schultz, arranged for
Bermpohl to design and build the camera,” at the same time she was writing
front-page news stories on German atrocities and interviewing Nazi generals.
Two weeks after the success of the Bermpohl camera in covering the grain-
elevator fire, McCormick wrote a memo to the Chicago Tribune business
manager:

Schultz Is our best correspondent. If she gets less than Darrah, bring her
up to him. If she gets the same, send her $100.00.34

A picture that was drawn, painted or photographed could have graphically
depicted any number of domestic or foreign issues, instead of art reproductions.
The grain elevator photograph began its news coverage with color. To dedicate

the labor, time and expense to produce a color photograph with troubling content

186

about the baser instincts of humanity was not a determinative value. There was a
deep social need for escape-Ism.

A content analysis of the art published on the covers of the picture
sections in the Chicago Tribune in the first six months of 1929, and the first six
months of 1934, found that there was a 37 percent decrease In realistic photos
and a 38 percent increase in drawings and paintings. The purposive sample
Included 51 section covers and 275 pictures (Appendix C). Art that could
decorate homes was preferred by readers—not affluent consumers who owned
original paintings—but those with aspirations for a better life. A photograph of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was retouched to remove any imperfections,
which was the customary treatment for all color photos (See Figure 26). The next
generation would add pictures of social realism to the news mix, but they would

already have the technological infrastructure to help them achieve their work.

187

KUN D 8008

 

FRANK
Democratic Candidate ior Reflection to b ’

Figure 26. Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1936, by Chicago
Tribune-Daily News Syndicate photographer Harry
Wamecke. This photograph of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt was retouched to create the impression of an oil
painting.

NOTES

 

1. “Four Colors-On News-Print," The Inland Printer, 101 no 2:42, May 1938; “The
Colonel's Century," Time, June 9, 1947, 60; and “McCormick Directs Tribune Under Medill
Traditions," Editor & Publisher, March 8, 1947, 11

2. ".Tribune Photo Studio, Specializing in Color Work, Moves to Spacious Quarters
on 20th Floor,“ The Trib, August 1935, 4- 5.

 

3. Four Colors—On News-Print, 1938; and “The Colonel's Century," 1947,42; and
“McCormick Directs Tribune Under Medill Traditions," 1947, 72.

4. Ibid.

5. .“Edward Johnson, 58, News Camera Man." New York Times, April 9. 1956,
27.

6. Louis Walton Sipley, A Half Century of Color (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1951)145-150.

188

 

7. J.L., “Prices for Photographs,“ New York Times, February 1, 1910, 8.

8. Harold A. Stewart to Joseph M. Patterson, July 22, 1931. Lake Forest College,
Donnelley and Lee Library, Lake Forest, IL, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Box 58, Folder 6,
Series 4, Subseries 1.

9. John Markland, “‘Miniature’ Camera Gains,“ New York Times, December 8, 1935, 14.

10. Sipley 1951, 145.

11. Sipley 1951, 145-149.

12. lbid.

13. Congress, Library of. The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii
Photographic Record Recreated, December 2003. Library of Congress
httpzllwww.Ioc.gov/exhibits/empirel [accessed October 10, 2007).

14. Penny McIntire, Visual Design for the Modern Web, Visual Design for the Modern
Web. (Berkeley, California: New Riders, 2008), 184.

15. . “Tops in Hollywood,“ Chicago Tribune, November 1, 1936, Picture Section
cover.

16. Guy Murchie Jr., “The Tribune Pioneers in Pictures!“ Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1940,
E3.

17. R.W.G. Hunt, The Reproduction of Colour (New York: A Halsted Press Book, John
Wiley 8. Sons, 1957), 10.

18. Guy Murchie Jr., “The Tribune Pioneers in Pictures!“ Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1940,
E3.

19. Wilhelm Bermpohl, “Photographic Camera,“ U.S. Patent Office, U.S. 1,951,896
applied for on March 13, 1930, and issued on March 20, 1934, in the United States, and on April
4, 1929 in Germany.

20. Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-five Years (Chicago: Regensteiner
Corporation, 1943), 98.

21. Pamela Roberts, A Century of Colour Photography. (London: Andre Deutsch, Carton
Publishing Group, 2007), 59.

22. Roberts, 2007, 72.

23. E.J. Wall, The History of Three-Color Photography. (London: The Focal Press, 1925),
257.

24. Hamber, Anthony. 1996. A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in

England, 1839-1880. (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers
SA), 85.

189

 

25. A. M. Kennedy, “Color in the Sunday Newspapers,“ Proceedings of the Newspaper
Color Conference, February 12 and 13, 1936, 13; and Pamela Roberts, A Century of Colour
Photography (London: Andre Deutsch, 2007), 32, 20; and Sipley, Half Century of Color, 14.

26. Robert R. McCormick letter to Joseph Patterson, March 30, 1922. Wheaton, IL. Lake
Forest College, Donnelley and Lee Library, Series 2, Box 51, Folder 5.

27. Godfrey Lundberg, Picturesque Chicagoland, Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1929, Picture
Section cover.

28. John Park Park, John. Letter to Robert R. McCormick, June 26, 1926. Wheaton, IL,
Lake Forest College Library, Donnelley and Lee Library, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, MSS
Collection, Series 2, Box 51, Folder 7.

29. Regensteiner, 1943,98.

30. Sipley 1951, 18

31. “Four Colors—On News-Print,“ 1938; The Colonel's Century, 1947, 42; and
McCormick Directs Tribune Under Medill Traditions, 1947, 72.

32. “The First Spot News Color Picture,“ Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1939, 62.
33. Tribune's New Color Camera Gem of Science, October 25,1936, 23.

34. Robert R. McCormick to Joseph M. Pattterson, May 26, 1939. McCormick Research
Center, Wheaton, IL, Series l-62, Box 8, Folder 9.

190

CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY--DEMOCRACY OF COLORS

Having explored the Chicago Tribune's vigorous creation of realistic and
expressionistic color images across five decades, beginning in 1897, it is
valuable to reconsider the central question. How did the Chicago Tribune's
inventions affect the culture, and how did the culture affect the Chicago Tribune?

To address that question it was first necessary to collect a substantial
body of evidence that documented the Chicago Tribune’s seminal role In the
inventions and applications for color in modern newspapers. The first line of
evidence for studying the Chicago Tribune's innovations derived from direct
scrutiny of several thousand newsprint originals and not on microforrn or other
preservation methods. Secondly, the research relied extensively on patent
searches and validation by other contemporaries at the time of invention, such as
Stephen Horgan, editor of The Inland Printer, who invented a one method of
photoengraving pictures in the 18803.1 This study found 92 patents related to
media products issued by governments throughout the world to employees of the
Chicago Tribune and its subsidiary companies (Appendix A), during the first half
of the twentieth-century.

The Chicago Tribune's seminal achievements Included the following visual
milestones:

- The June 10, 1897, edition of the Chicago Tribune featured the first
full color photography and color photoengravings in a newspaper. A
leading commercial printing expert in Chicago, Theodore

Regensteiner, and his associate, color photographer Max Lau,

191

designed the printing processes, which they, and two other outside
firms printed. The color photographs recreated scenes from
paintings of local and national history. Regensteiner adapted a
Miehle Co. letterpress and used a three-color printing and three-
coIor photography process based on the inventions of Philadelphia
photoengra ver erliam Kurtz. Three-color refemad to mixing three
primary colors to create all other colors of nature, without the use of
black or brown inks?

In 1920 Chicago Tribune printer John C. Yetter invented the color
rotogravure printing press, which brought natural-looking images
into newspapers. The routine mass production of natural images
began at the Chicago Tribune by 1922 (Patent No. US1504409).3
The color rotogravure was a high-speed engraving method that
brought readers reproductions of fine art that they framed to
decorate their homes, particularly during the Great Depression, and
it enabled advertisers to depict consumer products in realistic color.
Color rotogravure sections were published in the Chicago Tribune’s
Sunday newspaper, which gave a broad diversity of readers access
to images generally limited to expensive magazines or books, or to
people who could afford travel to distant locations and museums.

In 1924 Chicago Tribune Publisher Robert R. McCormick applied
for a patent for a printing press design that allowed multiple presses

to create different size, color and shapes of printed literature, while

192

 

working together without stopping. The invention (Patent No.
US1581132) was not printing press, but an engineering system that
became the industry standard known as the McCormick Press. This
invention enabled creative products with different sizes and colors
to be assembled into the production of a newspaper. All
subsequent Chicago Tribune inventions were made practical due to
the McCormick Press, and readers could continue to enjoy a daily
for the price of 1 or 2 cents, and a Sunday newspaper sold usually
for 5 cents.

In 1923 William Henry Vlfisner, the Chicago Tribune's mapmaker,
invented a machine for telegraphic wire transmission of black-and-
white pictures. He applied for the patent in 1923, and it was issued
in 1925 for a technology that was similar to a current facsimile
machine (Patent No. US1538916).

In 1924 Joseph WIssmar and Marvin Ferree of the Pacific 8. Atlantic
Photos, Inc., a Chicago Tribune subsidiary, invented a wireless
method for transmitting pictures and text together (Patent No.
US1529473). The subsidiary was a worldwide photo syndicate, and
the invention gave readers timely visual news images. In 1925,
WIssmar and Ferree received the patent for their invention that
transmitted black-and-white images.

In 1925 Chicago Tribune printer and machine-designer Otto R. Wolf

invented the color letterpress that brought color into the newspaper

193

on weekdays.4 Beginning in 1932, the Chicago Tribune began
routinely using the color letterpress for daily advertising and for
front-page editorial cartoons. The patent was issued to Wolf in 1930
(Patent No. US1784037).

The mechanical materials of journalism—printing presses, paper and
inks—are rarely studied, and as a result, this study investigated a fifty-year
period which had little subsequent research. The point of this study was not to
comprehensively explain technologies but to discover how the development of
color affected to the Chicago Tribune and its readers. Previous studies of the
Chicago Tribune and its publisher, and of other newspapers in the same era,
have focused on politics, personalities and business issues—but not on visual
news color.

Because visual journalism dominates current news practices, this case
study on the Chicago Tribune intended to build a continuum of knowledge
between the Yellow Kid cartoons of the nineteenth-century and the rise of
television. The Chicago Tribune created most of its inventions, during the 19303
based on the publisher's philosophy to battle economic hardships through
Innovations that bring consumers better products. The way to survive competition
with radio and television, McCormick told the American Society of Newspaper
Editors in 1931, was to modernize and make a more attractive newspapers"

Improvements in color did not jeopardize employee's jobs but significantly
increased opportunities and wealth.6 The value of the Chicago Tribune and six

subsidiary companies begun in the 19203 was estimated by its accountants to be

194

worth $64 million in 1931 in the Great Depression. For every page of color
advertising sold, one additional employee was needed to run another printing
press, and the demand for artists and photoengravers increased.7 As a result of
color combined with its originaleditorial content, the Chicago Tribune had the
largest circulation of any daily in the nation during McCormick's leadership. Its
circulation was surpassed by a Tribune Company subsidiary, New York Daily
News, which was a pictorial tabloid.8

The popularity of color pictures drove the demand for new types of
newsprint, and created 4,800 jobs at the Tribune Company's paper-
manufacturing subsidiaries.9 Thus, the inventions begun at the Chicago Tribune
kept driving the need for more inventions and jobs, and creativity spread from
original artistic content and stories to new papermaking, and new press
techniques.

Were there linkages among the printing phenomena across the decades
related to the central role of printing in a democracy? In comparison to textual
news, pictures have been derided for emotionally appealing to illiterate
populations, rather than providing reasoned thought through literary stories In
newspapers without graphics. Pictorial color is a universal characteristic of
natural communications among all people, despite nationality, political
persuasion, education levels and other beliefs. As a result, understanding the
phenomena of visual color within the news context of the pioneer in newsprint

justified the grounds for an exploration.

195

HoweVer, if the Chicago Tribune’s goal had been to reach the émigrés and
hard-working blue collar workers, who built Chicago through the grit of their labor,
with and without literacy, then that, too, would have justified a study of visual
news. Approximately one-quarter of Chicagoans in 1930 emigrated from Europe,
and no doubt, comprised some of the Chicago Tribune's readers with growing
levels of English fluencies.1O

However, pictures can capture the essences of a condition, and color
augments this function, as advanced by the new aesthetics of Carey C. Orr, chief
editorial artist at the Chicago Tribune. Wolfs color letterpress brought an
opportunity for an expressive language of symbolic color applied to front-page
editorial cartoons that could communicate ideas rapidly. Orr's use of
metaphorical language heightened the aesthetic impact of cartooning on
entertainment and editorial artists throughout the nation, such as Shaw
McCutcheon of the (Spokane) Spokesman-Review, Walt Disney, who once
aspired to be an editorial cartoonist, and Martha Orr, who's 19303 comic Apple
Mary, evolved into Mary Worth.11

In the absence of previous studies, this historical case study applied a
cultural approach In order to ascertain the relevant phenomena. Among the
diverse social, economic and military forces arose the critical problem of the ink
embargo prior and during World War I. It was also valuable to discover the
dependency of America’s free press on goods from totalitarian Germany with
advanced machinery, chemical manufacturing, color cameras, and other printing

supplies. A cultural approach illuminated the human need for color after the

196

deprivation of war, as seen by the ascent In the Chicago Tribune’s circulation and
the public's interest in fine art.

Three lines of thought and two applications united the Chicago Tribune ’3
nineteenth- and twentieth-century practices. First, the Chicago Tribune
management and readers considered pictures in full color to be an exceptional
event, due to the high quality of the printing, and the expense and labor that went
into producing it on newsprint. Previously, people of means enjoyed color
pictures through lithographs and engravings In expensive books. Second, the
content between the two centuries engendered pride in American history, its
patriots and presidents. The publication of the illuminated painting of the U.S.
Constitution and the drawings of the nation’s history in the golden anniversary
edition in the nineteenth-century were created to cultivate national and local
pnde.

Little attention was given to European culture, even though it was the
heritage of the majority of the populace. American art and themes represented
from 72 percent to 88 percent of the content of the Chicago Tribune's color
rotogravures on its Sunday section covers in 1929 and 1934 (Appendix C).

Third, American printers passed down the legacy of their skills through
their families. Yetter and McCormick were from different economic backgrounds,
for example, but manifested their shared values for printing. In this regard, they
not only strengthened visual democracy with their fine printing techniques for

pictorial color, they modernized newspapers.

197

In terms of the applications, innovative three-color photography was
undertaken in the both centuries, establishing the Chicago Tribune as the visual
news leader in color photography in newspapers. Significant attention has been
dedicated to McCormick’s andMedill’s political views, but their visual journalism
heritage was lost. This study corrects lost knowledge on the importance of the
materials, processes and tools of news. Cheap paper was not used by either
publisher to print a cheap product. Finely made newsprint and inks were used,
because American journalism was important to the Chicago Tribune’s
employees.

In the nineteenth-century the question among printers was whether color
pictures could be better reproduced through the etching or engraving method.
The Chicago Tribune proved valuable functions for both, attaining superior
quality with the color rotogravure, which was used for editorial content and
advertising, and the color letterpress used for daily advertising and editorial
cartooning.12

The most interesting findings relate to the Chicago Tribune’s spirit of
invention indicated by 92 patents related In some manner to visual news color.
To turn from machines to the motive for inventing them, is the most interesting
finding of the research. When radio and movies emerged in the early twentieth-
century, media predictions for newspapers looked dismal. The reaction by the
Chicago Tribune’s employees between the two world wars was to invent
everything they needed to improve their news product. Everything modern was in

color, and the Chicago Tribune’s employees sought to invent the newest

198

techniques. Based on their employment longevity, the quantity of their
inventions, and some oral histories, they enjoyed the creative spirit.

Applying the same fighting spirit used to survive World War I, McCormick
inspired innovation through two economic depressions, and he increased
circulation. Despite the negative legacy that the Yellow Kid comics left on
pictorial color, the Chicago Tribune persisted and showed that the readers valued
newsworthy content that was produced with technical mastery. Readers
preferred art reproductions in the Great Depression, which they could frame to
decorate their houses. As soon as the Chicago Tribune introduced the color
rotogravure press in 1920 and 1921, It achieved the largest circulation in the
nation. This research does not claim that color pictures were the sole reason for
the Chicago Tribune’s success, but the color advertising and pictures helped
capitalize the extensive news coverage.

In the Jazz Age, "modern" meant color, and the Chicago Tribune delivered
it. The high quality of its color engravings (color rotogravures) were fine enough
that consumers purchased them framed to decorate their homes. Readers the
news product was valuable enough to hang on their walls. But the employee-
inventors were also valued. They received contracts for 10 to 25 percent of the
profits from their patented machines and intellectual properties.”

The three principal findings, then, were the democratizing effect of color
pictures on newsprint, shown through readers” preferences for modern visuals on
American culture, and the Chicago Tribune's soaring circulation; the proliferation

of pictorial color In advertising in newsprint, which gave consumers realistic

199

images in the daily and Sunday papers; the democratizing influences were
experienced by employee-inventors, who owned a stake in their patents and
wholly received credit.

Discussion

McCormick and the employees approached the Great Depression with the
fighting spirit to uplift the regional economy and survive with the success of the
business community to which they were a part. When the color rotogravure
advertising became too expensive In the Great Depression, the Chicago Tribune
responded with the 1932 color letterpress. This interdependent media approach,
internally and externally, offers a model for inspired media management.

Modern visual color in news did not arrive with the roll out of Gannett
Company’s national newspaper, USA Today, in the 19803. This study brings to
light the visual journalism prior to USA Today, though. The Chicago Tribune
relied on the streamlined graphics that color brought, and readers could skim
articles rapidly.

By describing the Chicago Tribune’s culture of invention this study
contributes to the body of knowledge on how media companies meet serious
challenges and persist through Innovation. The newspaper industry constantly
hears that it is doomed with the arrival of each new media platform. And
newspapers are considered "old media." Yet newspapers create news everyday.
McCormick figured out what aspects of news production could be mass produced
without losing the individual identities and purposes of the Chicago Tribune

employees. The Chicago Tribune was a corporate family, not solely based on

200

pay and benefits. They were related through pride in their work, freedom to
invent, and employees felt appreciated. Four generations of Yetters worked at
the Chicago Tribune, two generations of Orr relatives.

The strength of this research is that the findings were triangulated with a
profundity of primary sources especially relying on the patents and oral histories,
with supplementation by secondary sources. The drawback of a cultural
approach, which examines a broad field of phenomena, is the reduced amount of
scrutiny to one single area, such as media color in the Great Depression, or
pictorial color prior to World War I, or three-color photography.

Future Research

Most historical research on newspapers does not examine the
technologies. The Illustrated London News in 1855 published the first color
pictures in a newspaper, so questions related to the quality and nature of the
printing were more important than, which media company achieved color first.
Studying the science of color and the technologies related to pictorial imaging
can challenge media researchers, who are not engineers. The discipline will
need multidisciplinary studies on multi-media visual news. It is easy to ignore
history in the making. There are no doubt current news companies whose
employees are innovators, who will have critical stories on novel media methods.
Interdisciplinary team research could be one historical approach undertaking the
inquiry, and keeping archives of media products. Were it not for Janet Ginsburg
of Illinois, who saved the Chicago Tribune’s original newsprints in color, a great

visual legacy would be lost. The reason no information can be found in the

201

history books on the Chicago Tribune's great accomplishments in visual
journalism has been due to archival copies made with black-and-white imaging
processes.

Between the two world wars the Chicago Tribune between left a legacy of
inventions for color images, and the next generation of journalists could dedicate
themselves to changing the news content and redirecting attention to social
realism. The democracy of colors was not completed by the Chicago Tribune,
which survived by reinventing what a newspaper is and means in a shared

culture.

 

1. Harry A. Groesbeck Jr., The Process 8 Practice of Photo-Engraving (New York:
Doubleday, Page 8 Company, 1924), 9.

2. Allan Forman, "The Chicago Tribune's Golden Jubilee," The Journalist, 1897: 71; and
Theodore Regensteiner, My First Seventy-Five Years (Chicago: Regensteiner Corporation,
1943), 98, 233.

3. George Brandenburg, "McCormick Directs Tribune Under Medill Traditions," Editor 8
Publisher, no.8 March, 1947, 72; and "Rotogravure in Colors on Newspapers," The Inland Printer
69 no 3 (1922), 368.

4. "Four Colors—On News Print," The Inland Printer 101, no. 2:42, May 1938.

5. "Better Newspapers Urged by M'Corrnick," New York Times, April 19, 1931, 24.

6. Joseph Dugan, ”New Super Press Spreads Color in Your Tribune," March 17, 1935,
F1; and Robert R. McCormick to Weymouth Kirland (accountant with Kirkland Fleming Green 8
Martin of Chicago) September 14, 1933, Lake Forest, IL, Lake Forest College, Donnelly and Lee
Library, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, McCormick Series 2, Box 53, Folder 2.

7. "Tribune Photo Studio, Specializing In Color Work, Moves to Spacious Quarters on the
20th Floor," The Trib, August 1935, 5.

8. American Newspaper Annual 8 Directory (New York: N.W. Ayer 8 Son, 1922 and

1932): and Editor 8 Publisher lntemational Year Book (New York: Editorial 8 Publisher, 1936,
1949, and 1955).

202

 

9 Arthur A. Schmon, Papermakers and Pioneers (New York: The Newcomen
Society in North America, 1962), 2.

10. Government, U.S., “U.S. Census 1930." University of Virginia Library, Historical
Census Browser, httpzllfisher.lib.virginia.edulcollectionslstats/histcensuslphplcounty (accessed 7
July 2008).

11. Shaw McCutcheon, (Son of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist John T.
McCutcheon), Telephone interview by author with transcript, December 1, 2006, and September
2007; and Kimberly Orr Cook (Grandson of Carey Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C.
Orr) Telephone interview by author with transcript, October 22, 2006; and Mrs. Dorothy J. Cook
(Daughter of Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Carey C. Orr), March 11, 2008.

12. Regensteiner, 221.
13. Parkinson 8 Lane to John W. Park, Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1924 in McCormick

Research Center, Wheaton, IL., Series X- 26, Box 5, Folder 9, Office of Corporate Secretary,
John Yetter Patents 1912—1932, October 9, 1924.

203

APPENDIX A: TRIBUNE COMPANY MEDIA PATENTS

204

APPENDIX A: TRIBUNE COMPANY MEDIA PATENTS

Inventions by Employees of the Tribune Company and its
Subsidiaries During Robert R. McCormick’s Leadership1

The following patents relate to various aspects of color image production,
including photoengraving, papermaking, electronic image transmissions, and
cameras. The employees of the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiary companies
(Appendix B) often applied for the patents under their Individual names and sold
their rights of ownership back to the publisher for nominal fees. With the support
of the Chicago Tribune Publisher Robert R. McCormick, inventors conducted
experiments at work and home.

While the contracts of all patents have not been located, the company’s
records show a pattern of purchasing the rights for nominal fees in exchange for
giving the employee-Inventors 10 to 25 percent of the profits or savings.2 The
employees continually made improvements on technological processes, and the
patents reflect refinements and the establishment of ownership rights throughout
the world.

KEY: AU = Australia; CA = Canada; FR = France; GB = Great Britain; US = United States

 

1 The cited patents are available at the following archives and databases: The
Robert R. McCormick Research Center, Series X-26, Tribune Company Office of
Corporate Secretary, Miscellaneous Papers 1858-1976, Box 5, Folder 9 John
Yetter Patents 1912-1932, Wheaton, Ill; and In the European Patent Office,
Advanced Search, from 1928 to 1955; http://ep.espacenet.coml; and In United
States Patent and Trademark Office, Advanced Search,
http:llpatft.uspto.gov/netahtmIIPTO/search-adv.htm; and In Google Patent
Search Beta, http:/Iwww.google.com/patents.

2 Contracts for the sale of the rights to the color rotogravure presses invented by John
Campbell Yetter are held in the archives of the McCormick Research Center, First
Division Museum, Wheaton, Illinois, Series X-26, Tribune Company Office of Corporate
Secretary, Miscellaneous Papers 1858-1976, Box 5, Folder 9, John Yetter Patents 1912-
1932.

205

DATE

1.10/17/1916

2.10/17/1916

3. 04/12/1921

4. 07/05/1921

5. 03/03/1923

6. 04/03/1923

7. 10/30/1923

8. 07/07/1924

9. 07/07/1924

10. 08/12/1924

11. 03/10/1925

12. 05/26/1925

13. 05/26/1925

14. 07/21/1925 Wood chip cooking apparatus for

INVENTION!
INVENTOR

Rotogravure printing press
automatic ink removal scraper

John C. Yetter

Rotogravure printing press

high-speed drying
John C. Yetter

Centrifugal paper pulp thickener

Julius T. Jaeger

Paper-roll storage 8 delivery

Robert R. McCormick

Color rotogravure press
John C. Yetter

NATIONAL

PATENT NO.

US1201787

US1201788

US1374377

US1383318

AU11353

Method for multicolor intaglio printing AU11354

Mechanism for drying newsprint

John C. Yetter

Continuous press for multicolor

multi-impressions
Otto R. Wolf

Multicolor printing press
John C. Yetter

Multicolor printing press

John C. Yetter: Otto R. Wolf

Electronic picture transmission
Marvin Ferree; Joseph Wissmar

Printing registration table
Theodore C. Schultz

Means for telegraphing photos

William H. Wisner

papermaking
Julius T. Jaeger

15. 09/12/1925 Telautographic needle holder

16. 09/12/1925

17. 09/12/1925

Marvin Ferree; Joseph Wissmar

Humidity control for printing

Electronic Images receiver

206

US1472450

G8218697

G3218698

US1504409

US1529473

US1 538908

US1538916

CA251874

FR594427

FR594428

FR594429

APPLICANT

John C. Yetter

John C. Yetter

Julius T. Jaeger

Robert R. McCormick

Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

John C. Yetter

Otto R. Wolf

John C. Yetter

John C. Yetter

Otto R. Wolf

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos
Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

Julius T. Jaeger

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos

Pacific 8. Atlantic Photos

DATE

18.

11/10/1925

19.12/15/1925

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

35.

02/09/1 926

04/20/1926

04/20/ 1 926

04/19/1927

07/26/1927

09I13/1927 Apparatus for moving paper rolls

03/06/1928

03/13/1928

04/1 7/1928

06/25/1 929

10/15/1929

01/21/1930

01/21/1930

01/22/1930

. 08/26/1930

12/09/1930

INVENTION!
INVENTOR

Phototelegraphic transmitting plate
Marvin Ferree; Joseph Wissmar

Staging bracket
John C. Yetter

Apparatus for cooking wood chips

Julius T. Jaeger

Printing press
Robert R. McCormick

Multicolor intaglio printing press

John C. Yetter

Multicolor press plate carrier

Godfrey Lundberg
Printing press

Robert R. McCormick
Frederick von der Horst

Printing press
Otto R. Wolf

Camera plate carriage
Godfrey Lundberg

Telautographic needle holder

Marvin Ferree; Joseph Wissmar

Polishing printing cylinder metals

Ernst P. Mars

Drying apparatus
Otto R. Wolf

Shiftable unit press for paper folding

Robert R. McCormick

Printing press
Robert R. McCormick

Printing press improvements

Robert R. McCormick

Printing press
Robert R. McCormick

Multicolor letterpress
Otto R. Wolf

207

NATIONAL

PATENT NO.

US1561067

CA256333

US1572723

U81581132

US1581151

US1624959

US1636917

US1641998

US1661209

CA278601

US1 666330

US1718827

US1731603

US1744131

US1744132

AU24755/30

CA303336

US1784037

APPLICANT

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos

John C. Yetter

Julius T. Jaeger

Robert R. McCormick

Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

Robert R. McCormick

Frederick von der Horst

Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos

Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

Robert R. McCormick

Robert R. McCormick

Robert R. McCormick

Robert R. McCormick

Tribune Co.

DATE INVENTION! NATIONAL APPLICANT

INVENTOR PATENT NO.

36. 02/07/1931 Printing press improvements GB352003 Robert R. McCormick
Robert R. McCormick

37. 10/06/1931 Roll handling apparatus US1826107 Tribune Co.
Frederick von der Horst

38. 01/26/1932 Printing plate underlay device US1842774 News Syndicate Co.
John W. Bamhart

39. 03/08/1932 Newspaper dispatch conveyer US1849045 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf

40. 04/12/1932 Matrix delivery line casting device US1853288 Tribune Co.
Sylvester J. Sennett

41. 05I03/1932 Paper roll hoisting plug US1857091 Tribune Co.
Frederick von der Horst

42. 12/20/1932 Printing press US1891614 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf

43. 03I14/1933 Paper roll handling device US1901482 Tribune Co.
Frederick von der Horst

44. 07I25/1933 Printing press roll stand US1919456 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf

45. 07/10/1934 Typographical machine US1965747 News Syndicate Co.
Walter H. Medford

46. 12l04/1934 Printing press ink fountain US1983115 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf

47. 12l31/1935 Aluminum and zinc printing plate CA355014 Otto R. Wolf
preparation
Otto R. Wolf

48. 04I07/1936 Surface finishing apparatus for U82036315 News Syndicate Co.

printing cylinders
John W. Bamhart; William G. Dodge;
William Baumrucker Jr.

49. 04/28l1936 Doctor blade trimming apparatus US.2039161 News Syndicate Co.
Gustave A. Friess

50. 05/12/1936 Gravure printing process U82040247 Arthur Dultgen
Arthur Dultgen

51. 06I23I1936 Gravure printing process CA358611 Arthur Dultgen
Arthur Dultgen

52. 07I07I1936 Multicolor registration printing device USZO46508 News Syndicate Co.
Gustave A. Friess

208

DATE

53. 07/14/1936

54. 11/03/1936

55.11/17/1936

56. 1 1/24/1936

57. 04/06/1937

58. 04/27/1937

59. 04/27/1937

60. 10I26/1937

61 . 03/29/1938

62. 06/14/1938

63. 09/13/1938

64. 01/03/1939

65. 02/28/1939

66. 06/06/1939

67. 01/07/1941

68. 11/04/1941

69. 01/13/1942

INVENTION]
INVENTOR

NATIONAL

Printing press auxiliary ink attachment U82047605
Otto R. Wolf

Paper slice machine CA361555
John Devine Alexander

Mechanism for measuring color U82060957
change

Cleo E. Tarvin; William G. Dodge

Doctor blade washing apparatus U82061730
Gustave A. Friess

Apparatus for drying carbon tissues U82076367

Gustave A. Friess

Apparatus for cooling a printing coupleU82078378
Gustave A. Friess

Adjustment mechanism for inking U82078520
apparatus

Otto R. Wolf

Method of producing gravure etchings U82096794
Arthur Dultgen

Printing press ink fountain US2112459
Gustave A. Friess

Apparatus for drying printing plates USZ120471
John Peters; Harold M. Crosby

Slime accumulation elimination CA376445
Charles A. Sankey

MuItI-unit press registration device U82142501
Arthur Dultgen; Anton Stobb; .

Max Stoessel

Printing press paper drying U82148739
Gustave A. Friess

Gravure printing plate production CA381796
Arthur Dultgen

Printing press confines for Ink mist U82227616
Otto R. Wolf

Printing press plate method U82261554
Albert L. Lengel

Printing press register apparatus CA402220

Max Stoessel

209

PATENT NO.

APPLICANT

Tribune Co.

Ontario Paper Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

Tribune Co.

Arthur Dultgen

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

Ontario Paper Co.

Arthur Dultgen;
Max Stoessel

News Syndicate Co.

Arthur Dultgen

Tribune Co.

Tribune Co.

News Syndicate Co.

DATE INVENTION] NATIONAL APPLICANT
INVENTOR PATENT NO.

70. 03I17/1942 Method for half-tone reproductions U82276718 News Syndicate Co.
Harold M. Crosby

71. 04I20I1943 Multi-unit registration device U82317095 News Syndicate Co.
Curtis 8. Crafts; Christopher V. Knell

72. 04/27/1943 Multi-unit registration improvements GB552805 News Syndicate Co.

A.H. Stevens
73. 10/24/ 1944 Newspaper assembly method USZ361140 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf
74. 01/25/1946 Apparatus for separating GB574908 Ontario Paper Co.

paper materials

75. 03/05I1946 Printing press slitter mechanism U32395950 Tribune Co.

Otto R. Wolf

76. 08l06/1946 Logging trailer for paper U82405299 Ontario Paper Co.
Gordon Godwin

77. 09/24/1946 Apparatus for separating CA437146 Ontario Paper Co.

paper materials
James R. Dunbar

78. 03I04I1947 Logging trailer for paper CA440026 Ontario Paper Co.
Gordon Godwin

79. 10/27/1947 Paper pulp manufacture CA444664 Ontario Paper Co.
Bruce R. Mead; John H. Fisher

80. 12/02/1947 Flat screen drive CA445376 Ontario Paper Co.
Percy Ritchie Sandwell

81. 08/10/1948 Photogravure plate improvements GB606206 News Syndicate Co.

82. 02/15I1949 Multicolor printing press U82462032 Tribune Co.
Otto R. Wolf

83. 08I30/1949 Gravure printing plates U82480400 News Syndicate Co.
Arthur Dultgen

84. 06/17/1952 Layout board for photographic USZ600505 Tribune Co.
reproduction
Max H. Jones

85. 06I17/1952 Pulping lignocellulose with sodium U82601110 Ontario Paper Co.

aluminate
John H. Fisher; Bruce R. Mead

86. 10/15/1952 Plastic printing plate improvements G8681021 News Syndicate Co.
Henry M. Richardson

210

DATE

87. 06/1 7/1953

88.11/16/1954

89. 1228/1954 Gravure plate-making methods

90. 01/25/1955

91. 03/01/1955

92. 08/30/1955

INVENTION!
INVENTOR

Curved plastic plate improvements

Henry M. Richardson

Plastic printing plate improvements

Henry M. Richardson;
William Baumrucker Jr.

Arthur Dultgen

Method for intaglio engraving

Fred Lando

Matrix for production of plastic

printing plates
Henry M. Richardson

Matrix for production of plastic

printing plates
Henry M. Richardson

211

NATIONAL

PATENT NO.

6869291 8

CA507409

CA508583

USZ700609

USZ703051

CA516140

APPLICANT

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co.

News Syndicate Co

APPENDIX B: TRIBUNE COMPANY SUBSIDIARIES
PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II

212

APPENDIX B: TRIBUNE COMPANY SUBSIDIARIESl

 

 

 

PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II
SUBSIDIARY . FUNCTION
Chicggo Daily Tribune, 1847 Daily newspaper
Chicag Tribune Wireless, Inc., 1928 Transoceanic wireless

 

Chicago Tribune Transportation Co. Ltd.,
c19203

Cargo ships for newsprint

 

Coloroto Corp., 1922

Coloroto Magazine

 

Franquelin Lumber and Pulp Wood Co.,
c19203

Canadian wood pulp

 

Illinois Atlantic Corp., c 19403

U.S. newsprint and raw materials
shippim

 

Illustrated Daily News, 1919

(New York) Daily News pictorial
tabloid

 

Liberty Weekly, Inc., 1924 - 1931

National magazine

 

News Supply Co., c19203

Distribution of newspapers

 

News Sjndicate Co., c19203

Syndicated news and fiction

 

Ontario Paper Co., 1911

Canadian paper mill

 

Ontario Transportation and Pulp Co. Ltd.,
1914

Canadian shipping

 

Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos, Inc.,
1922 - 1932

Syndicated photos

 

Quebec North Shore Paper Co., 1938 -
1993 (later Quebec and Ontario Paper Co.)

Canadian paper mill

 

 

 

Quebec and Ontario Transportation Co. Canadian shipping
Tonawanda Paper Co., 1923-1931 N.Y. paper mill
(formerly Daily News Paper Corp.)

Tribune European Edition, 1918 - 1934 The Paris Edition

(formerly Army Edition, 1917)

 

Tribune BuildinlCorp.

Corporate headquarters

 

 

WGN radio, 1920, formerly 92N

 

Radio reception and broadcast

 

 

 

 

' Most Tribune Co. subsidiaries began between the two world wars. The sources for the Chicago
Tribune, Chicago Tribune Transportation Co. Ltd., Coloroto Corp., Daily News Paper Corp.,
Franquelin Lumber 8 Pulpwood Co., Ltd., Newspaper Supply Co., News Syndicate Co., Ontario
Paper Co., Pacific 8 Atlantic Photos, and Tribune Building Corp. can be found at Lake Forest
College, Donnelley and Lee Library Special Collections, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Series I,
Boxes 1-50, Annual Meeting Reports, “Consolidated Cash Report,12 April 1924;" and IN Warren
Curtis Jr. letters to Robert. R. McCormick, 31 March 1925, and 2 April 1925.

For profit and losses in the 19303, see: Price, Waterhouse 8 Co. letter to Robert R.
McCormick, 7 June 1932, Lake Forest College, Donnelley and Lee Library Special Collections,
Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Series 2, Box 53,

Folder 1. Also see: “Board of Directors Meetings“ In 1929, Series I, Subseries 9, Box 48, Folder 1.

Additional sources for the News Syndicate can be found in “Chicago Tribune-NY News
Syndicate, Inc., Comparative Statement of Average Weekly Earnings, April 1940 - April 1941,“
Publishing Enterprises, Series I, Subseries 8, Box 46, Folder I.

213

 

The sources for the Ontario Paper Co. and the Quebec North Shore Paper Co. are from
Arthur A. Schmon, Papermakers and Pioneers: The Ontario Paper Company Limited and Quebec
North Shore Paper Company. New York: The Newcomen Society in North America, 1963, 6-9.

For Tonawanda Paper Co. and Liberty Weekly sources, see “New York News Buys
Ground for 10 Million Home,“ Chicago Tribune, 13 February 1918, 4; and In “Commercial
Leases," New York Times, 28 August 1924, 29.

For Information on the European edition, see Waveriey Root, The Paris Edition. San
Francisco: North Point Press, 1989, vii. For subsidiaries for newsprint and shipping, see: Carl
Wiegman, Trees to News. Toronto: McClelland 8 Stewart Ltd, 1953, 27, 111, 240, 348. Coloroto
sources can be found In “Business Survey: Analysis of Contents of Coloroto Magazine, Second
Period, January — June, 1923,“ Lake Forest College, Donnelley and Lee Library Special
Collections, Joseph M. Patterson Papers, Series I, Subseries 7, Box 41, Folder 4.

For wireless sources see, “Newspapers File 10 Radio Charters," New York Times, 27
November 1928,41.

214

APPENDIX C: CONTENT ANALYSIS

215

APPENDIX C: CONTENT ANALYSIS.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE “PICTURE SECTION” COVERS

Full Color Publishing

January - June, 1929 and 1934

RUI'I- .Igv_ Quu‘our infirm r

 

Figure 27. Chicago
Tribune, March 3, 1929,
President Herbert Hoover,
a photo by Godfrey
Lundberg, a Chicago
Tribune inventor.
(Michigan State University
Collection, Reprinted with
permission of Chicago
Tribune.)

Picture Section Covers

  

‘5 .

Figure 28. Chicago Tribune,
June 3, 1934, a painting by
Thomas Moran of the 1893
World's Fair. Sepia ink on
the back side of page
shows through the
newsprint (Michigan State
University Collection,
Reprinted with permission
of Chicago Tribune.)

1929 N=26 1934 n=25
American Art 88% (n=73) 72% (n=38)
Drawings/Paintings 15% (n=73) 53% (n=28)
Patriotic ArtT 08% (n=7) 07% (n=4)
Photographs 84% (n=71) 47% (n=25)
Montage 12% (n=10) 05% (n=3)

 

'Sources for the analysis were Indiana University Library, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers, Chicago Tribune; and Michigan State University Chicago Tribune Historical
Collection.

’ Patriotic images consisted of full-page or half-page of photographic portraits of U.S.
Presidents and battles scenes. The dominance of the patriotic images on the news pages without
other art to distract from it signified the importance of the art, and readers could easily frame
them.

‘ More than three Images gathered to create one composition were considered a
"montage.“

216

BIBLIOGRAPHY

217

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Key: Libraries and Special Collections
LFC = Lake Forest College, Donnelley and Lee Library, Lake Forest, IL.
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MRC = McCormick Research Center, Cantigny, Wheaton, IL.

MSU = Michigan State University, College of Communication Arts & Sciences, East
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SAA = Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington, DC.
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218

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