Swope's Smoke

Herbert Bayard Swope, redheaded, blue-shirted, jut-jawed journalist, left his post as executive editor of the New York World on Jan. 1. Thereafter, many a fellow-journalist pondered the Swopian future. What would he do, this man of 47 surcharged with energy, wealth, self-confidence? Would he buy a great metropolitan daily? Would he go into politics, write a book, be tsar of some industry? Or would he just twiddle his talented thumbs?

Last week there was news of Journalist Swope. In blaring newspaper advertisements throughout the land appeared his defiant signature and photograph. His message in these advertisements was: "I light a Lucky whenever I am tempted to eat between meals. . . . The activities of a newspaper demand good physical condition. I find Lucky Strike an immeasurable aid in helping me keep trim and fit. ... Toasting makes Lucky Strike the cigarette of joy and benefit."

It was obvious material for hawk-eyed Franklin P. Adams, oldtime colyumist ("The Conning Tower") of the World, longtime subordinate to Swope. After due thought, Colyumist Adams colyumed:

"It is difficult to shoot a hole in the accuracy of the statement made by Mr. H. B. ('Yes, Mr. Swope, Sir') Swope, who has leaped at a bound from journalism to cigaret indorsing. 'Whenever I am tempted to eat between meals,' his signed statement reads, 'I light up a Lucky.' Little did the American Tobacco Company know that in Mr. Swope's life there is no such time as between meals. Elementary, he doesn't have any meals. The former -- and his bellowing of 'Tear up the contract!' therefore now makes us only laugh -- Executive Editor of the World, always is five or six hours late for break fast, luncheon, and dinner, no matter what time they are scheduled for. What he consumes instead of meals -- a few steak sandwiches with onions, a few dill pickles, and a few apples -- cannot be called meals.

"Still we congratulate the Dean of Former Executive Editors that his health is now so good that he now lights up a cigaret. The last time we remember seeing Mr. Swope smoke was in 1891, and he did it then, he said, only to get cigaret pictures of Delia Fox and Camille D'Arville."

Observers noticed that the Swopian advertisement was published five columns wide in the World's contemporaries, the Times and Herald Tribune, but only four columns wide in the no longer Swopian World.