Three Cartoonists

The late great Publisher Joseph Pulitzer's three great cartoonists have all stuck to their earnest convictions. One of them, poker-playing Daniel Fitzpatrick, lean, well-paid and determinedly independent, is still a mainstay of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and one of the foremost men in his profession. Another, Robert Minor, has long since laid down his charcoal to follow his beliefs into another profession (he is a member of the political committee of the Communist Party in the U.S.). The third, Rollin Kirby, once the best-known of the three, last week quit his job.

Rollin Kirby, thrice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, noted ornament of the New York World's editorial page, has found little peace since the World died, 20 years after the death of Joseph Pulitzer. Kirby found an uneasy job with the World's successor, Roy Howard's World-Telegram.

He could not work in harness with the Scripps-Howard middle-of-the-road editorial ideas.

When Kirby left the World-Telegram in 1939, there was only one New York paper where he could feel at home: the liberal, New Dealing Post. The Post is no Croesus. When his contract expired, well-heeled, always well-paid Cartoonist Kirby got a renewal offer from the Post at a very small salary--no more, he said, than the first pay check he drew back in 1911 when his friend, Franklin Pierce (Information Please) Adams got him his first cartoonist's job on the old New York Mail.

"I'm sure they didn't expect me to accept," said grey, 66-year-old Rollin Kirby. He didn't.

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