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Newspaper Page Text
UNION NEWS CO. SUED IN WAR OVER NEWSPAPERS A newspaper circulation scrap that is stirring all the South Side came to a climax yesterday when suit for $50,000 was filed against the Union News Co. by a newsboy, Gust Dra villas. The Union News Co. is a big cor poration which controls the news stands inside the elevated stations all over the city. It hires agents at very small salaries, gives them commis sions, pays the elevated companies for the selling right and keeps what is left. The newsboy who is trying to take a fall out of the firm says that one of its agents had something td do with the circulation of a pamphlet which asked the people not to buy papers from stands ouside the elevated sta tions because the owners were Greeks. v As a result of the attack newsboys over the South Side, at 63d and Hal sted st particularly, have lost circu lation of hundreds a day. The pamphlet which Dravillas says was given to people as they went in and out of the station starts: "Where does your penny go when you buy a newspaper in Engle wood?" Then on another page it reads: "Here is the situation of the news paper stands in Englewood. "The stands are controlled by a corporation of Greeks within a ra jdius of five miles. "The newsboys receive $20 a month for working from 5 a. -m. to 10 p. m. "The profits (small as they are) are not spent in Englewood or Chi cago, but most of it is sent back to Greece. "The American newsboy is intim idated and driven away unless he will work for starvation wages. "Buy your papers on the inside of the elevated station and your money will go to an American who only asks for a square deal and a chance to earn an honest living." Att'ys Brosius and Mabee, who filed the suit, say that the pamphlet is libelous. "We don't know just how much the Union News Co. had to do with the circulation of the pamphlet We are pretty sure, however, that one of its agents saw they were given out "They were passed to the people from the inside of the station at 63d and Halsted, where the newsboys have had considerable trouble with the Union News man recently. "It is an attempt, we believe, on the part of the agents of a rich cor poration to strangle the business of honest, independent newsboys, who work hard and support their fam ilies." The Daily News, which is hooked up with the Union News Co. in a cir culation contract, refused to print a story of the suit, the attorneys de clared yesterday. LORIMER BLAMES THE PRESS The cold shoulder Wm. Lorimer got when he tried to squeeze into the banking game In'Chicago and the attacks which the banking interests are supposed to have made on him in the newspapers were told of by the ex-senator himself at his trial. He says that the Tribune played a story all over the front page on April 30, 1910, about the senate vote buying scandal just when he was contemplating the opening of his La Salle bank. The yarn was an alleged confession of a member of the state senate that he had been paid to vote for Lorimer. It was the continual hammering of the press that finally broke his bank and dragged to ruin a half dozen other firms in which he was interest ed, he declared. o o Nearly $40,000 earned in one year by Medill high school pupils through temporary employment out of school hours.