At 12:09 one foggy night last week a fleet of shiny, grass-green news trucks started careening out of the loading tunnel of the Daily News Building, roared into Chicago's Loop, swerved with loud honking to crash halts at crowded newsstands. "Yo!" yelled the drivers, "the Sun is out!" Fat bundles of papers pitched to the sidewalk, melted like snow on a griddle a few minutes after they were ripped open. Sometimes the newsstand crowd cheered. Chicago was grabbing Vol. 1, No. 1 of Marshall Field's new 2¢ morning paper, the Tribune-challenging Chicago Sun.
What Chicago saw was a full-size, 72-page first edition with format and typography resembling a cross between the New York Herald Tribune and Silliman Evans' Nashville Tennessean. It had a good sports section, competent Washington dispatches, but was weak on writing, painfully weak on comics (mostly new). Advertising-wise its first issue was fat to bursting (over 300 columns), with a listing of 150 advertisers who were turned away (though much of it doubtless came under the same heading as the twelve-page section of congratulatory letters).
All night the News's twelve big presses rolled full blast. Toward morning the delivery chutes spewed bundles faster than the trucks could take them away. Taxis were commandeered. By 6 a.m., when the presses had to be cleared for the Daily News, the Sun run was 896,000 copies of a 72-page, ad-filled issue to sell to curious Chicagoans.
The big question was how much the Sun's circulation would be when the curiosity sale was over and the Sun settled down as one of Chicago's regular newspapers.
Peace on Earth. What excited Chicago was the prospect of epic and maybe head-busting battle between the Sun and Colonel McCormick's ferocious Tribune, backed on both sides by all that millions can buy.
Nobody got hurt as the newspaper war began. Night before the first issue Sun Circulation Manager Jack Stenbuck, a big, picturesque ex-Hearstman with the appearance of a well-dressed pirate, called 150 truck drivers into conference. A good part of them were Hearst veterans and well remembered the slugging days when "McCormick used to put it on us." Said Circulation Manager Stenbuck:
"I have been asked what the sailing orders will be. This is going to be a friendly operation. We are not going out with our fists swinging. We are working for a very dignified gentleman, and we don't want to embarrass him."
First Punches. Likewise to Chicago Tribune drivers word had gone down: "No rough stuff." To its carriers the Tribune said: "The Tribune is not concerned whether you do or do not handle the Chicago Sun. However, if you desire to handle it, the Tribune reserves the right to appoint other agents to handle the Tribune."
The Sun was swamped with telephone calls demanding to know why home deliveries were not being made. Fact is that a home delivery service is a major organization job, and not even the "Great Stenbuck" can build one short of months. Loop newsstands suddenly refused to handle the Sunday Sun ("The Tribune did it," said Publisher Evans). And although the Sun built 2,000 wooden stands for such an emergency, it had to beat a city ordinance requiring steel stands.