ON THE PAN

WHEN readers of the Providence New flipped open their papers on that afternoon of May 3,1920, it was as much an a& of defiance as a means of learning the news. The daily was, as usual, not only thin in editorial and advertising content, it was remarkably predictable.
News readers could expect to find at least two Staples: one, under a Dublin dateline but unattributed, a piece in passionate support of the Irish Republican Army and venomous condemnation of British cruelty; the other, a tirade against all enemies of Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations. As for national affairs, there was no shortage of quotable politicians inveighing against the twin demons of High Tariff and the Red Menace. On the home front, there were police and labor news and local sports: baseball, boxing and bicycle racing.
Most dependable of all, there were the daily barrages loosed at the News' special fixed targets -Republicans all. Heading the lift was Gov. E. Livingston Beekman, with Isaac Gill, the party's power broker, a close second. If there was ever any editorial uncertainty at the News, it was probably whether 'Livvy'' Beekman was simply a puppet of "Ike" Gill or both were the fiendish tools of interests dear to the News' bigger, richer and more powerful cross-town rival, the Providence Journal.
Why, then, was buying and reading the News an act of defiance? Because the News spoke out noisily against just about everything the entrenched, old-money, estab-

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