Business: Day v. Phone Co.

In Manhattan Joseph P. Day cuts somewhat of a swath. He is the real estate dealer who in January semi-cyclonically sells lots out of doors and in his shirt sleeves. He is the man who, together with Herbert Bayard Swope (dynamic executive editor of the New York World) and other skillful publicists brought the 1924 Democratic National Convention to Manhattan (TlME, Jan. 28, 1924, PRESS). He knows he is well known. Yet last week he declared himself obscured, declared in paid advertisements in Manhattan newspapers: “The Telephone Company never makes mistakes, but just the same they omitted from 40% of the Winter Manhattan Telephone Directories My Telephone Number. . . .” He declared too he had tried to make the telephone company pay for the advertisements, something they refused to do, for they never claimed infallibility.