Claude Eldridge Toles Collection (1875-1901)

 

In 1893 the New York World was the first American newspaper to add a colored supplement to its Sunday edition, including some comic pictures by R. F. Outcault (later the creator of Buster Brown), picturing child life in Hogan’s Alley. In experimenting with color effects, it was decided to print the dress of the leading character in bright yellow. When Hearst made his raid on the World’s staff in 1895 and took over Outcault and his creation, The Kid of Hogan’s Alley, the World engaged George B. Luks, later a noted painter, to continue the Yellow Kid in its Sunday editions. Advertisements of the rival Yellow Kids in the World and the Journal plastered every billboard in New York. This war of the comic strips, together with the sensationalism of both papers, led the editor of another New York newspaper to coin the term “yellow journalism,” which survives to this day.” — A History of Newspaper Syndicates in the United States 1865-1935, by Elmo Scott Watson, Chicago, Ill. November 16, 1935.