Institute of Paper

From Canada last week came bad news for idealists. The Newsprint Institute of Canada, a co-operative pool of paper manufacturers supplying more than half the newsprint used in the U. S., formed to keep prices up and production stable, ap- peared doomed to go the way of many another group founded upon mutual trust.

Index to the probable disintegration was the resignation, as chairman of the Insti-ute, of Colonel John H. Price, president of Price Brothers & Co., Ltd., large producers of newsprint. Said he: "I have become convinced that the expressed purposes of the Institute and my efforts to accomplish them have been and are defeated by the unwillingness of members to conform to either the spirit or the terms of their mem- bership agreement."

Col. Price named no names, spoke of a general scrambling for markets by Institute members. But no observer failed to associate Col. Price's despairing message with last fortnight's announcement of the Hearst alliance with Canada Power & Paper Corp. (TIME, Sept. 29). In that announcement it was stated that Hearst-papers would pay market prices for their newsprint from C. P. & P. Nevertheless, many a disgruntled member of the Institute felt certain that some concession, involved perhaps in an exchange of stocks, had the effect of C. P. & P. "shading" the Institute's price of $55.20 per ton. The sight of that plum (approx. $26,000,000 prospective annual business) being so plucked made other Institute members feel they had been left suddenly in the cold. They at once began to assert themselves. Col. Price, whose company, a low-price producer, might be in the thick of any price war, declared that Price Bros, "now intends to adopt immediately whatever independence of policy and action it may be compelled to follow in order to protect its position and the interest of its stock-holders." Ernest Rossiter, president of St. Lawrence Corporation Ltd., gave simi- lar notice to the Institute. Meanwhile Quebec's Premier Louis Alexandre Tasch-ereau, who with Premier George Howard Ferguson of Ontario had much to do with the formation of the Institute (when they were trying to up the price to $60 per ton) declared himself "completely in the dark."

Whether or not the price war ensues, it was considered likely that one or two powerful groups of manufacturers would, by virtue of sheer strength, succeed the Institute as the influence to stabilize prices and regulate expansion of the industry. Armed with both Hearst and Rothermere contracts, the richest in the world, President James Henry Gundy of C. P. & P. loomed as logical Moses to lead the indus-try from its factional wilderness. Abitibi Power & Paper Co. and St. Lawrence Corp. would be possible allies of C. P. & P. in such a union. International Paper & Power Corp. might head another group; or--hav- ing lost the Hearstpaper business after 1933--might turn wholly to its major interest, Power, and pool its Canadian newsprint activities with other Canadian producers.

The U. S. consumes annually 4,000,000 tons of newsprint, imports more than 2,600,000 tons largely from Canada, some from Newfoundland and Scandinavia. Last week the U. S. Forest Service reported favorably on proposals to develop U. S. newsprint sources in Alaska, estimated capable of producing 1,000,000 tons annually in perpetuity. Two projected developments totalling $20.000,000, by Crown Zellerbach Corp. and jointly by the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, now await approval by the Federal Power Commission.

Prisoner Broun

When Colyumist Heywood Broun of the New York Telegram announced his Socialist candidacy for Congress, Editor Roy Wilson Howard observed: "It had been our boast that . . . few Scripps-Howard editors had gone to jail and none ... to Congress" (TIME, Sept. i).

Last week Colyumist Broun was arrested for marching with pickets of the striking Fifth Avenue dressmakers, spent two hours in gaol, was released through the intercession of Magistrate Louis Brodsky, his Democratic opponent.

Cinders to Cinders

Ella Cinders is the name of an unattractive, bobbed-haired, freckled girl who inhabits a comic strip drawn by Charlie Plumb with continuity by Bill Counselman. Like her progenitor Little Orphan Annie, Ella has had great changes of fortune. She has been befriended, betrayed, shipwrecked, rescued, jailed, courted, has made and lost fortunes in the course of her endless career. Not only as a character, but as a being of lines on bristol board as well, Ella has weekly adventures. Every seven days she leaves Artist Plumb's studio in San Gabriel, Calif, and flies with the airmail to Metropolitan Newspaper Feature Service's distribution office in Manhattan.

Last week Ella had an uneventful flight until she started crossing the Alleghenies. Suddenly, as the plane nosed through a night fog, flames started licking around the bottom of the cockpit. The pilot quickly picked out a pasture, alighted, struck a telephone pole, turned over. By the time Ella was rescued from her charred mail sack, her comic strip was partially destroyed, its wrapper in cinders.

Shrewdly, Metropolitan released the damaged strips along with the story of Ella's close call.

All Collier's "

Annually for 33 years Collier's Weekly has published its sports expert's selection of an All-America Football Team picked from the college players of the season. Customarily the selections are confided to newspapers for simultaneous release on the day when Collier's appears on the newsstands. Last year the St. Paul Dispatch "broke" (published) the names two days early. Sued for $25,000 by Collier's, the Dispatch claimed in defense that it did not reprint verbatim, that "ideas and opinions" can not be copyrighted.

In St. Paul last fortnight U. S. District Judge John B. Sanborn punctured the defense. Said he: "The article was of value to the plaintiff from the standpoint of increasing sales of its magazine. . . . Anyone reading [the article in the Dispatch] would know what men had been selected [by Grantland Rice] and the general scheme used in their selection, and unless they were interested in Mr. Rice's lit- erary style, they would have no need for the complete article. . . . The Dispatch availed itself of the labor of Mr. Rice by appropriating the fruits of what he had done and expressed."

The All-America team was originated in 1886 in an obscure magazine by the late Walter Camp and Caspar Whitney. In 1889 the feature was transferred to now-defunct Harper's Weekly under Mr. Camp's name, and in 1897 to Collier's. The fame of Camp maintained the standing of the feature. After his death in 1925 the selections were ably handled by Grantland Rice, but the basic idea was openly condemned by coaches and experts as too restrictive, bad for football. Partly as a protest against the notion of Collier's omniscience, partly as a sop to provincialism, partly because it is good reading and food for argument, innumerable syndicates and local sportwriters the country over now present their own "All-Americans."

Personnel

To Outlook-magazine as new managing editor last week went Carl Chandlee Dickey, long schooled on the New York Times, World's Work and on McClure's until Hearst scrapped it two years ago. He replaces Henry F. Pringle, leaving to finish his biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Be- fore vacating his office, Editor Pringle saw published in Outlook the first instalment of his most recent notable acquisition, a well-documented, impartial survey of Prohibition by Author Charles Merz (The Great American Bandwagon, And Then Came Ford), able understudy of the New York World's Editor Walter Lippmann.

The editorship of Life has passed most unobtrusively (no editorial massed-head has been printed for 21 weeks) to lean, black-moustached Bolton Mallory, onetime reporter, advertising man, instructor of English at Princeton University. Editor Mallory succeeds famed Norman Hume Anthony, who, with Phil Rosa (who assisted him when he was editor of Judge, went with him to Life) departed four months ago. Editor Mallory strives to make Life less "funny," smarter, of greater topical interest.

Scoop-the-Scoop

Last week the 'Chicago Herald & Ex- aminer thought it had a scoop when it was able to report, in a copyrighted story, that Rogers Hornsby would succeed Joseph McCarthy as manager of the Chicago "Cubs." Annoyed was the Hearstpaper when the Tribune's radiostation WGN denied the report, scooped-the-scoop. More irritated was the Herald & Examiner when, next day, the Tribune carried a copyrighted confirmation of the change of management. Bitterly editorialized the Herald & Examiner: "This is probably the first known instance in which a copyrighted story has been denied and then re-copyrighted by the publication broadcasting the denial." But the Tribune had originally turned up the rumor.

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