Administrator Without Code

"The first possible objection is that I am a trustee, director and stockholder in the Pulitzer Publishing Company, which publishes the St. Louis Post Dispatch. . . .

"The second possible objection is that under the conditions of the Scripps-Howard purchase of the New York World, there are certain payments still to be made. . . .

"If you appoint me to the deputy administratorship I should appreciate your publishing this letter. . . .

Ralph Pulitzer"

Modest Ralph Pulitzer's reluctance to become the deputy NRAdministrator of the newspaper code arose from the NRA rule that no one financially interested in an industry should help supervise it for the government. Last week General Johnson swept aside the objections of the late great Joseph Pulitzer's eldest son to taking a Washington job thus:

"I am glad you recorded your secondary interest in the publishing field. In view of your own record and the long and liberal record of your family, this does not in my opinion change your availability, and I am very happy you are going to be with us."

If Ralph Pulitzer, who left the wilting New York World before his brothers Joseph and Herbert sold it in 1931, had wanted a more substantial reason for refusing General Johnson's call to public duty he could have found it in the fact that no newspaper code yet exists for him to administer. The business of drawing one up began last July. Last week, long after such tougher problems as coal, steel. autos, lumber, had been codified, the news paper code was still on President Roosevelt's desk waiting, ostensibly, for him to find time to sign it.

First great rumpus on the newspaper code was over Freedom of the Press. Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune last autumn was loudest in his objections to a code which did not redefine the constitutional rights of newspapers to say what they please. Could they, for example, be licensed out of business by a government disgruntled with their views? In December General Johnson stopped trying to reassure newspaper publishers that the code was not meant to be a gag by inserting a specific clause to the effect that the government got no censoring rights.

More haggling occurred over the matter of whether reporters were ''professional persons" and therefore exempt from the 40-hr, a week clause. The American Newspaper Guild, formed last autumn, helped evolve a satisfactory compromise by requiring the code to make a survey of editorial hours and wages.

The third and last important obstacle to newspaper code was the question of child labor. Almost all U. S. newspapers use newsboys, of which there are 570,000 in the U. S. All NRA codes signed so far prohibit child labor. Newspapers resent being told not to use newsboys. Last week, the Bronx Home News discharged 100 newsboys who had tried to organize a carriers' union.

On Child Labor, as on Freedom of the Press, there has been a sharp difference of opinion between the Chicago Tribune and its lively Manhattan tabloid offspring, the Daily News, which now claims the biggest U. S. circulation (1,440,000 daily; 2,000,000 Sunday).* The News, which considered the Freedom of the Press scare silly, last week was one of the few newspapers to come out against child labor:

"We don't wish to seem hypocritical in this matter. The News, like the other papers, distributes some of its papers through children. Two years ago, we used to sell 25,000 copies a day to youngsters at the circulation department door at wholesale rates. . . . We've cut it down since the National Child Labor Committee kicked about it and the figure is now about 2,000 a day. We wish it were 0. . . .

"Offering some more advice to our competitors (who never take it), how about a state law for the licensing of such children as are the sole support of their families to sell papers? The age limit should be raised one year each year so that child labor could be eased out of the newspaper business without strain. . ."

*Last fortnight, the London Daily Herald claimed the world's biggest circulation (2,030,000). /-The 16 Gannett papers: Rochester Times-Union, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Albany Knickerbocker Press, Albany Evening News, Utica Observer-Dispatch, Elmira Star-Gazette, Elmira Advertiser, Elmira Telegram, Newburgh News, Ithaca Journal-News, Olean Herald, Ogdensburg Journal, Beacon News. Malone Evening Telegram (all in New York State). Also Hartford (Conn.) Times, and Plainfield (N. J.) Courier-News.

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