Newark Strike

One day last week the Newark (N. J.) Ledger failed to appear. Practically the whole editorial staff had walked out on strike, called by the Ledger chapter of the local Newspaper Guild (TIME, Nov. 26). Publisher Lucius T. Russell's announced reason for shutting down was that he did not wish to subject loyal members of his staff to "indignities and harassments" from the strikers. Two days later the Ledger resumed publication, and big, blustery Publisher Russell, up from a sickbed, bought full page space in the New York Times to state his case:

"TODAY'S NEWARK SUNDAY LEDGER OF 100,000 COPIES "will contain 132 pages reported, written, edited, selected by newspapermen NOT bossed and disciplined and hired and fired by Heywood Broun's children of the Guild (one year old). ... If Heywood Broun's children of the Guild (one yr. old) want to boss and hire and fire reporters and writers and editors and artists they will have to buy a newspaper plant and disburse a payroll instead of receiving one."

Appended was voluminous correspondence between the publisher and the Guild last July, purporting to show that Mr. Russell had tried to cooperate with the Guild until goaded beyond endurance by Guild efforts to dictate to him.

The Guild's reply: "Absurd."

Following a week of mutual recriminations Publisher Russell and the Guild finally got together to talk business. The meeting was brief, bitter. Publisher Russell slapped on the table a statement that, except on the order of arbitrators, he would sign no Guild contract that even raised the question of his sole authority to hire & fire for any reason he saw fit. Neither would he contract with a Guild that included copy boys, office boys, messengers, clerks, telephone operators, etc. Inclusion of those groups with newswriters, said he, "is nothing more than a surreptitious effort to impose a vertical union for strike purposes."

The strike went on.

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