Wirephoto War

(See front cover)

A newspaper publisher could if he would put in the entire second half of April hobnobbing in hotel lobbies; perching on gilt chairs in improvised conference halls; rising to perfunctory votes of thanks; hoisting highballs in smoke-filled rooms; puffing after-dinner cigars while the tri-colored dessert melts, the ice-water turns tepid, the cigaret butts float in the coffee saucers, and the speaker of the evening warms to his subject of "Freedom of the Press." For the last half of April traditionally is the season when men of the Press come together to talk about their business.

That such meetings rarely make exciting news is the publishers' own fault. They carry on their liveliest business behind closed doors, indulge in "off the record" discussions which newspapers obediently refrain from reporting. For public consumption they hand out reports and speeches viewing with alarm familiar bogeys, congratulating themselves on "vigilance," calling for cooperation, closer understanding, etc., etc.

This year's meetings of Associated Press and American Newspaper Publishers Association were bound to be an exception, due to at least three issues too hot to be disposed of entirely in private. One was the NRA newspaper code which expires June 15. Another was the question of letting down the bars against radio news broadcasting. Third and hottest of all was Wirephoto and John Francis Neylan.

Wirephoto is the Associated Press's system for flashing newspictures around the country by telephone wire. It serves 39 of the AP's 1,340 member newspapers, in 24 large cities. Those 39 underwrite the $1,000,000-a-year cost of getting pictures from any distance in about ten minutes (TIME, May 7; Jan. 14). When the project, secretly negotiated, was revealed at last year's AP meeting, two delegates fumed with rage. One was John Francis Neylan, brainy, brawny counsel for William Randolph Hearst, who holds 19 AP memberships. The other was peppery little Roy Wilson Howard (Scripps-Howard Newspapers), who has six. Lawyer Neylan roared at the AP management for "the most unjustifiable extravagance in the history of journalism." But Wirephoto supporters promptly pointed out that both he and Publisher Howard represented competing picture services-- Hearst's International and Scripps-Howard's Acme.

Beaten by ballots, Hearst's Neylan, a tenacious, fighting Irishman, was barely home in San Francisco from the convention last year when he started to load his guns for a return battle in 1935. In June he broadcast a voluminous letter to all AP members inviting them to help him force the AP management to rid itself of Wirephoto. Alternatives: drop it entirely or turn it back to American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to be operated by the latter for all the U. S. Press, with losses guaranteed by the four existing big picture agencies (AP, International, Acme, Wide World). From responses to that letter, Lawyer Neylan plotted his offensive. Last March he trundled his artillery into the open--a "Membership Proxy Committee of Twenty-five," hell-bent to split last week's convention wide open.

Neylan v. Noyes. Shrewdly Mr. Neylan hitched his Wirephoto attack to a demand that the AP directorate of 15 be altered to include small-city publishers who comprise 80% of the membership. Deftly he planted the idea that adoption of Wirephoto by the AP directorate indicated that the small towner was AP's forgotten man. That was enough to jolt the AP into action. Within a week AP President Frank Brett Noyes, venerable publisher of the rich & routine Washington Evening Star, wrote his 1,340 members: "It would be impossible to plan a procedure that would more effectively scuttle the Associated Press than the proposals advanced by Mr. Neylan." The battle for proxies went on until last week, when it moved onto the floor of the incongruously elegant Starlight Roof of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria. His big frame draped over a front-row chair whence he could easily address barbed asides to President Noyes on the platform. Lawyer Neylan let a potent "lit tle fellow" open his attack for a five-point program. The little fellow was youthful J. Noel Macy, publisher of New York's Westchester County papers.

Resolution No. 1: Let the AP maintain its picture-mat service to small papers at the same standard of efficiency as in the past, and at no greater cost than in pre-Wirephoto days. Boldly Publisher Macy pounced on a sore toe by reviewing the AP's momentous blunders on the Hauptmann verdict, the Gold Clause decision and the Weirton case "while the executives' attention was diverted to Wire-photo." His main point for the resolution: His papers were required to pay 50% more for an expedited mat-service to keep from being scooped by metropolitan dailies invading his own territory with Wirephotos. Moreover, said he, the Wirephoto machines were bought with money ($432,000) that belonged to the whole AP --non-users of Wirephoto as well as users. Angrily to the defense rushed Publisher Joseph Ridder of the St. Paul Dispatch et al. Cried he: "An insult to the board of directors! . . . You get what you pay for m this world, and now we are asked to vote that forever after the AP may never improve its mat-service if it should cost more."

Vote: Overwhelming "NO."

Resolution No, 2: Let the AP undertake no activity that does not serve the entire membership. Up spoke John D. Ewing, publisher of the Shreveport (La.) Times to complain that the Dallas News and Times-Herald "come into our field every day in the year with their damn Wirephotos--using our pictures!" Defense by President Noyes: "If we are to back to real mutuality, we go back to a pony wire service for all members, because some members can't afford anything better. ' Vote: Overwhelming "NO."

Resolution No. 3: Let the AP be protected against any liability arising out of ) Wirephoto. Big Jack Neylan rose on his long legs, began in an easy, booming drawl:

''I'm going to put this old grey head right into a family quarrel. Up to now here has been an impression that all is sweet and lovely among the immortal 39 [Wirephoto users.] Well, I can tell you that's no happy family. In fact they're having a terrible time keeping ten from running out! George Cameron of the San Francisco Chronicle is threatening to sue on the ground that Wirephoto was sold to him by misrepresentation. The sales talk was that his Hearst competitors were about to buy it. If he should win, and the rest of the ten get ants in their pants and run out--you pay the freight--because the Wirephoto contracts do not hold the users jointly and severally liable. I merely suggest that the intelligent thing to do is protect your own cash drawer." Shaking his grey mane, he shouted: "Break away from the throne long enough to show you have some independence left!"

Noyes defense: "They are all paying their assessments, including Mr. Cameron."

Vote: Not-so-pronounced "No." Lawyer Neylan demanded a roll-call. It was denied. Down he sat, his proxies useless in his pocket.

Resolution No. 4: Let a committee of five, including at least three nonusers of Wirephoto, review the whole transaction and determine if the AP's credit and the interests of all members have been protected. Neylan: "I demand a record vote." Carl L. Estes of the Longview, Tex.) News, bitingly: ". . . I've had enough of this self-appointed, self-anointed shepherd of the little fellow. " Vote: Tabled.

Resolution No, 5: Alter the directorate to include three directors, one each from cities up to 15,000, 50,000, 75,000 population. Publisher Robert McLean of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin: "Better discussed by a quiet, thoughtful group of men. Let it be put up to the board of directors." Vote: Referred to the directors. Lawyer Neylan: "Will the directors handle the voting as was done today?" Noyes, snappishly: "Maybe. Can't tell." Neylan: "Twice this afternoon you have disfranchised 900 members of the Associated Press by not permitting their proxies to be voted." Neylan, later: "We always lose the first two or three rounds."

Lawyer & Client. The newspaper world feels that a great publisher was lost when "Jack" Neylan, who looks like a well-groomed Abraham Lincoln, quit the San Francisco Call ten years ago to become general counsel for Mr. Hearst and all his enterprises. He had negotiated Hearst's purchase of that newspaper in 1919, taking the job of publisher with the late, crusading Fremont Older as editor. Virtually his first task was to deal with a reporters' strike. While rival publishers excitedly fired "agitators" from their staffs, Neylan soothingly sifted his own newshawks' grievances down to a complaint that they were forbidden to accept free theatre tickets. He rescinded the order; the strikers went happily back to work. A bitter opponent of the Newspaper Guild today, Lawyer Neylan likes to relate the Call strike episode as somehow illustrating the fallaciousness of a newspaper labor movement.

Lawyer Neylan has won William Randolph Hearst's confidence more completely than anyone ever has 'before. To him the 71 -year-old publisher is a "great American," a real Progressive, an unappreciated genius, a master of English prose, an extravagant, wilful client. But Lawyer Neylan's intense loyalties never beget humility. No yessing Hearstling, he some-times lectures Mr. Hearst as if he were a small boy. Visitors at the Hearst castle at San Simeon tell of the wistful note in the querulous Hearst voice: "I'd like to buy it, but Mr. Neylan won't let me." He usually buys it anyway, and Chancellor of Exchequer Neylan finds the money. Periodically Chancellor Neylan threatens to resign. The fact that he does not has nothing to do with the fat Hearst retainer. From many another client rich Jack Neylan is making all the money he needs to provide for all he cares about -- his wife and daughter, Jane Frances (now a senior at University of California), and his handsome estate at Woodside on the San Mateo Peninsula, for which he wrote a check for $160,000 five years ago.

So strong is Lawyer Neylan's influence with Hearst that he is reputed to have persuaded the publisher in 1932 that Franklin Roosevelt was a satisfactory choice for the Democratic nomination, thus starting the break from Garner which put the President across (TIME, July 11, 1932). But many a would-be Neylan client would be surprised to learn that the real reason his business was refused was that Neylan suspected him of trying to buy Hearst influence. At every opportunity he insists that anyone who claims an ability to deliver Hearst is a faker.

Lawyer Neylan has a real affection for his client, and Hearst often sneaks up on this blindly sentimental side when debates between them become warm. Dopesters predict that when the aging publisher dies, Jack Neylan will head the regency that tells Hearst's sons and Hearst's editors what to do. Yet some of his warmest admirers regret the Hearst connection, feel that Neylan's own capacities would have carried him farther, less equivocally.

Lawyer & Community. Ask knowing San Franciscans who is their city's most potent figure and they will probably say Banker Herbert Fleishhacker because his finger still is in so many pies. Ask who is the greatest potential force and they will say Jack Neylan. As to whether his power is for good or evil, answers will agree only in their superlatives. To New Dealers he is the "most dangerous" enemy in the land. (After the 1932 election he quickly turned on the Brain Trust denouncing its members as an "intellectual awkward squad.") To left-wing Labor he is the "most dangerous" of Conservatives. (He, more than any other one man broke the general strike in San Francisco last summer.) To followers of Senator Hiram Johnson he is the "most effective" Progressive. Most loyal of friends, he is the bitterest, most remorseless of enemies. Thirty years ago he burst upon San Francisco as "Windy Jack," a noisy brilliant, picturesque young hoodlum reporter with the vocabulary and manners of his teamster days in Arizona. Little about his behavior suggested that he was born of gentlefolk in New York 49 years ago properly educated in New Jersey. After he had been hired, fired, rehired on various San Francisco newspapers, the skyrocket of Jack Neylan's career was touched off in 1910 when the Bulletin assigned him to cover Hiram Johnson's campaign for Governor on the new Progressive ticket. Governor-elect Johnson took him to Sacramento as chairman of the new State Board of Control, for which Neylan had drafted the plan. Chairman Neylan's achievements transcended all legal limitations of the job. When the superintendents of State institutions tried to tell him that oleomargarine was better for insane patients than butter, Neylan barked: "You are more important to the State than your patients. If oleomargarine is so good, you eat it!" He saw that they did. With his toughest teamster tactics he routed so many corrupt officeholders to San Quentin Prison that Governor Johnson called a halt, jokingly told friends that "Neylan was ruining the State Government by putting all the officials in jail."

Jack Neylan drew up California's first budget, walked onto the floor of the Legislature, bulldozed that body into accepting it. When, after six years, California's $2,000,000 deficit had been turned into an $8,000,000 surplus, Budgeteer Neylan had to borrow $1,000 to move his family back to San Francisco where he began practicing law. His first partner was Aaron Sapiro, who silenced Henry Ford's attacks on Jews. After a year he opened his own office, got as his first client Zellerbach Paper Co. which he had lashed unmercifully as Chairman of the Board of Control. Because he knew how to use them, power and wealth gravitated to hard-fighting John Francis Neylan in the next 20 years. Emotional, intelligent, intuitive rather than scholarly, he is a spectacular courtroom performer. Towering, grey-maned, deep-voiced, he baits, bullies, works for an explosion of temper, then strikes home. He despises anything other than a frontal attack. But he is Irish enough to ogle juries, turn his biting wit on opponents.

Lawyer Neylan has never lost a jury trial (he refuses criminal and divorce cases), has lost only one case of great importance. That was a $10,000,000 suit by H. Hackfeld & Co., German sugar growers in Hawaii, whose property had been seized and reorganized by the Alien Property Custodian.

Lawyer & Liberalism. Friends of his "Windy Jack" days do not know quite what to make of Lawyer John Francis Neylan who lives in luxury among San Francisco's millionaires but who retains the simple bluntness of the Arizona teamster; who likes to haggle with dealers over fine books; who plays golf every Wednesday afternoon at Menlo Country Club or at Burlingame; who lunches at the Palace Hotel's "cabinet table" with local bigwigs; who is a regent of the University of California; who helped Hiram Johnson drive the Southern Pacific Railroad out of power 25 years ago but who now appears to be an archConservative, an apostle of property rights, counsel for bankers and Red-hater extraordinary.

Liberals point most angrily to Neylan's behavior in last year's San Francisco strike. Called back from a Honolulu holiday by jittery publishers, Neylan whipped them into a "law-&-order" coalition with himself as supreme dictator. Taking their orders from him, Hearstpapers and rivals alike followed a uniform editorial policy of attacking the strikers as "revolutionists." During the fight General Hugh Johnson arrived on the scene, began loudly to lecture the publishers on the rights of Labor. When the ex-cavalryman had reached the height of his oratory, the ex-teamster roared between glittering teeth: "I do the shouting in this part of the country, General! You may outargue me but you can't outshout me in my own hills!" General Johnson subsided, departed muttering: "This is the first time I ever ran up against a newspaper oligarchy."

When he broke the back of the strike, Jack Neylan all but crippled NIRA's Section 7a in the West. But he sees no inconsistency between that and his oldtime sponsorship of California's Workmen's Compensation Act. To him, in the days of Hiram Johnson, good government meant Progressivism and social reform. But the definition of Progressivism did not include economic reform, and Neylan's Liberalism crystallized then & there. In 1919 he defended Charlotte Anita Whitney, at his own expense, against a charge of criminal syndicalism; but Radicals were not yet important in 1919. He honestly regarded the San Francisco strikers as "revolutionists." refused the congratulations of shipowners and bankers with the statement that he was not fighting for them. When he said, "My heart bleeds for the Newspaper Guild," he really meant that he would like to see newspaper reporters get a better deal. But as Hearst's lawyer in the Call-Bulletin case, he considered the Guild a menace, fought it to a standstill, drove it Leftward toward trade unionism (TIME. Dec. 24). Twitted for defending bankers thrice in two years he explains: "The underdog needs friends. The bankers are so friendless now, even the politicians have courage to attack them."

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