Newshawks' Union

Cleveland newshawks got together three years ago to talk of organizing to protect their jobs, shorten hours, raise pay. Soon they heard that similar meetings were being held in Manhattan, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Result was American Newspaper Guild, founded in December 1933 with shaggy, drawling Scripps-Howard Columnist Heywood Campbell Broun as its president. Though some of the members at first did not like to proclaim it as such, the new Guild was a labor union from the start. Last week in Manhattan's Hotel Astor, the third annual Guild convention enthusiastically admitted this fact when instructed delegates representing the 4,200 Guildmen in good standing voted 84-10-5 for affiliation with the American Federation of Labor.

Before voting, the Guildmen heard New York's Mayor Fiorello ("Little Flower") LaGuardia declaim: "I think the Pullman porters had some difficulties similar to yours. Like you, they are scattered all over the country, and some are on the road all the time, so that it is extremely difficult for them to assemble. Further more, they met a most stubborn resistance on the part of employers. Airmail and passenger-line pilots, like you, originally resented the suggestion that they join in a labor group. They are now affiliated with the American Federation of Labor."

Gratefully remembering the opportune gift of $2,000 from John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers of America which had tided the Guild over a bad financial time last winter, saturnine Assistant Sunday Editor Julius Klyman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch urged the Guildmen to endorse Lewis' committee for Industrial Organization (TIME, Feb. 10) instead of the American Federation, which he believed to be "a crumbling institution which may not survive another six months."

President Broun, great & good friend of John L. Lewis, thereupon lumbered up to say: "I readily agree that the labor map is changing, but I want to be with the map-makers." St. Louis' four votes and Lansing, Mich.'s one were the only ballots cast against President Broun's majority.

Like all conventioneers, the Guildmen enjoyed their chance to cheer popular sentiments. Lively, liberal little Lawyer Morris Ernst, the Guild's shrewd Manhattan counselor, drew loudest cheers when he cried: "The public has a right to know what the newspaper publisher owns! If the publisher is a trustee of the freedom of the Press, then it is the trustee's first duty to make full disclosures to his beneficiaries."

Second big yell went up when the Detroit Guild wired in that Wayne County's Prosecutor Duncan C. ("Dune") McCrea, long at outs with the Hearstian Detroit Times, was thinking of instituting a $100,000 libel suit against the paper for stating that he was a member of the terroristic Black Legion organization, and that if he did he would donate any proceeds from the suit to the Newspaper Guild to help fight for "underpaid Hearst employes."

Taking stock at their convention, serious Guildmen saw that in its three years of existence the Guild had yet to win a concession from its archenemies, William Randolph Hearst and the conservative directors of the Associated Press. Of this, two Guild martyrs at the convention, handsome Dean Sothern Jennings, fired by the Hearstian San Francisco Call-Bulletin two years ago, and Morris Watson, baldish A. P. man whose ousting will be argued clear to the Supreme Court, were walking examples. Moreover, Guild officials frankly admitted membership had not increased as they hoped. Once the Guild had 10,000 newshawks signed up. Half of these had quit from apathy or fear of losing jobs.

On the credit side, Guildmen pointed to their coherent national organization, to their contracts with the Scripps-Howard Cleveland Press, Publisher Julius David Stern's New York Post and Philadelphia Record, and the huge, tabloid New York Daily News, to the fact that Guild and labor support had kept alive a bitter strike of 25 Milwaukee Guildmen against the Hearstian News since last February. Outside the four founding cities, strong Guilds had grown in Boston, Philadelphia, northern California, St. Louis and Washington, D. C. Chicago was weak, but New York, with 1,551 active Guildmen, was the national tower of moral and financial strength.

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