AP v. Guild

In 1933 an earnest, thin-thatched Associated Press reporter named Morris Watson organized and headed in the AP's New York office a unit of the American Newspaper Guild, newshawks' union which last month voted to join the American Federation of Labor (TIME, June 8). In 1934 the AP employes were granted a five-day week in return for suspending further efforts at collective bargaining. Last October the five-day AP week was suddenly rescinded. The AP Guildmen thereupon asked their National Executive Board to intercede with AP's General Manager Kent Cooper. Day after the Guild's protesting letter reached Mr. Cooper's desk. Morris

Watson was called in and fired. Last month the AP disregarded a National Labor Relations Board order to reinstate Morris Watson. Last week the Labor Board started the Watson case on its way to the U. S. Supreme Court by asking a U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an order to enforce its findings.

Last week's decision of a Circuit Court in New Orleans that the National Labor Relations Act did not apply to manufacturers gave an idea to the AP's counsel, white-crowned John William Davis. First he pointed out that the AP is not run for profit, can declare no dividends, then ingeniously argued: "This case falls in the classification of manufacture and not in interstate commerce. News is manufactured over editorial cables, while Bessemer Steel may be manufactured by the open-hearth process. News comes in as raw material and is put in final shape by editorial employes, and then only does its interstate transmission begin. Not until this process is completed does it become an article in interstate commerce. The rapidity with which news is transmitted does not make it any the less manufacturing."

In regard to the AP's non-profit status, the Guild's smart Attorney Morris Ernst was equally resourceful. Appearing as a "friend of the court," Attorney Ernst declared: "It is quite clear that respondent [the AP] is not an eleemosynary institution, but is a business association through which member newspapers make greater profits through decreased costs. Assessments vary in the same manner as dividends." For Mr. Davis' manufacturing claim, Mr. Ernst Lad just as ingenious a rebuttal: "News, in its intangible form, is carried over the air by wires; in printed form, it is carried over the ground by rail. The difference in means of transmission cannot affect or diminish the power of Congress to regulate respondent's activities as it can regulate the activities of railroads."

To this Mr. Ernst's Associate Counsel Callman Gottesman added, out of court, a sarcastic crack: "Many readers of the Associated Press have doubtless long suspected them of manufacturing news, but never expected the company's learned attorney to so admit in open court."

The Dred Scott of this historic legal battle of journalistic collective bargaining, Morris Watson, was for seven years admittedly one of AP's ablest reporters. Shortly after his Guild activities began, he was put in charge of the "Southern wire," a routine desk job. Associated Pressman Watson was temporarily taken from this to supervise the routing of news of the Hauptmann trial copy, functioned acceptably. At the close of the trial he took two weeks' leave in addition to his regular vacation because of illness, found himself assigned to the unwelcome "lobster trick" (midnight to 8 a. m.) on his return. He was still in this journalistic dog-house when Executive News Editor J. Marion Kendrick sent a note to General Manager Cooper suggesting that Morris Watson be discharged. On the memorandum Mr. Cooper scribbled: "Approved. BUT solely on the grounds of his work not being on a basis for which he has shown capability."

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