Seattle Settlement

Last week Editor Bruce Bliven of The New Republic openly wrote to William Randolph Hearst: "My immediate purpose ... is to suggest that you retire from active journalism. You are an elderly man. . . . Why not turn over the reins to someone else and enjoy the sunset years? . . . Things are going rather badly for your daily newspapers. . . . Even in cities where your papers have shown slight [circulation] gains, their competitors have run away from them by many thousands. . . In advertising revenue, also, your papers have not been doing so well. ... A special problem for you has been created by your present attitude toward union labor. . . . When, however, your own reporters and editors tried to improve the condition by forming a perfectly legal and orthodox trade union, you fought them hoof and claw. ... It is hard to resist a conclusion that you are in favor of trade unions when they are already strong and can beat you in a fair fight, but opposed to them when you think they are crushable." No news is one more attack on Publisher Hearst by the pinkish New Republic. But Editor Bliven's was only one of many voices that have lately been raised against the Nation's most prominent publisher.

Christian Century had croaked the doom of Publisher Hearst's ilk in an editorial week before. An anti-Hearst committee persuaded 20th Century-Fox to cancel a proposed cinema about the Spanish revolution with Hearstian correspondent Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker as supervisor. The publisher's Presidential candidate had been historically swamped Nov. 3. At this juncture, William Randolph Hearst, whose instinct for ultimately landing right side up has seldom failed him in five decades of journalistic rough & tumble, began mending his fences.

Last month Publisher Hearst addressed to his striking Seattle employes a post-election endorsement of popular, victorious Franklin Roosevelt (TIME, Nov. 16). Last week, with a double master stroke, he capitulated to the demands of Newspaper Guildsmen, who had kept his Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed since last August (TIME, Aug. 24 et seq.) * and, on the principle of if-you-can't-lick-'em-hire-'em, put in as PI's new publisher Franklin Roosevelt's 36-year-old son-in-law John Boettiger. According to Associated Press, Mrs. Boettiger, the former Anna Roosevelt Ball, is slated to be women's editor of the PI. If Mrs. Boettiger takes this job, she will be the third member of the Roosevelt family in Hearst employ. Brother Elliott is a vice president of Hearst Radio Inc.

Eleven years a Chicago Tribune man, two years assistant to Cinema Tsar Will Hays, John Boettiger was told to make the P-I the "best paper in town." In Seattle, he will find himself in one of the most colorful cities of the U. S. Settled in 1851, a railhead by 1883, headed for civic greatness with the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, Seattle is now 19th U. S. port of entry, still retains the breezy style of prospecting days. Owning its utilities, seat of the Uni versity of Washington (this year's West Coast representative for the Rose Bowl), Seattle still produces characters like the late eccentric Congressman Marion Zioncheck.

Tough and militant is Seattle Labor. In 1919, the city was the scene of a general strike. This year, the handful of striking Guildsmen could not have closed the P-I without the support of dock workers and truckmen who failed to scare when the town's conservatives, encouraged by such leading citizens as Publisher Clarance Brettun Blethen of the Times, talked of forming vigilante bands to break the picket lines.

Tower of strength to Seattle's uncompromising Labor men was and is Mayor John Francis Dore, one of the most picturesque politicians in the long line of colorful characters who have sat in the city's mayoral chair. When businessmen called for police to stop "violence" at the P-I plant, Mayor Dore said that "while Seattle has a Labor Administration," police would protect no strikebreakers. He is now the objective of a recall petition.

* The Hearst-Guild agreement, fixing minimum wages, hours, sick leaves, vacations, dismissal notice and pay, is substantially the same as that fixed last September between striking Guildsmen and the Hearst Milwaukee Wisconsin News. Last week an agreement was reached between the Guild and the Hearstian San Francisco Examiner.

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