Guild Housecleaning

The American Newspaper Guild last week became a straightforward newspaper union and gave up grinding leftish political axes. In a national referendum the Guild ousted its entire present administration--long accused of Communist fellow-traveling--by a nearly two-to-one vote.*

Outside New York City the shellacking was formidable: 9-to-1 in Philadelphia (second largest local); 29-to-1 in Minneapolis and St. Paul; 10-to-1 in Cleveland; an average 30-to-1 in small locals. In Boston, home local of ex-Guild President Donal M. Sullivan, Opponent Milton Murray of Detroit got a 4-to-3 vote, though new Executive Vice President Sam Eubanks won 2-to-1.

Three months ago New York's solid bloc of votes saved the administration group at the Guild convention in Detroit. This time the Administration counted on a 1,700-vote majority from among New York's 4,000 members to save them again. But New York gave them a majority of only 158 votes.

Milton Meadowcroft Murray, 37, new Guild president of Scotch-Irish-English-Dutch descent, is a crack newspaperman. Twice president of the Detroit Guild, smart negotiator of Guild contracts on two of Detroit's three papers, he is assistant city editor of the Detroit Times (though frequently out on assignment as one of the paper's best reporters). A six-footer, with a genial twang acquired through years of telephoning to city editors, his chief interest outside news and the Guild is his 120-acre farm near Detroit. He drilled its well himself, is now building a dock on a small lake where he catches pan fish and hunts ducks. More important, the election meant that henceforth the Guild would be run by the kind of man whom most newspapermen regard as typical of the hardworking best in their profession.

* Based on an 87% vote, at week's end, of the Guild's 12,000 paid-up members. Final count, due this week, will almost certainly bury the leftists still deeper.

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