Manhattan in the Dark

The strike that kept Manhattan's newspapers undelivered had gone on for two weeks. Some people were getting used to doing without papers. But an increasing number were finding it hard going.

One out of every five regular readers felt the lack enough to go to the printing plants, brave shouting picket lines and buy copies. Some newspapers printed box scores showing the city's growing thirst for news; the Daily News (normal weekday circ. 2,000,000) sold 135,000 copies on the seventh day of the strike, 500,000 a week later.

New York Times Topicker Simeon Strunsky, who usually does, saw the brighter side of things in the long lines waiting to buy papers at the plants. Wrote he: "It is calculated to make a newspaper man's bosom swell with pride, like Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., riding at anchor in Pinafore. . . ." Other newsmen felt as if they were talking into a dead mike.

Publishers kept a keen eye on those long queues of newspaper buyers. More were there to catch up on the racing results, the comics and the gossip columnists (in that order) than were seeking the news of the war and the world. In front of the staid Times, one observer saw buyers tear out the obituary page, throw the rest of the paper away.

The strike had definitely slowed the city's pulse. Macy's department store said that the lack of advertising had cut sales. Night clubs and theaters felt it, too.

Green Light. When the strikers refused to return to work, pending settlement of their demands (higher pay, vacations with pay, overtime pay on holidays, and a publisher-financed welfare fund), WLB declared their contract terminated, gave the publishers permission to deal with new groups, hire new men. With that green light shining, the papers announced that they would attempt to resume newsstand deliveries.

Rumors ran through the picket lines that the oldtime strong-arm men of the Chicago circulation wars, the late Moe Annenberg's boys, were moving in. Sporadic violence flared around the Daily News plant. In midtown it suddenly became easier to buy papers, especially the News and the Times; boys and old men were posted at street corners, peddling papers at a 100 to 150% markup.

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