Go Ahead & Shoot

In its skirmish with U.S. newspaper publishers, the American Newspaper Guild (C.I.O.) was playing no favorites. Guild pickets last week methodically patrolled J. David Stern's pro-labor Philadelphia Record and Camden (N.J.) Courier-Post. Back in 1934, when the Guild didn't even have coffee money, Dave Stern was the first publisher to sign a Guild contract.

Stern's papers were target No. 2 in the Guild's national campaign to get $100 a week for experienced reporters. The first enemy, Hearst's Los Angeles Herald & Express (TIME, Sept. 23), was still shut down and the strike was in its ninth week. Dave Stern was a hand-picked target: Rival Walter (son of Moe) Annenberg's richer Inquirer (circ. 600,000) had countered Guild demands with an offer identical to Stern's, but so far had been left alone. To Guild members, who might also be baffled by the discrimination, the Guild frankly admitted that it considered Stern the softer touch.

But by week's end it was plain that the Guild was bucking a hardened (or at least a fed-up) Stern. Record and Courier-Post executives rolled up their sleeves, got out the papers themselves.

Stern stood pat on his offer of a, 12% general increase. Said he sternly: "Since 1936 ... we have had a gun pointed at our head, in the shape of a strike threat, at every Guild negotiation. This year, the gun was not only pointed but cocked before we even sat down. . . .

"You know, after you have looked down a gun barrel for several years, you become impervious to the threat. You finally get to thinking that perhaps the easiest solution is to let the other fellow pull the trigger."

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