So I Took the $50,000

The tabloid Elmira (N.Y.) News was shutting up shop, and the publisher didn't sound a bit sorry. In his farewell Page One editorial, Robert J. Allen,* an Army flyer in World War I and a Marine flyer in No. II, heaved a luxurious sigh as he told why:

"Partly we are quitting because we want to take a long, long vacation. We want to become a sort of lotus eater, at least for a while. We want to see all the warm, azure seas and lie beside them on the white sands. We want to travel to all the continents and to most all of the countries. We want to sleep late or get up early, without compulsion to do either. ... we want to loaf and travel as long as it amuses us. . . ."

At that point, with his 7,400 readers' tongues hanging out, Publisher Allen wiped the lotus off his chin, and confessed that there was another reason for putting an end to his 14-year-old newspaper. "To a large extent," he added bitterly, "we are quitting because we could no longer endure the conditions and demands imposed on us by the International Typographical Union. . . . They handed us an ultimatum which is no longer, by their express stipulation, to be known as a contract, but will henceforward be known as 'Conditions of Employment' (TIME, Sept. 1).

". . . To agree to many provisions in the document in question would be like lying down to enable a bully to kick you with greater facility. And we were never one for that sort of thing." He had even offered the News to his I.T.U. employees, he said, if they would just pay him I.T.U. wages in return. They turned him down, so he was calling it quits. His printers could shift for themselves; Publisher Allen had sold his equipment for more than $50,000, was taking his wife and heading for the Caribbean in a surplus Marine Corps plane he had bought.

*No kin to Washington Columnist Robert S. Allen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.