New Look in Chicago

Chicagoans read a new kind of newspaper last week. The strike of the A.F.L. International Typographical Union had forced Chicago's six daily papers to print by photo-engraved typewriting instead of type. The papers had simply bypassed the typesetting process.

The improvised products were hardly the "newspaper of the future," as one hopeful editor proclaimed. Some readers complained that the typed words and hand-lettered headlines were hard to read. But the papers were good enough to give the I.T.U. some worries about the future of its closed-shop policy -- and featherbedding practices. The I.T.U., one of the oldest U.S. unions, had for most of its 95 years fought the adoption of any labor-saving processes which might throw printers out of work.

That necessitous attitude had mothered invention. Partly to combat printers' strikes, a few small, papers (TIME, July 28) had tried out photo-engraved typing in the last several years. But last week was the first time the process had been used on a large scale.

The papers got some help from commercial print shops, where I.T.U. members -- fearing to violate the Taft-Hartley Act by a secondary boycott -- set ads for the newspapers. Other unions avoided sympathy moves that might violate the law. By week's end, the dailies were printing newspapers of about their usual size; the Tribune ran 116 pages Sunday, the Sun a 152-page tabloid with 96 pages of news.

Three hundred typists replaced the 1,550 strikers. The Sun and Times, operating 24 hours a day, hired the biggest crew with such lures as free turkey dinners on Thanksgiving Day to keep them punching. Copyreaders briefed the girls on the mysteries of their symbols, which the typists found not very mysterious. Executives' secretaries pitched in to help type the news; the executives answered the mail themselves.

There was still plenty of confusion in the newspaper offices and mistakes in the papers. "Making a correction is such an involved process," said one editor, "that we don't do it unless it's libel." But the publishers were chipper enough to think they would win their fight for a signed contract, instead of the unilateral conditions of employment -- and closed shop --the I.T.U. had tried to impose.

"If I were a member of the printers' union," said Executive Editor Basil ("Stuffy") Walters of the Daily News, "I'd feel a bit scared. We're not trying to bust the union; nobody's mad at anybody except that maybe we're a bit mad at the union leadership." The union leadership was mad too. It extended its strike to the Hammond, Ind. Times, which also switched to typing. And the I.T.U. served strike notices on Chicago trade papers and the Detroit Times and Free Press.

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