Off to Queer Street

Britain's newspaper publishers, already cramped by a newsprint shortage and soaring prices, caught another body blow. The Newsprint Supply Co. Ltd., the nonprofit cooperative through which the publishers allocate their newsprint supplies, announced last week that paper was so short that the wartime rationing system would have to be reimposed. Under it, the use of newsprint will be limited to the level of 1950's first nine months, thus force every paper either to freeze its circulation or to cut its size, already down to six or at most eight pages.

Wryly, publishers called the move "self-imposed, under duress." They were forced to it by a crisis of the Labor Government's own making. While the Government had gone on exporting 75,000 tons of British newsprint this year to Australia (whose newspapers run as high as 48 pages), it had choked off almost all Canadian newsprint imports to save $7,-500,000 in Canadian credits. Scandinavian suppliers, quick to take advantage of the shortage created by the Canadian embargo, had boosted prices to Britain in 10 months from -L-30 to -L-35 a ton. Higher prices alone, warned the Sunday Express' Editor John Gordon, would put "many newspapers in 'Queer Street,' " and probably force a number of marginal provincial papers out of business.

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