Thunder on the Right

"Your tax dollars have helped Norway and Denmark to reduce their internal debt while ours was mounting," Chicagoans read last week. "We have financed a six-lane highway in Portugal, numerous uncompleted projects in Iran and are now providing free airplane excursions for thousands of Arabs visiting Mecca. The record is filled with innumerable instances of 'foreign aid' so dubious and downright silly as to be almost beyond belief. It includes dress suits for Grecian undertakers, public baths for Egyptian camel drivers and even iceboxes for Eskimos."

The editorial might well have run in the Chicago Tribune. In fact, it appeared in John Shively Knight's Chicago Daily News and the four other metropolitan newspapers of the Knight chain.* Written by Publisher Knight, whose weekly, three-column "Editor's Notebook" sets policy for all Knight papers, the editorial was the latest in a series of pronouncements through which the powerful chain in less than five months has abjured its longtime support for Eisenhower and marched toward total estrangement from Modern Republicanism.

"Intelligent Conservatism." Bald, hawk-faced Jack Knight, 62, is one of the most influential publishers in the U.S. A shrewd, cost-conscious businessman, he has long articulated a middle-of-the-road political philosophy which mirrors a broad cross section of business thinking; he calls it "intelligent conservatism." While his slick, tricked-up papers seem often to reflect the auditor more than the editor in Knight's nature, they are closely identified with their communities and powerful in local and national politics. (In Illinois politicians say that an endorsement by the Daily News is an automatic guarantee of 50,000 votes.) Thus, Knight's list from Ike to right marks one of the most significant political shifts in the U.S. press since the Truman era.

Shuttling between his 8-ft. desk in the Daily News publisher's office, and the 10-ft.-by-10-ft. cubicle where he retires to write his "Editor's Notebook," Knight is in closer touch with reality than most publishers, and has often irritated his fellow businessmen. He backed Wendell Willkie, mistrusted Tom Dewey, shied away from Herbert Hoover in 1932 because he felt that Hoover "knew very little about the human equation."

Knight swung his weight behind F.D.R. six months before Pearl Harbor, supported the Marshall Plan "with misgivings." A Taft supporter when he visited Ike in May 1952, Knight sensed immediately that Eisenhower "had a fresher and more modern approach." The publisher's vigorous support of Eisenhower earned him the President's "admiration and warm regard" --the phrase Ike wrote on the signed photograph that still faces Jack Knight's desk.

Mounting Distrust. The break has been swift and thorough. Only a year ago last January the Knight papers ran a glowing verdict by Jack Knight himself on Ike's first term. Wrote he: "The political phenomenon of our times is the almost childlike faith of the people in Eisenhower. One seldom hears a businessman teeing off on Ike for doing the very things that caused him to cuss out Roosevelt and Truman as 'Socialists.' The answer must be that our businessmen have changed with the times in terms of social attitudes and are glad the program is being administered by a man they trust."

Publisher Knight's first stirrings of distrust became evident last summer, when he warned of a new burst of inflation. His papers made their first direct attack on the President last January over one of the purely professional issues--the way advance news of the Eisenhower Doctrine was leaked to a few papers--that prompted some of the rare harsh press criticism of the Administration.

With publication of the $71.8 billion budget, Knight's mounting distrust of Eisenhower's fiscal philosophy hardened and deepened. He started lashing out at foreign-policy "fumbling," at the "incredible" Secretary of State, the weakening of the Western alliance; in his concern with Government costs he moved inevitably closer to isolationism.

Frills & Boondoggles. Knight's news columns quickly reflected the new line. In March Washington Bureau Chief Ed Lahey (TIME, Dec. 19, 1955) reported: "The Eisenhower 'father image' is getting a little flaky around the edges. Quite a number of good 'internationalists' in the Senate treated his Middle East message as though it were less than divine revelation." Urged on by Daily News Editor Basil Walters, Knightmen waded through the budget and burst through with derisive headlines:

WE'VE READ ALL 1,249 PAGES!

AND BROTHER, IS IT LOADED WITH FRILLS AND BOONDOGGLES!

Along with horror stories on boondoggle items such as "the $300,000 that the Army spends to finance Sunday morning recreation for civilian members of private rifle clubs," the Knight papers have run two-column pep talks urging readers to protest to their Congressmen, helped them out with maps of congressional districts and names of Representatives.

How to End Taxes. By last week the down-with-taxes drive had all but taken over Knight's news columns. In one issue of the News the Page One headline trumpeted Ike's defense of the budget, while the "second front page"--Knight's gambit to inveigle readers as far as page 3--devoted a banner head and five columns to tax stories, including tips on evasion of state taxes by Columnist Jack Mabley and a dispatch from London, where Editor Walters, on tour, was busily exposing Lord Beveridge and Britain's womb-to-tomb social-security system.

Chicago Ikemen who have never taken the Tribune's anti-Eisenhower outbursts seriously are quick to accuse Knight of using criticism of the President to sell newspapers. Retorts Knight: "I don't sit down and say something because I think it is good for my newspapers. I don't fail to say something because I think it would be bad for my newspapers." Knight's rightward march is essentially the reaction of a cost-conscious businessman. But the hundreds of letters from worried readers that are pouring into his newspapers' and congressional offices each week indicate that what Editor-Publisher Knight finds good for the country is also good for the Knight newspapers.

* Besides the Daily News (circ. 588,576), the Miami Herald (243,230), Akron Beacon Journal (158,626), Detroit Free Press (456,768) and Charlotte, N.C. Observer (150,571).

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