The Higher Principle

...But it rested on the principle that "newspaper publishers have not only the right but also the duty to furnish the public with newspapers," and a voluntary agreement was reached between proprietors and workers to bargain together and submit any unsettled dispute to a court of arbitration selected by both sides...

...It's an interesting thing that in each of the major disputes which we have had in the last two years [the steel industry, dock workers, airlines, etc.] there has been a followup in which the parties have sat down together to decide how they can work out private methods of avoiding this situation in the future...

...What has been arranged is not a peace agreement but an armistice between two hostile and still resentful forces...

...That is very important, and the Scandinavian experience will be part of the experience to which we will look . . . ." Unfortunately, the publishers and unions made no provision for a followup review, but Wirtz may be able to bring it about...

...Secretary Wirtz thinks not...

...This agreement was negotiated in 1937...

...Ideally, such a study should begin with a definition of what a newspaper is in a democratic society, or, at least, what it should be...

...But despite many difficult periods, the agreement has been honored and has avoided strikes or lockouts for 25 years in a country where the rights of labor are respected more than almost any other country in the world...

...It was recognized on both sides as an "experiment" that could be abandoned after a certain length of time by either side...

...Is it too much to suggest that a similar experiment be explored in the United States...

...Yet it was precisely by going back to this first principle that Sweden finally ended its newspaper war and devised a system that has respected both the freedom of the press and the freedom of labor for more than a generation...

...For while both sides were opposed to arbitration in the New York and Cleveland disputes, everybody has suffered in the process and may now be more willing to consider new approaches...

...They thought that freedom from censorship and other government interference would assure that constant flow of information...

...It could be that the war over wages and profits has dominated everything else to such an extent that neither the unions nor the publishers are willing to put the obligation to publish before anything else...

...It did not occur to them that printers and publishers, by strike and lockout, could interfere with the distribution of news for more than three months, precisely at the time when the Government is setting out its legislative program for the entire year...

...Maybe it's too idealistic now to talk of first principles...

...The principle of uninterrupted publication, however, is fundamental...

...We are all going to do some very serious looking at these situations in the light of the Scandanavian experience and others," he said the other day...

...For part of the trouble in the New York dispute was that the weapons of both strike and lockout were used as if there were no fundamental obligation on the part of either the unions or the publishers to supply news to the community...

...Out of fear of being put out of business by new automatic machinery, the printers have violated the principle by the strike, and out of fear of being picked off one by one and negotiated out of business by the unions, the publishers have violated the principle by resort to lockout...

...Nor has every dispute been submitted to the voluntary arbitration court...

...This obligation, however, is the basic principle...

...Yet the right of the public to know what is going on stands above the right to strike or lockout, or should in a democracy, and after these last three months, which have deranged the economy and health of more people than will ever be known, the higher principle is at least worth a try...

...Fortunately, the armistice is for two years, so that, after a reasonable cooling-off period, there will still be time for both sides to sit down together—hopefully with one or two professional labor relations experts from the outside—to redefine the principles and procedures for reaching a longe-range settlement...

...There was no question of compulsory arbitration, but merely a voluntary agreement to accept arbitration for a limited number of years, after which both sides were at liberty to denounce the whole procedure...

...The Founding Fathers forbade the Congress in the first article of the Bill of Rights to pass any laws that would abridge the freedom of the press...

...He has recognized that New York tends to set the pattern of labormanagement agreements in other cities, and has proposed, therefore, that an objective study of the problem be started as soon as possible...

...Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz is already pressing for such a study and review...

...They were convinced that a free and constant flow of information was essential if people were to have the facts necessary to make sound individual judgments...

...Hard collective bargaining has prevailed and the court has seldom been used...