THE PULL OF THE PRESS
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Pull Of The Press By ERNEST L. MEYER SOME 20 years ago, I recall, it was the habit of newspapermen in moments of bleak prophecy to lament that the heyday of the daily press was over and that...
...I understand that this independent truckers' union was fostered and petted by the newspaper publishers themselves who were afraid that a union affiliated with the AFL or the CIO would become too uppety for comfort...
...The Pull Of The Press By ERNEST L. MEYER SOME 20 years ago, I recall, it was the habit of newspapermen in moments of bleak prophecy to lament that the heyday of the daily press was over and that we would be wise to shift what talents we had to some new and promising profession like bootlegging...
...And now, instead of waiting for their allotment of shoes, sugar, or cigarettes, they were waiting for their pet newspaper—275,000 sold across the counter in one night, mostly in single copies and with a strict limit of 5 to a customer...
...Chief point at issue in the present strike is the union demand that the publishers contribute 3 per cent of the truckers' payroll, or some $150,000 a year, to the union's own "benefit fund...
...For, we argued gloomily, the radio with its rapidly increasing popularity and its ability to disseminate news a thousand times faster than the printing press, would inevitably make newspapers as outmoded in the streamlined world of tomorrow as buggies and bustles...
...There is, to be sure, a joker in the situation...
...That same argument, though somewhat modified in the ensuing years because the press displayed an amazing reluctance to die, has been going ©n ever since...
...The press, for reasons sometimes obscure, still has a powerful pull...
...But they didn't...
...Perhaps because there had been no actual showdown, no dramatic windup battle between King • Press and Contender Radio for the title of world champion scatterer of nonsense and news...
...But there I go, getting gloomy again...
...The police were not needed to keep the crowd in order...
...At every publish...
...AS for the strike itself, it is not popular either with the public or with the other unionized, members of the newspaper craft who do not blush at all when they cross the picket lines...
...Then the 60, and only because they want to, work extra hours and draw pay-checks ranging from $80 to $120 a week, which is hardly starvation pay for hauling a load of papers from a plant to a news-stand or postoffice...
...They came, many of them, from the far places of the 5 boroughs, and Westchester County, and the shadowy purlieus of Weehawken and Hohokus, N. J. They stood in line, as many as 30,000 at one edition time, when they might have roosted at home listening comfortably to the radio, with some stations broadcasting news summaries as often as 48 times a day...
...At the plant where I work, the Daily News, a line of men, women and youngsters standing 3 abreast one evening covered a distance of 17 city blocks and it took a force of 85 city patrolmen and detectives to keep the street traffic moving...
...Perhaps because in this long season of rationing they had become inured to the ordeal of standing quietly in long lines waiting for their dole...
...They get $50 a week for 40 hours work in daytime and $50 for 37 hours work at nights, which isn't bad for the relatively unskilled labor of driving a truck...
...For example, a publisher needs 100 truck drivers, but the union says we can supply only 60...
...ing plant, starting long before press time, the patient mobs wait in noonday heat and far beyond the moon at midnight...
...That windup battle, or maybe only a semi-windup, has . just come in this month of July, 1945, and it really has been a sight to see...
...Its 1,700 membership list is closed tight as a drumhead...
...Now with television radio, some enterprising station will flash the comics on the screen right in yo"r own parlor, and then the newspapers will really be doomed...
...There's a $500 initiation fee, and no one can enter the ranks of this labor trust unless he is a legitimate son of a member...
...Because in an informal sampling of crowds lined up to buy papers at a newspaper plant it was discovered that 40 per cent missed the daily comics, 30 per cent missed the sports pages, 20 per cent wanted the paper for the general news, and 10 per cent stood in line for va^e and miscellaneous reasons...
...And their restricted membership puts them in the bigger money...
...For on July 1 some 1,700 truck drivers, members of the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union of New York City went on strike, no papers were sold at news-stands, and New Yorkers who daily purchase 13,000,000 copies of regular editions had the choice of buying the communist Daily Worker and the gliberal PM (who were not affected by the strike) or of staying home and twiddling the radio dials, or of trekking down to the newspaper plants and buying their favorite rags across the counter...
...THERE is a joker, too, in my assumption that the newspaper has won a windup fight in its match against the radio as a disseminator of news...
...Well, their baby has now outgrown its booties, and raised whiskers most wiry...
...All in all, it seems to me, reluctant, ly, that this outfit is of the type that plays right into the hands of a professional baiter of organized labor like Westbrook Pegler...
...The crowd was good-humored, even when spattered by gusts of Summer thunder-showers...
...This is because the,Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union, independent, is just a trifle too independent...
...WHAT has been astonishing has been the sight of hundreds of thousands of citizens adopting the . last and by far more arduous course...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 30
