The Press: Minton v. Frank

A very tough customer is Mr. Sherman Minton of New Albany, Ind. Boosted into the Senate three years ago with the help of his colleague, Frederick Van Nuys, he has now joined the rest of the Indiana Democratic machine in quietly cutting Senator Van Nuys’ political throat. Last month Senator Minton introduced a bill making it a felony punishable by two years in jail and $1,000 to $10,000 fine to publish a “known untruth.” The convicted magazine or newspaper would be suspended from the mails for six months. After vigorous editorial condemnation of his bill, Mr. Minton revealed he had no notion of pressing for its passage. He just wanted to attract attention to his criticisms of the press.

Following week Sherman Minton undertook another form of press-baiting. To appear before his lobby committee, he summoned Maurice Vallee Reynolds, publisher of Rural Progress, a farm monthly edited by Glenn Frank, chairman of the Republican Party’s Program Committee. Based on the throw-away theory that the meagre income from cheap paidcirculation is not worth the money and effort involved in getting it, the 20-odd-page, tabloid-size Rural Progress is mailed free to some 2,000,000 country homes in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. Theoretically it depends for its income on advertising alone —just as radio does. With the magazine’s ledger and journal before it, the Minton Committee made much of the facts that in three years and three months of publication, Rural Progress had lost $951,000, that continued publication was madepossible by cash obtained from Administration critics like Dr. Edward A. Rumely (executive secretary of Publisher Frank Gannett’s National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government), the late Banker Frank A. Vanderlip and his family, Jar-Maker George A. Ball. Likepractically every farm paper in the U. S., Rural Progress usually manages to find something wrong with President Roosevelt’s farm policies. These facts constituted the most damaging charges that Mr. Minton could bring against it.

Prevented from defending his magazine before the committee. Editor Frank was told to “sit down” while Senator Minton called his magazine “sugarcoated propaganda.” Rural Progress’ readers, the Senator later declared over the radio, would never have accepted the magazine had they known that “these rich people, opposed to the President, were putting up the bank roll.”

Last week on the air Editor Frank had his innings. He said his readers did not need Senator Minton to pasteurize their reading material for them. Taking a long breath he continued: “If, as in his attack on Rural Progress, an officer of Government can use the prestige of his position to malign, misinterpret, and deliberately undertake to cripple or destroy a magazine because not every line in it has agreed entirely with that officer, then every newspaper, every magazine, every business enterprise, every farm, every professional practice in the United States, whose operator is not a cringing yes-man, can be put at the mercy of Government officials, of any party at any time, if those officials are callous enough or daring enough to ride roughshod over even the most elementary constitutional rights of citizens and their honest enterprises. . . .

“The small number of men of means who have made long-term investment in this property invested because they believed in the soundness of the publishing plan and had seen its effectiveness as an advertising medium, and for no other reason whatever.”

Last week Senator Minton asked for $25,000 to continue the lobby committee’s work, promised to spend part of it on an “objective study” of propaganda in the news.