The Press: Sewage Disposal

Three months ago, New York City’s bouncing little Mayor Fiorello Henry (“Little Flower”) LaGuardia declared a one-man war on indecent magazines, sat himself down and wrote a warning letter to 1,300 metropolitan newsdealers. Said he: “The Mayor has power of sewage disposal, and if necessary I will get rid of these dirty magazines as filth.”

Nothing much happened, so one day last fortnight the Mayor acted. He sent out 40 Department of Sanitation garbage trucks to round up copies of a new magazine titled Man to Man, published by Country Press, a subsidiary of Fawcett Publications, Inc. of Greenwich, Conn., whose prosperous publishing business was founded on the late Captain Billy Fawcett’s rowdy Whiz Bang (TIME, Feb. 19).

The Little Flower, acting in his capacity as magistrate, signed a warrant for the arrest of Julius Stolz, president of Interborough News Co., distributors of Man to Man. Then he bustled to a police station, jumped up behind the lieutenant’s desk, heard the complaint (offering for sale an “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent or disgusting book or magazine”), released Distributor Stolz in $5,000 bail.

Three eminent Manhattan humorists—James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Stanley Walker—turned out to be contributors to Man to Man. They had once sold some pieces (sample title: How to Poker) to a naughty little journal called For Men formerly published by Country Press. Fawcett editors had resurrected their pieces from the files.

Last week, in the Mayor’s City Hall office, Crusader LaGuardia again sat in judgment as a magistrate, heard Distributor Stolz’s case, decided to hold him for trial. (Penalty if convicted: up to a year in jail, $1,000 fine, or both.)

Meanwhile, a warrant was issued for the arrest of one Morris Newman, alias John Milkowicz, described by Mayor LaGuardia’s Commissioner of Investigation as the “smut king” of Manhattan. Accused of publishing a dozen indecent magazines which he distributed at a rate of 50,000 copies a month, through five shops in New York and Jersey City, King Newman was out of town, reportedly celebrating the Jewish New Year. This week he turned up, was held for trial along with Distributor Stolz.