The Press: Manhattan in the Dark

In Wall Street last week, the Communist Daily Worker was in hot demand. So was pinko PM, which jumped its press run from 175,000 to 475,000. The pro-labor Post and its outpost, the Bronx Home News, had shut up shop; twelve other metropolitan dailies carried on with comparatively minuscule printings—of cut-down issues that were practically devoid of advertising.

The men who move the papers from presses to stands were on strike. The Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union had demanded higher wages, vacations with pay and an employer-financed benefit fund. The newspapers, weighing strike losses in circulation (and advertising guarantees) against gains in unused newsprint allowances, had decided to resist. Result: you could 1) go to a newspaper plant and wait your turn in a long line; 2) catch the news on the radio*; 3) do without. There was also a hard-to-find black market, with a few enterprising newsboys cleaning up in a small way at 10¢ to 25¢ a copy. Some suburban afternoon papers got out early morning editions for commuters, hoped they would keep the new readers they were meeting on the trains.

Union pickets at the plants paid little heed to those who bought single copies, sometimes spilled the bundles of those who bought more. Many of the strikers were in high good humor; they had made a killing on Picket Line in the third race at Aqueduct, collecting $46.20 for their $2 investment.

Humor was the thing that people missed most. PM carried a resume of a dozen comic strips. Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, mugging and gesturing, gave a Sunday radio reading of the Dick Tracy strip, ordered municipal station WNYC to have the comics read each day.

*The Daily News doubled its customary 24 news broadcasts a day. The Post, Times, Daily Mirror and Journal-American all aired special news programs, as well as some of their daily features. Network outlets stepped up their news coverage.