The Press: Public Pressure in Detroit

In the hope that union strikers may be susceptible to public pressure, the Rt. Rev. Richard S. Emrich, Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, applied some of that pressure last week to Detroit’s newspaper strike, now in its fourth month. By taking a “public be damned” attitude, said Bishop Emrich, Detroit’s printing-pressmen and the paper and plate handlers who walked off both the Free Press and News last July, have threatened the legitimate cause of unionism. Their insistence on terms beyond those accepted by twelve other unions, said the bishop, was “a scandalous misuse of power.”

The bishop’s words seemed to have an effect. At week’s end both labor and management were talking again, in a settlement effort shifted to neutral ground in Toledo, Ohio.