Press: Substantial Victory

After the choleric publisher of the Newark (N. J.) Ledger fired eight members of the Newark Newspaper Guild four months ago, 35 other Guild members walked out on strike (TIME, Nov. 26, Dec. 3). Last week the eight were still out of jobs but the 35 were back at work, their strike won.

The strike, first such action by the Guild against a newspaper in a large city, was noisy and bad-tempered on both sides. Hot-headed Publisher Lucius T. Russell was loud in his derision of “Heywood Broun’s children of the Guild.” The Guild retaliated with a program of picketing not only the Ledger building and newsstands but also advertisers (including potent Bamberger’s). Ledger circulation, 44,000 before the strike, slumped to about 30,000. By the advertising manager’s own statement, the Ledger lost 15 of its fattest accounts, suffered deep cuts in many another. Supported by money donations from Guild chapters throughout the land, the strikers maintained a running fire from picket lines, loudspeaker trucks, radio stations and a furious sheetlet called The Reporter, until the Ledger marched into court and obtained an injunction against the strikers. So sweeping was the injunction, that even such non-sympathizers as the New York Times and Herald Tribune viewed it with open alarm. To circumvent the court order, non-professional friends of the strikers proceeded to picket the stores with carefully inoffensive signs simply stating that the strikers had been enjoined and that the stores advertised in the Ledger. Publisher Russell sent out counter-pickets with signs explaining that the stores advertised in the Ledger because the Ledger employed only “union labor” (i. e., the printers’ unions).

Meanwhile a Ledger stockholder, alarmed by the Ledger’s loss of revenue and good will, persuaded a court to put two trustees in charge. He charged Publisher Russell with “general business mismanagement,” and with loaning himself $232,000.

Fortnight ago Secretary of Labor Perkins sent a Federal mediator to tackle the strike. Last week, aften ten days of shuttling between both sides, he pocketed an agreement signed by Ledger and Guild. Prime points: 1) Dismissal of all 24 strikebreakers. 2) Rehiring of all strikers. 3) No dismissals for 30 days. 4) An arbitration board to decide the fate of the eight ousted newshawks whose case started the strike. 5) Arbitration board also to settle matters of wages, hours, working conditions, grievances. 6) The Guild to help restitution of the Ledger’s lost good will.

Obvious to the Guild as well as to outsiders was the fact that the strike had prevailed, not against a rich strong paper, but against a poor weak one with one foot already in the courts. Therefore the Guild refrained from crowing, claimed only “a substantial victory for Guild principles,” promised to make the Ledger “better than ever.”