"Infernal Outrage"

Theoretically, the newspaperman belongs to a "fourth estate," proud in its antecedents, jealous for its membership, mighty in affairs. Actually he binds his toga with shoelace and a piece of string, and now and then he must take to his heels with some irate mere first-or second-estater grabbing at the frayed vestment.

In the exercise of his profession, he is curiously without legal protection, or social position. According to the whim of the moment the man he interviews may paste him at the first question, or sneer, or smile. If the reporter develops as a result of this a cynical contempt for all the other estates, a perpetual grouch, an inferiority complex, it is not surprising.

That inferiority complex betrayed itself in many New York papers, last week, from parenthetical bad-boy chuckles to grandiose editorial anathema, in stories of a tilt between John Pierpont Morgan and ship-news reporters and cameramen, aboard the Olympic, docking 16 hours late from Southampton.

Morgan Ire. On board also, and the especial charge of Mr. Morgan, was Miss Elizabeth Morrow, daughter of Ambassador to Mexico Dwight W. Morrow. Rumors that Miss Morrow, 25, or her sister, Anne, 22, was to marry Col. Lindbergh had been printed. Lindbergh was a guest of Ambassador Morrow in Mexico City. The ship-news reporters were instructed to ask Miss Morrow all about it.

Came a knock at the door of her suite. She opened it. "Are you going to marry him?" chorused the reporters, trigger-fingers quivering on their pencils. Miss Morrow laughed. "Hold that pose!" chorused the cameramen, shaking powder in their flashlight pans.

At this point a door opened and through it strode a tall, heavy man of magnificent carriage, instantly recognizable as John Pierpont Morgan. He was smoking a comfortably big meerschaum pipe, but his visage was not benign. He spoke: "This is an infernal outrage. . . . You fellows get along."

Several photographs, however, had been taken. The reputed engagement has since been thoroughly denied.

Alone among the newspapers the tabloid Daily News (biggest circulation in the U. S.) vented its wrath in a stern editorial, betrayed the liveliest inferiority complex. It baited Messrs. Morgan & Morrow with representing both the U. S. and Wall Street in Mexico, and climaxed: "By such toplofty behavior Mr. Morgan only got himself into a scene where he had not been invited, and called attention in a most awkward and public manner to the close business connections between himself, Miss Morrow's father and the United States government."

Ship-news Men. In addition to the fact that Miss Morrow was apparently not offended by the reporters, there remains the fact that these reporters are among the best in New York. The ship-news assignment is coveted in Manhattan shops. The men who get it can, if any ever could, tie up their togas with blue ribbon.

It does happen on occasion that they will run a passenger ragged around the deck. One excitable prima donna one day heard a rap on her door, asked "Who is there?" Came a voice: "It is I." Thoughtlessly she opened the door. In poured the reporters and cameramen from whom she was hiding.

Another morning on another trip the same prima donna was caught on deck, took to flight. Behind her bayed the reporters. Around the cabin forward she flew. As she turned aft on the starboard promenade a hoarse voice shouted "Go!" Three flashlights exploded. Cameramen, cutting through cabin, thus ambushed her in the gray morning.

But such incidents as these are rare. Day in, day out, the men who go down the bay to board incoming liners are gentlemen.*

Code? Sisley Huddleston, in the solemn Christian Science Monitor, last week proposed a code for newspapermen. The question is discussed by Scriptor and Lector in a dialog faintly reminiscent of Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753). Saith Scriptor: "You are right, Lector. . . . Nobody has yet troubled to work out a good code for journalists and for editors. They must avoid the Charybdis of mischiefmaking, but they must also avoid the Scylla of subserviency."

At the moment it may have seemed to Mr. Morgan that the newspapermen were prying, as Scriptor has it, "purely for the sake of producing a sensation." Whether or not they were subservient when he ordered them off, they got their pictures.

And that any code could ever be hatched, for U. S. newspapermen or for the people they interview, which would obviate the occasional row, is inconceivable. There is an unwritten code which newspapermen of the better class do ob serve. If treated courteously, they are likely to be courteous. Many important men have found this out, including Thomas A. Edison, Edward of Wales, Harry Emerson Fosdick. William Howard Taft, Frederick A. Stock.

* Said Henry F. Pringle in an article, "When the Reporters Come," in the North American Review, December issue: "Not a few of the staff writers on the standard New York dailies . . . hold university degrees. Several are listed, whatever this may be worth, in The Social Register and play squash at the Harvard Club. One of the better British Earls, a serious young man who declines to use his title . . . covered the arrival of ships for almost a year.' . . . The most capable New York reporters, the men who are assigned to really big news events, are well bred, well dressed, well read and honest. They are, in brief, gentlemen."

Mr. Pringle might also have mentioned Richard Law, son of onetime English Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, who is a capable reporter on the Herald Tribune. But he did make plain that, besides some gentlemen, many a ruffian wears the press badge. Especially bad actors are found among cameramen and tabloidmen, some of whom were in Miss Morrow's room when Mr. Morgan entered.