President & Publishers .

Last week for the first time President Roosevelt took sides in the running scrimmage between the newspaper publishers of the land and their editorial employes organized as the American Newspaper Guild. The specific case in which he lined up with the publishers was, in itself, trivial but its implication as a matter of national policy cast a long significant shadow into the future.

Last May Dean Sothern Jennings lost his job as a rewrite man on William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Call-Bulletin because, against office orders, he insisted on attending the Guild convention in St. Paul. When after much transcontinental haggling the paper refused to reinstate him, the National Labor Relations Board recommended that NRA take away the Call-Bulletin's Blue Eagle (TIME, Dec. 24). Instantly the newspaper publishers of the U. S. sprang to arms. Dodging the merits of the Jennings case, the publishers insisted that the Labor Board had no jurisdiction over newspaper employes' complaints; that the Newspaper Code provided a special Industrial Board, composed of four employers' and four employes' representatives to handle such matters. Up to the line of battle the publishers trundled their biggest field gun, when Howard Davis, plump, sleek president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association and chairman of the Code Authority, told members to hold themselves in readiness for a convention call, presumably to consider mass withdrawal from NRA.

Meanwhile "Assistant President" Donald Richberg had taken the publishers' side in what had become, on the surface, a highly legalistic dispute. Ignoring the Labor Board's recommendation, NRA turned the Jennings case testimony over to the Newspaper Industrial Board for "recommendation." Temporarily appeased, Mr. Davis cautiously announced he would postpone the convention call for a few days.

Few observers expected the Industrial Board to accomplish anything. Its eight members are almost always deadlocked, and a ninth impartial member can be called in only by a majority vote. Back to NRA went the Jennings case, and Mr. Davis again unlimbered his big gun, this time definitely calling a convention for Jan. 28 in Manhattan's Hotel Biltmore. In vain did Presidential Secretary Louis Howe and Secretary of Labor Perkins work for a compromise.

Such was the situation last week when President Roosevelt stepped in. To Chairman Francis Biddle of the Labor Board he wrote a "hands-off" letter which, at first blush, looked like surrender to the publishers. Acknowledging that a few of the 550 NRA codes contained special provisions for adjudicating labor disputes, the President laid down three principles limiting the Labor Board's activities in such cases: 1) The Labor Board shall refuse to hear any complaint or even review testimony. 2) It may hear complaints that a Code Board is improperly constituted, and submit recommendations to the President. 3) It may hear complaints that a Code Board decision violates Section 7a, and report to the President.

Into the air sailed the publishers' collective hat. To them the President's order was a victory for "freedom of the Press." Mr. Davis called it a "satisfactory adjustment," canceled the convention call.

The Guild, however, felt it had been sorely betrayed by the White House. Mourned its president, big, baggy Heywood Broun who had long been one of the President's most ardent journalistic supporters: "It is impossible to dodge the fact that the newspaper publishers have cracked down on the President . . . and that Franklin D. Roosevelt has cracked up. . . . The publishers have trotted out that old bogey, freedom of the Press. [They] announce that 'a satisfactory adjustment' has been reached. They mean satisfactory to the publishers. . . . The President made no attempt to learn from the Guild its bill of complaints against the stupidities and inequities of the Newspaper Industrial Board. . . . The Government . . . has been held up by the threat and the bluff of the publishers. . . . The President surrendered at the point of a wooden gun."

Of the "free Press" in New York City none but the meticulous Times and the loudly liberal Post printed Mr. Broun's comments about publishers and the President. Taking to the radio to point out this fact, President Broun delivered an equally one-sided report on the Jennings case, in which he failed to make any mention of the code requirements on which the publishers were making their stand.

Washington wiseacres saw significant strategy in the President's action: no lover of the publishers, he has been increasingly vexed by their mounting criticisms of the New Deal. Rather than give them the slightest justification for bolting NRA. he was leaning over backward to preserve the letter of the Code, thus paying out enough rope for the publishers to hang themselves. The White House apparently expected the Newspaper Industrial Board to deal quickly and fairly with the Jennings case or else hold its peace if the Government takes a hand.

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