"What Tragedy!"

Among the hundreds of representatives of the U. S. Press who flocked into Weirton, W. Va. after the National Labor Relations Board began its crucial hearings on the union policies of Weirton Steel Co. last August, was 34-year-old Editor Hartley W. Barclay of the tradesheet Mill & Factory. Even Editor Barclay's 23,000 readers, mostly plant owners and managers, were surprised by the violence with which he reacted in his October issue. "What comedy! What tragedy!" exploded Hartley W. Barclay in an article captioned The True Story of Weirton and illustrated with smiling Weirton workers. Claiming that Trial Examiner Edward Grandison Smith was "obviously prejudiced in favor of the C.I.O.," Editor Barclay called the NLRB "our Ogpu," found its trial methods "farcical," concluded: "This case should be declared a mistrial and dropped."

When reprints of the Mill & Factory article began to be distributed by Weirton Steel Co. in Weirton and elsewhere last month, one reader who got hopping mad was the NLRB's Chairman J. Warren Madden. Last week in Washington Chair-man Madden signed an NLRB subpoena ordering Editor Barclay to turn over by Monday to a trial examiner in Steubenville, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Weirton, all the material used in preparation of the offending article including ''communications," written or spoken, that had passed between Editor Barclay, ConoverMast Corp. which publishes Mill & Factory, and some 30 other groups and persons, most significant of which was Weirton Steel Co.

After a brief consultation with Conover-Mast's high-powered lawyer, Elisha Hanson, who as counsel for the American Newspaper Publishers' Association is the most vociferous warrior for the Free Press against the New Deal, Editor Barclay announced that he would ignore the subpoena.

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