Class-Conscious Comic

One of the last places on earth where the C.I.O. expects praise is in Wall Street. But last week the Wall Street Journal turned handsprings in ungrudging admiration of the C.I.O. News (circ. 450,000 weekly), one of the biggest U.S. labor papers. Understandably, the admiration had a professional rather than an ideological basis.

The C.I.O., said the Journal, is a "wizard of public relations." The C.I.O. News's overseas edition, with nearly 100,000 circulation, gets in its aggressive propaganda licks (C.I.O. FIGHTS TO GET VET BACK IN JOB), but sees that the message is "spiced with really clever cartoons, not contentious but just funny." (Apparently, the Journal had half expected the News to class-angle its pinups to the textile shortage.) The Journal's only real criticism was that the C.I.O.'s servicemen's edition seemed to be shy of news about wildcat strikes.

Not published in the overseas edition, but printed in their 18 domestic editions, is the C.I.O. News's slyest attempt at sugarcoating: a comic strip called The Adventures aj Jim Barry, Trouble Shooter. Its hero, who gets off some occasional soap-boxing for "60 million jobs" while solving murder mysteries, is a labor editor who is tall, dark and politically unswerving. His latest triumph was uncovering a murder in a labor-management committee. The villain turned out to be, not the boss, as unsophisticated readers might have expected, but the attorney for "some stockholders." Trapped, the villain hissed: "I don't intend to see Fascism destroyed. I've got a good use for it" (see cut).

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