Paper Chase

For want of newsprint, the biggest evening paper in the U.S. went virtually adless last week. After J. David Stern's Record folded, the Philadelphia Bulletin (circ. 750,000) had picked up 30,000 new readers and started a Sunday edition ; its paper supply was stretched thin. Many another paper had put itself on the short est rations since the war.

There was a newsprint problem, but shortage was hardly the word for it. The U.S. was getting more paper than ever, but lacked boxcars to move it from the mills. Last year Canada, No. 1 papermaker to the world, rolled out a record four million tons of newsprint. The U.S. press gobbled four-fifths of it. It was the rest of the world press that was pinched.

In Washington, Senator Kenneth Wherry's Small Business Committee heard strange tales of want in the midst of all this plenty. Small publishers cried that big ones had tied up the supply. Time Inc., Curtis Publishing Co., and other big magazine publishers, said one witness, were "absorbing the market" by buying paper mills. The little fellows were left to starve, or pay through the nose (up to $250 a ton, against the going price of $84).

Last week the committee called in 50 big publishers, asked how about sharing a little of what newsprint makers call "the currency of civilization." The guests just stared at the ceiling. But when impatient Senator Wherry threatened legislation to restore newsprint controls, the publishers promised to see what they could do. Local associations, they hoped, could see to it that no daily or weekly had to suspend.

And a trade committee would seek relief for the religious, fraternal and labor press.

In the New York Times, the publishers found a spectacular example of sharing.

When the Communist Daily Worker faced suspension, the Times lent it 16 tons of paper. The Worker ran a thank-you note, but some of the Times's readers took it to task. The Times added comfortably: "We think democracy . . . strong enough to withstand any verbal blows ... by the Daily Worker, and we think that proof of this strength can best be provided by permitting [it] to keep on talking."

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