Something to Hoot About

The vast city rooms of New York City's seven big dailies were melancholy and quiet after weeks of shutdown. But for a few valued hands, like New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James Reston. there was still work to be done.

After all. the Times's small outpost editions in Paris and Los Angeles were still going. And 60 U.S. papers subscribe to Reston's column as part of the Times's syndicate service. So with his usual square-jawed Scots honesty. Reston sat down to write a column on the subject that interested him most.

"One day the New York newspapers will publish again, but they dare not go back to the same chaotic pattern of collective bargaining that produced the present shutdown," Reston wrote. "The present system is intolerable for the public, the unions and the publishers alike. The President of the U.S. cannot censor the New York papers. The Congress is specifically forbidden to abridge their freedom. But Bert Powers, the boss of the New York printers, cannot only censor them but shut them down. What is 'free' about a press that can be muzzled on the whim of a single citizen?

"This is anarchy in what is supposed to be one of the most reasonable elements of our society, and the unions and the publishers will have to end it either by making peace or preparing for war. If, however, peace cannot be achieved, then there will have to be war. The papers will have to be published, in New York if possible, elsewhere if not; in union shops if possible, in non-union shops if not. And they will have to be distributed, through the mails if necessary. The present situation cannot be accepted in a democratic society.

"This may be an acceptable situation in a meat factory or a steel mill, but newspapers are not pork chops or iron fences. Unless everybody from Jefferson to Mencken and Gerald Johnson has been kidding us. our job is to print the news and raise hell, with the kind permission of Bert Powers if possible, but without it if necessary.

"I know this view is not shared by all publishers, but reporters are part of this profession too. and if. failing to make an honorable peace, we acquiesce in the proposition that news is a dispensable commodity like soap, then we shall be treated like soap peddlers and deserve it. Values and duties have become so con fused that even the suggestion of publishing without the consent of the unions is now regarded as a declaration of war. How the old editors who founded our press would have hooted at that!"

Scant hours after Reston's message went out from New York, prudence overtook the management of the Times. Fearing to upset Bert Powers and his printers at a time when it might still be possible to settle with them, the Times sent out a mandatory order to kill the column. A few papers, such as the Houston Chronicle, had already gone to press with it. The Kansas City Star protested the kill order, but the Times's own outposts printed nary a word. And Scotty Reston. who never before had a column suppressed by the paper he so much admires and adores. could only be thinking: "How the old editors who founded our press would have hooted at that!''

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