Publishers on the Ramparts

By invariable custom the Associated Press meeting (see above) is followed by the convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. For four days the corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria were overrun by some 500 publishers, heaviest attendance on record. They transacted all real business behind closed doors, issued self-congratulatory hand-outs which most Manhattan dailies dutifully printed by the yard.

Keynote of most A. N. P. A. conventions is defensive. Last year the bugbear was radio. This year it was the New Deal. Speech after speech, report after report whanged loudly on a few familiar strings: 1) The Press is being harassed or threatened on all fronts by punitive legislation. 2) NRA has upped production costs. 3) Pernicious regulations of advertising have cut down revenue. 4) The Administration is trying to throttle the Press by censorship.

Target Tugwell. Personal target for most of the publishers' hard words and harder feelings was Brain Truster Rexford Guy Tugwell whom President Roosevelt last week stepped up to be Undersecretary of Agriculture as a public exhibit of faith in him (see p. 14). "There seems to be a clearly defined belief on the part of many administration officials," warned Lincoln B. Palmer, general manager of A. N. P. A., "that advertising is a social and economic waste, that it should be included as a marketing cost; that even harmless trade claims should be prohibited; and that all advertisements should be strictly factual. . . . We are informed that a recently published book by Dr. Tugwell and Howard C. Hill entitled Our Economic Society is proposed to be used as an economic textbook in social science classes for the purpose of implanting anti-advertising propaganda in the adolescent mind."

Manager Palmer reviewed the fight of an A. N. P. A. committee against the proposed Food & Drug Act's clauses on advertising, originally "one of the most offensive measures which was ever introduced in so far as proper advertising is concerned." Now, he reported, the modified and amended bill is ''reasonably satisfactory [but] has not the approval of the Department of Agriculture because it is not sufficiently drastic to meet Dr. Tugwell's desire."

Code. The publishers were reticent, so far as the public was concerned, on Child Labor ("We are watching its progress closely, prepared to take action if necessary") and the Newspaper Guild. But on one topic they were fiercely voluble:

Freedom of Press. If any outsider had the notion that Freedom of the Press was only a well-chewed bone of a few watchdog's like Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick and Editor Marlen Pew of Editor & Publisher, the convention proved the contrary. With a few notable exceptions, the rank & file of U. S. publishers genuinely believe that the Administration is capable of imposing censorship, that they scored a momentous victory in forcing into the Newspaper Code a clause reaffirming the Constitutional guarantee of a free Press. Cheered to the rafters was Col. McCormick, chairman of the A. N. P. A.'s Press freedom committee, after reviewing his almost daily battles with General Johnson. The convention backed him up with a resolution pledging "increasing vigilance."

Shrapnel. The publishers fired a blast at the proposed Newsprint Code which, they insisted, "is a monopoly, make no mistake about it"; shot at the Post Office Department for its contention that newspapers are largely responsible for the heavy deficit on second-class mail; proposed coinage of a 3-c--piece to make it simpler to sell 3-c- newspapers; re-elected Howard Davis, plump business manager of the New York Herald Tribune, as president; went home.

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