"Government by Insult"

Few NRA tasks have cost President Roosevelt and General Johnson more time and trouble than the newspaper code. It all began last July when the Publishers' Association grumbled that the Press was not an industry, adaptable to codification. Haggles developed over three points: 1) the publishers, fearful of being "licensed" into silence and out of business, wanted a written-promise on Freedom of the Press; 2) they wanted newshawks and editors getting $35 per week or more exempted from maximum hours as "professional men"; 3) they wanted to continue using newsboys. Finally last fortnight the President signed a newspaper code which granted every major point demanded by the publishers (TIME, Feb. 26).

But there was little jubilation in the Press last week. The President, vexed by the whole irksome business, had spanked the publishers on three tender spots, 1) He "requested" big newspapers in big cities to put reporters on a five day, 40 hr. week; 2) he "ordered" a new report on child labor (newsboys); 3) he laughed off the Freedom of Press clause as having "no more place [in the code] than would the recitation of the whole Constitution or the Ten Commandments. . . . The freedom guaranteed by the Constitution is a freedom of expression and that will be scrupulously respected--but it is not freedom to work children, or do business in a fire trap or violate the laws against obscenity, libel and lewdness."

Cannonade. That last rebuke set off a cannonade of editorial rage. Angriest was Publisher Ogden Reid's arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune: "Here is . . . the first time that the President has publicly given support to the 'Smear America' campaign in which so many of his aides have participated. America has been made familiar with government by edict. Is it now to be subjected to 'government by insult?' The episode is of importance in relation to the constantly growing tendencies of the Roosevelt Administration to resent criticism, however fair, and to slander all who dare cross the path of its policies. . . . We hope that Mr. Roosevelt will see fit to apologize to the Press of the nation for this gross insult. . . ."

Hardly less spirited than the Herald Tribune was the Boston Herald: "The President's executive order is an amazing document . . . argumentative, bad-mannered, and offensive. . . . The alleged discourtesy of Colonel Lindbergh in giving out his letter to the President prematurely seems an act of studied, Chesterfieldian deference in comparison. . . ."

Publisher Harry Chandler, loyal friend of Herbert Hoover, had this to say in his Los Angeles Times: "As the code applies to the newspaper, it seems to me to be unworkable--not to say an unjustified and unnecessary and dangerous movement to interfere with an institution which was born of the spirit of freedom. ... If the code system is carried to its logical conclusion, the end must inevitably be the handcuffing of the Press."

Many a paper took columns to say what Publisher Leonard Kimball Nicholson of the New Orleans Times Picayune put into 35 words: "Inasmuch as we do not 'work children, or do business in a fire trap, or violate the laws against obscenity, libel and lewdness,' there is no comment we can make on the President's action. . . ."

Quick to rally behind the President were supporters who, from the first, have apologized for the behavior of the rest of the Press. Julius David Stern, publisher of the New York Evening Post and Philadelphia Record printed a front page box headlined "O. K., MR. PRESIDENT!" The Milwaukee Journal: "President Roosevelt has accepted the newspaper code with certain remarks which reflect the bad taste left in his mouth after months and months of unjustifiable delay. The delay and the haggling for advantages were carried on under the camouflage of a valiant fight for 'freedom of the press.' . . ."

Editor-in-chief George B. ("Deak") Parker of the Scripps-Howard papers:

"The Constitution guarantees freedom of both speech and the press.

"The newspapers enjoy free press.

"The President enjoys free speech.

"So, as the saying goes--What the hell?"

Operation, First direct action taken by the Publishers' Association was to get postponement of the code's effective date from Feb. 26 to March 12. Meanwhile the publishers had to contemplate the fact that 60 days hence the President expected something to be done about child labor and newshawks' hours. If not, the President was empowered by law to impose his own changes, an act which would make last week's uproar sound like soft sweet music.

To administer the Press code, General Johnson last week picked a big-framed, dynamic Irishman from. Iowa, named George D. Buckley.

Twenty years ago "Buck" Buckley was a University of Chicago footballer. Seventeen years ago he was president of Crowell Publishing Co. (Collier's, American, Woman's Home Companion, Farm & Fireside). Ten years ago he was president and publisher of Hearst's Chicago Herald & Examiner. Since 1926 he has been a vice president of National City Bank in Manhattan. Chicago newsmen remember "Buck" Buckley as a loud-cursing tough-acting man who really is mild and human. He now lives on Manhattan's upper East Side in a brownstone house with a front door painted an Irish green.

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