Springfield Surprise

Springfield, Mass. has four newspapers, all of them owned by big, tough Sherman Hoar Bowles. Besides the famed Republican founded by his ancestors, there are the Morning Union, Evening Union and the somewhat less respected Daily News.

One day last week evening readers were astonished to find the News and Union editions nearly identical. The front pages were exactly alike, each including many an Associated Press dispatch although the News is no AP member. The phenomenon was accounted for, but not fully explained, by the lead story in both papers:

PRINTERS ON PAPERS HERE ARE OUT

WALKOUT CALLED IN THE UNION

AFTER DISCHARGES AT DAILY

NEWS, SAYS TYPO OFFICIAL

Publisher Bowles, who inherited his publishing province from three successive Samuel Bowleses (TIME, Oct. 15), had long been quarreling with the local typographical union.* A wage-&-hours dispute had been settled only a month when last week Mr. Bowles turned up a new fight. He ordered one of his crack linotype operators on the News, Kenneth Irving Taylor, to quit his machine and take the foremanship of the composing room. Compositor Taylor, mild-mannered, bespectacled, member of the Springfield Board of Public Welfare, refused on grounds that his presidency of the local union forbade his being a boss. Sherman Bowles promptly fired him. Out, on their president's heels, walked every other typesetter in the four newspaper shops. Editors of both evening papers gathered together what type had been set, borrowed some type forms from the morning editions, rolled out a joint edition.

Next day Springfielders gaped at the most amazing papers they had ever seen. The Republican and Union were printed in typewriting (see cut). Only the conventional banner designs distinguished the two front pages, each set in four wide columns containing two dozen short items. Here and there the eight-page sheets were broken with real type of advertisements already set up, with comic strips or stereotyped features. Evening editions came out in the same form.

The process was simple. Staffmen wrote and edited their copy much shorter than usual. Expert stenographers typed it in two-column measure, tapped out headlines on special Remington portables with extra-large letters. Editors then pasted stories and headlines upon heavy cardboards the size of a newspaper page. Staff cartoonists inked in column-rules, dashes, decorations. Clippings from back numbers were pasted into place for the mastheads, weather reports, departmental headlines, etc. The whole was photo-engraved, cylinder plates cast, sent to press.

Evening papers followed suit and the process was repeated for the next two days until arrival of strikebreakers imported from New Jersey. They managed to put together an eight-page printed edition of the Republican, but not until four strikebreakers and one striker were mauled, linotype machines battered by vandals and advertisement forms destroyed. A truckload of rotogravure sections from New York was hijacked, burned. Next day all four papers reverted to the typewriter and photo-engraving plant for most of their pages.

-Last autumn Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau charged Publisher Bowles with hoarding $94,860 in gold. The publisher contended that the gold was in escrow, with the Government's knowledge, to pay for newsprint imported from Finland. Last month the Treasury settled the case, had the charge dismissed.

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