Broun's Successor

When Heywood Broun died last month at 51 he left the American Newspaper Guild, which he had organized and pre sided over for six years, in a ticklish spot.

Ever since the Guild was founded in 1933 there had been rumblings of discord in its bowels : accusations of Communism, scorn fully ignored, factional bitterness, quietly suppressed.

Because he was loved for his humanitarian spirit by most newspapermen, be cause he was gracious and a subtle theorist, Heywood Broun's own personality had kept harmony in the Guild. But with Broun gone, there was more than a possibility that these subterranean dissensions might erupt into open revolt.

The day before Broun fell ill, his one-time friend and neighbor, Red-fearing Westbrook Pegler, wrote in his own syndicated column of the Guild: "I have long sensed a strong pull toward Communism in its official list. The masthead, so to speak, includes two officers out of five who are, to my satisfaction, either Communists or determined fellow travelers." And of Heywood Broun: "I can quote from his own writing an affirmation which goes far beyond a mere expression of sympathy for the show-window aims of the Moscow government." That such beliefs were harbored by many a Right-thinking dissenter in the Guild was no news either to Guildsmen or to their publisher-employers. But seldom had such charges been aired in the public press, least of all by a Guild member, and never by a newspaperman with Columnist Pegler's immense following. The Guild's executives were understandably alarmed.

Guild leadership has centred in Manhattan almost from the start, and Manhattan newsmen are apt to be more Left-thinking than newsmen in other sections.

Of the Guild's 19,500 members (approximately a fourth of all U. S. newspaper employes), last year 6,763 were employed in New York City.

At first radicalism in the Guild amounted to little more than sentiment on one side, suspicion on the other. Under Heywood Broun's benevolent influence the Guild at various times made resolutions in favor of freedom for Tom Mooney, industrial unionism, Franklin Roosevelt's plan to reform the courts; against fascism, war, Father Coughlin. But as the Guild grew in size and complexity its control was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small circle of executives. Not their social sympathies but their power laid them open to suspicion.

A week after Broun died, the Executive Board sent out a letter urging Guild locals not to make nominations for a new president, to wait instead until next summer's national convention. Local officials looked up the Guild constitution, saw that the Board's proposal was unconstitutional.

For the constitution provides that within one month after a national elective office falls vacant an election must be held to fill it.

In Washington, D. C. a Guild local ignored the Board's letter, nominated Wisconsin-born, 37-year-old, brush-lipped Kenneth Crawford, Washington correspondent for the New York Post. In Denver another local went the Washington Guild one better, put up the name of much nominated* Columnist Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. Other nominations followed thick & fast, included Milton Kaufman, onetime Executive Secretary Jonathan Eddy, Columnist Franklin Pierce Adams (F. P. A.)--and even (after the deadline for nomination expired) Columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Mrs. Roosevelt did not choose to run.

All other candidates declined except Kenneth Crawford. Meanwhile, the New York Guild had looked over Crawford's record, found him eminently suitable, seconded his nomination. So last week, by default, without the formality of an election, Postman Crawford became president of the American Newspaper Guild.

The Guild could have searched long & hard before it found a new president more like Founder Broun. Not physically (a far cry from Broun's genial, hulking mass is six-foot, solid, tweedy Kenneth Crawford) but temperamentally: like Broun, his mind is on the masses, his eyes slant to the Left. One measure of his personal leaning toward Marxism is his book The Pressure Boys, about lobbyists (with many a side crack at publishers and advertisers). In his last sentence, summarizing his beliefs, Crawford writes: "No great progress can be made until the hard-pressed middle classes learn that their destiny is bound up with the welfare of fellow workers at the bottom, not the owners at the top. . . ." In spite of his radical opinions, Guildsman Crawford is an organizational conservative, agrees with many a Red-abhorring publisher that newsmen, who must write objectively, should not belong to an organization which expresses its beliefs publicly on controversial issues. In a statement accepting the Guild presidency last week he said: "It is my opinion that the Guild's primary function is to protect and improve the wages, hours and working conditions of newspaper people; . . . that it is not the Guild's business to reform the world or the world's newspapers." Like Broun, he intends to remain an active newspaperman, confine his Guild activities to speeches, presiding at meetings. Thus he will be another humanitarian, part-time head, and the same executives who now run the Guild will continue to run it. Still unsettled last week was the question that agitates numerous Guildsmen outside Manhattan : the Guild's domination by a small clique of New York newspapermen. Likewise unsettled was Columnist Pegler's question: Communism's influence inside the Guild.

*Among the offices for which Mrs. Roosevelt has been proposed: President of Bryn Mawr College (TIME, Jan. 1), President of the U. S.

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