Short Rations

A fortnight-old teamsters' strike (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) had frozen the flow of newsprint from warehouses to Manhattan pressrooms. To stretch their dwindling supplies, the city's nine dailies cut their size drastically. By last weekend, the other eight were as adless as PM.

Last to drop department-store advertising was the Daily News, which had stored huge reserves of paper and early in the strike had boasted that it was doing fine.*Hardest hit was the tabloid Mirror, which shrank to a skinny eight pages but clung stubbornly to Winchell, Pearson and two pages of comics, along with a nubbin of news. (And moved a nightclub comedian to crack: "I'm so weak I can't even lift a copy of today's Mirror V) Whistling shrilly to keep up its courage, the starveling Mirror ran a daily silver-lining box. Sample: "The Mirror . . . has become a collector's item. In time, the paper which you buy for 2-c- . . will be sold by dealers in rare issues for $5 and $10 a copy. . . ."

In London the Daily Express, long rationed to four pages, shed a crocodile tear for the plight of New York's dailies, headlined its paragraph on the shortage: WE KNOW, FELLERS.

*One who helped make the reluctant decision to strip down was the Daily News's brand-new board chairman: Mrs. Eleanor Medill ("Cissie") Patterson, publisher of the Washington Times-Herald.

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