End of a Chain

After the powerful International Typographical Union started publishing its own daily newspapers eight years ago, the union made plain its objective. Said the I.T.U. Executive Council: "[We want to make it tough] for an unreasonable employer by reaching his most sensitive spot --his pocketbook." The I.T.U. carefully picked its own spots, started dailies in twelve towns; in each there was only one newspaper, and its publisher had refused to deal with the union. I.T.U. President Woodruff Randolph not only hoped by competition to force the nonunion papers to recognize I.T.U. but also expected to give jobs to unemployed union members. But his papers lost money, and Randolph found that he was making it tougher for himself than for competing newspaper publishers.

As I.T.U. poured more than $4,000,000 into its losing publishing venture, many of its 94,000 members grumbled louder and louder that they wanted the union to get out of the newspaper business.

Three dailies were sold, and three folded as expenses far outran income. Last year at the annual I.T.U. convention, over Randolph's objections, the membership voted to limit borrowing for the papers from the union's pension and mortuary funds to $1,000,000 (it had already borrowed an estimated $2.5 million). Last week, getting ready for this year's convention, Randolph took drastic action to head off another stormy fight over the papers.

He folded five* of the six remaining general dailies (all with circulations of less than 10,000), leaving only the Jamestown (N.Y.) Sun (circ. 10,722) still published by I.T.U. The papers said angrily that lack of advertising killed the papers in cities where "the people [wished] for a second and competing paper." Apparently the people's wish "for a second and competing newspaper" was not strong enough to send them to the newsstands to buy.

* All named the Daily News-Digest and published in Meriden, Conn., Texarkana, Ark., Huntington, W.Va., Allentown, Pa. and Monroe, La.

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