Newspaper Strike

When a Teamsters' strike shut off circulation of the Philadelphia Bulletin and Inquirer and the nearby Camden Courier-Post, all three managements decided to get out their papers anyway, and hope the customers would come to them. Last week, as the strike entered its third week, the customers were still coming in droves. Long lines patiently queued up all day in the lobbies of the Philadelphia Bulletin and Inquirer in downtown Philadelphia. In Camden, just across the Delaware River, traffic jammed bumper to bumper around the Courier-Post's building to buy copies from vendors, who have included, on occasion. President-Publisher Mrs. Frances G. Stretch, her three children and granddaughter.

Complicating matters for the Inquirer (prestrike circ. 619,054) was a simultaneous strike of most of its 710 American Newspaper Guild employees on issues of wages and benefits. Still, a dozen Inquirer executives, plus 70 nonstriking Guildsmen. were managing to get out some 17,000 copies a day. The non-Guild Bulletin (707,406) was selling more than 100,000 copies daily in its lobby. Neither paper was accepting ads.

Only nonstruck major Philadelphia paper was the Daily News (circ. 191,666) of Walter H. Annenberg's Triangle Publications, which also owns the Inquirer. The News was standing steady at its normal press run. refusing to take any extra ads, and discreetly printing almost nothing about the strike.

For enterprising Philadelphia small fry, the strike was a bonanza of sorts. They bought up piles of the papers at 5-c- a copy in the downtown offices, hawked them in the suburbs for as much as 15-c- each. But some ran into a hazard undreamed of in their teen-age philosophy. Striking Teamsters intercepted them, took their papers and dumped the bundles into the murky waters of the Schuylkill River.

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