After the Battle

"We never saw anything like it," said the Wall Street Journal, still in deep shock. "One of the country's steel companies announced it was going to try to get more money for its product. And promptly all hell busted loose. Mr. Kennedy had his victory. The President himself said all the people of the United States should be gratified. Around him there was joy unrestrained at this proof positive of how naked political power, ruthlessly used, could smash any private citizen who got in its way. If we had not seen it with our eyes and heard it with our own ears, we would not have been able to believe that in America it actually happened."

But it had happened. President Kennedy had slugged it out with steel and won. As the dust of battle lifted like smoke from an open-hearth furnace, the nation's press last week assigned itself the task of reckoning the casualties, the cost and, most importantly, the meaning of the fight.

Tragic Blunder. Many papers and columnists shared the Wall Street Journal's incredulous despair. "A warning to all Americans," editorialized the 86-year-old Nashville Banner, "that the day of Free Enterprise is drawing to a close. Khrushchev could be right when he said: 'Your grandchildren will live under Socialism.' "

In Los Angeles the conservative Times (circ.548,702) saw in Kennedy's fighting mood "a reincarnation on an undreamed of scale of Mussolini's corporate state."

Syndicated Columnist David Lawrence complained bitterly, day after day. Kennedy's move against steel, said Lawrence, was a "tragic blunder" that "had led the public into believing that price increases are sinful or unpatriotic." Lawrence had dark visions of "a recession that could conceivably become a deep depression," of a precipitate national decline into "quasi-Fascism," of the end of everything: "The only persons in the world who can truly derive satisfaction from President Kennedy's tragic performance are the advocates of state socialism--often a forerunner of Communism." Vague Threats. In steel's very capital, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decided that the industry had "earned the President's charge of irresponsibility," but felt that the Kennedy Administration had gone to "disquieting lengths to bolster its case." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch rebuked Kennedy for bringing Brother Bobby into the fight: "President Kennedy would have been wiser to have put some restraints on his zealous brother. We did not like at all Attorney General Kennedy's vague threats of criminal indictments against steel executives, and we did not like his vague threats of a divestiture suit to break up U.S. Steel." Papers that from the beginning had applauded the presidential power play continued for the most part to cheer: "a spectacular victory" (the New York Times, the Baltimore Stm); "a tremendous victory" (the Hearstpapers, the Chicago Daily News'); "a gratifying day for the public" (the Nashville Tennessean); "a triumph for common sense" (the Christian Science Monitor). The Sacramento Bee hailed "a dramatic demonstration that Big Business no longer can say 'the public be damned' and get away with it." Wrote Editor James Wechsler in the liberal New York Post: "An episode in the decline of a corporate empire whose leadership had lost touch with reality."

"It was a sensational spat," said the New York World-Telegram and Sun, as time wore on. "Now let's ditch the hatchets and pick up the tools of production." The Tampa Tribune proposed that "both Big Steel and Big Brothers cool off. The differences between them are not insurmountable and can better be settled by calm words than by big clubs."

That is what President Kennedy tried to do in his press conference (see THE NATION), touching off a wave of conciliatory comment in the press. But for all the aura of reason, the Administration's clash with steel had hardened press attitudes on both sides of an emotional issue --an issue that would be a reference point on editorial pages for months to come.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.