Word: code
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...tasks have cost President Roosevelt and General Johnson more time and trouble than the newspaper code. It all began last July when the Publishers' Association grumbled that the Press was not an industry, adaptable to codification. Haggles developed over three points: 1) the publishers, fearful of being "licensed" into silence and out of business, wanted a written-promise on Freedom of the Press; 2) they wanted newshawks and editors getting $35 per week or more exempted from maximum hours as "professional men"; 3) they wanted to continue using newsboys. Finally last fortnight the President signed a newspaper code which...
...publishers on three tender spots, 1) He "requested" big newspapers in big cities to put reporters on a five day, 40 hr. week; 2) he "ordered" a new report on child labor (newsboys); 3) he laughed off the Freedom of Press clause as having "no more place [in the code] than would the recitation of the whole Constitution or the Ten Commandments. . . . The freedom guaranteed by the Constitution is a freedom of expression and that will be scrupulously respected-but it is not freedom to work children, or do business in a fire trap or violate the laws against obscenity...
Publisher Harry Chandler, loyal friend of Herbert Hoover, had this to say in his Los Angeles Times: "As the code applies to the newspaper, it seems to me to be unworkable-not to say an unjustified and unnecessary and dangerous movement to interfere with an institution which was born of the spirit of freedom. ... If the code system is carried to its logical conclusion, the end must inevitably be the handcuffing of the Press...
...were supporters who, from the first, have apologized for the behavior of the rest of the Press. Julius David Stern, publisher of the New York Evening Post and Philadelphia Record printed a front page box headlined "O. K., MR. PRESIDENT!" The Milwaukee Journal: "President Roosevelt has accepted the newspaper code with certain remarks which reflect the bad taste left in his mouth after months and months of unjustifiable delay. The delay and the haggling for advantages were carried on under the camouflage of a valiant fight for 'freedom of the press...
Operation, First direct action taken by the Publishers' Association was to get postponement of the code's effective date from Feb. 26 to March 12. Meanwhile the publishers had to contemplate the fact that 60 days hence the President expected something to be done about child labor and newshawks' hours. If not, the President was empowered by law to impose his own changes, an act which would make last week's uproar sound like soft sweet music...