Pressure on the Press

On March 31 nearly 300 workers in one of the workers in one of the world's largest department stores went on strike: The store was Jordan Marsh. The workers were fighting over whether the A.F.L. or an independent, company-dominated union should represent the truck drivers and warehouse men. For more than two weeks Jordan Marsh tried to break the strike by storing their goods in Columbia Record Company warehouses, distributing them in trucks owned by the Kaplan Company of Lowell and using the polite "services" of many other wholesalers who value the department store's powerful friendship. The issue was finally decided on April 17, when the A.F.L. won by an overwhelming number of votes, despite Jordan Marsh's attempts to pack the election.

This strike could have affected thousands of families around Greater Boston, yet not a word about it was printed in the Boston, Press. The metropolitan papers studiously kept all news of the dispute out of their columns in deference to the fat advertising contracts which Jordan Marsh annually gives them. They shifted control of their columns from the managing editor to the boys who sell the ads.

The Boston press is fond of carrying exclusive stories on the war situation written by famed columnists and correspondents. But what is the use of exclusive stories concerning far off developments when Hub papers seem not even able to cover their own stamping ground? Boston papers have, in their editorial pages, shown themselves jealous guardians of wartime freedom of the press. But what good is freedom of the press when the press freely abuses that freedom?