Newsstands Sell Times Rapidly As Readers Hail End of Strike

Readers of The New York Times yesterday celebrated the end of the New York newspaper strike with an enthusiasm usually reserved for the return of a long-lost relative.

"It is so good to see the Times back on sale again," an elderly gentleman amid a crowd of early-morning buyers at the Out of Town Newsstand said yesterday. Sale of the Times was still brisk by mid-afternoon, and one employee at Out of Town estimated that 2200 copies of the Times would be sold by the end of the day.

"We are glad to see the paper back because a lot of Times readers will buy nothing else," James Finn, supervisor of the stand said yesterday. While he declined to release any circulation figures, Finn said the sale of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal did not match the daily sale of Times before the strike, which began August 9.

Across the street at Nini's Corner, employee George Fielding stood idly by a stack of unsold copies of the WallStreet Journal. Sales of the Journal declined today. Fielding said. "We sold 600 copies of the Times today until we ran out at 2 p.m.," he said, adding, "On an average day before the strike, we would sell about 300 copies."

"My only comment is thank God that the Times is back," James C. Thomson Jr., curator of the Nieman Fellowships, a Harvard program for professional journalists, said yesterday. "We never knew how much we needed it until it wasn't around," he added.

But not everyone who wanted one got a copy of the Times this morning, including some students who subscribe through Harvard Delivery News Services. "We hope to resume delivery Wednesday morning," Marty Olive '78-4, president of the service, said yesterday.

Olive said that because of the strike the price of a daily and Sunday subscription through the end of the academic year will be reduced from $68 to $52.75. Daily subscriptions will cost $25.15 rather than the usual $32.05, and Sunday subscriptions will be reduced to $27.60 from $36.05.

"The strike cut out about 25 percent of our delivery schedule," Oliver said, adding that last year his 12-person staff delivered about 600 copies of the Times each day. "I'm relieved that it is over," he added.

The Times reached a settlement with the last of its four striking unions early Monday, when members of the Newspaper Guild, consisting of reporters and editors, voted 226 to 121 to accept a three-year contract. The agreement calls for an average weekly salary increase of $23 in the first two years of the contract and a $22 increase in the third year.