Late one night last week, as usual, the New York Times went to bed. But the 48-page Times that cascaded from one of the big presses was not at all as usual. The right-hand “ear” on Page 1 identified it as the “T.E.P.” (for Temporary Emergency Project) Edition. A limited edition of a few hundred copies, it looked almost the same as the regular Times, except that the type was larger. But it was produced, without benefit of printers, by Vari-Type.
Like other Manhattan dailies, the Times was practicing—just in case the International Typographical Union called a strike. At an estimated cost of $20,000 a week, it had hired 350 typists and other extra help, and set up a special staff under Assistant Managing Editor Turner Catledge to iron the kinks out of the new process. The ironing had gone so well, not only on the Times but on the other dailies, that the worried I.T.U. last week made VariTyping a major issue.
Fortnight ago the I.T.U. and the dailies had come to a tentative agreement. The publishers agreed to boost wages to $99 a week for day work, highest I.T.U. wages in the U.S. To play safe, the papers kept their VariType crews working. Then Woodruff Randolph, I.T.U. president, demanded that the I.T.U. be granted jurisdiction over VariType operators. This would make it impossible for the papers to put out a VariType issue if the printers struck. The papers flatly refused. They had no intention of giving up the first method yet found to counter printers’ strikes.
As I.T.U. Boss Randolph hustled to New York to dicker, featherbedding also became an issue. The New York publishers wanted to kill the costly “bogus rule”* that the I.T.U. had been writing into contracts for more than 40 years. At the New York Herald Tribune, the touchy bogus question brought trouble last week. When 30 lobster-shift (2 a.m. shift) printers defied the foreman and left work to check up on the backlog of bogus matter, they were fired. Later in the day, the union got them reinstated. But there was little doubt that the publishers’ next campaign would be to eliminate the bogus rule.
At its annual convention in Manhattan last week, the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association looked over a room full of new labor-saving printing gadgets. Among them: a Fairchild photoelectric engraver that made cheap cuts of plastic in a fraction of the time required for the present zinc engraving. If VariTyping could be combined with a quick and cheap engraving process, then the newspaper of the future might be “printed” without printers. The publishers voted to spend $280,000 for research on new printing processes.
* A make-work requirement in many newspaper contracts with printers. Advertisements which are set up outside a newspaper and plates or mats of them sent in must be reset in the newspaper composing room. The duplicated type, unused, is then thrown into the “hell box.” The I.T.U. contends that this useless make-work is the only way it can assure jobs for all its members.
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