(3 of 6)
''I'm going to put this old grey head right into a family quarrel. Up to now here has been an impression that all is sweet and lovely among the immortal 39 [Wirephoto users.] Well, I can tell you that's no happy family. In fact they're having a terrible time keeping ten from running out! George Cameron of the San Francisco Chronicle is threatening to sue on the ground that Wirephoto was sold to him by misrepresentation. The sales talk was that his Hearst competitors were about to buy it. If he should win, and the rest of the ten get ants in their pants and run out—you pay the freight—because the Wirephoto contracts do not hold the users jointly and severally liable. I merely suggest that the intelligent thing to do is protect your own cash drawer." Shaking his grey mane, he shouted: "Break away from the throne long enough to show you have some independence left!"
Noyes defense: "They are all paying their assessments, including Mr. Cameron."
Vote: Not-so-pronounced "No." Lawyer Neylan demanded a roll-call. It was denied. Down he sat, his proxies useless in his pocket.
Resolution No. 4: Let a committee of five, including at least three nonusers of Wirephoto, review the whole transaction and determine if the AP's credit and the interests of all members have been protected. Neylan: "I demand a record vote." Carl L. Estes of the Longview, Tex.) News, bitingly: ". . . I've had enough of this self-appointed, self-anointed shepherd of the little fellow. " Vote: Tabled.
Resolution No, 5: Alter the directorate to include three directors, one each from cities up to 15,000, 50,000, 75,000 population. Publisher Robert McLean of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin: "Better discussed by a quiet, thoughtful group of men. Let it be put up to the board of directors." Vote: Referred to the directors. Lawyer Neylan: "Will the directors handle the voting as was done today?" Noyes, snappishly: "Maybe. Can't tell." Neylan: "Twice this afternoon you have disfranchised 900 members of the Associated Press by not permitting their proxies to be voted." Neylan, later: "We always lose the first two or three rounds."
Lawyer & Client. The newspaper world feels that a great publisher was lost when "Jack" Neylan, who looks like a well-groomed Abraham Lincoln, quit the San Francisco Call ten years ago to become general counsel for Mr. Hearst and all his enterprises. He had negotiated Hearst's purchase of that newspaper in 1919, taking the job of publisher with the late, crusading Fremont Older as editor. Virtually his first task was to deal with a reporters' strike. While rival publishers excitedly fired "agitators" from their staffs, Neylan soothingly sifted his own newshawks' grievances down to a complaint that they were forbidden to accept free theatre tickets. He rescinded the order; the strikers went happily back to work. A bitter opponent of the Newspaper Guild today, Lawyer Neylan likes to relate the Call strike episode as somehow illustrating the fallaciousness of a newspaper labor movement.