PIOUS FREEDOM

When the majority of American newspapers rose up in arms against the proposed code for their industry under the N.R.A., many of them were doubtless quite sincere in their belief that such a course would develop into an infringement of the constitutional rights of the uncensored press. On the other hand, it was widely thought, though not quite so widely printed, naturally, in the papers, that the industry was afraid of an investigation of its methods of circulation, particularly the practice of employing children to sell the sheets in the streets. Mayor LaGuardia of New York has uncovered quite a different and more venal custom which may well have been behind the fourth estate's high-toned reluctance to enter the N.R.A.

In New York City the newsstands, of which there are some forty thousand, were set aside as positions for the disabled. The blind and crippled were supposed to have preference. LaGuardia discovered that these posts were bought and sold, not distributed to those who had a legal right to them, but allotted to the highest bidder. The machinery behind this petty manipulation masks itself under the pious title of The New York Newsdealers' Protective and Benevolent Association, directed by a common gangster named Jake Sbar. The price tag on a newsstand ranges from one thousand to eighteen thousand, and once the cash is passed. Sbar, in connivance with all of the city's circulation managers and the newsstand License Commissioner, sets them up in the proper place. If they refuse to obey his orders, refuse to contribute to his war-chest, Jake tells the circulation managers and no more papers are delivered to that unfortunate.

The circulation managers themselves are worthy models for such men as Sbar. The manager of the Daily News ran a gang of toughs for his former Chicago employer, personally shot down a competitor, and was promoted to the New York paper for the efficacy of his methods, so drastic that they often consisted in dumping large hijacked assignments of rival newspapers into the Chicago river.

One can understand the editorial bashfulness of the press on the subject of the N.R.A. While their columns sponsor reform, their business departments create corruption. The cooperation of the two branches against the Recovery administration was probably the first time the left hand knew what the right was doing.