The Press: Waiting for Itchy

To earn its reputation as a strong union town, Seattle ran a grim gamut of labor trouble, from a bitter citywide general strike (1919) to bloody waterfront wars (1934). Last week a strike made news which the newspapers could not report.

Seattle, for the first time in 82 years, had no newspapers.

Out on strike were 209 union printers, who walked out of their cluttered composing rooms at the Star and Hearst's morning Post-Intelligencer, their spick-&-span one at the Times, demanding a $2.95 a day raise. In the old days publishers had met such crises by hustling scab compositors into town, and paying...