The Press: Pattern for Partnership

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In a society as complex as the U.S., it takes more than one man, or one newspaper, or one committee to focus the national attention on a serious problem. While the U.S. Senate's McClellan committee has produced the national headlines on labor racketeering, it was vigilant newsmen, from Des Moines to Portland, Ore. and back to Scranton, Pa., who sparked the Senate investigation and provided the scattered local fragments (TIME, June 4, et seq.) that fell into a nationwide kaleidoscope of corruption and violence. The pattern of partnership showed sharply this week as Senator John McClellan's men wound up their hearings on union terrorism in Scranton.

In few cities have union bullyboys faced a more obdurate press than in Scranton (pop. 127,600). Their most dogged foe over the years has been sensitive, white-haired Thomas F. Murphy, editorial-page editor of the Democratic evening Times (circ. 57,429). A Timesman for 60 of his 77 years, fighting Tom Murphy is a staunch unionist; in 1904 he helped found the Newswriters Union, a forerunner of the American Newspaper Guild. But in recent years, as labor goons and commissars pushed their thumbs deeper into Scranton's economic windpipe, old Tom hammered tirelessly at union despotism.

Dirt for a Dossier. When a house built by a nonunion contractor (TIME, April 29) was dynamited in 1954, Murphy headlined his lead editorial: GET THE DYNAMITERS! He followed it up in the next ten weeks with eleven more editorials, pounding at local authorities to enlist county and state investigators for the man hunt. By last October, when a jury convicted four union leaders who had ordered the dynamiting, Murphy had racked up 27 editorials on the case, while the Times reporters had unearthed enough dirt to hand the McClellan committee a bulging dossier.

But the biggest news breaks did not fall to the Times. They fell to its morning rival, the Republican Tribune (circ. 40,733). When Teamster Steward Paul Bradshaw went on trial for the dynamiting in 1955, a tough, aggressive Tribune reporter named J. Harold Brislin interviewed him and wrote a story after his conviction asking: "Will Bradshaw talk?" Four months later, out on bail and embittered by the way his union pals had let him take the rap, Paul Bradshaw decided at last to talk—to Harold Brislin.

Vinegar in the Blood. In a series of surreptitious midnight conferences at Brislin's house, Bradshaw and girl friend sang out the story of the dynamiting and allowed the newsman to copy tape-recorded conversations by the four other goons who had done the job. With affidavits from Bradshaw and girl friend in hand, Brislin turned his story in to the Tribune city desk and handed over his evidence to the district attorney. Within three days all four dynamiters had con fessed. Brislin's continuing exclusive sto ries in the Tribune and a sustained editorial barrage by the Times led to grand-jury indictments against six local union leaders and four of their goons. Later Brislin turned over his files to McClellan committee investigators and even accompanied Witness Bradshaw to Washington.