The Press: Too Exclusive

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From his Broadway beat, Columnist Leonard Lyons last week also reported an exclusive White House story. "David K. Niles, veteran member of the White House staff," wrote Lyons in the New York Post and 72 other newspapers, "is compiling statistics on WPA graduates who become successful. Its purpose is to show that the income taxes they paid, and paid by others who earned money through the efforts of those WPA men, totaled more than the cost of WPA."†

White House newsmen, who went to Niles to check up, got no story. But they did get an interesting insight on the way of the Broadway columnists and how they make much from little.

What actually happened, said Niles, was that he had bumped into Lyons at a first night. Niles told Lyons of a chat with Playwright Arthur Miller, once a $22.77-a-week member of the WPA's Federal Theater, now author of the hit Death of a Salesman. Miller had told Niles that his income taxes were so big lately that he felt he had "amply repaid the Government for the help it gave me in WPA days." Niles said he repeated the Miller remark to Lyons, who built a White House survey out of it.