The Press: The Fair Lady of Milwaukee

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Machinery and beer are the city's best-known industries, and it leads the U.S. not only in beer production (13 million bbls. a year) but in consumption (39 gals. per capita). Nightclubs are as hard to find as skyscrapers, although the city has 2,137 taverns. "Milwaukee," observes one longtime resident, "is a big town that's still a village." Milwaukee has had a Socialist mayor for 30 of the last 38 years, because Milwaukeeans have learned to vote on men and issues instead of parties. Says one of the city's leading politicians: "A Milwaukee Socialist is just a good, average guy. About the only thing publicly owned is the waterworks. Mayor Zeidler behaves more like a conservative Republican than a Socialist."

Milwaukeeans pride themselves on having a gemutlich city, where hospitality and friendship bubbles out of every stein of beer. "The three Bs of Milwaukee," says one Milwaukeean, "are not Beethoven, Bach and Brahms but beer, baseball and bowling. We haven't got a city of great culture. We can make any machine in Milwaukee, but we have no first-class theater building or art museum or orchestra—and no real prospect of them." 'For its lack of the outward signs of culture, the Journal has to share the blame. If Harry Grant had resolutely exercised his evangelistic fervor a generation ago in favor of such cultural monuments, Milwaukee would probably have them. "It's very unusual for one man to have all the power I have," says he. "Men tolerate me because they know I don't want a thing for myself. I want it for the Journal" and thereby for Milwaukee. "Hell's bells, the Journal has got to remain a simple, clean thing. Nothing must ever besmirch the Journal.'"

The Journal, as alert and sharp-eyed as a rooster, has a tabloid-moralistic habit of playing up any smirch involving a Milwaukeean. When the wife of a prominent businessman was caught by a pri vate detective in a hotel room with another man, the Journal front-paged the story: FOUND IN HOTEL WITH A FRIEND. Recently, a distraught Milwaukee housewife telephoned the city desk to beg the paper not to print the news that her husband had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly. "Lady," a Journal reporter told her, "I'm going to give you a break. I won't ask his name. If we knew his name we'd have to run it. This way he has a chance of being missed."