The Press: What Comes Naturally

In composing rooms all over the U.S., printers sat on sawed-off chairs before tinkling linotype machines and spelled out the news: their A.F.L. International Typographical Union had just thundered its answer to the Taft-Hartley law. The act had outlawed the closed-shop agreements that were the bone & sinew of the I.T.U. So the 95-year-old labor union would simply sign no more contracts. Its 1,001 locals would post unsigned "conditions of employment," and would work as long as the conditions prevailed. Any publisher who rashly tried to alter the conditions—or to hire non-union printers—would...