The Kingdom and the Power (53 page)

If Amory Bradford had said that, it would not have agitated Powers, but to hear such words from the President—a Boston Irishman for whom Powers had rung doorbells during the 1960 campaign, a revered figure that Powers had not associated with the Harvard boys of his Boston past—was a shattering experience for Powers. And not only Powers—the union was equally resentful, disturbed, and surprised by Kennedy’s criticism.

Two days after the Kennedy statement, Powers was approached by a Washington publisher who was a friend of the President’s—Philip L. Graham, the president and chief executive officer of the
Washington Post
and
Newsweek
: Graham had heard that
Time
was preparing a cover story on Powers, and, contemplating the same thing, he invited Powers to his New York hotel for a private conference, and the two men talked for six hours. Powers felt comfortable with Graham, and the Washington publisher would not have guessed that Powers’ formal education had ceased after the tenth grade. Powers was socially poised and articulate, having gained considerable self-confidence during the strike, becoming accustomed to articulating his views in the daily spotlight of television cameras while encircled by crowds of people. He had gone to numbers of fine restaurants with important peacemakers during the strike, and he had come to understand with more intimacy the symbols of success. He had seen how the headwaiters at “21” welcomed the well-publicized and handsome strike mediator Theodore Kheel, and he had become familiar with the interior of City Hall and with the mayor’s residence at Gracie Mansion, and with the people who came and went there. Powers had also gotten a closer view of how publishers live, how casually they traveled back and forth to Europe, how they sometimes took
two
vacations during the winter, in Florida or Nassau or Bermuda—even
during a newspaper strike. The top national labor leaders, too, enjoyed the good life—at the very top, labor was not much different from management; finally there was little to choose between these men after they had achieved power, and were invited to the same political banquets, and sat elbow-to-elbow along the dais; and soon—at least among the younger labor leaders—they were going to the same tailor, were having their fingernails buffed by the same sensual manicurist, were probably thinking the same improper thoughts.

All this had not suddenly occurred to Powers during the newspaper strike—he had been a vice-president in his union for eight years before becoming its president in 1961, and his marriage to a schoolteacher had also helped to smooth some of his rougher edges and heighten his awareness. But his experience during the 1962–63 strike was new and dramatic; he now understood as never before the importance of the media as an instrument to power. And so when he received a call from Philip Graham requesting a talk at Graham’s suite in the Carlyle Hotel, Powers wasted little time in getting there, knowing immediately its location. It was on Madison Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street, and it had been regularly publicized in newspapers because it was where Harry Truman always stayed and Kennedy frequently stayed.

Graham was impressed with Powers’ frankness and conviction, and at the conclusion of their discussion Graham telephoned President Kennedy in Palm Beach and, with Powers still in the room, praised Powers to the President and denounced the New York publishers. When Kennedy learned that Powers was present, he asked Graham to call later, which he did. As a result of the next call, during which Graham expressed interest in becoming an intermediary between the New York publishers and the unions, Kennedy endorsed the idea. But when the New York publishers learned of it, they refused to consider it. If Graham entered the New York negotiations, they said, they would walk out.

In the relative quiet of
The Times
’ newsroom, Theodore Bernstein decided that when the strike was finally settled,
The Times
should attempt to explain to its readers why there had been a strike in the first place, why it had lasted so long, and what had gone on behind the negotiating scenes day after day. Bernstein
consulted with
The Times
’ labor specialist, A. H. Raskin, and the project was outlined. It was an unusual assignment. It would mean that Raskin would not only be analyzing the demands and stubbornness of the unions and their leaders, but he would also be required to balance it with the implacability of the Publishers Association, including its spokesman,
The Times
’ own Amory Bradford. In the history of
The Times
this seemed unprecedented, a word that Bernstein had banned from the paper on the theory that nothing was unprecedented; but if Raskin did write a critical account of
The Times
’ vice-president, and if
The Times
published it, it would be a most unusual happening.

When Raskin began his research he discovered, to his utter lack of amazement, that newspaper executives were like big businessmen anywhere—equally quick at dodging reporters when the news was not so pleasant. When Raskin tried to reach Bradford at his office and left messages with his secretary, the calls were not returned. If Bradford was in his office on the fourteenth floor, and was not occupied elsewhere with the negotiation,
The Times
might have been witness to the bizarre scene of a working
Times
reporter banging on the locked door of a reluctant
Times
executive.

When Raskin’s story did appear in
The Times
, on April 1, 1963, a day after the employees had finally returned to work, Bradford was very upset by it. The one-hundred-fourteen-day strike had ended, Raskin wrote, with Powers achieving breakthroughs on three of his key issues. Powers was guaranteed a thirty-five-hour week (in return for relinquishing the fifteen minutes of daily toilet time). He achieved the common expiration date on union contracts with the publishers—not before the big pre-Christmas advertising campaign, as he had hoped, but before the pre-Easter advertising, which was almost as good. And Powers also managed to limit the use of automatic equipment by one-third of what the publishers had wanted, with a joint committee formed to analyze what money had been saved and how much of it should go to the union. The salary increase, totaling $12.63 a week per man over a two-year period, was roughly $2.50 more than would have been earned had there been no strike.

Mayor Wagner of New York, and Theodore Kheel, the mediator, were favorably portrayed in Raskin’s article as the packagers of the acceptable settlement, but Powers and Bradford and most of the other personalities were seen as considerably less than heroic.
Powers was said by Raskin’s sources to be “honest, clean, democratic—and impossible”; “cold, ambitious and utterly incapable of setting any realistic priorities for himself,” although Powers was conceded to be “the ablest and most forward-looking” of the graphic arts union leaders. Amory Bradford was credited with a keen mind and articulateness, but Raskin also reported that Bradford had brought “an attitude of such icy disdain into the conference rooms that the mediator often felt he ought to ask the hotel to send up more heat.” Raskin also characterized Bradford as an “aloof” man who operated on a “short fuse” and who called the mayor’s strike methods “foolish” and had become “sick and tired of the whole proceedings.” Mayor Wagner was quoted as saying that the forces of management and labor had conducted the strike with equal incompetence, adding “ ‘both sides deserve each other.’ ”

When Raskin finished writing his story, it was read by Bernstein and then by Catledge. After Catledge had finished it, he immediately called Dryfoos and asked him to look at it. Dryfoos said he would read it when it appeared in
The Times
. Catledge urged him to read it prior to publication. So Dryfoos took the story with him to Central Park, where he could read it alone near the lake, and Catledge remained in the office uncertain of Dryfoos’ reaction and whether the story would ever be published in
The Times
. Although Dryfoos had recently killed the Reston column, Dryfoos’ overall record was quite commendable in permitting to be published in
The Times
stories that most publishers would eliminate. Dryfoos had not vetoed anti-cigarette editorials although they had cost
The Times
thousands of dollars in cigarette advertising. Dryfoos had not objected when
The Times
’ television critic, Jack Gould, during the greatly publicized television quiz show scandals, wrote a column informing readers that newspapermen were “not entirely qualified to don the mantle of unsullied virtue.” One common vice, Gould wrote, was the “junket”—whereby a business concern pays all the travel and living expenses of a journalist who covers an evént of direct interest to the company, such as the opening of a new hotel in the Caribbean, or the filming of a movie in Europe or Mexico. Gould also mentioned the tradition of “Christmas loot” in newspaper offices, the deluge of gifts to the press from private companies. While Gould did not single out any particular newspaper,
The Times
was always high on the seasonal list: indeed.
The Times
’ reception
room during Christmas week was stacked with newly arrived bright packages—cases of liquor, baskets of fruit, silver serving sets, movie cameras, and other tokens of affection from various New York promoters and merchants.

With a knowing smile, Dryfoos reminded Gould that he was “opening a can of worms” with the story, but Dryfoos seemed pleased to publish it, and almost immediately there was posted on the bulletin board in the newsroom a request that
Times
men hitherto return all gift packages, a policy that did little to enhance Gould’s popularity within the office.

Now after reading Raskin’s article, Orvil Dryfoos returned it to Catledge’s office. Dryfoos whistled softly and raised his eyebrows, but he told Catledge to print it. Dryfoos could anticipate the reaction it would have with his colleague, Bradford, but Dryfoos felt that
The Times
had no choice but to publish it. Raskin’s reputation for accuracy and judgment was unquestioned, and so the piece was relayed to the composing room on the fourth floor, where the printers read it with interest, and when Amory Bradford saw it he became enraged. He urged Dryfoos to reconsider, but the publisher said he could not. And so, on April 1, it appeared, taking two full pages in
The Times
; and soon it was celebrated around the country—and in a piece in
The New Yorker
by A. J. Liebling—as a remarkable example of independent journalism. President Kennedy, discussing it later in a conversation with a
Times
man in Washington, said that if he had been Dryfoos, he would probably not have published it.

This represented one of Dryfoos’ final decisions as a
Times
publisher. He left the office almost immediately afterward for a short vacation in Puerto Rico. He was very tired and he looked it. But his vacation in Puerto Rico was interrupted by illness and he entered a hospital near San Juan; then he was flown back to New York and he went directly from the airport to the Harkness Pavilion of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. That is where he died on May 25 of a heart ailment, at the age of fifty.

The death of Orvil Dryfoos was followed by messages of condolence from leaders around the nation and world—President Kennedy and U Thant; Dean Rusk and Adlai Stevenson; Jean Monnet of France, Adolfo López Mateos of Mexico, Jaja Wachuku of Nigeria, dozens of congressmen, governors, publishers, hundreds
of friends. His funeral at Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue was attended by two thousand mourners, and the eulogy, delivered by James Reston, began:

Reston then recounted Dryfoos’ qualities as a publisher, his ability to make sound decisions under pressure—such as in the newsroom on election night in 1960 when Dryfoos was the first man to “sense that we had gone out on a limb for Kennedy too early and insisted that we reconsider. And again in 1961,” Reston continued, “when we were on the point of reporting a premature invasion of Cuba, his courteous questions and wise judgment held us back.”

This last point seemed to carry just the slightest sting for a few New York editors assembled in the temple—
they
had planned to play up the Bay of Pigs invasion, but Dryfoos, agreeing with Reston, had ordered the story toned down.

In addition to the Sulzberger and Dryfoos families, and the political dignitaries, the assemblage in the temple included most of the top executives and editors—Market and Krock, Catledge and Oakes, Daniel and Salisbury, and many editors from past decades: Charles Merz, former editorial-page editor; Neil MacNeil, an assistant managing editor who had worked under Van Anda, Birchall, and James; David H. Joseph, a retired city editor who had been hired personally by Ochs. Amory Bradford also attended the funeral service but he did not sit among the many executives near the front. He sat several rows back, and Harrison Salisbury, who has an eye for such things, immediately foresaw Bradford’s resignation.

After Dryfoos was buried in a grave near the mausoleum in which Adolph and Mrs. Ochs are buried, on a knoll looking west over the Saw Mill River in Westchester County, there followed weeks of intense guessing in the newsroom as to who the next publisher would be. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who was seventy-two
and restricted to a wheel chair because of his heart condition, was not capable of resuming command even briefly. His only son, Arthur Ochs (Punch) Sulzberger, thirty-seven years old, had little executive experience. Since Dryfoos had appeared to be in good health until the strike, it was assumed by the Sulzberger that Dryfoos would be the paper’s chief executive through the Nineteen-seventies, and there had meanwhile been no sense of urgency about developing a successor.