SOURCE: “Heywood Broun: It Seemed to Him,” in Men Who Lead Labor, Modern Age Books, Inc., 1937, pp. 115-42.

In the following essay, Minton and Stuart discuss Broun's efforts as a leader of the progressive labor movement in the United States.

The publishers greeted the formation of the American Newspaper Guild with sad shakes of their heads, predicting that newswriters could never successfully be organized. As Roy Howard, president of the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, complained to his employee, Heywood Broun, “You're doing a very silly and evil thing in trying to get reporters into a union. That would rob them of their initiative and take the romance and glamour out of the newspaper business. Still, I don't have to worry; the Guild will never get to first base.”

Roy Howard was wrong. Not only did the Newspaper Guild grow, but it fought William Randolph Hearst, the most powerful...