was Elmer Brown, president; John J. Pilch, first vice-president; Alexander Sandy Bevis, second vice-president (Canadian); Joseph P. Bailey, third vice-president (Mailer). Secretary-treasurer Don Hurd died in 1959, succeeded by William R. Cloud. After Elmer Brown's 1968 death, the ITU presidents were Pilch (1968–1973) and Bevis (1974–1978). The Mergenthaler linotype machine was used by newspaper printers from the 1880s to the 1970s. Technological progress again confronted the ITU in the post-war period. A number of new advances—including offset lithography, flexography, relief print, screen printing, rotogravure, and digital printing—greatly reduced the number of workers needed in the modern printshop and newspaper composing room. In 1964, the ITU counted 121,858 members. But by 1980, the union had shed nearly a quarter of its membership due to technological advances. Toward the end of the ITU, the mailers outnumbered the printers. With the disappearance of linotype machines and the advent of paste makeup and computerized composition methods, the work in the composing rooms dropped. The mail rooms needed people to work on the inserting machines. Merger Concerned that the union did not have the economic strength to win good wages and benefits for its members and worried that further membership declines might threaten the viability of the union, the ITU leadership sought a merger with another printing union. The ITU sought to merge with the Newspaper Guild but terminated negotiations in 1981 after nearly four years of talks. The ITU discussed merging with the Graphic Communications International Union, but the talks did not proceed very far. Later, the GCIU merged into the IBT. Problems plagued the term of ITU President Joe Bingel (1978–1983). In a contested special election between Bingel and Robert McMichen, McMichen, the anti-Teamster candidate, won the election. However, the ITU was dying. The ITU executive council subsequently required president Robert McMichen to enter into merger talks with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. IBT President Jackie Presser spoke of merger with the ITU; at the 1983 San Francisco ITU convention. ITU President Joe Bingle risked his leadership post on the ITU–IBT merger and lost. However, the ITU's 74,000 members turned down the merger two-to-one in a vote taken in 1985, fearing that the Teamsters could not be trusted to respect the terms of the merger agreement—which included the hallmark of the ITU: autonomy. The Mailers would later join the Teamsters; the Printers would not. The last ITU convention was held in 1984 in