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Title: The Brass Check - A Study of American Journalism
Author: Upton, Sinclair
Language: English
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THE BRASS CHECK
_A Study of American Journalism_
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
❦
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA.
═════════════════════════════════════════════════
First Edition Paper February, 1920 23,000 Copies
Second Edition Paper February, 1920 20,500 Copies
Third Edition Cloth April, 1920 16,500 Copies
Fourth Edition Paper June, 1920 15,000 Copies
Fifth Edition Paper July, 1920 12,000 Copies
Sixth Edition Cloth August, 1920 12,500 Copies
═════════════════════════════════════════════════
A LETTER FOR THE TIME
VILLENEUVE, SWITZERLAND,
Monday, Oct 6, 1919.
My Dear Confrère:
I am happy to see you always so burning with energy, but your next book
prepares for you some rude combats. It requires a bold courage to dare,
when one is alone, to attack the monster, the new Minotaur, to which the
entire world renders tribute: the Press.
I return to Paris in a few weeks. Reaction there holds the center of the
walk. It speaks already as master, and perhaps it will be master before
the end of the winter. The wave of counter-revolution, of
counter-liberty, passes over the world. It will drown more than one
among us, but it will retire, and our ideas will conquer.
Very cordially I press your hand.
ROMAIN ROLLAND.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Story of the Brass Check 13
II. The Story of a Poet 17
III. Open Sesame! 22
IV. The Real Fight 27
V. The Condemned Meat Industry 32
VI. An Adventure with Roosevelt 39
VII. Jackals and a Carcase 45
VIII. The Last Act 50
IX. Aiming at the Public’s Heart 55
X. A Voice from Russia 58
XI. A Venture in Co-operation 62
XII. The Village Horse-Doctor 68
XIII. In High Society 74
XIV. The Great Panic 80
XV. Shredded Wheat Biscuit 86
XVI. An Interview on Marriage 90
XVII. “Gaming” on the Sabbath 97
XVIII. An Essential Monogamist 102
XIX. In the Lion’s Den 110
XX. The Story of a Lynching 114
XXI. Journalism and Burglary 121
XXII. A Millionaire and an Author 125
XXIII. The “Heart-Wife” 130
XXIV. The Mourning Pickets 142
XXV. The Case of the Associated Press 150
XXVI. A Governor and His Lie 154
XXVII. The Associated Press at the Bar 165
XXVIII. The Associated Press and Its Newspapers 169
XXIX. The Scandal-Bureau 176
XXX. The Concrete Wall 184
XXXI. Making Bomb-Makers 191
XXXII. The Roof-Garden of the World 197
XXXIII. A Fountain of Poison 202
XXXIV. The Daily Cat-and-Dog Fight 213
PART II
THE EXPLANATION
XXXV. The Causes of Things 221
XXXVI. The Empire of Business 228
XXXVII. The Dregs of the Cup 237
XXXVIII. Owning the Press 241
XXXIX. The War-Makers 250
XL. Owning the Owners 258
XLI. The Owner in Politics 263
XLII. Owning the Associated Press 271
XLIII. The Owner and His Advertisers 282
XLIV. The Advertising Boycott 289
XLV. The Advertising Ecstasy 295
XLVI. The Bribe Direct 300
XLVII. The Bribe Wholesale 307
XLVIII. Poison Ivy 311
XLIX. The Elbert Hubbard Worm 314
L. The Press and Public Welfare 318
LI. The Press and the Radicals 323
LII. The Press and the Socialists 327
LIII. The Press and Sex 332
LIV. The Press and Crime 337
LV. The Press and Jack London 341
LVI. The Press and Labor 346
LVII. The Associated Press and Labor 353
LVIII. “Poisoned at the Source” 362
LIX. The Press and the War 377
LX. The Case of Russia 385
LXI. “Bolshevism” in America 395
PART III
THE REMEDY
LXII. Cutting the Tiger’s Claws 403
LXIII. The Mental Munition-Factory 408
LXIV. The Problem of the Reporter 415
LXV. The Press Set Free 421
LXVI. A Frame-up That Fell Down 429
Conclusion 436
A Practical Program 438
Publisher’s Note 443
INTRODUCTORY
The social body to which we belong is at this moment passing through one
of the greatest crises of its history, a colossal process which may best
be likened to a birth. We have each of us a share in this process, we
are to a greater or less extent responsible for its course. To make our
judgments, we must have reports from other parts of the social body; we
must know what our fellow-men, in all classes of society, in all parts
of the world, are suffering, planning, doing. There arise emergencies
which require swift decisions, under penalty of frightful waste and
suffering. What if the nerves upon which we depend for knowledge of this
social body should give us false reports of its condition?
The first half of this book tells a personal story: the story of one
man’s experiences with American Journalism. This personal feature is not
pleasant, but it is unavoidable. If I were taking the witness-chair in a
court of justice, the jury would not ask for my general sentiments and
philosophic opinions; they would not ask what other people had told me,
or what was common report; the thing they would wish to know—the only
thing they would be allowed to know—is what I had personally seen and
experienced. So now, taking the witness-stand in the case of the
American public versus Journalism, I tell what I have personally seen
and experienced. I take the oath of a witness: the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. After this pledge,
earnestly given and earnestly meant, the reader must either believe me,
or he must exclude me from the company of civilized men.
My motive in writing this book is not to defend myself. We live in a
time of such concentrated agony and peril that a man who would waste ink
and paper on a defense of his own personality would be contemptible.
What I tell you is: “Look! Here is American Journalism! Here is what it
did to one man, systematically, persistently, deliberately, for a period
of twenty years. Here are names, places, dates—such a mass of material
as you cannot doubt, you cannot evade. Here is the whole thing, inside
and out. Here are your sacred names, the very highest of your gods. When
you have read this story, you will know our Journalism; you will know
the body and soul of it, you will know it in such a way that you will
not have to be told what it is doing to the movement for industrial
freedom and self-government all over the world.”
In the second half of the book you will hear a host of other
witnesses—several score of them, the wisest and truest and best people
of our country. They are in every part of our country, in every class
and every field of public life; and when you have heard their
experiences, told for the most part in their own words, you must grant
my claim concerning this book—that it is a book of facts. There are no
mistakes in it, no guesses, no surmises; there are no lapses of memory,
no inaccuracies. There are only facts. You must understand that I have
had this book in mind for twenty years. For twelve years I have been
deliberately collecting the documents and preserving the records, and I
have these before me as I write. In a few cases of personal experiences
I have relied upon my memory; but that memory is vivid, because the
incidents were painful, they were seared into my soul, and now, as I
recall them, I see the faces of the people, I hear their very tones.
Where there is any doubt or vagueness in my recollection, or where there
is hearsay testimony, I state the fact explicitly; otherwise I wish the
reader to understand that the incidents happened as I say they happened,
and that upon the truth of every statement in this book I pledge my
honor as a man and my reputation as a writer.
One final word: In this book I have cast behind me the proprieties
usually held sacred; I have spared no one, I have narrated shameful
things. I have done this, not because I have any pleasure in scandal; I
have not such pleasure, being by nature impersonal. I do not hate one
living being. The people I have lashed in this book are to me not
individuals, but social forces; I have exposed them, not because they
lied about me, but because a new age of fraternity is trying to be born,
and they, who ought to be assisting the birth, are strangling the child
in the womb.
PART I
THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF THE BRASS CHECK
Once upon a time there was a little boy; a nice little boy, whom you
would have liked if you had known him—at least, so his mother says. He
had been brought up in the traditions of the old South, to which the two
most important things in the world were good cooking and good manners.
He obeyed his mother and father, and ate his peas with a fork, and never
buttered the whole slice of his bread. On Sunday mornings he carefully
shined his shoes and brushed his clothes at the window, and got into a
pair of tight kid gloves and under a tight little brown derby hat, and
walked with his parents to a church on Fifth Avenue. On week-days he
studied hard and obeyed his teachers, and in every field of thought and
activity he believed what was told him by those in authority. He learned
the catechism and thought it was the direct word of God. When he fell
sick and the doctor came, he put himself in the doctor’s hands with a
sense of perfect trust and content; the doctor knew what to do, and
would do it, and the little boy would get well.
The boy’s grandfather had been a Confederate naval officer, drowned at
sea. The boy’s father had spent his youth in Virginia during the agonies
of the Civil War, thus missing most of his education. After the war the
family was ruined, and the father had to enter into competition with
Yankee “hustle,” handicapped by a Southern gentleman’s quaint notions of
dignity, and also by a Southern gentleman’s weakness for mint-juleps. So
the last week’s board bill was generally a matter of anxiety to the
family. But always, no matter how poor the family might be, the little
boy had a clean white collar, and a copy of the “New York Sun” every
morning. This paper was beautifully printed, smooth and neat; the little
boy knew all its peculiarities of type, and he and his father and his
mother accepted every word they read in it, both the news-columns and
the editorial page, precisely as they accepted the doctor’s pills and
the clergyman’s sermons, the Bible and the multiplication table and
Marian Harland’s cook-book.
The “New York Sun” was edited by one of the bitterest cynics that ever
lived in America. He had been something of a radical in his early days,
and had turned like a fierce wolf upon his young ideals. He had one
fixed opinion, which was that everything new in the world should be
mocked at and denounced. He had a diabolical wit, and had taught a
tradition to his staff, and had infected a good part of American
Journalism with the poison of his militant cynicism. Once every
twenty-four hours the little boy absorbed this poison, he took it for
truth, and made all his ideas of it.
For example, there were women who were trying to be different from what
women had always been. There was a thing called “Sorosis.” The boy never
knew what “Sorosis” was; from the “Sun” he gathered that it was a
collection of women who wanted to have brains, and to take part in
public affairs—whereas the “Sun” acidly considered that woman’s place
was the home. And the boy found it easy to agree with this. Did not the
boy’s grandmother make the best ginger-cakes of any grandmother in the
whole city of Baltimore? Did not his mother make the best chocolate-cake
and the best “hot short-cake”—that is, whenever the family could escape
from boarding-houses and have a little kitchen of its own. The boy was
enormously fond of chocolate-cake and short-cake, and of course he
didn’t want women neglecting their duties for fool things such as
“Sorosis.”
Also there were the Populists. The little boy had never seen a Populist,
he had never been given an opportunity to read a Populist platform, but
he knew all about the Populists from the funny editorials of Charles A.
Dana. The Populists were long-haired and wild-eyed animals whose habitat
was the corn-fields of Kansas. The boy knew the names of a lot of them,
or rather the nick-names which Dana gave them; he had a whole
portrait-gallery of them in his mind. Once upon a time the “Sun” gave
some statistics from Kansas, suggesting that the Populists were going
insane; so the little boy took his pen in hand and wrote a letter to the
editor of the “Sun,” gravely rebuking him. He had never expected to read
in the columns of the “Sun” a suggestion that Populists might _go_
insane. And the “Sun” published this feeble product of its own
“smartness.”
Later on the boy discovered the “New York Evening Post,” the _beau
ideal_ of a gentleman’s newspaper, and this became for years his main
source of culture. The “Evening Post” was edited by E. L. Godkin, a
scholar and a lover of righteousness, but narrow, and with an abusive
tongue. From him the boy learned that American politics were rotten, and
he learned the cause of the rottenness: First, there was an ignorant
mob, composed mainly of foreigners; and second, there were venal
politicians who pandered to this mob. Efforts were continually being
made by gentlemen of decency and culture to take the government away
from these venal politicians, but the mob was too ignorant, and could
not be persuaded to support a clean government. Yet the fight must be
kept up, because conditions were going from bad to worse. The boy
witnessed several “reform campaigns,” conducted mainly by the “Evening
Post” and other newspapers. These campaigns consisted in the publication
of full-page exposures of civic rottenness, with denunciations of the
politicians in office. The boy believed every word of the exposures, and
it never occurred to him that the newspapers might be selling more
copies by means of them; still less did it occur to him that anybody
might be finding in these excitements a means of diverting the mind of
the public from larger and more respectable forms of “graft.”
There was a candidate for district attorney, William Travers Jerome by
name; a man with a typical “Evening Post” mind, making an ideal “Evening
Post” candidate. He conducted a “whirlwind” campaign, speaking at half a
dozen meetings every evening, and stirring his audience to frenzy by his
accounts of the corruption of the city’s police-force. Men would stand
up and shout with indignation, women would faint or weep. The boy would
sit with his finger-nails dug into the palms of his hands, while the
orator tore away the veils from subjects which were generally kept
hidden from little boys.
The orator described the system of prostitution, which was paying its
millions every year to the police of the city. He pictured a room in
which women displayed their persons, and men walked up and down and
inspected them, selecting one as they would select an animal at a fair.
The man paid his three dollars, or his five dollars, to a cashier at the
window, and received a brass check; then he went upstairs, and paid this
check to the woman upon receipt of her favors. And suddenly the orator
put his hand into his pocket and drew forth the bit of metal. “Behold!”
he cried. “The price of a woman’s shame!”
To the lad in the audience this BRASS CHECK was the symbol of the most
monstrous wickedness in the world. Night after night he would attend
these meetings, and next day he would read about them in the papers. He
was a student at college, living in a lodging-house room on four dollars
a week, which he earned himself; yet he pitched in to help this orator’s
campaign, and raised something over a hundred dollars, and took it to
the “Evening Post” candidate at his club, interrupting him at dinner,
and no doubt putting a strain on his patience. The candidate was swept
into office in a tornado of excitement, and did what all “Evening Post”
candidates did and always do—that is, nothing. For four long years the
lad waited, in bewilderment and disgust, ending in rage. So he learned
the grim lesson that there is more than one kind of parasite feeding on
human weakness, there is more than one kind of prostitution which may be
symbolized by the BRASS CHECK.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY OF A POET
The boy, now become a youth, obtained a letter of introduction from his
clergyman to the editor of his beloved “Evening Post,” and at the age of
sixteen was given a trial as reporter. He worked for a week collecting
odd scraps of news, and when the week was over he had earned the
generous sum of two dollars and sixty-seven cents. This was his first
and last experience as newspaper reporter, and it confirmed his boyish
impression of the integrity of the journalistic profession. His work had
consisted of compiling obituary notices about leading citizens who had
died. “John T. McGurk, senior partner of McGurk and Isaacson,
commission-merchants of 679 Desbrosses Street, died yesterday of
cirrhosis of the liver at his home, 4321 George Washington Avenue,
Hoboken. Mr. McGurk was 69 years of age, and leaves a widow and eleven
children. He was a member of the Elks, and president of the North
Hoboken Bowling Association.” And these facts the “Evening Post” printed
exactly as he had written them. In a book which will not have much to
say in favor of American Journalism, let this fidelity to truth, and to
the memory of the blameless McGurk, have its due meed of praise.
The youth took to writing jokes and jingles, at which he earned twice as
much as the “Evening Post” had paid him. Later on he took to writing
dime-novels, at which he made truly fabulous sums. He found it puzzling
that this cheap and silly writing should be the kind that brought the
money. The editors told him it was because the public wanted that kind;
but the youth wondered—might not at least part of the blame lie with the
editors, who never tried giving anything better? It was the old
problem—which comes first, the hen or the egg?
We have spoken jestingly of the traditions of the old South, in which
the youth was brought up; but the reader should not get a false
impression of them—in many ways they were excellent traditions. For one
thing, they taught the youth to despise a lie; also to hate injustice,
so that wherever in his life he encountered it, his whole being became a
blaze of excitement. Always he was striving in his mind to discover the
source of lies and injustice—why should there be so much of them in the
world? The newspapers revealed the existence of them, but never seemed
to know the causes of them, nor what to do about them, further than to
support a reform candidate who did nothing but get elected. This
futility in the face of the world’s misery and corruption was maddening
to the youth.
He had rich relatives who were fond of him, so that he was free to
escape from poverty into luxury; he had the opportunity to rise quickly
in the world, if he would go into business, and devote his attention
thereto. But would he find in business the ideals which he craved? He
talked with business men, also he got the flavor of business from the
advertisements in the newspapers—and he knew that this was not what he
was seeking. He cultivated the friendship of Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley,
and fell in love with the young Milton and the young Goethe; in them he
found his own craving for truth and beauty. Here, through the medium of
art, life might be ennobled, and lifted from the muck of graft and
greed.
So the youth ran away and buried himself in a hut in the wilds of
Canada, and wrote what he thought was the great American novel. It was a
painfully crude performance, but it had a new moral impulse in it, and
the youth really believed that it was to convert the world to ways of
love and justice. He took it to the publishers, and one after another
they rejected it. They admitted that it had merit, but it would not
sell. Incredible as it seemed to the youth, the test by which the
publishers judged an embryo book and its right to be born, was not
whether it had vision and beauty and a new moral impulse; they judged it
as the newspapers judged what they published—would it sell? The youth
earned some money and published the book himself, and wrote a preface to
tell the world what a wonderful book it was, and how the cruel
publishers had rejected it. This preface, together with the book, he
sent to the leading newspapers; and thus began the second stage of his
journalistic experiences!
Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,”
a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The
“American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady,
to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture,
saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story;
so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but
here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions
about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s
picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the
table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left,
it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was
published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New
York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has
divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the
newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first
wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second
wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other
lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!
Both the “New York Times” and the “New York American” published
interviews with the young author. It had been his fond hope to interest
people in his book and to cause them to read his book, but in this he
failed; what both the interviews told about was his personality. The
editors had been amused by the naïve assumption of a young poet that he
might have something of importance to say to the world; they had made a
“human interest” story out of it, a journalistic tidbit to tickle the
appetites of the jaded and worldly-wise. They said scarcely anything
about the contents of the book, and as a result of the two interviews,
the hungry young author sold precisely two copies!
Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which
ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories
stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was
trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not
sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only
way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the
“Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he
would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very
little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it
was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get
nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a
book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the
editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would
publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it.
This, you understand, was the “literary world,” in which ideas, the most
priceless possession of mankind, were made the subject of barter and
sale. In every branch of it there were such petty dishonesties, such
tricks of the trade. There were always ten times as many people trying
to get a living as the trade would support. They were clutching at
chances, elbowing each other out of the way; and their efforts were not
rewarded according to their love of truth and beauty, but according to
quite other factors. They were dressing themselves up and using the
“social game,” they were posing and pretending, the women were using the
sex-lure. And everywhere, when they pretended to care about literature
and ideas, they were really caring about money, and “success” because it
would bring money. Everywhere, above all things else, they hated and
feared the very idea of genius, which put them to shame, and threatened
with annihilation their petty gains and securities.
From these things the youth fled into the wilderness again, living in a
tent with his young wife, and writing a story in which he poured out his
contempt upon the great Metropolis of Mammon. This was “Prince Hagen,”
and he sent it to the “Atlantic Monthly,” and there came a letter from
the editor, Professor Bliss Perry, saying that it was a work of merit
and that he would publish it. So for weeks the young author walked on
the top of the clouds. But then came another letter, saying that the
other members of the “Atlantic” staff had read the story, and that
Professor Perry had been unable to persuade them to see it as he saw it.
“We have,” said he, “a very conservative, fastidious and sophisticated
constituency.”
The young author went back to his “pot-boiling.” He spent another winter
in New York, wrestling with disillusionments and humiliations, and then,
fleeing to the wilderness for a third summer, he put his experience into
“The Journal of Arthur Stirling,” the story of a young poet who is
driven to suicide by neglect and despair. The book was given to the
world as a genuine document, and relieved the tedium of a literary
season. Its genuineness was accepted almost everywhere, and the author
sat behind the scenes, feeling quite devilish. When the secret came out,
some critics were cross, and one or two of them have not yet forgiven
the writer. The “New York Evening Post” is accustomed to mention the
matter every once in a while, declaring that the person who played that
trick can never receive anyone’s confidence. I will not waste space
discussing this question, save to point out that the newspaper reviewers
had set the rules of the game—that love and beauty in art were heeded
only in connection with personalities and sensation; so, in order to
project love and beauty upon the world, the young author had provided
the personalities and sensation. As for the “Evening Post” and its
self-righteousness, before I finish this book I shall tell of things
done by that organ of Wall Street which qualify decidedly its right to
sit in judgment upon questions of honor.
CHAPTER III
OPEN SESAME!
My next effort was “Manassas,” a novel of the Civil war. I poured into
it all my dream of what America might be, and inscribed it: “That the
men of this land may know the heritage that has come down to them.” But
the men of this land were not in any way interested in the heritage that
had come down to them. The men of this land were making money. The
newspapers of this land were competing for advertisements of whiskey and
cigars and soap, and the men who wrote book-reviews for the literary
pages of these newspapers were chuckling over such works of commercial
depravity as “The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.” They had
no time to tell the public about “Manassas”; though Jack London called
it “the best Civil War book I’ve read,” and though it is my one book
which no severest critic can say has any propaganda motive. Charlotte
Perkins Gilman told me a story of how she persuaded an old Civil War
veteran to read it. The old fellow didn’t want to read any book about
the war by a youngster; he had been through it all himself, and no
youngster could tell him anything. But Mrs. Gilman persisted, and when
she met him again she found him with shining eyes and a look of wonder
on his face. “It’s the War!” he cried. “It’s the War—and he wasn’t even
born!”
It happened that at this time Lincoln Steffens was publishing his
terrible exposés of the corruption of American civic life. Steffens did
for the American people one specific service. He knocked out forever the
notion, of which E. L. Godkin and his “New York Evening Post” were the
principal exponents, that our political corruption was to be blamed upon
“the ignorant foreign element.” Steffens showed that purely American
communities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt of all; and he
traced back the corruption, showing that for every man who took a bribe
there was another man who gave one, and that the giver of the bribe made
from ten to a thousand times as much as he paid. In other words,
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and
assemblies to keep them from doing the people’s will and protecting the
people’s interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power,
it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political
democracy.
Steffens did not go so far as that in the early days. He just laid bare
the phenomena, and then stopped. You searched in vain through the
articles which he published in “McClure’s” for any answer to the
question: What is to be done about it? So I wrote what I called “An Open
Letter to Lincoln Steffens.” I cannot find it now, but I recall the
essence of it well enough.
“Mr. Steffens, you go from city to city and from state to state, and you
show us these great corporations buying public privileges and
capitalizing them for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, and
unloading the securities upon the general investing public. You show
this enormous mass of capital piling up, increasing at compound
interest, demanding its toll of dividends, which we, the people who do
the hard work of the world, who produce the real wealth of the world,
must continue forever to pay. I ask you to tell us, what are we to do
about this? Shall we go on forever paying tribute upon this mass of
bribery and fraud? _Can_ we go on paying it forever, even if we want to?
And if not, what then? What will happen when we refuse to pay?”
I sent this letter to Steffens, to see what he thought about it. He
replied that it was the best criticism of his work that he had seen, and
he tried to persuade “McClure’s” to publish it, but in vain. I forget
whether it was he or I who sent it to “Collier’s Weekly”; but anyway,
the article was read and accepted, and Robert J. Collier, the publisher,
wrote and asked me to come to see him.
Picture me at this moment, a young writer of twenty-five who has been
pleading with the American public to remember its high traditions, and
has seen his plea fall flat, because the newspapers and magazines
overlooked him; also—a painful detail, but important—who has been
supporting a wife and baby on thirty dollars a month, and has been paid
only five hundred dollars for two years work on a novel. A friend who
knows the literary world tells me that this is the chance of my life.
“Collier’s” is run “on a personal basis,” it appears; a sort of family
affair. “If Robbie likes you, your fortune is made,” says my friend.
“This is your ‘open sesame’ to the public mind.”
Well, I go to see Robbie, and it appears that Robbie likes me. I am
young and ascetic-looking; the tension under which I have worked has
given me dyspepsia, so my cheeks are hollow and my skin is white and my
eyes have a hectic shine. Robbie, no doubt, is moved to sympathy by
these phenomena; he himself is a picture of health, florid and jolly, a
polo-player, what is called a “good fellow.” He asks me, will I come to
dinner at his home and meet some of his friends and his editorial staff?
I answer that of course I will.
My worldly-wise friend insists that I shall invest my spare savings in a
dress-suit, but I do not take this advice. I go to Robbie’s palatial
home in my old clothes, and Robbie’s velvet-footed butler escorts me
upstairs to Robbie’s dressing-room, where Robbie’s valet is laying out
his things on the bed. And while Robbie is dressing, he tells me again
how much he admires my article. It is the most illuminating discussion
of present-day problems that he has ever read. He and his friends don’t
meet many Socialists, naturally, so I am to tell them about Socialism. I
am to tell them everything, and needn’t be afraid. I answer, quite
simply, that I shall not be in the least afraid.
The evening was spoiled because Robbie’s father came in. Old Peter
Collier was a well-known character in New York “society”; but as not all
my readers have been intimate in these circles, I explain that he had
begun life as a pack-peddler, had started “Collier’s Weekly” as an
advertisement sheet, and by agents offering books as premiums had built
up a tremendous circulation. Now he was rich and important; vulgar,
ignorant as a child, but kind-hearted, jovial—one of those nice,
fatherly old fellows who put their arms about you, no matter who you
are.
And here he had come in to dinner with his son, and found his son
entertaining a Socialist. “_What?_ What’s this?” he cried. It was like a
scene in a comedy. He would hear one sentence of what I had to say, and
then he would go up in the air. “Why—why—that’s perfectly outrageous!
Who ever heard of such a thing?” He would sputter for five or ten
minutes, to the vast amusement of the rest of the guests.
Presently he heard about the “Open Letter to Lincoln Steffens.” “What’s
this? You are going to publish an article like that in my magazine? _No,
sir!_ I won’t have it! It’s preposterous!” And there sat Robbie, who was
supposed to be the publisher; there sat Norman Hapgood, who was supposed
to be the editor—and listened to Old Peter lay down the law. Norman
Hapgood has since stated that he does not remember this episode, that he
never knew Peter Collier to interfere with the policy of the magazine.
Well, the reader may believe that the incident was not one that I would
forget in a hurry. Not if I should live to be as old as Methuselah will
I forget my emotions, when, after the dinner, the old gentleman got me
off in a corner and put his arm around my shoulders. “You are a nice
boy, and I can see that you’ve got brains, you know what you’re talking
about. But what you ought to do is to put these ideas of yours into a
book. Why do you try to get them into my magazine, and scare away my
half million subscribers?”
I went home that evening feeling more sick at heart than I like to
remember. And sure enough, my worst fears were justified. Week after
week passed, and my Open Letter to Lincoln Steffens did not appear in
the columns of “Collier’s Weekly.” I wrote and protested, and was met
with evasions; a long time afterwards, I forget how long, “Collier’s”
graciously condescended to give me back the article, without asking the
return of the two hundred dollars they had paid me. The article was
rejected by many other capitalist magazines, and was finally published
in some Socialist paper, I forget which.
Such is the picture of a magazine “run on a personal basis.” And see
what it means to you, the reader, who depend upon such a magazine for
the thoughts you think. Here is Lincoln Steffens, taking his place as
America’s leading authority on the subject of political graft; and here
am I, making what Steffens declares is the best criticism of his work.
It is accepted and paid for, and a date is set to give it to you, the
reader; but an ignorant and childish old pack-peddler steps in, and with
one wave of his hand sweeps it out of your sight. Sixteen years have
passed, and only now you hear about it—and most of you don’t hear about
it even now!
But here is a vital point to get clear. The old pack-peddler wiped out
my discussion of the question, but he did not wipe out the question.
Today the question is cried aloud from the throats of a hundred and
eighty million people in Russia, and the clamor of it spreads all over
Europe, a deafening roar which drowns out the eloquence of statesmen and
diplomats. It is the question of the hour in America, and America must
find the answer under penalty of civil war. Sixteen years ago the answer
was given to Robert Collier, and if he had had the courage to stand out
against his father, if Norman Hapgood had been what he pretended to be,
an editor, they would have taken up the truth which I put before them,
they would have conducted a campaign to make the American people see
it—and today we should not be trying to solve the social problem by
putting the leaders of the people’s protest into jail.
CHAPTER IV
THE REAL FIGHT
There was a strike of the wage-slaves of the Beef Trust in Chicago, and
I wrote for the “Appeal to Reason” a broadside addressed to these
strikers, trying to point out to them the truth which Peter Collier had
concealed from his precious half million subscribers. This broadside was
taken up by the Socialists of the Stockyards district, and thirty
thousand copies were distributed among the defeated strikers. The
“Appeal to Reason” offered me five hundred dollars to live on while I
wrote a novel dealing with the life of those wage-slaves of the Beef
Trust; so I went to Packingtown, and lived for seven weeks among the
workers, and came home again and wrote “The Jungle.”
Now so far the things that had been done to me by the world of American
Journalism had been of a mocking nature. I had been a sort of “guy”; a
young poet—very young—who believed that he had “genius,” and kept making
a noise about it. So I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from
abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists
with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things
are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of
their fellow fakers. The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one
of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which
understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the
making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men.
But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note.
The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place.
And what is the reason for this change? Was there any change in me? Did
I suddenly become dissipated, dishonest, self-seeking? No, there was no
change in me; I was the same person, living the same life. But I ceased
to oppose social wickedness with the fragile weapon of poetry, with
visions and inspirations and consecrations; instead, I took a sharp
sword of contemporary fact, and thrust it into the vitals of one of
those monstrous parasites which are sucking the life-blood of the
American people. That was the difference; and if from now on you find in
this story a note of fierce revolt, please understand that you are
listening to a man who for fourteen years had been in a battle, and has
seen his cause suffering daily wounds from a cruel and treacherous foe.
My first experience, it happened, was with “Collier’s Weekly.” But it
was not a dinner-party experience this time, there was no element of
friendliness or sociability in it.
“The Jungle” was appearing serially, and was causing a tremendous lot of
discussion; it occurred to me that it might be possible to persuade
“Collier’s” to take up the matter, so I wrote an article, telling quite
simply some of the things that were going on in the packing-houses of
Chicago. I had been there, and had seen—and not as a blundering amateur,
as the packers charged. It happened that I had met in Chicago an
Englishman, Mr. Adolph Smith, the world’s greatest authority on
packing-houses. He had studied methods of meat-packing all over Great
Britain, and all over the continent of Europe, for the “London Lancet,”
the leading medical paper of Great Britain. He had come, as authorized
representative of the “Lancet,” to investigate conditions in America. I
had his backing in what I wrote; I also had the backing of various State
and Federal authorities; I had the text of the Federal meat-inspection
law, which had been written by the packers to enable them to sell
diseased meat with impunity.
I took all these facts to Norman Hapgood and Robert Collier. I offered
them the opportunity to reap the fame and profit which I subsequently
reaped from the book-publication of “The Jungle,” and incidentally to do
a great public service. They were interested, but not convinced, and
they employed a United States army-officer, Major Louis L. Seaman, who
went out to Chicago and accepted the hospitality of the packers, and
reported that all my charges were exaggerated, and most of them entirely
false. And Collier and Hapgood accepted Major Seaman’s word against my
word and the authorities I offered.
That was all right; I had no complaint against that; they used their
editorial judgment. My complaint was of the way they handled the story.
In their preliminary announcement (April 15, 1905) they said:
Some very brilliant articles have been sent us about the unhygienic
methods of the Beef Trust. In order not to run any risk of wronging
that organization we engaged Major Seaman to go to Chicago, and his
first report will appear next week.
So, you see, they were going to give an illustration of editorial
fairness, of scrupulous regard for exact truth; and having thus prepared
their readers, on April 22, 1905, they presented their material—a long
article by Major Seaman, praising the Chicago Stockyards, and pretending
to refute all my charges. At the same time they published only three
paragraphs of my charges—the great bulk of my articles they left
unpublished! They gave their readers a few paragraphs from the “London
Lancet,” but so far as concerned me, the readers got only the answers of
Major Seaman, and an introductory editorial condemnation of me,
explaining that I had submitted my articles to the editors, and they,
“desirous of securing the unexaggerated facts,” had sent Major Seaman to
Chicago, and now gave his findings.
And this not being enough, they added a discussion of the matter on
their editorial page. This editorial they headed, “Sensationalism”; and
they subtly phrased it to give the impression that the paragraphs they
were publishing constituted all I had to say: “Mr. Sinclair’s article,
published alone, would have produced much more of a sensation than it
will produce as mitigated, by the report of Major Seaman.... Having some
doubt, however, about the real facts, we induced Major Seaman to make
the trip to Chicago. This incident will serve as an example of the
policy mapped out for the conduct of this paper.”
How dignified and impressive! And how utterly and unspeakably knavish!
And when I wrote to them and protested, they evaded. When I demanded
that they publish my entire article, they refused. When I demanded that
they publish my letter of protest, they refused that. And this was done
by Norman Hapgood, who posed as a liberal, a lover of justice; a man who
spent his editorial time balancing like a tight-rope walker on the
narrow thread of truth, occupying himself like a mediaeval schoolman
with finding the precise mathematical or metaphysical dead centre
between the contending forces of conservatism and radicalism. A friend
of mine talked with him about his treatment of me and reported him as
saying, with a smile: “We backed the wrong horse.” The truth was, he had
backed the horse of gold, the horse that came to his office loaded down
with full-page advertisements of packing-house products.
“Collier’s” calls itself “The National Weekly,” and has obtained a
reputation as a liberal organ, upon the strength of several useful
campaigns. It attacked spiritualist fakers and land-fraud grafters; also
it attacked dishonest medical advertising. It could do this, having
arrived at the stage of security where it counts upon full-page
advertisements of automobiles and packing-house products. But when it
was a question of attacking packing-house advertisements—then what a
difference!
Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a
child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second
generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a
personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public
fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to
be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and
didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take
him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a
perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he
would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf
and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his
afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a
dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In
the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the
“smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they
became tipplers and café celebrities; in their intellectual life they
became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year
the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far
gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the
“Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are.
And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he
gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and
simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it
called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now
calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is
an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been
taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s
Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.” I
shall have something to the point to say about this group of
publications very soon.
P. S.—A well known journalist writes me that he feels I do an
injustice to Norman Hapgood in telling the above story, and in failing
to give credit to Hapgood for other fine things he has done. The
writer brings facts, and I am always ready to give place to the man
with facts. I quote his letter:
“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier?
Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country.
The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that
advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were
its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with
chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his
erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood
left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the
country some of the most important exposés it had. Do you know the
story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from
official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust
had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the
days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every
government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of
the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in
the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust
jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a
simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do
you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined
point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most
important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and
‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’ may be true. But isn’t it
fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier
advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he
could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors
involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”
CHAPTER V
THE CONDEMNED MEAT INDUSTRY
“The Jungle” had been accepted in advance by the Macmillan Company. Mr.
Brett, president of the company, read the manuscript, and asked me to
cut out some of the more shocking and bloody details, assuring me that
he could sell ten times as many copies of the book if I would do this.
So here again I had to choose between my financial interest and my duty.
I took the proposition to Lincoln Steffens, who said: “The things you
tell are unbelievable. I have a rule in my own work—I don’t tell things
that are unbelievable, even when they are true.”
Nevertheless, I was unwilling to make the changes. I offered the book to
four other publishers, whose names I do not now remember; then I began
preparations to publish it myself. I wrote to Jack London, who came to
my help with his usual impetuous generosity, writing a resounding call
to the Socialists of the country, which was published in the “Appeal to
Reason.” The result was that in a couple of months I took in four
thousand dollars. The Socialists had been reading the story in the
“Appeal,” and were thoroughly aroused.
I had the book set up and the plates made, when some one suggested
Doubleday, Page and Company, so I showed the work to them. Walter H.
Page sent for me. He was a dear old man, the best among business-men I
have met. There were several hustling young money-makers in his firm,
who saw a fortune in “The Jungle,” and desperately wanted to publish it.
But Page was anxious; he must be sure that every word was true. We had a
luncheon conference, and I was cross-questioned on every point. A week
or two passed, and I was summoned again, and Herbert S. Houston of the
firm explained that he had a friend, James Keeley, editor of the
“Chicago Tribune,” to whom he had taken the liberty of submitting my
book. Here was a letter from Keeley—I read the letter—saying that he had
sent his best reporter, a trusted man, to make a thorough report upon
“The Jungle.” And here was the report, thirty-two typewritten pages,
taking up every statement about conditions in the yards, and denying one
after another.
I read the report, and recall one amusing detail. On page one hundred
and sixteen of “The Jungle” is a description of the old packing-houses,
their walls covered with grease and soaked with warm moist steam. “In
these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years.” The
comment upon this statement was: “Unproven theory.” So it was necessary
for me to consult the text-books on bacteriology, and demonstrate to
Doubleday, Page and Company that unicellular parasitic organisms are
sometimes endowed with immortality!
I said: “This is not an honest report. The thing you have to do, if you
really wish to know, is to send an investigator of your own, somebody in
whom you have confidence.” They decided this must be done, and picked a
young lawyer, McKee by name, and sent him to Chicago. He spent some time
there, and when he came back his verdict was that I had told the truth.
I went to dinner at McKee’s home and spent the evening hearing his
story—incidentally getting one of the shocks of my life.
McKee had done what I had urged him not to do: he had gone first to the
packers, to see what they had officially to show him. They had placed
him in charge of a man—I do not recall the name, but we will say
Jones—their publicity agent, a former newspaper man, who served as host
and entertainer to inquiring visitors. He had taken McKee in charge and
shown him around, and in the course of their conversation McKee
mentioned that he was looking into the charges made in a novel called
“The Jungle.” “Oh, yes!” said Jones. “I know that book. I read it from
beginning to end. I prepared a thirty-two page report on it for Keeley
of the ‘Tribune’.”
So here was a little glimpse behind the curtain of the newspaper world
of Chicago! James Keeley was, and still is the _beau ideal_ of American
newspaper men; I have never met him, but I have read articles about him,
the kind of “write-ups” which the capitalist system gives to its heroes.
He had begun life as a poor boy and risen from the ranks by sheer
ability and force of character—you know the “dope.” Now he was one of
the high gods of newspaperdom; and when it was a question of protecting
the great predatory interest which subsidizes all the newspapers of
Chicago and holds the government of the city in the hollow of its hand,
this high god sent to Armour and Company and had a report prepared by
their publicity-agent, and sent this report to a friend in New York as
the result of a confidential investigation by a trusted reporter of the
“Chicago Tribune” staff!
And maybe you think this must be an unusual incident; you think that
capitalist Journalism would not often dare to play a trick like that! I
happen to be reading “Socialism versus the State,” by Emile Vandervelde,
Belgian Minister of State, and come upon this paragraph:
It will be remembered, for example, that the “London Times” published,
a few years ago, a series of unsigned articles, emanating, it was said
from an impartial observer, against the municipal lighting systems in
England. These articles made the tour of Europe. They furnish, even
today, arguments for the opponents of municipalization. Now, a short
time after their publication, it was learned that the “impartial
observer” was the general manager of one of the big electric light and
power companies of London.
Doubleday, Page and Company published “The Jungle,” and it became the
best-selling book, not only in America, but also in Great Britain and
its colonies, and was translated into seventeen languages. It became
also the subject of a terrific political controversy.
The packers, fighting for their profits, brought all their batteries to
bear. To begin with, there appeared in the “Saturday Evening Post” a
series of articles signed by J. Ogden Armour, but written, I was
informed, by Forrest Crissey, one of the staff of the “Post.” The editor
of this paper, George Horace Lorimer, was for nine years an employee of
the Armours; he is author of “The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His
Son,” a text-book of American business depravity. From first to last his
paper was at the service of the packers, as it has always been at the
service of every great financial interest.
Some of the statements made under Armour’s signature made me boil, and I
sat down to write an answer, “The Condemned Meat Industry.” I had the
facts at my fingers ends, and wrote the article in a few hours, and
jumped on the train and came up to New York with it. I took it to the
office of “Everybody’s Magazine” and asked to see E. J. Ridgway, the
publisher. I was wise enough by this time to understand that it is the
publisher, not the editor, you need to see. I read the article to
Ridgway, and he stopped the presses on which “Everybody’s Magazine” was
being printed, and took out a short story and shoved in “The Condemned
Meat Industry.”
“Everybody’s Magazine” at this time was on the crest of a wave of
popularity. It had finished Tom Lawson’s exposé of Wall Street, upon the
strength of which it had built up a circulation of half a million. Its
publishers, Ridgway and Thayer, were advertising men who had bought a
broken-down magazine from John Wanamaker, and had made the discovery
that there was a fortune to be made by the simple process of letting the
people have the truth. They wanted to go on making fortunes, and so they
welcomed my article. It gave the affidavits of men whom the Armours had
employed to take condemned meat out of the destructors and sell it in
Chicago. It told the story of how the Armours had bribed these men to
retract their confessions. It gave the reports of State health
authorities, who showed how the Armours had pleaded guilty to
adulterating foods. It was a mass of such facts fused in a white heat of
indignation. United States Senator Beveridge told me that he considered
the article the greatest piece of controversial writing he had ever
read.
You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever
you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and
specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat
supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore
a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it
was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is
supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs.
It was my first complete test of American Journalism. Hitherto I had
tried the newspapers as a young poet, clamoring for recognition; they
had called me a self-seeker, and although I felt that the charge was
untrue, I was powerless to disprove it to others. But now I tried them
in a matter that was obviously in the public interest—too obviously so
for dispute. I was still naïve enough to be shocked by the result. I had
expected that every newspaper which boasted of public spirit would take
up these charges, and at least report them; but instead of that, there
was silence—silence almost complete! I employed two clipping-bureaus on
this story, and received a few brief items from scattered papers here
and there. Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went
so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”
Meantime “The Jungle” had been published in book form. I will say of
“The Jungle” just what I said of the magazine article—whatever you may
think of it as literature, you must admit that it was packed with facts
which constituted an appeal to the American conscience. The book was
sent to all American newspapers; also it was widely advertised, it was
boosted by one of the most efficient publicity men in the country. And
what were the results? I will give a few illustrations.
The most widely read newspaper editor in America is Arthur Brisbane.
Brisbane poses as a liberal, sometimes even as a radical; he told me
that he drank in Socialism with his mother’s milk. And Brisbane now took
me up, just as Robbie Collier had done; he invited me to his home, and
wrote one of his famous two-column editorials about “The Jungle”—a rare
compliment to a young author. This editorial treated me personally with
kindness; I was a sensitive young poet who had visited the stockyards
for the first time, and had been horrified by the discovery that animals
had blood inside them. With a fatherly pat on the shoulder, Brisbane
informed me that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house, or words to
that effect.
I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith,
representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that
in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement
that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally
accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the
reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement
was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you
find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and
five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity
to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American
editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page
advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat
prepared in filth.
Or take the “Outlook.” The “Outlook” poses as a liberal publication; its
editor preaches what he calls “Industrial Democracy,” a very funny joke.
I have dealt with this organ of the “Clerical Camouflage” in five
sections of “The Profits of Religion”; I will not repeat here, except to
quote how the pious “Outlook” dealt with “The Jungle.” The “Outlook” had
no doubt that there were genuine evils in the packing-plants; the
conditions of the workers ought of course to be improved, BUT—
To disgust the reader by dragging him through every conceivable
horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and with
offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel—all this is to
overreach the object.... Even things actually terrible may become
distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational way and in a
high pitched key.... More convincing if it were less hysterical.
Also Elbert Hubbard rushed to the rescue of his best advertising
clients. Later in this book you will find a chapter dealing especially
with the seer of East Aurora; for the present I will merely quote his
comments on my packing-house revelations. His attack upon “The Jungle”
was reprinted by the Chicago packers, and mailed out to the extent of a
million copies; every clergyman and every physician in the country
received one. I have a copy of his article, as it was sent out by a
newspaper syndicate in the form of “plate-matter.” It occupies four
newspaper columns, with these headlines:
ELBERT HUBBARD LASHES THE MUCK-RAKER CROWD.
Says “The Jungle” Book is a Libel and an Insult to Intelligence, and
that This Country is Making Headway as Fast as Stupidity of Reformers
Will Admit.
After which it will suffice to quote one paragraph, as follows:
Can it be possible that any one is deceived by this insane rant and
drivel?
And also the friend of my boyhood, my beloved “New York Evening Post”!
This organ of arm-chair respectability—I have reference to the large
leather receptacles which you find in the Fifth Avenue clubs—had
upbraided me for a harmless prank, “The Journal of Arthur Stirling.” Now
comes “The Jungle”; and the “Evening Post” devotes a column to the book.
It is “lurid, overdrawn.... If the author had been a man who cared more
for exact truth,” etc. Whereupon I sit myself down and write a polite
letter to the editor of the “Evening Post,” asking will he please tell
me upon what he bases this injurious charge. I have made patient
investigations in the stockyards, and the publishers of “The Jungle”
have done the same. Will the “Evening Post” state what investigations
_it_ has made? Or does it make this injurious charge against my book
without investigation, trusting that its readers will accept its word,
and that it will never be brought to book?
This is a fair question, is it not? The organs of arm-chair
respectability ought not to make loose charges against radicals, they
ought not condemn without knowledge. So I appeal to my beloved “Evening
Post,” which I have read six times per week for ten or twelve years; and
the answer comes: “It is not our custom to permit authors to reply to
book-reviews, and we see no reason for departing from our practice in
order to permit you to advertise your book and to insult us.” And so the
matter rests, until a couple of months later, the President of the
United States makes an investigation, and his commission issues a report
which vindicates every charge I have made. And now what? Does the
“Evening Post” apologize to me? Does it do anything to make clear to its
readers that it has erred in its sneers at “The Jungle”? The “Evening
Post” says not one word; but it still continues to tell the public that
I am unworthy of confidence, because I once played a harmless joke with
“The Journal of Arthur Stirling”!
CHAPTER VI
AN ADVENTURE WITH ROOSEVELT
I was determined to get something done about the Condemned Meat
Industry. I was determined to get something done about the atrocious
conditions under which men, women and children were working in the
Chicago stockyards. In my efforts to get something done, I was like an
animal in a cage. The bars of this cage were newspapers, which stood
between me and the public; and inside the cage I roamed up and down,
testing one bar after another, and finding them impossible to break. I
wrote letters to newspaper editors; I appealed to public men, I engaged
an extra secretary and ran a regular publicity bureau in my home.
It happened that I had occasion to consult the record of the
congressional investigations held after the Spanish-American War, into
the quality of canned meat furnished by the Chicago packers. Here was
Theodore Roosevelt on the witness-stand, declaring: “I would as soon
have eaten my old hat.” And now Theodore Roosevelt was president of the
United States, with power to help me if he would! In a moment of
inspiration I decided to appeal to him.
He had already heard about “The Jungle,” as I learned later; his
secretary, Loeb, told me that he had been receiving a hundred letters a
day about the book. Roosevelt now wrote, saying that he had requested
the Department of Agriculture to make an investigation. I replied that
nothing could be expected from such an investigation, because the
Department of Agriculture was itself involved in my charges. If he
wanted to get the truth, he must do what Doubleday, Page and Company had
done, get an independent report. He wrote me to come to Washington, and
I had several conferences with him, and he appointed two of his trusted
friends to go out to Chicago and make a “secret” investigation. Three
days after this decision was made I forwarded a letter to Roosevelt from
a workingman in the Chicago stockyards, saying that it was known all
over the yards that an investigation was to be made by the government,
and that a mad campaign of cleaning up was in progress.
Roosevelt asked me to go with his commission. I was too busy to do this,
but I sent Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, a Socialist lecturer, and her husband
as my representatives, paying the cost out of my own pocket. I knew that
they would be trusted by the workers who had trusted me, and thought
they might be able to get at least a few of the facts to Roosevelt’s
commission. As a matter of fact, they were not able to do very much,
because they were shadowed during the entire time by detectives of the
packers, and every workingman knew that it would cost him his job to be
seen near the commission’s rooms. I found the Socialists of Chicago
bitterly distrustful of the commission, and disposed to ridicule me for
trying to work with it.
The news of what was going on soon leaked into the newspapers of
Chicago. They had already published vicious attacks upon “The Jungle”;
and upon me. One paper—I forget the name—had remarked that it was quite
evident that I knew more about the inside of the brothels of Chicago
than I knew about the stockyards. This, you understand, in a
book-review! I replied to this that possibly the editor might be
interested to know the exact facts in the case: I had spent seven weeks
patiently investigating every corner of the stockyards, and I have never
been inside a brothel in my life.
Now there began to be dispatches from Washington, so phrased as to turn
the investigation against me instead of against the packers. Finally
there appeared in the “Tribune” a column or two from Washington, signed
by Raymond Patterson, editor of the paper. This dispatch stated in
specific and precise detail that President Roosevelt was conducting a
confidential investigation into the truth of “The Jungle,” intending to
issue a denunciation and annihilate a muck-raking author. On the day
when this story appeared in the “Chicago Tribune,” I received seventeen
telegrams from friends in Chicago!
One of the telegrams—from A. M. Simons—declared that the author of the
“Tribune” dispatch was Roosevelt’s personal friend. So, of course, I was
considerably disturbed, and spent the day trying to get Roosevelt on the
telephone from Princeton, not an easy achievement. First he was at a
cabinet session, then he was at luncheon, then he had gone horseback
riding; but finally, after spending my day in the telephone-office in
Princeton, I heard his voice, and this is what he said: “Mr. Sinclair, I
have been in public life longer than you, and I will give you this bit
of advice; if you pay any attention to what the newspapers say about
you, you will have an unhappy time.” So I went home to bed. The next
time I saw Roosevelt he told me that he had not seen Raymond Patterson,
nor had he said anything about his intentions to anyone. “I don’t see
how Patterson could have done such a thing,” was Roosevelt’s comment.
The commissioners came back to Washington, and I went down to see them.
They were amazingly frank; they told me everything they had seen, and
everything that was in their report to the President, nor did they place
any seal of confidence upon me. I realized that I was dealing with
people who desired publicity, and I had sufficient worldly tact to know
that it would be better not to mention this point, but simply to go
ahead and do what all parties concerned wanted done.
The report was known to be in the President’s hands, and he had summoned
the chairmen of the agricultural committees of the House and Senate, and
was holding the report as a threat over their heads to force them to
amend the Federal meat inspection law. The newspaper reporters all knew
what was going on, and were crazy for news. I returned to my little farm
at Princeton, and packed up a suit-case full of documents, letters,
affidavits and official reports, and came to New York and called up the
offices of the Associated Press.
Here was a sensation, not only nation-wide, but international; here was
the whole world clamoring for news about one particular matter of
supreme public importance. There had been an investigation by the
President of the United States of one of America’s greatest industries,
and I had been tacitly commissioned to make the results known to the
public, for the benefit of the public, whose physical health was at
stake. I came to the great press association, an organization
representing at that time some seven hundred newspapers, with scores of
millions of readers, hungry for news. The Associated Press was the
established channel through which the news was supposed to flow; and in
this crisis the channel proved to be a concrete wall.
I was about to describe the thickness of the wall, but I stop myself,
remembering my pledge to tell the exact facts. I do not know the
thickness of this wall, because I have never been able to dig through
it. I only know that it is as thick as all the millions of dollars of
all the vested interests of America can build it. I first telephoned,
and then sent a letter by special messenger to the proper officials of
the Associated Press, but they would have absolutely nothing to do with
me or my news. Not only on that day, but throughout my entire campaign
against the Beef Trust, they never sent out a single line injurious to
the interests of the packers, save for a few lines dealing with the
Congressional hearings, which they could not entirely suppress.
It is the thesis of this book that American newspapers as a whole
represent private interests and not public interests. But there will be
occasions upon which exception to this rule is made; for in order to be
of any use at all, the newspapers must have circulation, and to get
circulation they must pretend to care about the public. There is keen
competition among them, and once in a while it will happen that a
“scoop” is too valuable to be thrown away. Newspapermen are human, and
cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the
temptation to publish the news. So I had found it with “Everybody’s
Magazine,” and so now I found it when I went with my suit-case full of
documents to the office of the “New York Times.”
I arrived about ten o’clock at night, having wasted the day waiting upon
the Associated Press. I was received by C. V. Van Anda, managing editor
of the “Times”—and never before or since have I met such a welcome in a
newspaper office. I told them I had the entire substance of the
confidential report of Roosevelt’s investigating committee, and they
gave me a private room and two expert stenographers, and I talked for a
few minutes to one stenographer, and then for a few minutes to the other
stenographer, and so the story was dashed off in about an hour. Knowing
the “Times” as I have since come to know it, I have often wondered if
they would have published this story if they had had twenty-four hours
to think, and to be interviewed by representatives of the packers. But
they didn’t have twenty-four hours, they only had two hours. They were
caught in a whirlwind of excitement, and at one o’clock in the morning
my story was on the press, occupying a part of the front page and
practically all of the second page.
The question had been raised as to how the story should be
authenticated. The “Times” met the problem by putting the story under a
Washington “date-line”—that is, they told their readers that one of
their clever correspondents in the capital had achieved this “scoop.”
Being new to the newspaper game, I was surprised at this, but I have
since observed that it is a regular trick of newspapers. When the
Socialist revolution took place in Germany, I happened to be in
Pasadena, and the “Los Angeles Examiner” called me up to ask what I knew
about the personalities in the new government. So next morning the
“Examiner” had a full description of Ebert and a detailed dispatch from
Copenhagen!
The “New York Times,” having put its hand to the plough, went a long way
down the furrow. For several days they published my material. I gave
them the address of the Bloors, and they sent a reporter to Delaware to
interview them, and get the inside story of the commission’s experiences
in Chicago; this also went on the front page. All these stories the
“Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers
which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the
Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The
“Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid
me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a
dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system
even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have
done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I
read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business
of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New
York Times”!
Also I had another experience which threw light on the attitude of the
great metropolitan newspapers to the subject of money. It is the custom
of publishers to sell to newspaper syndicates what are called the
“post-publication serial rights” of a book. “The Jungle” having become
an international sensation, there was keen bidding for these serial
rights, and they were finally sold to the “New York American” for two
thousand dollars, of which the author received half. Forthwith the
editorial writers of both the Hearst papers in New York, the “American”
and the “Evening Journal,” began to sing the praises of “The Jungle.”
You will recall the patronizing tone in which Arthur Brisbane had spoken
of my charges against the Chicago packers. But now suddenly Brisbane
lost all his distrust of my competence as an authority on stockyards. In
the “Evening Journal” for May 29, 1906, there appeared a double-column
editorial, running over into another double column, celebrating “The
Jungle” and myself in emphatic capitals, and urging the American people
to read my all-important revelations of the infamies of the Beef Trust:
In his book—which ought to be read by at least a million Americans—Mr.
Sinclair traces the career of one family. It is a book that does for
modern INDUSTRIAL slavery what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for black
slavery. But the work is done far better and more accurately in “The
Jungle” than in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Mr. Sinclair lived in the stockyards. He saw how the men that work
there are treated, how the people that buy dreadful, diseased products
are treated. HE TOLD THE TRUTH SIMPLY AND CONVINCINGLY. He went there
to study life, not merely to tell a story.
As a result of the writing of this book, of the horror and the shame
it has aroused, there is a good prospect that the Beef Trust devilries
will be CHECKED at least, and one hideous phase of modern life at
least modified....
Meanwhile, the public should be thankful to Mr. Sinclair for the
public service he is rendering, and his book “The Jungle” should sell
as no book has sold in America since “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
And then on May 31st, two days later, appeared another editorial of the
same character, conveying to the readers of the “Evening Journal” the
fact that they might read this wonderful novel in the Hearst newspapers;
the first chapter would be published in both the “Evening Journal” and
the “American,” and after that the complete story would run in the
“American.” The ordinary capitals used by Mr. Brisbane in his editorials
were not sufficient in this crisis; he used a couple of sizes
larger—almost an advertising poster. I quote the closing paragraphs from
his editorial:
It will please our readers to know that for the right to publish Mr.
Sinclair’s book serially in our newspapers—which includes no interest
whatever in its publication in book form—we pay to him an amount of
money exceeding all that he has been able to earn in six years of hard
literary work.
This newspaper, which has opposed the Beef Trust and its iniquities
for years, and which first published the facts and the affidavits that
form part of Mr. Sinclair’s indictment, rejoices that this young man
should have had the will, the courage and the ability to write a work
that HAS FORCED NATIONAL ATTENTION, including the attention of the
President of the United States....
We urge that you read the first installment of Mr. Sinclair’s book in
this newspaper today, and that you continue reading it daily as the
various installments appear in THE AMERICAN.
CHAPTER VII
JACKALS AND A CARCASE
Roosevelt had hoped to get the new inspection bill through Congress
without giving out the report of his commission. But the packers and
their employes in Congress blocked his bill, and so finally the report
was given out, and caused a perfect whirlwind of public indignation. The
packers, fighting for their profits, made their stand in the
Agricultural Committees of the House, which apparently they owned
completely. Courteous hearings were granted to every kind of retainer of
the Beef Trust, while the two representatives of the President were
badgered on the witness-stand as if they had been criminals on trial. I
sent a telegram to Congressman Wadsworth of New York, chairman of the
committee, asking for a hearing, and my request was refused. I then
wrote a letter to Congressman Wadsworth, in which I told him what I
thought of him and his committee—which letter was taken up later by his
democratic opponents in his district, and resulted in his permanent
removal from public life.
But meantime, Wadsworth was king. In the fight against him, I moved my
publicity bureau up to New York, and put three stenographers at work. I
worked twenty hours a day myself—nor was I always able to sleep the
other four hours. I had broken out of the cage for a few weeks, and I
made the most of my opportunity. I wrote articles, and sent telegrams,
and twice every day, morning and evening, a roomful of reporters came to
see me. Some of these men became my friends, and would tell me what the
packers were doing in the New York newspaper-offices, and also with
their lobby in Washington. I recall one amusing experience, which gave
me a glimpse behind the scenes of two rival yellow journals, the “New
York Evening World” and the “New York Evening Journal.”
The “Evening Journal” sent a reporter to see me. Would I write an
article every day, telling what I knew about conditions among working
girls in New York? I signed a contract with the “Journal” for a month or
two, and that same evening all the wagons which delivered papers for the
“Journal” were out with huge signs over them: “Upton Sinclair will
write, etc., etc.” Then next day came my friend William Dinwiddie,
representing the “Evening World.” Would I write a series of articles for
the “Evening World”? Certainly I would, I said, and signed a contract
for a number of articles at five cents a word; so all the wagons of the
“World” appeared with the announcement that I would tell in the “World”
what I knew about conditions in the packing-houses of New York. And the
editorial writers of the “Evening World,” who had hitherto ignored my
existence, now suddenly discovered that I was a great man. They put my
picture at the top of their editorial page, celebrating me in this
fashion:
A BOOK THAT MADE HISTORY
Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there
been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as
has come to Upton Sinclair.
Yesterday unknown, the author of “The Jungle” is today a familiar name
on two continents. Paris, London and Berlin know him only less well
than New York and Boston. They know about him even in far-off
Australia.
Forthwith came the man from the “Journal,” all but tearing his hair with
excitement. What unspeakable treachery was this I had committed? Was it
true that I had promised to write for the “World,” as well as for the
“Journal”? I answered that it was, of course. “But,” said this man, “you
gave me an exclusive contract.” “I gave you nothing of the sort,” I
said, and pulled out the contract to prove it. “But,” said he, “you
promised me personally that it would be an exclusive contract.” “I
promised you nothing of the sort,” I said. “I never thought of such a
thing.” But he argued and insisted—I must have known, my common-sense
must have told me that my stories for them were of no value, if at the
same time I was writing for their deadly rival. I was rather shocked at
that statement. Were they entirely interested in a “scoop,” and not at
all in the working girls of New York? “To hell with the working girls of
New York!” said the Hearst reporter; whereat, of course, I was still
more shocked.
For three days this man from the “Journal” and other men from the
“Journal” kept bombarding and besieging me; and I, poor devil, suffered
agonies of embarrassment and distress, being sensitive, and not able to
realize that this was an every-day matter to them—they were a pack of
jackals trying to tear a carcase away from another pack of jackals. But
when I stood by my contract with the “Evening World,” the “Journal”
dropped its contract, and lost its interest, not merely in the working
girls of New York, but also in the sins of the Chicago packers.
The lobbyists of the packers had their way in Washington; the meat
inspection bill was deprived of all its sharpest teeth, and in that form
Roosevelt accepted it and prepared to let the subject drop. I was
bitterly disappointed, the more so because he had made no move about the
matter which lay nearest my heart. I had made a remark about “The
Jungle” which was found amusing—that “I aimed at the public’s heart and
by accident I hit it in the stomach.” It is a fact that I had not been
nearly so interested in the “condemned meat industry” as in something
else. To me the diseased meat graft had been only one of a hundred
varieties of graft which I saw in that inferno of exploitation. My main
concern had been for the fate of the workers, and I realized with
bitterness that I had been made into a “celebrity,” not because the
public cared anything about the sufferings of these workers, but simply
because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.
I had objected to Roosevelt that he was giving all his attention to the
subject of meat-inspection, and none to the subject of labor-inspection.
His answer was that he had power to remedy the former evils, but no
power to remedy the latter. I tried to persuade him to agitate the
question and obtain the power; but I tried in vain. “The Jungle” caused
the whitewashing of some packing-house walls, and it furnished jobs for
a dozen or two lady-manicurists, but it left the wage-slaves in those
huge brick packing-boxes exactly where they were before. Ten years later
the war broke out, and as these wage-slaves became restive, an
investigation was made. Here are a few paragraphs describing the
adventures of the Federal investigators:
The first four homes brought expressions of horror from the women of
the party, dark, insanitary, pest-ridden rooms and foodless kitchens.
Mrs. Belbine Skupin. Working in the yards. The six Skupin children in
their home at 4819 Laflin Street, hugging the stove and waiting for
“mother to return.” “I didn’t think such things existed outside the
books,” said one indignant young lady visitor, Miss Walsh.
In one home, seven children found. Youngest, a baby of fourteen
months; oldest, a boy of eight years. Baby “mothered” by girl of four.
Father and mother work in stockyards. Children had no shoes or
stockings and flimsy underwear. No food in house except pot of weak
coffee, loaf of rye bread and kettle containing mess of cabbage. But
in the basement was a ‘conservation’ card, bearing the motto “Don’t
waste food.”
I look back upon this campaign, to which I gave three years of brain and
soul-sweat, and ask what I really accomplished. Old Nelson Morris died
of a broken conscience. I took a few millions away from him, and from
the Armours and the Swifts—giving them to the Junkers of East Prussia,
and to Paris bankers who were backing enterprises to pack meat in the
Argentine. I added a hundred thousand readers to “Everybody’s Magazine,”
and a considerable number to the “New York Times.” I made a fortune and
a reputation for Doubleday, Page and Company, which immediately became
one of the most conservative publishing-houses in America—using “The
Jungle” money to promote the educational works of Andrew Carnegie, and
the autobiography of John D. Rockefeller, and the obscene ravings of the
Reverend Thomas Dixon, and the sociological bunkum of Gerald Stanley
Lee. I took my next novel to Doubleday, Page and Company, and old Walter
Page was enthusiastic for it and wanted to publish it; but the shrewd
young business-men saw that “The Metropolis” was not going to be popular
with the big trust companies and insurance companies which fill up the
advertising pages of the “World’s Work.” They told me that “The
Metropolis” was not a novel, but a piece of propaganda; it was not
“art.” I looked them in the eye and said: “You are announcing a new
novel by Thomas Dixon. Is _that_ ‘art’?”
Quite recently I tried them again with “King Coal,” and they did not
deny that “King Coal” was “art.” But they said: “We think you had better
find some publisher who is animated by a great faith.” It is a phrase
which I shall remember as long as I live; a perfect phrase, which any
comment would spoil. I bought up the plates of “The Jungle,” which
Doubleday, Page and Company had allowed to go out of print—not being
“animated by a great faith.” I hope some time to issue the book in a
cheap edition, and to keep it in circulation until the wage-slaves of
the Beef Trust have risen and achieved their freedom. Meantime, it is
still being read—and still being lied about. I have before me a clipping
from a Seattle paper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a
true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt
made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly
disproved them all!
And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the
“Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does.
He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:
The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with
similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure
to portray a truthful picture.
I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to
ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to
back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and
there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson
that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not
portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their
wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could
claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend
Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the
reason that Slosson did not give them an opportunity to read it! He did
not publish or mention my protest, and he left his readers to assume, as
they naturally would, that the “Independent” considered that I had
exaggerated the misery of the Stockyards workers.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LAST ACT
I am telling this story chronologically, but in dealing with a subject
like “The Jungle” it seems better to skip ahead and close the matter up.
There was a last act of this Packingtown drama, about which the public
has never heard. The limelight had been turned out, the audience had
gone home, and this act was played in darkness and silence.
A year had passed and I was living at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, when
W. W. Harris, editor of the Sunday magazine section of the “New York
Herald,” came to call on me, and explained a wonderful idea. He wanted
me to go to Chicago secretly, as I had gone before, and make another
investigation in the Stockyards, and write for the “New York Herald” an
article entitled “Packingtown a Year Later.”
He was a young editor, full of enthusiasm. He said: “Mr. Sinclair, I
know enough about the business-game to feel quite sure that all the
reforms we read about are fakes. What do you think?”
I answered, “I know they are fakes, because not a week passes that I
don’t get a letter from some of the men in Packingtown, telling me that
things are as bad as ever.” And I showed him a letter, one sentence of
which I recall: “The new coat of whitewash has worn off the filthy old
walls, and the only thing left is the row of girls who manicure the
nails of those who pack the sliced dried beef in front of the eyes of
the visitors!”
“Exactly!” said the editor. “It will make the biggest newspaper story
the ‘Herald’ has ever published.”
“Possibly,” said I. “But are you sure the ‘Herald’ will publish it?”
“No worry about that,” said he. “I am the man who has the say.”
“But where is Bennett?”
“Bennett is in Bermuda.”
“Well,” said I, “do you imagine you could sign a contract with me, and
put such a job through, and get such a story on the ‘Herald’ presses
without Bennett’s getting word of it?”
“Bennett will be crazy for the story,” said the editor. “Bennett is a
newspaper man.”
“Well, you have to show me.”
I explained that I was writing another novel, and was not willing to
stop, but my friend Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, who had represented me with
Roosevelt’s investigating committee, would do the work. Let the “Herald”
send Mrs. Bloor and one of its own reporters, to make sure that Mrs.
Bloor played the game straight; and when the investigation was made, I
would write an introductory statement, which would lend my name to the
articles, and make them as effective as if I had gone to Packingtown
myself. But first, before I would trouble Mrs. Bloor, or do anything at
all about the matter, the editor must put it before Bennett and show me
his written consent to the undertaking. “I am busy,” I said. “I don’t
care to waste my time upon a wild goose chase.” The editor agreed that
that was reasonable, and took his departure.
James Gordon Bennett, the younger, was the son of the man who had
founded the “New York Herald,” establishing the sensational, so-called
“popular” journalism which Pulitzer and Hearst afterwards took up and
carried to extremes. Bennett, the elder, had been a real newspaper man;
his son had been a debauch and spendthrift in his youth, and was now in
his old age an embittered and cynical invalid, travelling in his yacht
from Bermuda to the Riviera, and occasionally resorting to the capitals
of Europe for fresh dissipations. He had made his paper the organ of
just such men as himself; that is to say, of cosmopolitan café loungers,
with one eye on the stock-ticker and the other on their “scotch and
soda.” And this was the publisher who was to take up a new crusade
against the Beef Trust!
But to my surprise, the editor came back with a cablegram from Bennett,
bidding him go ahead with the story. So I put the matter before Mrs.
Bloor, and she and the “Herald” reporter went out to the Stockyards and
spent about two months. Mrs. Bloor disguised herself as a Polish woman,
and both she and the reporter obtained jobs in half a dozen different
places in the yards. They came back, reporting that conditions were
worse than ever; they wrote their story, enough to fill an eight-page
Sunday supplement, with numerous photographs of the scenes described.
There was a conference of the editorial staff of the “Herald,” which
agreed that the story was the greatest the paper had ever had in its
history. It must be read by Mr. Bennett, the staff decided. So it was
mailed to Bermuda—which was the last ever seen or heard of it!
Week after week I waited for the story to appear. When I learned that it
was not to appear I was, of course, somewhat irritated. I threatened to
sue the “Herald” for payment for the time I had spent writing the
introduction, but I found myself confronting this dilemma: the
enthusiastic young editor was a Socialist, and if I made trouble, he was
the one who would be hurt. So I decided to forego my money-claim on the
“Herald.” But I would not give up the story—that was a public matter.
The public had been fooled into believing that there had been reforms in
Packingtown; the public was continuing to eat tubercular beef-steaks,
and I was bound that somehow or other the public should get the facts. I
wrote up the story and submitted it to other newspapers in New York. Not
one would touch it. I submitted it to President Roosevelt, and he
replied that he was sorry, but was too busy to take the matter up.
“Teddy” was a shrewd politician, and knew how hard it is to warm up dead
ashes, how little flavor there is in re-cooked food.
I knew, of course, that I could publish the story in the Socialist
papers. That has always been my last recourse. But I wanted this story
to reach the general public; I was blindly determined about it. There
was a big Socialist meeting at the Hippodrome in New York, and I went up
to the city and asked for fifteen minutes at this meeting. I told the
story to an audience of five or six thousand people, and with reporters
from every New York paper in front of me. Not a single New York paper,
except the Socialist paper, mentioned the matter next morning.
But still I would not give up. I said: “This is a Chicago story. If I
tell it in Chicago, public excitement may force it into the press.” So I
telegraphed some of my friends in Chicago. I planned the most dramatic
thing I could think of—I asked them to get me a meeting in the
Stockyards district, and they answered that they would.
Mind you, a little over a year before I had put Packingtown on the map
of the world; I had made Packingtown and its methods the subject of
discussion at the dinner-tables of many countries; and now I was coming
back to Packingtown for the first time since that event. There was a big
hall, jammed to the very doors with Stockyards workers. You will pardon
me if I say that they made it clear that they were glad to have me come
there. And to this uproarious audience I told the story of the “New York
Herald” investigation, and what had been discovered. I stood, looking
into the faces of these workingmen and women, and said: “You are the
people who know about these matters. Are they true?” There was a roar of
assent that rocked the building. I said: “_I_ know they are true, and
_you_ know they are true. Now tell me this, ought they be made known to
the American people? Would you like them to be made known to the
American people?” And again there was a roar of assent.
Then I looked over the edge of the platform to a row of tables, where
sat the reporters looking up, and I talked to them for a while. I said:
“You are newspaper men; you know a story when you see it. Tell me
now—tell me straight—is not this a story?” The newspaper men nodded and
grinned. They knew it was a “story” all right. “The public would like to
read this—the public of Chicago and the public of all the rest of
America—would they not?” And again the newspaper men nodded and grinned.
“Now,” said I, “play fair with me; give me a square deal, so far as you
are concerned. Write this story just as I have told it tonight. Write it
and turn it in and see what happens. Will you do that?” And they pledged
themselves, the audience saw them pledge themselves. And so the test was
made, as perfect a test as anyone could conceive. And next morning there
was just one newspaper in Chicago which mentioned my speech in the
Stockyards district—the “Chicago Socialist.” Not one line in any other
newspaper, morning or evening, in Chicago!
A little later I happened to be on the Pacific coast, and made the test
once more. I was putting on some plays, and it happened that a newspaper
had played me a dirty trick that morning. So in my curtain-speech I said
what I thought of American newspapers, and told this Chicago story. Just
one newspaper in San Francisco published a line about the matter, and
that was the “Bulletin,” edited by Fremont Older, who happened to be a
personal friend, and one of the few independent newspaper editors in
America. Excepting for Socialist papers, the “Bulletin” has the
distinction of being the only American newspaper which has ever printed
that story.
I say the only American newspaper; I might say the only newspaper in the
world. Some time afterwards there was a scandal about American meat in
England, and the “London Daily Telegraph” requested me to cable them
“without limit” any information I had as to present conditions in
Packingtown. I sent them a couple of thousand words of this “New York
Herald” story, but they did not publish a line of it. They had, of
course, the fear that they might be sued for libel by the “Herald.” It
is no protection to you in England that you are publishing the truth,
for the maxim of the law of England is: “The greater the truth the
greater the libel.” Also, no doubt, they were influenced by newspaper
solidarity—a new kind of honor among thieves.
CHAPTER IX
AIMING AT THE PUBLIC’S HEART
The publication of “The Jungle” had brought me pitiful letters from
workingmen and women in others of our great American slave-pens, and I
went to Ridgway of “Everybody’s” with the proposition to write a series
of articles dealing with the glass industry, the steel industry, the
coal-mines, the cotton-mills, the lumber-camps. I offered to do all the
work of investigating myself; my proposition was accepted and I set to
work.
I went first to the glass-works of South Jersey, where I saw little
children working all night in eleven-hour shifts, carrying heavy trays
of red-hot glass bottles. Other children worked at the same tasks in the
blazing heat of summer, and sometimes they fainted and had their eyes
burned out by hot glass. When the State child-labor inspector came, he
was courteous enough to notify the superintendent of the glass-works in
advance, and so the under-age children were collected in the passageway
through which fresh air was blown to the furnaces. I told the story of
one little Italian boy who had to walk several miles on the
railroad-track to his home after his all-night labors. He fell asleep
from exhaustion on the way and the train ran over him. I submitted this
article to “Everybody’s,” who sent one of their editors to check up my
facts. I recall one remark in his report, which was that he could not
see that the little boys in the glass-factories were any worse off than
those who sold newspapers on the streets of New York. My answer was that
this was not a reason for altering the glass-article; it was a reason
for adding an article about the newsboys!
Meantime I was investigating the steel-mills of Alleghany County. I
spent a long time at this task, tracing out some of the ramifications of
graft in the politics and journalism of Pittsburgh. The hordes of
foreign labor recruited abroad and crowded into these mills were
working, some of them twelve hours a day for seven days in the week, and
were victims of every kind of oppression and extortion. An elaborate
system of spying crushed out all attempt at organization. I talked with
the widow of one man, a Hungarian, who had had the misfortune to be
caught with both legs under the wheels of one of the gigantic travelling
cranes. In order to save his legs it would have been necessary to take
the crane to pieces, which would have cost several thousand dollars; so
they ran over his legs and cut them off and paid him two hundred dollars
damages.
This article also I brought to “Everybody’s,” and watched the process of
the chilling of their editorial feet. What influences were brought to
bear to cause their final break with me, I do not know; but this I have
observed in twenty years of watching—there are few magazines that dare
to attack the Steel Trust, and there are no politicians who dare it. Our
little fellows among the corporations, our ten and hundred million
dollar trusts, are now and then fair game for some muck-raker or
demagogue; but our billion dollar corporation is sacred, and if any one
does not know it, he is taught it quickly.
While I am on the subject of “Everybody’s,” I might as well close my
account with them. They had gained the purpose of their “muck-raking”
campaign—that is, half a million readers at two dollars per year each,
and one or two hundred pages of advertising each month at five hundred
dollars a page. So year by year one observed their youthful fervors
dying. They found it possible to discover good things in American
politics and industry. They no longer appreciate my style of
muck-raking; they do not stop their presses to put on my articles. Again
and again I have been to them, and they are always friendly and polite,
but they always turn me down. Three or four years ago, I remember, they
published an editorial, telling what wonderful people they were; they
had been over their files, and gave a long list of the campaigns which
they had undertaken for the benefit of the American people. Whereupon I
wrote them a letter, asking them to take up this list and test it by the
one real test that counted. From the point of view of a magazine, of
course, it suffices if the public is told it is being robbed. That
brings readers to the magazine; but what good does it do the public, if
the robbery continues, and if the magazine drops the subject, and makes
no move to get back the stolen money, or even to stop the future
stealings? Let “Everybody’s” apply the one test that had any meaning—let
them point out one instance where their exposures had resulted in
changing the ownership of a dollar from the hands of predatory
exploiters to the hands of their victims!
I was in position to bear witness in one of the cases cited by
“Everybody’s Magazine.” I knew that the condemned meat industry was
still flourishing, I knew that the wage-slaves of Packingtown were still
being sweated and bled. I knew also that the campaign of Tom Lawson had
brought no result. “Everybody’s” had clamored for laws to prevent
stock-gambling and manipulation, but no such laws had been passed, and
“Everybody’s” had dropped the subject. What had the magazine to say
about the matter? Needless to add, the magazine had nothing to say about
it; they did not answer my letter, they did not publish my letter. They
have been taken over by the Butterick Publishing Company, and are an
adjunct of the dress-pattern trade, not an organ of public welfare. For
years I continued to look over the magazine month by month, lured by
vain hopes; it has been several years since I have found an article with
any trace of social conscience. They have just finished a series of
articles on After-the-War Reconstruction, which for futility were
unexampled; after glancing over these articles, I removed “Everybody’s”
from that small list of magazines whose contents repay the labor of
turning over the pages.
CHAPTER X
A VOICE FROM RUSSIA
For the sake of consecutiveness in this narrative, I have put off
mention of a newspaper sensation which occurred during my “Jungle”
campaign, and which I happened to observe from the inside. I am glad to
tell this story, because it gives the reader a chance to hear about the
troubles of another man than Upton Sinclair.
First, picture to yourself the plight of the Russian people in the
spring of 1906: one or two hundred million people held down by the most
brutal tyranny of modern times, all knowledge withheld from them, their
leaders, their best brains and consciences systematically exiled,
slaughtered, tortured to death in dungeons. The people had been led into
an imperialist war with Japan, and after a humiliating defeat were
making an effort at freedom. This effort was being crushed with
constantly increasing ferocity, and the cry of despair of the Russian
people now echoed throughout the whole of civilization.
Among these enslaved masses was one man who by titanic genius had raised
himself to world fame. Nor had fame spoiled or seduced him; he stood a
heroic figure, championing the rights of his people before the world. He
came to America to plead for them, and to raise funds for their cause.
Never since the days of Kossuth had there been an appeal which should
have roused the American people to greater enthusiasm than this visit of
Maxim Gorky.
A group of American Socialists went out on the revenue-cutter “Hudson”
to meet Gorky’s steamer in the harbor; among them I remember Gaylord
Wilshire, Abraham Cahan, Leroy Scott. There were also reporters from all
the newspapers, and on the way down the bay a reporter for the “World”
came to Wilshire and asked if he had heard a report to the effect that
the lady who was coming as Gorky’s wife, Madame Andreieva, was not
legally his wife. Wilshire answered by explaining to the reporter the
situation existing in Russia: that marriage and divorce there were a
graft of the orthodox church. It cost a good deal to get married, and it
cost still more to get a divorce; the money you paid went to the support
of fat and sensual priests, who were occupied in conducting pogroms, and
keeping the peasantry of the country in superstition and slavery.
Naturally, all Russian revolutionists repudiated this church, and paid
it no money, for marriage or divorce or any other purpose. The
revolutionists had their own marriage code which they recognized. Gorky
had complied with this code, and regarded Madame Andreieva as his wife,
and everybody who knew him regarded her as his wife, and had no idea
that she was not his wife. The reporters of other papers had gathered
about, listening to this explanation, and they all agreed that the
American public had no concern with the marriage customs of Russia, and
that this story had nothing to do with Gorky’s present mission.
Gorky went to the Hotel Belleclaire, as Wilshire’s guest. From the
moment of his arrival he was the object of several different intrigues.
In the first place there was the embassy of the Tsar, who was hanging
and shooting Gorky’s partisans in Russia, and naturally spared no labor
or treasure to destroy him in America. A spy of the embassy afterwards
confessed that it was he who took the story about Gorky’s unorthodox
marriage to the New York newspapers, and who later on succeeded in
persuading the “World” to make use of it.
Then there were representatives of the various newspaper syndicates and
magazines and publishing-houses, which wanted Gorky’s writings, and were
besieging his friends. And then there were two different groups of
radicals, competing for his favor—the “Friends of Russian Freedom,”
settlement-workers and folks of that sort, many of whom have since
become Socialists, but who in those days were carefully bourgeois and
painfully respectable, confining their revolutionary aims strictly to
Russia; and the American Socialists, who knew that Gorky was an
internationalist like themselves, and wished to use his prestige for the
benefit of the American movement, as well as for the Russian movement.
It happened that at this time Moyer and Haywood were being tried for
their lives, and this case was the test upon which the right and left
wings were dividing. Gaylord Wilshire, who was then publishing a
Socialist magazine in New York, drafted a telegram of sympathy to Moyer
and Haywood, and submitted it to Madame Andreieva, proposing that Gorky
should sign it. Which, of course, threw the “Friends of Russian Freedom”
into a panic. If Gorky supported Moyer and Haywood, he would get no
money from the liberal millionaires of New York, the Schiffs and the
Strausses and the Guggenheims and the rest, who might be persuaded to
subsidize the Russian revolution, but who had no interest in industrial
freedom for America! The matter was explained to Gorky, and he gave his
decision: he was an international Socialist, and he would protest
against the railroading of two radical labor leaders to the gallows. He
signed the telegram, and it was sent, and next morning, of course, the
New York newspapers were horrified, and the Russian Embassy got busy,
and President Roosevelt cancelled a reception for Gorky at the White
House!
But the worst mistake that Gorky made was in his contracts for his
writings. He fell into the very same trap that I have told about in
Chapter VII—he signed a contract with the “New York Journal,” and
thereby incurred the furious enmity of the “New York World”! So then the
editors of the “World” remembered that story which they had got from the
Russian Embassy; or maybe the Embassy reminded them of it again. By this
story they could destroy entirely the news-value of Gorky’s writings;
they could render worthless the contract with their hated rival! That
incidentally they would help to hold one or two hundred million people
in slavery and torment for an indefinite number of years—that weighed
with the staff of the “World” not a feather-weight.
Next morning the “World” came out with a scare-story on the front page,
to the effect that Maxim Gorky had insulted the American people by
coming to visit them and introducing his mistress as his wife. And
instantly, of course, the news-channels were opened wide—the Russian
Embassy saw to that. (Do you recollect the fact that the general manager
of the Associated Press went to Russia and received a decoration from
the Tsar?)
From Maine to California, American provincialism quivered with
indignation and horror. That night Gorky and his “mistress” were invited
to leave the Hotel Belleclaire. They went to another hotel, and were
refused admittance there. They went to an apartment-house and were
refused admittance there. They spent a good part of the small hours of
the morning wandering about the streets of New York, until friends
picked them up and whisked them away to a place which has never been
revealed. And next morning all this shameful and humiliating story was
flaunted on the front page of the newspapers—especially, of course, the
“New York World.”
A perfect flood of abuse was poured over the head of poor, bewildered
Gorky; the clergy began to preach sermons about him, and our great,
wise, virtuous statesmen, who were maintaining a “House of Mirth” in
Albany, and high-class houses of prostitution in every State capital and
in the National capital, joined in denunciations of this display of
“foreign licentiousness.” So Gorky’s mission fell absolutely flat. His
writings were scorned, and all he had to send to his heroic friends in
Russia was the few dollars he himself was able to earn. I saw him
several times during the year or two he stayed in America, first on
Staten Island and then in the Adirondacks: a melancholy and pitiful
figure, this Russian giant who had come to make his appeal to the heart
of a great and liberal people, and had been knocked down and torn to
pieces by the obscene vultures of commercial journalism. Even now the
story is raked up, to serve the slave-drivers of the world. Gorky is
defending his revolution against allied world-capitalism; the United
States Senate is officially collecting scandal concerning the
Bolsheviki; and Senator Knute Nelson, aged servant of privilege from
Minnesota, puts these words on the Associated Press wires: “That
horrible creature Maxim Gorky—he is about as immoral as a man can be.”
CHAPTER XI
A VENTURE IN CO-OPERATION
The next experience with which I have to deal is the Helicon Home
Colony. I will begin by telling very briefly what this was: an attempt
to solve the problem of the small family of moderate means, who have one
or two children and are not satisfied with the sort of care these
children get from ignorant servant-maids, nor with the amount of
play-space they can find in a city apartment. I wrote an article in the
“Independent,” pointing out that the amount of money which these people
spent in maintaining separate kitchens and separate nurseries would, if
expended in co-operation, enable them to have expert managers, and a
kindergartner instead of a servant-girl to take care of their children.
I proposed that a group of forward-looking people should get together
and establish what might be called a home-club, or a hotel owned and run
by its guests. There was nothing so very radical about this idea, for up
in the Adirondacks are a number of clubs whose members rent cottages in
the summertime and eat their meals in a club dining-room. Why might
there not be in the same community a school, owned and run by the
parents of the children?
The economic importance of the idea, if it could be made to work, would
be beyond exaggerating. There are twenty million families in America,
maintaining twenty million separate kitchens, with twenty million stoves
and twenty million fires, twenty million sets of dishes to be washed,
twenty million separate trips to market to be made. The waste involved
in this is beyond calculation; I believe that when our system of
universal dog-eat-dog has been abolished, and the souls of men and women
have risen upon the wings of love and fellowship, they will look back on
us in our twenty million separate kitchens as we look upon the Eskimos
in their filthy snow-huts lighted with walrus-blubber.
Here was a man who had made thirty thousand dollars from a book, risking
the whole of it, and giving all his time to an effort to demonstrate
that fifty or sixty intelligent people might solve this problem, might
learn to co-operate in their housekeeping, and save a part of their time
for study and play. Here were the newspaper-editors of New York City,
who were supposed to report the experiment, and who behaved like a band
of Brazilian Indians, hiding in the woods about Helicon Hall and
shooting the inmates full of poisoned arrows. Upton Sinclair and his
little group of co-workers became a public spectacle, a free
farce-comedy for the great Metropolis of Mammon. The cynical newspaper
editors, whose first maxim in life is that nothing can ever be changed,
picked out their cleverest young wits and sent them to spy in our
nursery, and eavesdrop in our pantry, and report all the absurdities
they could see or hear or invent.
The procedure was so dishonest that even the reporters themselves
sickened of it. There was one young man who used to come every Sunday,
to write us up in Monday’s “New York Sun”; for, you see, on Mondays
there is generally a scarcity of news, and we served as comic relief to
the sermons of the Fifth Avenue clergy. The “Sun,” of course, treated us
according to its tradition—as in the old days it had treated “Sorosis”
and the “Populists.” “Mr. Sinclair,” said this young reporter, “you’ve
got an awfully interesting place here, and I like the people, and feel
like a cur to have to write as I do; but you know what the ‘Sun’ is.” I
answered that I knew. “Well,” said the reporter, “can’t you think of
something amusing that I can write about, that won’t do any harm?” So I
thought. I had brought a collie dog from my farm at Princeton, and three
times this dog had strayed or been stolen. “You might write about the
dog instead of about the people,” I said. So next morning there were two
or three columns in the “New York Sun,” making merry over this latest
evidence of the failure of co-operative housekeeping! Upton Sinclair’s
dog refused to stay at Helicon Hall!
And then there was the famous adventure with Sadakichi Hartmann. One day
there arrived a post-card, reading: “Sadakichi Hartmann will call.” The
announcement had a sort of royal sound, and I made inquiry and
ascertained that I ought to have known who Sadakichi Hartmann was. Just
about dinner-time there appeared two men and a girl, all three clad in
soiled sweaters. One of the men was the Japanese-German art-critic, and
the other was Jo Davidson, the sculptor, a lovable fellow, who made
sketches of us and kept us entertained. But Hartmann had evidently been
drinking, and when he told us that he had come to spend the night, we
assured him quite truthfully that we had no room and could not
accommodate him. There happened to be a meeting of the executive
committee that night, with important problems to be settled; and when I
came out from the committee-room at eleven o’clock, I found the
art-critic making preparations to spend the night on one of the couches
in our living-room. He was told politely that he must leave, whereupon
there was a scene. He spent a couple of hours arguing and denouncing,
and next day he wrote a letter to all the newspapers, telling how he and
his companions had been turned out of Helicon Hall at one o’clock in the
morning, and had spent the night wandering about on the Palisades.
And then there was a gentleman from Boston via Montmartre, Alvan F.
Sanborn by name. He had written a book about the revolutionists of
Paris, looking at them through a microscope as if they had been so many
queer kinds of bugs; and now he came to turn his microscope on us. He
proved to be a gentleman with a flowing soft necktie and a sharp
suspicious nose. He accepted our hospitality, and then went away and
criticized the cooking of our beans. His article appeared in the
“Evening Transcript” of Boston, a city which is especially sensitive on
the subject of beans. Mr. Sanborn found our atmosphere that of a
bourgeois boarding-house. I have no doubt it was a different atmosphere
from that of the Quartier Latin, where Mr. Sanborn’s standards of taste
had been formed.
Also there were the two Yale boys who ran away from college and came to
tend our furnaces, and then ran back to college and wrote us up in the
“New York Sun.” They were Allan Updegraff and Sinclair Lewis, both of
whom have grown up to be novelists. What they wrote about us was
playful, and I would have shared in the fun, but for the fact that some
of our members had their livings to think about. For example, there was
a professor of philosophy at Columbia. Once or twice a week he had to
give lectures to the young ladies at Barnard, and the Dean of Barnard
was a lady of stern and unbending dignity, and after those articles had
appeared our professor would quiver every time he saw her. We were
trying in Helicon Hall not to have servants, in the sense of a separate
class of inferior animals whom we put off by themselves in the basement
of the building. We tried to treat our workers as human beings. Once a
week we had a dance, and everybody took part, and the professor of
philosophy danced with the two pretty Irish girls who waited on the
table. The fact that his wife was present ought to have made a
difference, even to a Dean, but the stories in the “Sun” did not mention
the wife.
So before long we began to notice dark hints in the newspapers; such
esoteric phrases as “Sinclair’s love-nest.” I have since talked with
newspaper men and learned that it was generally taken for granted by the
newspaper-world that Helicon Hall was a place which I had formed for the
purpose of having many beautiful women about me. Either that, or else a
diseased craving for notoriety! I remember Ridgway of “Everybody’s”
asking the question: “Couldn’t you find some less troublesome way of
advertising yourself?”
Now, I was still naïve about many things in the world, but I assure the
reader that I had by this time learned enough to have kept myself
securely on the front pages of the newspapers, if that had been my aim
in life. A group of capitalists had come to me with a proposition to
found a model meat-packing establishment; they had offered me three
hundred thousand dollars worth of stock for the use of my name, and if I
had accepted that offer and become the head of one of the city’s
commercial show-places, lavishing full-page advertisements upon the
newspapers, I might have had the choicest and most dignified kind of
publicity, I might have been another Nicholas Murray Butler or George
Harvey; I might have been invited to be the chief orator at banquets of
the Chamber of Commerce and the National Civic Federation, and my
eloquence would have been printed to the extent of columns; I might have
joined the Union League Club and the Century Club, and my name would
have gone upon the list of people about whom no uncomplimentary news may
be published under any circumstances. At the same time I might have kept
one or more apartments on Riverside Drive, with just as many beautiful
women in them as I wished, and no one would have criticized me, no
newspaper would have dropped hints about “love-nests.” I have known many
men, prominent capitalists and even prominent publishers and editors,
who have done this, and you have never known about it—you would not know
about it in ten thousand life-times, under our present system of
predatory Journalism.
But what I did was to attack the profit-system—even the profit in news.
I refused to go after money, and when money came to me, I spent it
forthwith on propaganda. So it comes about that you think of me—at best
as a sort of scarecrow, at worst as a free-lover and preacher of sexual
riot.
So far as Helicon Hall was concerned, we were a gathering of decent
literary folk, a number of us not Socialists or cranks of any sort,
several of the ladies coming from the South, where standards of ladyhood
are rigid. There were Professor William Noyes of Teachers’ College and
his wife; Prof. W. P. Montague of Columbia, and his wife; Edwin
Björkman, the critic, editor of the Modern Drama Series, and during the
war director of the government’s propaganda in Scandinavian countries;
his wife, Frances Maule Björkman, a well-known suffrage worker; Mrs.
Grace MacGowan Cooke, the novelist, and her sister Alice MacGowan; Edwin
S. Potter, now assistant editor of the “Searchlight on Congress,” and
his wife; Michael Williams and his wife. Williams has since turned into
a Roman Catholic, and has written an autobiography, “The High Romance,”
in which he pokes fun at our Socialist colony, but he is honest enough
to omit hints about “free love.”
What our people did was to work hard at their typewriters, and spend
their spare time in helping with our community problems. We had many,
and we didn’t solve them all, by any means; it was not easy to find
competent managers, and we were all novices ourselves. We had only six
months to work in, and that was not time enough. But we certainly did
solve the “servant-problem”; from first to last those who did the
monotonous household work of our colony conducted themselves with
dignity and sympathy. Also we solved the problem of the children; we
showed that the parents of our fourteen children could co-operate. Our
children had a little world of their own, and did their own work and
lived their own community life, and were happier than any fourteen
children I have seen before or since. Also we had a social life, which
no one who took part in will forget. Such men as William James and John
Dewey came to see us frequently, and around our big four-sided fireplace
you heard discussions by authorities on almost every topic of
present-day importance. But nobody read about these discussions in the
newspapers; the publishers of newspapers were not selling that sort of
news.
I look back on Helicon Hall today, and this is the way I feel about it.
I have lived in the future; I have known those wider freedoms and
opportunities that the future will grant to all men and women. Now by
harsh fate I have been seized and dragged back into a lower order of
existence, and commanded to spend the balance of my days therein. I know
that the command is irrevocable, and I make the best of my fate—I manage
to keep cheerful; and to do my appointed task; but nothing can alter the
fact in my own mind—I have lived in the future, and all things about me
seem drab and sordid in comparison. I feel as you would feel if you were
suddenly taken back to the days when there was no plumbing and when
people used perfume instead of soap.
CHAPTER XII
THE VILLAGE HORSE-DOCTOR
At three o’clock one morning in March there came a fire and wiped out
the Helicon Home Colony. Everybody there lost everything, but that did
not save us from dark hints in the newspapers, to the effect that some
of our members had started the fire. The colony had just purchased ropes
to be used as fire-escapes from some remote rooms on the third floor of
the building. It was not mentioned by the newspapers that the managing
committee had been discussing the need of those ropes for three or four
months. For my part I escaped from my room in the tower of the building
with my night-clothing burned, and part of my hair singed off, and my
feet full of broken glass and burning brands, which laid me up for two
or three weeks.
The “American Magazine” printed an editorial based on the rumor that the
fire had been caused by leaking gas. The fact that we had defective
gas-pipes and not enough fire-escapes proved to the “American Magazine”
that industrial co-operation was an impossibility! They gave me space to
answer that there was absolutely no evidence that the fire had been
caused by gas-leaks, and that for years the authorities of the town had
allowed Helicon Hall to be conducted under the profit-system as a
boarding-school for boys, with no provision for fire-escapes whatever.
They did not allow me to state that at the time the mysterious fire took
place I had in the building the data of many months of secret
investigation into the armor plate frauds, whereby the Carnegie Steel
Company had robbed the United States government of a sum which the
government admitted to be seven hundred thousand dollars, but which I
could have proven to be many millions. I had, for example, the precise
designation of a certain plate (A.619) in the conning-tower of the
battleship “Oregon,” which was full of plugged up blowholes, and would
have splintered like glass if struck by a shell. I had the originals of
the shop-records of many such plates, which had been doctored in the
hand-writings of certain gentlemen now high in the counsels of the Steel
Trust. I had enough evidence to have sent these prominent gentlemen to
the penitentiary for life, and I myself came very near being burned
along with it. I put a brief account of these matters into “The
Money-changers,” and some of the heads of the Steel Trust announced that
they were going to sue me for libel, but thought better of it. I shall
give some details about the matter later on, in telling the story of
“The Money-changers” and its adventures.
There was a coroner’s inquest over the body of one man who lost his life
in the Helicon Hall fire. This inquest I attended on crutches, and was
cross-questioned for a couple of hours by the village horse-doctor. Two
or three members of the jury were hostile, and I couldn’t understand it,
until near the end of the session it came out. We had had two
organizations at Helicon Hall; the company, which owned the property,
and the colony, a membership corporation or club, which leased the
property from the company. We had made this arrangement, because under
the law it was the only way we could keep the right to decide who should
have admittance to the colony. If we had had one corporation, anybody
who bought our stock would have had the right to come and live with us.
But now it appeared that the village horse-doctor and the village barber
and the village grocer suspected the colony of a dire plot to keep from
paying its just debts in the locality! I made haste to assure these
gentlemen that my own credit was behind the bills, and that everything
would be paid—except the account of one painter who had contracted to do
a job for three hundred dollars and had rendered a bill for seven
hundred.
Also they questioned us closely about moral conditions in the colony,
and brought out some sinister facts, which were spread on the front
pages of the “New York Evening World” and the “New York Evening
Journal.” It appeared that we had not had enough bed-rooms at Helicon
Hall, and on the third floor there was a huge studio which had served
for the drawing-classes of the boys’ school. It was proposed to convert
this studio into bed-rooms, but first it would be necessary to raise the
roof, and this would cost more money than we had to spare. Our architect
had advised us that the same lumber which would be needed for this work
might serve temporarily to partition off compartments in the studio,
which would serve for sleeping-quarters with curtains in front. So here
at last the newspapers had what they wanted! Here was something
“suggestive,” and a coroner’s jury thrusting into it a remorseless
probe!
As it happened, in those curtained-off compartments there had slept an
elderly widow who had begged to be allowed to work for us in order to
educate her sixteen-year-old son—who slept in the compartment next to
her. Also there was an old Scotchman, an engineer who had come all the
way across the continent to take charge of our heating-plant; also a
young carpenter who was working on the place, and one or two others
whose names I forget, but all quite decent and honest working-people
whom we had come to know and respect. It is perfectly obvious that if
people wish to be decent, curtains are sufficient; whereas, if they wish
to be indecent, the heaviest doors will not prevent it: just as a woman
can behave herself in a scanty bathing-suit, or can misbehave herself
though clad in elaborate court-costume. These considerations, however,
were not presented to the readers of the “New York Evening World” and
the “New York Evening Journal.” What they got were the obscene hints of
a village horse-doctor, confirming their impression that Socialists are
moral lepers.
There were forty adults at Helicon Hall, and they did not live together
six months without some gossip and some unpleasantness. There was a
young workingman who spouted crude ideas on sex, to the indignation of
our two pretty Irish girls, and he was asked to shut up or to leave.
There was a certain doctor, not a Socialist, but an entirely
conventional capitalist gentleman, who left of his own accord after
asking one of the pretty Irish girls to visit his office. Also there was
a man who fell in love with another man’s wife. You cannot run a
hotel—not even a co-operative hotel—without such things happening. Every
hotel-manager knows it, and counts himself lucky indeed if nothing worse
happens. I was told by one of those in charge of the Waldorf-Astoria in
New York that there sits on every floor a woman-clerk whose duty it is
to see who goes into whose room. Quite recently I had dinner in a
certain gorgeous and expensive leisure-class hotel in Southern
California, and heard some young men of the world, guests of the hotel,
discussing what was going on there: the elderly ladies of fashion who
were putting paint on their cheeks and cutting their dresses half-way
down their backs, and making open efforts to seduce these young men; the
young matrons of the hotel, who disappeared for trips into the mountain
canyons near by; the married lady of great wealth, who had been in
several scandals, who caroused all night with half a dozen soldiers and
sailors, supplying them with all the liquor they wanted in spite of the
law, and who finally was asked to leave the hotel—not because of this
carousing, but because she failed to pay her liquor bills.
All this goes on in our fashionable resorts, from California to Florida
via Lake Michigan and Newport. It goes on, and everybody in the hotels
knows that it is going on, including the management of the hotels; but
do you read anything about it in the newspapers? Only when it gets into
the law-courts; and then you get only the personal details—never the
philosophy of it. Never are such facts used to prove that the capitalist
system is a source of debauchery, prostitution, drunkenness and disease;
that it breaks up the home, and makes true religion and virtue
impossible!
For the most part what you read about these leisure-class hotels in the
newspapers is elaborate advertisements of the hotels and their
attractions, together with fatuous and servile accounts of the social
doings of the guests: columns and columns of stuff about them, what they
eat and what they drink and what they wear, what games they play and
what trophies they win, how much money they have, and what important
positions they fill in the world, and their opinions on every subject
from politics to ping-pong. They are “society”; they are the people who
own the world, and for whom the world exists, and in every
newspaper-office there is a definite understanding that so long as these
people keep out of the law-courts, there shall be published no
uncomplimentary news concerning them.
I will finish with the subject of Helicon Hall while I am on it. Seven
years later I found myself involved in the Colorado coal-strike,
fighting to break down the boycott of the capitalist newspapers. A group
of young radicals endeavored to tell the story of the Ludlow massacre at
a street meeting in Tarrytown, New York, the home of the Rockefellers.
They were arrested and thrown into jail, and I started a campaign in
Tarrytown to set them free. Under these circumstances I became the
object of venomous attacks by the local paper, the “Tarrytown News”; in
one of its editorials the “News” declared that my home in Englewood, New
Jersey, had been raided by the police on account of “free-love”
practices; and this statement was reprinted by other papers. I was
pretty cross at the time, because of a series of outrages which I had
witnessed, so I caused the arrest of the editors of the “Tarrytown News”
for criminal libel. By a curious coincidence I found myself involved
once more with a village horse-doctor—not the horse-doctor of Englewood,
New Jersey, but the horse-doctor of Tarrytown, New York. Readers of
“King Coal” will find him portrayed as the justice of the peace with
whom the hero has an interview.
This judicial horse-doctor issued warrants, and appointed the day of the
trial, and a number of my Helicon Hall friends agreed to come. But one
was ill and another was called away, and my lawyer arranged with the
lawyers of the other side for a week’s postponement. Such agreements
between lawyers are always considered matters of honor with the
profession, but in this case, when we appeared before the judicial
horse-doctor to have the postponement arranged, the lawyers of the other
side repudiated their agreement. So we found ourselves in a trap—ordered
to proceed to trial without a single witness. Of course we refused to
proceed, and the defendants were discharged.
However, I still had the right of civil action, and of this right I
prepared to avail myself. The attorneys for the “News”—as they
afterwards told me themselves—made a thorough search of my life, and
found nothing to help them. So they were willing to publish a retraction
and an apology. There was no doubt that I could have made the “News” pay
a very pretty price; but I had not brought the suit for money, and I
agreed to let them off. The retraction was published on the front page
of the “News,” but of course it was not published anywhere else, and
there are probably not a dozen people today who know about it. Mark
Twain, I believe, is author of the saying that a lie can run all the way
round the earth while the truth is putting on its shoes.
I find that wherever people still remember Helicon Hall, it is some of
these old newspaper falsehoods they remember, and never our earnest
effort to show the economies of domestic co-operation. Even the genial
O. Henry—who, being an American, got his ideas about life from the
newspapers. “Say, do I look like I’d climbed down one of them missing
fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?” inquires the sarcastic James Turner,
cleaner of hats, in the story, “What you Want.”
On my desk there lies a copy of the “Moving Picture World” for April 19,
1919. Somebody has produced a moving picture film out of a book by the
Irreverend Thomas Dixon, and the magazine tells the managers of moving
picture theaters how to work up interest and make a “clean-up” on this
film. “Put up red flags about the town and hire soldiers to tear them
down, if necessary,” advises the “Moving Picture World.” This picture,
“Bolshevism on Trial,” has a sublime patriotic motive. “Columbia’s sword
is unsheathed to keep Bolshevism from the Land of the Free,” proclaims
the article. And it furthermore informs us that the picture “promises to
be one of the clean-up pictures of the season.” The “Moving Picture
World” thinks that it “might profitably be given Government support, for
it is a powerful argument in controverting the dream-talk of the
Socialists.” It advises you to “get local patriotic societies to help.”
“Work all of the crowd stunts,” it urges; and in giving elaborate
details of a press campaign, it says:
Work gradually to the contention that Socialism will not be possible
in this or the succeeding generation because people are not yet
prepared for liberty such as Socialism aims at. Later work in allusion
to the feature of the limited experiment made by Upton Sinclair some
years ago at Halycon Hall, where the community idea fell because all
wanted to live without working. All of this should be worked under a
pseudonym.
The above, you must understand, is not an advertisement, but is reading
matter in the country’s leading motion picture journal. It gives you a
fair idea of the intellectual attainments and moral standards of the men
who supply the material by which our children’s imaginations are
stimulated and developed.
CHAPTER XIII
IN HIGH SOCIETY
I had written a book showing what was going on at one end of the social
scale. It now occurred to me to write a book showing what was going on
at the other end. Who spent the money wrung from the wage-slaves of the
Stockyards, and what did they spend it for? So came “The Metropolis,”
whose adventures I have next to tell.
The dramatization of “The Jungle” had brought me into touch with a
play-broker, Arch Selwyn, who has since become a well-known producer of
plays. We were having lunch at some hotel on Broadway, talking about our
play-business, when I happened to mention the new novel I was writing.
“Say! That’s the real thing!” said Arch. “What you want to do is to get
on the inside of that society game. Get a job in one of those Long
Island country homes, and treat them to a real muck-raking!” We spent
some time “joshing” one another over this idea. I was to get a job as
steward on Howard Gould’s yacht! Arch, who had a tendency toward
stoutness, was to assist me by butlering in one of the Vanderbilt
palaces!
Arch was chummy with a man named Rennold Wolf, who wrote gossip for the
“Morning Telegraph,” organ of the “Tenderloin” and the sporting world of
New York. To my consternation, there appeared in the “Telegraph” next
morning a news-item with these headlines:
UPTON SINCLAIR PUTS ON LIVERY
Other Servants at “The Breakers,” the Vanderbilt Home in Newport,
Catch Him Taking Notes
“JUNGLE’S” AUTHOR EJECTED
And in the detailed story which followed it was set forth that I had
also been employed as a steward on Howard Gould’s yacht. The concluding
sentence read:
He says that he was ready to leave, inasmuch as he already had
absorbed the salient features of Newport culture.
Now there are three or four main press-agencies whereby news from New
York goes out to the rest of the world. I have shown how in the case of
the “condemned meat industry” these news-channels became a concrete
wall. Here suddenly this concrete wall collapsed and became a channel.
In Vancouver and Buenos Aires, in Johannesburg and Shanghai and
Auckland, people read next morning that the author of “The Jungle” had
been listening at the keyhole on board the private yacht of an American
millionaire. I wrote an indignant letter to the “Morning Telegraph,”
denouncing the story and demanding that they should publish a
retraction. They published it—in an obscure corner. I took the trouble
myself to forward this letter to all the press agencies which had sent
out the story; but the news channels had again become concrete walls.
To show what our press has done to my literary work, let me say that in
small countries such as Norway and Denmark and New Zealand I have more
readers than in the whole of the United States. A single book of mine,
“Sylvia’s Marriage,” which in America sold two thousand copies in five
years, sold in Great Britain forty-three thousand copies in two years.
And sometimes I wonder what all these people abroad must think about me,
after fifteen years’ operation of the news channel and concrete wall!
I wonder—and then there comes to me the memory of an incident which
happened in Holland. I had rented the home of a peasant-family in the
country, and was much troubled by fleas, due to a custom of the
Hollanders of keeping their cattle and goats in the rear portions of
their homes during the winter. I tried insect powders and sulphur fumes
in vain, and finally decided upon a desperate remedy. I went to an
apothecary and told him that I wanted five pounds of cyanide of
potassium and a couple of quarts of sulphuric acid. I remember well his
look of dismay. “My dear sir! What—what—” I told him that I was aware of
the danger, and would seal up the house for several days, and take all
due precautions. They are a polite people, these Hollanders, the most
considerate I have ever met, and the apothecary’s comment was a
beautiful combination of terseness and tact. “Here in Holland,” said he,
“we should say that was a characteristically American procedure.”—And so
I suppose it must be with my readers abroad. They would not expect a
European author to go prying at key-holes on board a private yacht; but
when they read it in a dispatch from New York, they say what the Dutch
chemist said about cyanogen gas as a remedy for fleas.
The charge has been made so many times that “The Metropolis” is a book
of servants’ gossip that it might be well to state that there is no
detail in the book which was derived in any such way. The newspapers
which labored so desperately to discredit the book pointed out that
while it was possible for anyone to go into the Stockyards and see what
was going on, it was not possible for anyone to go into “society.” They
saw fit to overlook the fact that I myself had been brought up in what
is called “society”—or at least on the edge of it, with the right to
enter whenever I chose. My earliest boyhood recollections have to do
with young ladies being prepared for début parties or for weddings,
discussing the material for costumes, and the worldly possessions of
various “eligible” young men, and whether so and so’s grandfather was a
grocer. I cannot remember the time that I was too young to abhor
“society,” its crass materialism, its blindness to everything serious
and truly sacred in life.
Also, contrary to the general impression, it is not in the least
difficult to meet the New York “smart set,” if you happen to be a
celebrity. As the late John L. Sullivan remarked about Grover Cleveland:
“A big man is a big man. It don’t matter if he is a prize-fighter or a
president.” I remember once asking Arthur Brisbane how he managed to
hobnob with the Long Island “smart set,” when he was attacking their
financial interests so frequently. He answered that they esteemed
success, and cared very little how it had been gained.
You must understand that the members of this “smart set” are bored most
of the time. They go hunting wild animals all over the world; they fly
in airplanes, and break their necks chasing imitation foxes; they
collect porcelains and postage stamps, Egyptian scarabs and Japanese
prints; they invite prize-fighters and vaudeville artists and European
noblemen—anything in the world to escape boredom. Do you suppose they
would resist the temptation of a novelist whose bloody horrors had sent
shudders along their spines?
You have read how hunters on the plains are accustomed to draw antelope
to them. They stand on their heads and kick their heels in the air, and
the timid, curious creatures peer wonderingly, and come nearer and
nearer to gaze at the startling spectacle. And precisely so it was with
me; after “The Jungle” came out, and even after it was known that I was
writing “The Metropolis,” I used to see the sharp ears and soft brown
eyes of timid and curious society antelopes peering at me through the
curtained windows of Fifth Avenue mansions and Long Island
country-places. All I had to do was to go on kicking my heels in the
air, and they would come out of their hiding-places and draw nearer and
nearer—until at last I might leap to my feet and seize my rifle and
shoot them.
I can say truly that I did not break any game-laws in “The Metropolis.”
The ladies whom I drew from real life—for example, “Mrs. Vivie Patton”
and “Mrs. Billy Alden”—were ladies who let me understand that they were
“game”; they lived to be conspicuous, and they would not be distressed
to have it rumored that they figured in my novel.
Some extracts from “The Metropolis” were published serially by the
“American Magazine.” The editors of the magazine opened negotiations
with the “New York Times,” offering to give them the exclusive story of
this sensational serial. Van Anda, managing editor of the “Times,” is a
newspaper man, and made preparations for another big scoop, as in the
case of the “condemned meat industry.” But this time, alas, he reckoned
without his owner! Mr. Adolph Ochs happened in at one o’clock in the
morning, and discovered a three or four column story about “The
Metropolis” on the front page of the “Times.” It was not so bad for
Upton Sinclair to attack a great industry of Chicago, but when it came
to the sacred divinities of New York, that was another matter. The story
was “killed”; and incidentally, Upton Sinclair was forbidden ever again
to be featured by the “New York Times.” The law laid down that night has
been enforced for twelve years!
The editors of the “American Magazine” had expected to create a
sensation, but they were not prepared for the storm of abuse which fell
upon “The Metropolis,” and upon them for publishing it. I was surprised
myself by the way in which those who posed as men of letters dropped
their literary camouflage, their pretenses of academic aloofness, and
flung themselves into the class-struggle. It is a fact with which every
union workingman is familiar, that his most bitter despisers are the
petty underlings of the business world, the poor office-clerks, who are
often the worst exploited of proletarians, but who, because they are
allowed to wear a white collar and to work in the office with the boss,
regard themselves as members of the capitalist class. In exactly the
same way I now discovered that every penny-a-liner and hack-writer in
newspaperdom regarded himself or herself as a member of “society,” and
made haste to prove it by pouring ridicule upon “The Metropolis.” Mrs.
Corra Harris, a Southern authoress of rigid propriety, wrote an article
about me in “The Independent,” in which she hailed me as the “buzzard
novelist,” and went on to say that I had listened at the keyhole on
Howard Gould’s yacht. “The Independent” printed my answer, which was
that I had been following my career as “buzzard novelist” for many
years, and had yet to be accused of a falsehood, but that Mrs. Harris,
at the very opening of her career as buzzard critic, had repeated a
grotesque falsehood which I had denied again and again.
I am not proud of “The Metropolis” as a work of art; I was ill and
desperately harassed when I wrote it, and I would not defend it as
literature. But as a picture of the manners and morals of the “smart
set” of New York, I am prepared to defend it as a mild statement of the
truth. I have been charged with exaggeration in the prices I quoted, the
cost of the orgies of the “smart set.” These prices I had verified, not
from the columns of the yellow journals, but by the inspection of bills.
I was accused of crudeness in mentioning prices, because in “society” it
is not good form to mention them. I would answer that this is one of the
shams which “society” seeks to impose upon the wondering multitude. I
have never anywhere heard such crude talk about the prices of things and
the worldly possessions of people as I have heard among the idle rich in
New York. And even if “society” were as austere and free from vulgarity
as it wishes the penny-a-liners and hack-writers to believe, that would
make no difference to me; for if people are squandering the blood and
tears of the poor in luxury and wantonness, it does not seem to me such
a great virtue that they avoid referring to the fact.
Also the critics were cross with the hero of the novel; they said he was
a prig; he ought to have been really tempted by the charms of the lovely
“Mrs. Winnie Duval.” Well, I don’t know. I planned the book as the first
of a trilogy, meaning to show the real temptations to which men are
exposed in the Metropolis of Mammon. It happened to me, not once, but
several times, to meet with an experience such as I have portrayed in
the “Mrs. Winnie” scene, and I never found it any particular temptation.
The real temptation of the great Metropolis is not the exquisite ladies
with unsatisfied emotions; it is that if you refuse to bow the knee to
the Mammon of its Unrighteousness you become an outcast in the public
mind. You are excluded from all influence and power, you are denied all
opportunity to express yourself, to exercise your talents, to bring your
gifts to fruition. One of the reasons “The Metropolis” had a
comparatively small sale was because I had refused to do the
conventional thing—to show a noble young hero struggling in the net of
an elegant siren. The temptation I showed was that of the man’s world,
not of the woman’s; the temptation of Wall Street offices, not of Fifth
Avenue boudoirs. It was a kind of temptation of which the critics were
ignorant, and in which the public, alas, was uninterested.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT PANIC
My investigations for “The Metropolis” had brought me several permanent
friendships; for there are true and gracious people in New York
“society,” as everywhere else. One of them was Edmond Kelly, who was not
only a thinker and writer of distinction, but an international lawyer,
known in all the capitals of Europe, and up to the time of his death the
only American who had received the cross of the Legion of Honor in
France. Kelly had been counsel for Anna Gould in her famous divorce
suit, and told me the incredible story of Count Boni de Castellane. “The
Metropolis” was being published in Paris, and causing a sensation there;
as I read the eulogies of the French critics, I used to smile to myself,
wondering what they would have said if I had made a book about the
manners and morals of French “society,” as seen through the eyes of
Edmond Kelly!
It happened that I was in New York in the fall of 1907, and was in
Kelly’s study late one evening. I had to wait an hour or two for him,
and he came in, deeply moved, and told me that he had just left the home
of an old friend, Charles T. Barney, President of the Knickerbocker
Trust Company, who was in dire distress. I had been reading in the
papers for a couple of days wild rumors of trouble in this institution,
which had built itself a miniature Greek temple at the corner of
Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Now I got the inside story of
what was going on. It appeared that the masters of high finance in New
York, of whom the late J. P. Morgan was king, had determined to break
these new institutions, the independent trust companies which were
creeping in upon their preserves. Morgan had deliberately led Barney
into entanglements, and had given him definite promise of support. That
night, when called upon by Barney, he had repudiated his pledge; so the
Knickerbocker Trust Company was doomed, several other trust companies
would go with it, and the whole financial structure of New York would be
shaken to the foundations. Kelly had promised even that late at night to
make appeals in Barney’s behalf, so I left him. Next morning I read in
the paper that an hour or two after Kelly had parted from him, the
President of the Knickerbocker Trust Company had shot himself through
the body.
So came the panic of 1907. Pierpont Morgan, having deliberately brought
it on to tighten his hold upon the credit of the country, discovered
that it was getting beyond his control, and by desperate efforts stopped
it—for which action he became the hero of Capitalist Journalism in
America. It happened that from two other independent sources I got the
story, every part of which dove-tailed together. So I went about the
streets of New York, knowing that this mighty master of finance, who was
being crowned as a deliverer, was in fact a greedy old ruffian who had
deliberately brought ruin to thousands of small business-men, and misery
and want to millions of workers.
I had Kelly’s permission to tell the story in the form of a thinly
veiled allegory, the meaning of which no one could possibly miss. I took
the proposition to the “American Magazine,” which signed a contract with
me to publish the story as a serial. I set to work to write it, but
meantime the “American Magazine” must have begun to hear from Wall
Street. It was not very long before John S. Phillips, editor of the
magazine, was sending for me and pleading with me as a personal favor to
let him off from this contract. I did so, and so ends the chapter of my
dealings with another of our great organs of publicity.
I know no more pitiful story in the history of our Journalism than that
of the “American Magazine.” It was founded because Lincoln Steffens, Ida
Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Finley Peter Dunne found they were no
longer permitted to tell the truth in “McClure’s.” They purchased the
“American,” assuming a debt of four hundred thousand dollars. Soon
afterwards one of the assistant editors told me that they were having
trouble in meeting their interest payments; and then came a crisis,
plainly revealed in their columns. The magazine had begun the
publication of a sensational series of articles, “Barbarous Mexico,” by
John Kenneth Turner. These articles, since published in book form, and a
second time suppressed, gave an intimate, first-hand account of the
ferocities of the Diaz régime, under which American “dollar diplomats”
were coining enormous fortunes. The “American” began the publication
with a grand hurrah; it published two or three of the articles, and then
suddenly it quit, with a feeble and obviously dishonest excuse—and poor
Turner had to take his articles to that refuge of suppressed
muck-rakers, the “Appeal to Reason.”
There must have been some crisis in the office of the magazine. Somebody
had evidently had a “show-down,” the editors had been “taught their
place.” Ever since then they have been a theme for tears. Ida Tarbell,
who had torn the wrappings off the infamies of Standard Oil, has
forgotten the subject, while Standard Oil, after a sham reorganization,
has almost doubled the value of its stock, and more than doubled its
plundering of the public. Ray Stannard Baker, who exposed the financial
knaveries of the Beef Trust, shed his muck-raker skin and metamorphosed
himself into “David Grayson,” a back-to-the-land sentimentalist—and this
while the Beef Trust has multiplied four times over the profits it takes
out of the necessities of a war-torn world! Finley Peter Dunne, who
contributed the satires of Mr. Dooley and that withering ridicule of the
idle rich under the name of “Mr. Worldly-Wise Man,” has apparently
fallen silent from shame. Lincoln Steffens, the one man who stood by his
convictions, quit the magazine, and now cannot get his real opinions
published anywhere. The “American Magazine,” which started out to
reclaim the industrial and political life of our country, is now
publishing articles about how a little boy raises potatoes in a
cigar-box, and how a man can become a millionaire by cobbling his own
shoes.
I write these words in anger; but then I remember my pledge—the exact
facts! So I go to the library and take down the first bound volume my
hand touches. Here are the titles of a few “special articles” and
“feature stories” from the “American Magazine” for January, 1918: “How
We Decide When to Raise a Man’s Salary.” “What to Do with a Bad Habit.”
“Are You Going Somewhere—or Only Wandering Around?” “The Comic Side of
Trouble.” “Do You Laugh at the Misfortunes of Others?” “The
Business-Woman and the Powder Puff: The personal story of one who has
made a success and thinks she knows the reason why.” “What I Have Seen
Booze Do.” “Interesting People: A Wonderful Young Private Secretary.” “A
Barber Who Uses His Head.” “The Star in a ‘One-Girl Show’.” “From
Prize-Fighter to Parson.”
Now I ask you: could any muck-raker in a rage make up a list of titles
more completely expressive of vulgarity, commercialism and general
“bunk” than the above real ones?
I was at this time planning the sequel to “The Metropolis,” called “The
Money-changers.” The story of the 1907 panic fitted perfectly into my
purposes, and so I made it the basis of this novel. Needless to say, I
couldn’t get the “American Magazine” or any other magazine to publish it
serially, nor could I get any respectable publishing-house to take up
the book. I was forced to go to a fifth-rate concern, which afterwards
went into bankruptcy. By the literary reviewers I was now practically
boycotted; I had written a book of scandal, I had declassed myself as a
man-of-letters. The fact that every word I had written was the truth,
and that the men I pilloried were the plunderers of a great nation, made
no difference whatever to the austere guardians of our literary
traditions.
Since the year 1908, when “The Money-changers” was published, it has
been the rule of American literary authorities that in discussions of
American novelists my name is not mentioned. In 1914 Georg Brandes, the
greatest of living critics, visited America, and to reporters at the
steamer he made the statement that there were three American novelists
whom he found worth reading, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Upton
Sinclair. Every New York newspaper except one quoted Dr. Brandes as
saying that there were _two_ American novelists he found worth reading,
Frank Norris and Jack London. Dr. Brandes was puzzled by this incident,
and asked me the reason; when I told him, he consented to write a
preface to my next novel, “King Coal.” He spoke so highly of the book
that I refrain from quoting him. But did his praise make any difference
to American critics? It did not.
All the publicity “The Money-changers” got was from our “yellow”
journals. The reader will understand that I despise these “yellows”;
they are utterly without honor, they are vulgar and cruel; and yet, in
spite of all their vices, I count them less dangerous to society than
the so-called “respectable” papers, which pretend to all the virtues,
and set the smug and pious tone for good society—papers like the “New
York Tribune” and the “Boston Evening Transcript” and the “Baltimore
Sun,” which are read by rich old gentlemen and maiden aunts, and can
hardly ever be forced to admit to their columns any new or vital event
or opinion. These are “kept” papers, in the strictest sense of the term,
and do not have to hustle on the street for money. They serve the
pocketbooks of the whole propertied class—which is the meaning of the
term “respectability” in the bourgeois world. On the other hand the
“yellow” journals, serving their own pocketbooks exclusively, will often
print attacks on vested wealth, provided the attacks are startling and
sensational, and provided the vested wealth in question is not a heavy
advertiser. An illustration of what I mean is the following, which
appeared in the “New York American” for September 6, 1908:
U. S. NAVY ADMITS ROTTEN ARMOR
Carnegie Co.’s Profit, $700,000
ADMIRAL MASON SAYS OREGON NOW CARRIES 400 TONS
Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Others Also Have Defective Plates
FACTS HIDDEN 15 YEARS
Revelations in Upton Sinclair’s New Novel Are Fully Verified
Washington, Sept. 5—Rear-Admiral W. P. Mason, Chief of the Bureau of
Ordnance, in an interview today admitted that the battleship Oregon,
once the pride of the United States Navy, has carried since the day
she was built 400 tons of defective armor plate.
In addition the naval authorities reluctantly told that the conning
tower of the Oregon, which by expert testimony nearly fifteen years
ago was shown to be full of blowholes, is still on this vessel, which
may any day be called in defending the country against an enemy.
It is also known that the armor manufactured by the Carnegie Steel
Company, Limited, up to the latter part of 1893, which Hilary A.
Herbert, then Secretary of the Navy, recommended be stripped from the
Indiana, New York, Massachusetts and several other smaller vessels has
never been removed.
The investigation made by the “American” was prompted by the assertion
in Upton Sinclair’s new book “The Money-changers,” that “there are
ships in our navy covered with rotten armor plate that was sold to the
Government for four or five times what it cost.”
Referring to the investigation in 1893–94, which resulted in the
celebrated armor plate scandal, the author says: “Nothing much was
ever done about it. The Government could not afford to let the real
facts get out. But, of course, the insiders in the navy knew about it,
and the memory will last as long as the ships last.”
This part of the book is a bitter attack on several well-known men who
have been connected for years with the steel industry, and whose
identity it is easy to trace. It charges that at the time of the armor
plate scandal they bought out the Democratic party and secured the
support of a President of the United States.
And here is part of a second dispatch, which appeared in the “New York
World” the following day. It is amusing to note how these two rivals,
the “World” and the “American,” follow each other up!
Lake Placid, N. Y., Sept. 6—In an interview given by him today, after
he had been informed by his publishers and a representative of the
“World” of a report from Pittsburgh that William E. Corey, President
of the U. S. Steel Corporation, is to proceed against him for libel,
basing his action on charges contained in his new novel, Upton
Sinclair, who is spending the summer at Lake Placid, defied the “Steel
Crowd,” as he designated Mr. Corey and his associates, to do their
worst.
Mr. Sinclair declared he would welcome legal action on the part of Mr.
Corey, because it would give him an opportunity to place on record
evidence which he declares is in his possession concerning alleged
fraudulent acts of the steel men.
“I have not as many documents as I once had,” said Mr. Sinclair; “I
have not been able to replace some that were burned at Helicon Hall;
but I have more than Mr. Corey would care to see in print, I fancy.”
Mr. Sinclair said that among other documents in his possession before
the destruction of Helicon Hall by fire, were affidavits and other
papers pertaining to alleged fraudulent practices in connection with
the manufacture of steel rails.
“I took the trouble,” said he “to go out to Pittsburgh. I spent a
couple of weeks investigating. I had affidavits to prove that these
practices prevailed in the case of steel rails, a year or two before
E. H. Harriman gave out his statement as to the wretched quality of
rails which the Steel Trust was selling his railroads. I can tell Mr.
Harriman, too, that his own purchasing officials were not ignorant
about it.”
All this, of course, had little to do with literature. But it had
something to do with Journalism, had it not? It had to do with matters
of vital importance to the American people—battleships that could not
fight, and steel rails that cracked and caused train-wrecks. How came it
that all our organs of “respectability” kept silence, and left these
grave matters to the despised “yellow” press?
CHAPTER XV
SHREDDED WHEAT BISCUIT
I had all but ruined my health by overwork, and I now went to California
for a winter’s rest. I rested a couple of months, and then wrote three
one act plays. Having received a couple of thousand dollars from “The
Money-changers,” I decided to try out a plan which had haunted me for
many years, that of establishing a Socialist theatrical enterprise.
There were fifteen hundred Socialist locals throughout the United
States, some of them large organizations. Would not they welcome a
little travelling company, voicing the ideas which were barred from the
commercial stage? I began to organize and rehearse such a company in San
Francisco. And so came new adventures with the newspapers.
First, the famous Adventure of the Shredded Wheat Biscuit. It must be
explained that I was trying queer ideas in diet; I have always been of
an experimental temperament, and was willing to try anything in the hope
of solving the health problem, which I have since realized is
insoluble—there being no diet or system of any sort which will permit a
man to overwork with impunity. In California I was living on raw food,
and had written some articles about it in “Physical Culture.” When I had
to eat in San Francisco hotels I could not get raw food, of course, but
at least I wanted whole wheat bread, or failing that, Shredded Wheat
Biscuit. All of which, needless to say, was highly amusing to hotel
proprietors and newspaper reporters.
I was staying at the St. Francis, and I ordered a meal in the
restaurant, from a menu which specified “One Shredded Wheat Biscuit with
cream, 25c; Two Shredded Wheat Biscuit with cream, 40c.” I ordered One
Shredded Wheat Biscuit, and after I had eaten it I wanted another, so I
told the waiter to make it two. When I received the bill it showed fifty
cents, and I pointed out to the waiter that this was an error, it should
have been forty cents; I had had only one portion of cream. The waiter
consulted and returned with the information that inasmuch as the order
had been placed in the form of two orders, the bill was twenty-five
cents each. I paid the bill without further comment, but going out into
the lobby I reflected that it was rather preposterous to charge
twenty-five cents for a Shredded Wheat Biscuit, when you could go around
the corner to a grocery-store and buy a dozen in a box for ten or
fifteen cents. My abnormal sense of equity vented itself in a brief note
to the management, stating that I had been charged fifty cents for two
Shredded Wheat Biscuit, when the price on the menu was forty cents, and
I would appreciate having my extra ten cents returned to me. This note I
handed to the clerk, and there my knowledge of the matter ends. I am not
in position to say that the management of the Hotel St. Francis turned
over my note to the “San Francisco Examiner.” I can only say that I did
not mention the matter to anyone, and that all I did was to write the
note, seal it in an envelope, and hand it to the clerk at the desk.
I understand, of course, that hotels have to have publicity. People are
arriving in the city by thousands every day, and the problem of what
hotels they go to depends upon what hotels they hear about. If a great
soap-magnate or lard-king is visiting the St. Francis, the management
makes haste to notify the reporters, and there is published a dignified
interview with the soap-magnate or lard-king, giving his opinion of the
market-prospects for soap or lard, and the need of a higher tariff on
such commodities. If a notorious Socialist muck-raker is visiting the
St. Francis, and it is discovered that he orders Waldorf salads and
Shredded Wheat Biscuit and suchlike foods for monkeys and squirrels—why,
then the management perceives an opportunity for publicity of a gay and
cheerful nature. San Francisco, you understand, prides itself upon being
a place of Bohemianism, of bonhomie; San Francisco had more saloons in
proportion to its population than any other city in America, and more
venereal disease than Paris—so I was told by a Stanford professor. San
Francisco must have its little jokes.
Next morning there appeared in the “San Francisco Examiner” a “feature
story” to the effect that Upton Sinclair had ordered two Shredded Wheat
Biscuit in the dining-room of the Hotel St. Francis, and when rendered a
bill for twenty-five cents had refused to pay it and had raised a
disturbance in the dining-room. Immediately, of course, the great
concrete wall turned into a news-channel once again, and people in
Vancouver and Buenos Aires, in Johannesburg and Shanghai and Auckland,
who had last heard of Upton Sinclair as working as a steward on Howard
Gould’s yacht, now heard of him as raising a disturbance over Shredded
Wheat Biscuit in a hotel dining-room. “Upton Sinclair Rages,” runs the
headline in the “Los Angeles Examiner.” An actress by the name of Rose
Stahl was playing up in Seattle, and her publicity man must have seen an
opportunity to “get in on the game.” In the afternoon paper there
appeared a story to the effect that Rose Stahl had telegraphed me
twenty-five cents with which to pay for my Shredded Wheat Biscuit. Rose
Stahl did not actually send me the twenty-five cents; at any rate I
never received it; she merely gave out the story that she was sending
it, and the concrete wall remained a news-channel long enough to convey
this report.
I stop and wonder: will my readers find it possible to believe these
tales? So many, many things happening to one man! There is something
suspicious about it—where there is so much smoke, surely there must have
been at least one tiny spark of fire! Did I not really raise a
disturbance, just the tiniest little bit of a disturbance—such as would
have caused the people at the next table to desist from their
conversation and look at me?
All that I can do is to remind the reader of the pledge I gave at the
beginning of this book: I am telling the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. Not only did I not raise a disturbance in the
dining-room of the Hotel St. Francis, I never in my life raised a
disturbance in a public dining-room, nor in any other public place so
far as I can recollect. The one act that might be called a “disturbance”
was that which I performed in front of the office of John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., during the Colorado coal-strike; it consisted of
walking up and down in absolute silence with a band of crepe around my
arm. On several other occasions I have made Socialist speeches, and the
newspapers have seen fit to write these up as if they were disturbances;
but I have never in my life engaged in any sort of altercation or
controversy in a public place. I am by instinct shy, and I don’t go into
public at all, except I am carried by some conviction. As a little boy I
got into one or two fights, and got a bloody nose each time, but since
the age of eleven or twelve I have never struck a human being, and can
only remember threatening to do so on one occasion—in a public park,
when I saw an old bootblack beating a very small boy. As for raising a
disturbance with a waiter, I can only say that when a poor wage-slave in
a leisure-class hotel brings me an improper bill, my impulse is to give
him, not a scolding, but an I. W. W. tract. My anger is reserved for the
management of the hotel which is robbing me, and I give vent to this
anger in a polite letter, which causes the management to rob me still
further. As Shakespeare says:
Who steals my purse steals trash;
But he that filches from me my good Name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And leaves me poor indeed.
My wife reads this story, and laughs; she says the world will find me
comical, defending myself so very solemnly against a comical charge.
Well, I am not without a sense of humor; I look back in retrospect, and
have not a little fun over my “monkey diet” days. But I am serious in
this book, and if you will bear with me to the end, you will see why;
you will see this same predatory Journalism, which made a “monkey” out
of me, engaged in blasting the best hopes of mankind, and perpetuating
slavery and torment for hundreds of millions of people.
CHAPTER XVI
AN INTERVIEW ON MARRIAGE
Two or three days after the Shredded Wheat episode, there called on me a
pleasant lady who introduced herself as a friend of an old friend of
mine. She wanted to ask me some questions; and as I was just going in to
lunch and had an engagement immediately afterwards, I asked this lady to
lunch with me. It appeared that a man and woman in the city had
announced the completion of a five or ten years’ “trial marriage.” Would
I say what I thought about this couple, and about “trial marriages” in
general? I have always been willing to say what I thought about any
subject, so I explained that while I was not an advocate of “trial
marriages,” it was apparent that this couple were sincere, and one must
respect people who stood by their convictions in the face of prejudice
and ridicule.
I went on to talk to this lady on the subject of modern marriages. I
cannot, of course, state word for word what I said, but I know my views,
which have not changed in any way, so I can practically duplicate the
interview.
In any competitive society, woman is necessarily condemned to a position
of inferiority by the burdens of maternity; so, either she has to
suppress her love-nature and her desire for children, or she must find
some man who will take care of her. In a society whose standards are
pecuniary, that is to say, whose members are esteemed in proportion to
the amount of their worldly possessions, the average woman is forced
into a mercenary attitude toward love and marriage. In weighing the
various men who offer themselves, she will generally have to balance
money against love; and the more corrupt the society becomes—that is to
say, the greater the economic inequality—the more mercenary will become
the attitude of women, the more they will weigh money in the balance,
and the less they will weigh love. This is particularly true of the
older women, who know the world and the ways of the world, and who seek
to control the marriages made by their young.
In the course of this abstract discourse I gave some instances. I told
of a couple of mothers I had watched, marrying off their daughters to
what they called “eligible” men—that is to say, men who could support
the daughters in luxury. I said: “Those girls were practically sold.” I
told of a young girl being married to a hard and dull old business man.
I told of another young girl being married to a rich man who had
syphilis. I told of another young girl, who happened to be intimately
known to myself and my wife, who had been in the plight of a
school-teacher—that is to say, facing a life-time of drudgery, and the
ultimate breakdown of her health—and who had married a middle-aged
corrupt politician. We had watched the progress of this marriage. We
knew that the husband was unfaithful to his wife, and we knew that the
wife knew it, and we knew that for the sake of a home and fashionable
clothes she was parting with the finer qualities of her nature. Said I:
“We have seen this woman’s character deteriorating stage by stage; and
when we see things like that, it almost makes us feel ashamed of being
married.”
Now, of course, this was a foolish remark; but it was no worse than
foolish, was it? It wasn’t precisely criminal. But see what was done
with it!
I parted from the lady who had been my guest at lunch, and next morning,
January 30, 1909, a member of my little theatrical company called me up
in excitement and distress of mind, to ask had I seen that morning’s
“Examiner.” I obtained a copy, and on the front page I saw a picture of
myself and a picture of my wife—that stolen picture about which I have
previously told. The story had a scare headline reading:
UPTON SINCLAIR SORRY HE WED. SAYS CEREMONY IS FARCE
Underneath the pictures was the caption:
Upton Sinclair and the wife he declared yesterday he is sorry that he
married.
I will quote a few paragraphs from the article; you will appreciate the
jolly tone of it:
Upton Sinclair says he’s sorry he’s married.
He said it right out in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice, and the
waiter almost dropped the butter-plate, well trained as the particular
waiter who happened to be leaning over the back of Mr. Sinclair’s
chair with this particular butter-plate happened to be.
As Mr. Sinclair talked he threw a handful of California raisins into
his dish of Waldorf salad and watched with evident pleasure the
contrast of the dull purple of the raisins with the pale silver of the
celery and the gold of the aspic mayonnaise.
“Why am I so prejudiced against marriage? Why shouldn’t I be
prejudiced against it? You might as well ask me why I am so prejudiced
against slavery—or against thievery—or if it comes to that against
murder either. Marriage in this day is nothing but legalized—slavery;
that’s the most polite word to call it, I fancy. The average married
woman is bought and sold just exactly as much as any horse or any dog
is bought. Marriage—ough! It really isn’t a subject to be discussed at
the table!”
Needless to say, here was another occasion where the concrete wall
became a news-channel. This story was telegraphed to all the Hearst
newspapers, and published with the same photographs in New York, Boston,
Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The substance of it was telegraphed
abroad and laid before the readers of my books, not merely in England
and France and Germany and Norway and Sweden, but in South Africa and
Australia, in Yokohama and Hong Kong and Bombay. Please do not think
that I am just giving you a geography lesson; I made a memorandum at the
time concerning this particular story, which hurt me more than anything
that had ever happened to me.
It chanced that my three one-act plays were to have their opening
performance in San Francisco that evening. So when I was called on the
stage to make a speech, I spread out a copy of the “Examiner” and told
what had happened. Next morning the “Examiner” took up the cudgels, and
published an article by “Annie Laurie,” the interviewing lady,
upbraiding me for “playing the cry-baby” and refusing to stand by the
words that I had spoken. Thinking the matter over, I realized that quite
possibly “Annie Laurie” was partly sincere; she may have thought that
the interview she wrote represented me! She was so vulgar that she saw
no difference between the phrases I had used and the twist she had given
to them.
This misquotation by ignorant and vulgar reporters happens not merely to
muck-rakers and Socialist agitators; it happens to the most respectable
persons. For example, here is Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, of Chicago
University; he hides himself in the shade of his classic elms, and does
his best to preserve his dignity, but in vain. In an address to a
graduating class he urged the class “to seek a sense of form—in dress,
manners, speech and intellectual habits. In antithesis it was pointed
out that we had lived too long in a kingdom of slouch.” The New York
papers got it by telegraph in this fashion:
The wiggling, swaying movements of American women on the streets and
the stage have made them the ridicule of all Europe. They have a glide
and a wiggle that makes them both undignified and ungraceful.
Whereupon the horrified professor writes to the “New York Nation”:
Of course, I never said any such thing, but papers in all parts of the
country could not know that the report was stupid fiction, and that
the quotation marks were absolutely false. Yet in this form the above
vulgar paragraphs have gone the length and breath of the country as my
utterances.
To understand such incidents you must know the economics of reporting.
The person who misquoted Professor Laughlin was probably a student,
scratching for his next week’s board-bill, and knowing that he would get
two or three dollars for a startling story, and nothing at all for a
true story—it would be judged “dull,” and would be “ditched.” In my own
case, the person to blame was a “star writer”; she was working on a
fancy salary, earned by her ability to cook up sensations, to keep her
name and her picture on the front page. If this “star” had gone back to
her city editor and said, “Upton Sinclair is a good fellow; he gave me
an interesting talk about the corruption of modern marriages,” the
editor would have scented some preachment and said, “Well, give him two
sticks.” But instead she came into the office exclaiming, “Gee, I’ve got
a hot one! That fool muck-raker tore up his marriage certificate before
my eyes! He says that married women are sold like horses and he’s sorry
he’s married to his wife!” So the city editor exclaimed, “Holy
Smoke!”—seeing a story he could telegraph to the main offices in New
York and Chicago, thus attracting to himself the attention of the heads
of the Hearst machine.
For you must understand that while the city editor of the “San Francisco
Examiner” will be getting three or four thousand dollars a year, above
him are big positions of responsibility and power—Arthur Brisbane,
getting ninety or a hundred thousand, Ihmsen, Carvalho, von Hamm and the
rest, getting fifteen or twenty thousand. If you are to be lifted into
those higher regions, you must show one thing and one thing only; it is
called “a nose for news,” and it means a nose for the millions of
pennies which come pouring into the Hearst coffers every day. From top
to bottom every human being in the vast Hearst machine, man, woman and
office-boy, has every nerve and sinew stretched to the task of bringing
in that flood of pennies; each is fighting for a tiny bit of prestige, a
tiny addition to his personal share of the flood. And always, of course,
from top to bottom the thing to be considered is the million-headed
public—what will tickle its fancies, what particular words printed in
large red and black letters will cause it to pay out each day the
greatest possible number of pennies.
In conflict with such motives, considerations of honor, truth and
justice count for absolutely nothing. The men and women who turn out the
Hearst newspapers were willing, not merely to destroy my reputation,
they have been willing again and again to drive perfectly innocent men
and women to ruin and suicide, in order that the copper flood may
continue to pour in. They have been willing by deliberate and shameful
lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them
to murderous war. Mr. Hearst’s newspaper machine telegraphed that vile
misrepresentation of me all the way round the world; it telegraphed my
repudiation of it nowhere, and I was helpless in the matter. Millions of
people were caused to think of me as a vulgar and fatuous person—and
some of them were permitted to denounce me in Mr. Hearst’s own papers!
The following contribution by the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, a
sensational clergyman of New York, was featured in the “New York Evening
Journal” with large headlines and a portrait of the reverend
physiognomy:
Upton Sinclair seems to be a person so profusely developed on the
animal side that marriage is not able to be conceived of by him as
being other than a mere matter of commerce between two parties of
opposite sexes, and sex simply a principle that starts and stops at
the level of the physical without ever mounting up into the region of
intellect and spirit.
A pig will contemplate even a garden of flowers with a pig’s eye, and
instead of arranging those flowers into a bouquet will bore into them
with his snout.
Mr. Sinclair’s doctrine is that of free love, and matrimony a physical
luxury and an evanescent convenience.
This comes dangerously near to companioning him with the cattle and
makes the marriage relation an elegant reproduction of the nuptials of
the pasture.
Also I quote a few scattered sentences from a long editorial in the
“Commercial-Appeal” of Memphis, Tennessee, an extremely conservative
family newspaper, widely-read throughout the South:
A few years ago a young man by the name of Upton Sinclair wrote a
novel about Packingtown. We do not recall the name of the book; but it
should have been entitled “The Slaughterhouse.” It was just about the
most nauseating novel that has ever been written by an American. It
was a compound of blood and filth and slaughter, commingled with vice
and shame. It was the kind of a book to be handled with a pair of
tongs.... But recently Mr. Sinclair has aired his views upon
matrimony, and what he has to say is simply shocking to decency.... It
is hard for any decent person to understand such an attitude. If there
is any one thing that distinguishes man from cats and dogs and other
animals it is matrimony.... If Upton Sinclair’s offensive philosophy
should be embraced, it would mean the absolute destruction of family
life.... The Sinclair philosophy is the philosophy of lust and
animalism and it could only emanate from a diseased and perverted
mind.
I have quoted the above because there is a “human interest” story
connected with it, which will perhaps bring home to you the harm which
dishonest journalism does. For something like thirty years the “Memphis
Commercial-Appeal” has been read by the honorable and high-minded old
Southern gentleman who is now my father-in-law. Like all good Americans,
this gentleman believes what he reads in his morning paper; like most
busy Americans, he gets the greater part of his ideas about the world
outside from his morning paper. He read this editorial, and got a
certain impression of Upton Sinclair; and so you may imagine his
feelings when, two or three years later, he learned that his favorite
daughter intended to marry the possessor of this “diseased and perverted
mind.” He took the beautiful oil painting of his favorite daughter which
hangs in his drawing-room, and turned it to the wall. And that may bring
a smile to you, but it brought no smile to the parties concerned; for in
the South, you must understand, it is the custom for daughters to be
devotedly attached to their fathers, and also to be devotedly obedient
to their fathers. If you had seen the tears I saw, you would know that
this old gentleman’s daughter was not an exception to the rule.
And since we have started the subject, perhaps I might complete the
“human interest” story by stating that after all the tears had been shed
and the marriage was a couple of years in the past, I went down to visit
this old Southern gentleman. It was a queer introduction; because the
old gentleman was horribly embarrassed, and I, being impersonal and used
to being called bad names, had no idea of it. After we had chatted for
an hour or two I retired, and the daughter said: “Well, Papa, what do
you think of him?”
The old gentleman is quaintly shy and reticent, and had probably never
made an apology in his life before. He did it all in one sentence: “I
see I overspoke myself.”
CHAPTER XVII
“GAMING” ON THE SABBATH
I moved myself and family to the little single-tax colony at Arden,
Delaware, and spent a winter living in tents. The newspapers of
Philadelphia and Wilmington used Arden as the newspapers of New York had
used Helicon Hall—for purposes of comic relief. For the most part it was
not especially harmful publicity; it had to do with pageants and
mediaeval costumes and tennis tournaments and singing festivals. But
always there was ridicule, even though mild; and this was not a just
light in which to place a group of people who had a serious and useful
message to convey. I noticed that in their Arden stories the newspapers
carefully refrained from giving any hint of what the single tax meant,
or of why single taxers went to live in a colony. What got publicity was
the fact that one of the Arden boys built himself a screened
sleeping-place up in the branches of a big tree. “Arden Residents Roost
in Tree-Tops”! ran the headlines. I wasn’t roosting in tree-tops myself,
but the newspapers wanted pictures for this full-page story, and my
picture happened to be on hand, so in it went.
I was writing a book, and trying to keep well, and doing my honest best
to keep out of the “limelight”; but the fates were in a mood of special
waggery, it appeared, and came and dragged me out of my hiding-place.
Close upon the edge of Arden there dwelt an Anarchist philosopher, a
shoemaker hermit, whose greatest pleasure in life was to rise in public
meetings and in the presence of young girls explain his ideas on the
physiology of sex. The little Economic Club of Arden invited him to shut
up, and when he claimed the privileges of “free speech,” the club
excluded him from its meetings, and when he persisted in coming, had him
arrested. It happened that the members of this Economic Club were also
members of the baseball team, and they played a game on Sunday morning;
so the Anarchist shoemaker repaired to Wilmington and swore out
warrants, on the ground of their having violated an ancient statute,
dating back to 1793, forbidding “gaming” on the Sabbath. It happened
that I did not belong to the Economic Club, and had had nothing to do
with the trouble; but I had played tennis that Sabbath morning, so the
Anarchist shoemaker included me in his warrants. He told me afterwards
that he knew I would add publicity and “spice” to the adventure.
So behold us, eleven young men summoned to the office of a Wilmington
Justice of the Peace one evening, and finding the street packed solid
for a block, and people even climbing up telegraph poles and lamp-posts
to look in at the window and watch the proceedings. I am accused of
seeking notoriety, but on this occasion at least I may be acquitted of
the charge. A constable had appeared at my home and interrupted my
literary labors, with a notice to appear in this public spectacle, under
penalty of dire displeasure of the law!
The members of the Arden Athletic Association appointed me their
spokesman, and for an hour or two I labored to persuade the local
magistrate that “gaming” meant gambling and not playing tennis and
baseball. But the magistrate insisted that there was another statute
against gambling, and he had no option but to find us guilty, and to
fine us the sum of four dollars and costs, which amounted to a total of
one hundred and thirty-two dollars. A large part of this would go to the
magistrate and the constable, and we suspected that this was the basis
of his decision; therefore we declined to pay our fines, and accepted
the alternative of a jail-sentence. The limit under the law was
twenty-four hours. We received eighteen, it being mercifully provided
that our sentences should begin forthwith—at nine o’clock in the
evening. We invited the constable to an ice-cream parlor, and served
part of our sentence there, and another part of it taking a trolley-ride
to the Newcastle County Workhouse. We sang songs on the way, and the
motorman remarked that we were the happiest bunch of convicts he had
ever taken to the institution.
This is a book on Journalism, and not on prison-reform, so I will be
brief. We spent the night in cells which were swarming with vermin and
had filthy, stinking toilets; we were served food which was unfit for
animals, and we spent seven or eight hours working on a rock-pile under
the charge of men, some of whom were brutal and dishonest. This was the
state prison of Delaware, as well as the county workhouse, and it held
three or four hundred men, white and black, some twenty of them serving
life-sentences, working in a clothing-factory under a sweatshop
contractor. The prison had been recently built, and was advertised as a
model one, yet there was no exercise-court or spot where men serving
life-sentences could get a glimpse of the sunlight or a breath of fresh
air!
When we came out from the jail we were met by twenty-two newspaper
reporters and three camera-men, and everything we had to say took the
front page, top of column. Incidentally, I got a curious revelation. For
years I had written poetry, and had never been able to get it published;
but now I found that by the simple device of writing it in jail, I could
get it on the front page of every newspaper in Philadelphia and New
York! The poem was “The Menagerie,” which you may find in “The Cry for
Justice,” if you are interested. I had lain on the floor of my cell all
night, listening to the sounds which echoed through the long steel
corridors. I quote two lines:
And then in sudden stillness mark the sound—
Some beast that rasps his vermin-haunted hide.
When my cell-mate, Berkeley Tobey, read those lines, he remarked:
“That’s me!” To which I answered: “Tobey, that’s you!”
What we told about conditions in that jail made an uproar in Delaware.
There was still more uproar because the Anarchist shoemaker was
threatening to have us arrested every Sunday, if the Economic Club
continued to exclude him from its meetings; and we made investigation
and discovered that members of the Wilmington Country Club, including
the Attorney General of the State and the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, were accustomed to play golf on Sunday. We served notice that we
would employ detectives and have them all arrested and sent to the
Newcastle County Workhouse every Monday, so that they might discover
what it meant to be confined in a place with no exercise-court and no
chance for a glimpse of sunlight or breath of fresh air. The magistrates
of Wilmington held a private conference and decided that they would
issue no more warrants upon the charge of “gaming on the Sabbath.” Also
the prison commissioners of Newcastle County held a meeting and decided
that they had been intending all along to add an exercise-court to the
prison.
Here was a case where I got publicity from the newspapers; yet the
reader will note, I do not show much gratitude. This story took the
front page, not because the newspapers cared anything about conditions
in the Newcastle County Workhouse, but solely because the story was
funny. Van Valkenburg, publisher of the “Philadelphia North American,”
told a friend of mine that it was the funniest newspaper story he
remembered in his entire experience. And of course the facts about the
jail conditions were an inseparable part of the fun. What “made” the
story was precisely this—that eleven clean and well-educated and refined
young idealists were taken and shut up all night in steel cells, were
put in prison clothes and set to work on a stone-pile. The fact that the
cells were alive with lice could not be omitted, if you were to
appreciate the joke on a well-known charity-worker of Philadelphia, now
advertising manager of the “New Republic,” who figured in a poem as
“some beast that rasps his vermin-haunted hide.” The fact that the food
served in the jail was vile was necessary to set off the joke that the
author of “The Jungle” had made a bolt for an ice-cream parlor as soon
as he was released. And so on.
I look back upon my life of nearly twenty years of muck-raking, and am
able to put my finger on exactly one concrete benefit that I have
brought to mankind. Twenty or more men who are serving life-sentences in
the Newcastle County Workhouse owe it to me that they get every now and
then a glimpse of the sunlight and a breath of fresh air! These men know
that they owe it to me, and I have the thought of their gratitude to
warm my heart when I am tempted by “the blues.” One of our eleven
Sabbath “gamesters,” Donald Stephens, became in war-time a conscientious
objector, and was sentenced to the Newcastle County Workhouse in real
earnest. He was recently released, and wrote me about his experiences; I
quote:
You will be pleased to learn that the short visit we Ardenites paid
that institution some years back and the publicity you gave to
conditions then led to social improvements—chief of which was the
building of an outside recreation yard. Some of the old-timers
expressed heartfelt appreciation for the good work you did.
In view of this can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how
much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and
disinterested press? Also, can you blame me if I stored away in my mind
for future reference the fact that when it is necessary to get some
important news into the papers, I can manage it by getting myself sent
to jail? This is a discovery which is made, sooner or later, by all
social reformers; and so going to jail becomes a popular diversion and
an honorable public service.
CHAPTER XVIII
AN ESSENTIAL MONOGAMIST
The adventure of Sabbath “gaming” served as a curtain raiser to the
great tragedy of my life. I pause on the brink of this tragedy,
hesitating to take the plunge, even in memory; hesitating for the
reader’s sake as much as for my own. I ask myself, “Will anybody endure
to read a detailed statement of the grievances of one man, at a time
when so many millions of men are suffering?” Again, reader, let me beg
you to believe that I am not writing this book to defend myself. Amid
the terrific events that are going on in the world at this hour, I would
not take ten minutes of my time for such a purpose.
I am telling this story in defense of a cause. It was not I, but the
cause, that was maimed and tortured through these years, and any other
man in my place would have met my experience. The matter at issue in
this book is not the character of Upton Sinclair, but the character of
the machinery upon which you rely every day of your life for news of the
world about you. If that machinery can be used deliberately and
systematically to lie about Upton Sinclair, it can be used to
disorganize the people’s movement throughout the world, and to set back
the coming of Social Justice.
I grope in my mind for a simile to make clear how I feel about this
book, how I would have you feel. Say to yourself that Upton Sinclair is
a guinea-pig—surely a sufficiently unpretentious creature! It would be
entirely preposterous of a guinea-pig to expect that a book should be
written about him, or that a research-laboratory should devote its
attention to him. But the scientist reaches into a pen full of
guinea-pigs, and catches up one by the neck, and makes him the subject
of an experiment—removes his thyroid gland, let us say, or gives him an
injection of a serum. So suddenly it becomes of the utmost consequence
what happens to this guinea-pig. Trained experts take his temperature
every ten minutes; they keep a chart of his pulse, they watch his
respiration, they analyze his excretions; and nobody thinks this
preposterous—on the contrary, every man of science understands that the
condition of this guinea-pig may be of greater moment to mankind than
the fall of an empire.
So it is that I am giving this story; giving everything—because that is
what science requires. In the case of the great tragedy of my life, my
divorce scandal, I confront the ordeal with as much shrinking as ever
any guinea-pig exhibited. During all the time of this affair, I refused
again and again, in spite of great provocation, to say a public word in
my own defense; nor have I ever told the story, except to a few intimate
friends. The prospect of having to bring it up again was the cause of my
putting off writing this book for several years.
Obviously, the story must be told. It is generally believed that there
was something in the affair discreditable to me, and if now I pass it
over, my critics will say: “Ah, yes! He is quite willing to play the
game of frankness, so long as the cards run his way; but when his luck
changes, then suddenly he gets ‘cold feet,’ and retires from the game!”
Anyone can see that will not do; I must either tell this story, or I
must leave the book unwritten. Having decided that it is my duty to
write the book, I proceed to the story. I shall tell just as little as I
have to tell, in order to make clear the part played by the newspapers.
More especially, I shall do my best to spare the feelings of my former
wife and her family. My former wife has remarried, and neither her
maiden name nor her present name is anybody’s concern in this book.
In Ellen Key’s “Love and Marriage” occurs a passage explaining that
while monogamy is probably the best marital arrangement for the majority
of people, there are some individuals so constituted that monogamy is
unsatisfactory to them; they find that the fulfillment of their nature
requires that they should have more than one love at one time. When my
former wife came upon that passage, she brought it to me in triumph.
Here was the thesis upon which she had been arguing for many years, and
here was a woman, recognized as a great teacher, who believed as she
did. I do no unkindness to my former wife in making this statement,
because she was accustomed to quote the passage to every one she met,
and she defended it in published writings.
Now, I have a respect for Ellen Key’s personality, and for many of her
ideas. I admit that she may know more about the nature of woman than I
do, and may be correct in her statements as to the love-needs and the
love-rights of some women. All I could say was that I found the idea
offensive, and I would part company with anyone who acted upon it. What
men and women might agree to do in some far-off blissful future I did
not attempt to say, but for the present we lived in a world in which
venereal disease was an unforgettable menace, and on this account if no
other, one had the right to demand marital fidelity. I argued this
question through long years, and my former wife found my arguments
tiresome and oppressive. To the newspapers she described me as “an
essential monogamist,” a phrase which gave great glee to the
“Tenderloin” loungers and the newspaper wits who serve them. Just how
these wits reconciled the phrase with the charge that I was a
“free-lover,” I can not explain, nor have the wits explained it.
Now ordinarily, when Americans find that they are hopelessly disagreed
upon such a question, they proceed to establish a residence in Reno or
Texas. Etiquette requires that the man should pay all the expenses, and
also that he should bear the odium involved. In one of Bernard Shaw’s
plays he explains that the English law requires not merely infidelity,
but cruelty in the presence of witnesses, and therefore the convention
has come to be that the man and woman shall repair to the garden, and
there in the presence of the gardener the husband shall knock his wife
into a flower-bed. I remember some years ago Mr. Booth Tarkington
stepped off a steamer from Europe and was informed by reporters that his
wife was suing him for divorce, alleging cruelty; he was asked for a
comment, and replied, graciously: “When one’s wife accuses one of
cruelty, no gentleman would think of making a reply.”
I was prepared to play my part as a gentleman according to this
standard, and several times I made the necessary practical arrangements;
but each time the other party changed her mind. She pleaded that the
world attached a certain stigma to “a divorced woman”; therefore, it was
cruel and unkind for a man to insist upon having a divorce. I might at
least allow her the protection of my name. To this argument I was weak
enough to yield.
I had endured for some eight years this kind of domestic precariousness;
a maelstrom in which a man’s physical, mental, and moral integrity are
subtly and bewilderingly tossed and buffeted and maimed. But finally I
came upon certain facts which decided me to put an end to it. It
happened in midsummer, when my lawyer was in the country, and in my
haste to consult him I made the greatest blunder of my life. I sent a
telegram inquiring whether a letter of admission from the other party
was evidence in a divorce-suit in New York State; and to this telegram I
signed my name.
I have since been told that it is a regular custom of the “yellow”
journals, in places where the “smart set” or other people of prominence
gather, to maintain relations with telegraph-clerks. When telegrams
containing news or hints of news are filed, the clerk furnishes a copy
to the newspaper, and is paid according to the importance of the “tip.”
Three or four hours after I filed that telegram, I was called to the
telephone by the “New York American,” which told me they had information
that I was bringing suit for divorce. I was astounded, for I had not
mentioned the matter to a soul. At first I denied the fact, but they
said their information was positive, and they would publish the story.
So it was a choice between having a false story or a true story made
known, and I replied, “I will prepare a statement and send it to you
some time this evening.” I prepared the briefest possible statement, to
the effect that my wife had left me with another man, and had written to
that effect, and that I was preparing to bring suit. The last paragraph
read:
I make this statement because I have just learned that word of my
intention has reached one newspaper, and I would rather the real facts
were printed than anybody’s conjectures. I have nothing to add to this
statement and I respectfully ask to be spared requests for interviews.
I sent this statement, and next morning the “American” published it on
the front page, with my picture, and a picture of my former wife, and a
picture of a boy which was not our boy, but a “fake.” I quote a few
lines:
SINCLAIR ACCUSES HIS WIFE
Upton Sinclair, the author and social colonizer, in a surprising
statement last night announced his intention to bring suit for
divorce....
The action of Mr. Sinclair in giving out such a statement, or bringing
suit for divorce from his wife, will be a great surprise to his
friends and co-workers....
You will note the phrasing of this, so carefully calculated to make me
odious—a man who rushed to the newspapers with an attack upon his wife!
And then followed several paragraphs from that old and false San
Francisco interview on marriage, to the effect that women are bought in
marriage as dogs and horses are bought. How singular that a man who held
such ideas should object to marital infidelity!
I am not going into detail concerning the horrors of the next few weeks.
Suffice it to say that the herd had me down and proceeded to trample on
my face. My personality, my affairs, my opinions and my every-day
actions became the subject of discourse and speculation upon the front
pages of the New York papers. My mother’s apartment, where I was living,
was besieged by reporters, and when I refused to see them, it made no
difference—they went away and wrote what they thought I might have said.
The other party to the case was interviewed to the extent of pages—I
mean literally pages. Gelett Burgess, who passes for a man of letters,
and was one of the founders of the Author’s League of America, wrote a
full-page burlesque of the tragedy, which was published with
illustrations in the “New York American.” Mr. Burgess told a friend of
mine some time afterwards that he had done it because he needed the
money, but he was ashamed of having done it. It is not my wish to spare
him any of this shame; therefore I reproduce the headlines of his
elegant composition:
Why Hungry Mrs. Upton Sinclair Went Home to Mamma.
Gelett Burgess Discusses the Failure of Poetry à la carte as an
Appetite Satisfier, and the Triumph of a Meal Ticket over Free but
Famished Love.
Also I ought not to fail to mention one of the editors of “Life,” who
went to see my former wife in company with a fat little pig of a
publisher, his pockets stuffed with bills, which were offered the lady
to write a scandal-story of her life with me!
The opinions of the newspaper commentators on the scandal varied from
day to day. The generally accepted explanation was that I had married an
innocent young girl and taught her “free love” doctrines, and then, when
she practised these doctrines, I kicked her out of my home. But some of
the newspapers found the matter worse than that. The “Chicago Evening
Post” gave an elaborate analysis of my character and motives. It said it
would be possible to forgive me if what I had done was “the jealous rage
of a male brute infuriated past reason”; but the awful truth was plain—I
had done this deed as “publicity work” for the second volume of “Love’s
Pilgrimage”!
The idea that there lived on earth a human being who could have enjoyed
the experience I was then undergoing was one which would not have
occurred to me; however, the fact that this newspaper writer could
conceive it indicated that there was at least one such person living. I
have since heard that certain actors and actresses have increased their
fame and incomes by being many times divorced and remarried. But with
authors it does not work out that way. Mitchell Kennerley, publisher of
“Love’s Pilgrimage,” had been selling a thousand copies a week of this
book, and after the divorce-scandal he did not sell a hundred copies in
six months!
I felt in those terrible days precisely like a hunted animal which seeks
refuge in a hole, and is tormented with sharp sticks and smoke and
boiling water. Under the law it had been necessary for me to obtain
certain evidence. I had taken steps to obtain it, and this became a
source of mystery as thrilling as a detective-story. For days men
followed me every step I took; my mail was tampered with continually,
and likewise the mail of my friends. I ran away into the country to
hide, I even changed my name for a while, but that did no good—I was
found out. Up to this time I had never had a grey hair in my head, but I
found many after these months, and have them still.
Among the mass of newspaper items I note one that seems trifling, yet is
curiously significant. There appeared in the “New York Times” a
telegraphic dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, to the effect that I was
being sued by a store-keeper in New Jersey for thirty-eight dollars
worth of fertilizer. Stop and think a minute how many men in America are
sued every day for bills which they refuse to pay, and how seldom does
the “New York Times” hunt out such news by telegraph! Often I have tried
to get radical news into the “Times,” and heard the editors plead space
limitations; yet they found room for a dispatch about my being sued for
thirty-eight dollars!
Five years before this I had owned a little farm, and had left it in
charge of a man who contracted bills in my name. I had paid all the
bills which were properly rendered; but after four years had passed, and
I had sold the farm and wiped the matter off my books, I received for
the first time a bill for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer.
Naturally I refused to pay this bill; so I was sued—and the “New York
Times,” having me down and desiring to trample further on my face,
obtained the news and published it in connection with my
divorce-scandal.
Nor was that all. The day after this item was published, there appeared
in the “New York World” a column of humor about me, one part of which I
quote. Please take the trouble to read it carefully, because it
illustrates a significant point.
The following statement, with several long-hand corrections, was
received by the “World” yesterday:
“With regard to the report that I am being sued for thirty-eight
dollars worth of fertilizer I might mention that I am being sued for
something I never purchased or received. The dealer has admitted in
writing that he did not send me the bill until four years after the
alleged purchase. I like to get my bills a little sooner than that.
Upton Sinclair.
“Please put the above in the form of an interview.”
Now this was funny, was it not? It was a complete exposition of an ass;
reading it, you would be perfectly sure you were dealing with an
ass—unless possibly with a crook. The “Chicago Evening Post” took the
latter view. It quoted the tell-tale sentence with the comment: “Other
papers fell for ‘Interviews,’ but it was evidently one of the ‘World’s’
busy days, when not even a cub-reporter could be spared for rewrite.” On
the basis of this, the “Post” went on to expose me as a cold and
calculating notoriety-hunter.
Now what is the truth about the statement in the “New York World”? Here
it is:
Three times in the course of that day the “World” had sent a reporter to
seek me out. Would I not say something about the report of my intention
to file my suit in Delaware instead of in New York? Would I not say
something about the fact that a man had called up the “New York World”
on the telephone, and announced himself as the co-respondent in my
divorce case, on his way to have a fist-fight with me? Finally, the
third time, would I not at least say something about this suit for
thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer?
I saw no reason why I should not state the facts in this last matter, so
I said to the reporter: “I will not give an interview, because I have
been misquoted so many times, and am sick of it. But I will write out
what I have to say, and you can make an interview of that, provided you
do not change it. I have to look up the dates of the fertilizer bill,
and I’ll send what I have to say by a messenger.” This was agreed to,
and I wrote out the statement. Having been previously made to appear as
seeking publicity, I wanted to be particularly careful in this case, so
to remind the reporter of his promise, I added: “Put the above in the
form of an interview.”
I have often written those words in sending copy to newspapers. For
example, they wire asking for an expression of opinion, and in replying,
I remind them that they made the first move, not I. They perfectly
understand the meaning of the request, “Put the above in the form of an
interview,” and do not commit a breach of confidence except for a
definite purpose, to make some person odious. In this particular case it
was no oversight, no lack of a “cub-reporter”; it was the deliberate act
of malice of the “World” reporter, abetted by the editors who passed the
copy. I know that my statement reached the right reporter, because the
rest of the article contained things which he had said to me in the
course of his calls. I have gone into such minute detail about this
episode, because it shows so perfectly how these corrupt and greedy
newspapers have you at their mercy. They do whatever they please to you,
and you are helpless. If for any reason, good or bad, you make them
angry, they trample you like a vicious stallion. Or perhaps you seem
funny to them, and then they amuse themselves with you, about as a
wanton child who picks a butterfly to pieces.
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE LION’S DEN
To understand the rest of this episode, you must know something about
the divorce laws of New York, and about divorce procedure. The code of
the State, which was framed by a combination of Puritan bigotry with
Roman Catholic obscurantism, requires infidelity legally proven. The
defendant cannot confess, and neither party to the suit can testify
against the other; moreover, if it appears that both have desired the
divorce or consented to the divorce, there is “collusion” and the
divorce is not granted. These laws are administered by judges who are
almost invariably corrupt, many of them in addition being under the
spell of Catholic superstition, considering that they have decreased the
period of their sojourn in purgatory when they succeed in twisting the
law or the evidence so as to balk some person’s desire to be free from
marital disharmony.
Into this jungle of ravening beasts and poisonous serpents I now walked,
unarmed and unprotected—having made the mistake of employing a lawyer
who was a sensitive and honorable gentleman. The Court appointed a
referee to hear the case, and before this referee I appeared with my
counsel and my witnesses; also there appeared the counsel for the other
party, as required by law, and a solemn farce was played. The referee
had got the case as a morsel of graft from the infamous Tammany machine;
whether he was malicious or merely ignorant, I do not know, but he was
evidently possessed with curiosity concerning the notorious scandal, and
questioned me concerning my attitude toward the matters in evidence—how
I had regarded them and what I had done about them. My attorney objected
that under the law I was not permitted to testify concerning my wife’s
conduct, but the referee insisted that I should answer his questions,
and for fear of angering him, and possibly exciting his suspicions, I
answered.
Under the law it was provided that all this testimony should be secret,
the property of the Court. My attorney and the attorney for the other
party demanded of the referee and of the clerk of the Court that the law
should be obeyed. But when the referee’s report was handed in, a full
account of it and of the testimony was published in every newspaper in
New York. When inquiry was made by my attorney, it developed that
twenty-six different clerks had had access to those papers, and it was
not possible to determine which one of the twenty-six had accepted a
bribe from the newspapers. Suffice it to say that the whole obscene
story was spread before the world. I say “obscene”—it was that of
necessity, you understand; the New York State divorce law requires it to
be that, literally. The law requires that the witnesses must have seen
something tending to prove a physical act of infidelity; and if they
shrink from going into detail, the referee compels them to go into
detail—and then the details are served as delicious tidbits by the
“yellow” journals.
I waited a month or two in suspense and shame, until at last the august
judge handed down his decision. The referee had erred in questioning me
as to the other party’s actions and my attitude thereto; therefore the
referee’s recommendations were not accepted, and another referee must be
appointed and the solemn farce must be gone through with a second time.
I observed with bewildered interest that the erring referee was not
compelled to return to me the money which the law had compelled me to
turn over to him as his share of the “swag.” I must pay another referee
and a new set of court costs, and must wait several months longer for my
peace of soul and self-respect to be restored to me.
The second referee was appointed and the farce was played again. This
time the referee would make no mistake, he would ask me no questions; he
was a business-like gentleman, and put the job through in short order.
He turned in his report, with the recommendation that my petition should
be granted; and again the newspapers got the story—only now, of course,
it was a stale story, the public was sick of the very name of me.
Again I waited in an agony of suspense, until a Roman Catholic judge
handed down his august decision. It appeared that the evidence in the
case was defective. The other party had been identified by means of
photographs, and this was not admissible. Both attorneys in the case and
the referee declared that there were innumerable precedents for
photographs having been admitted, but the Roman Catholic judge said no.
Also he said that there was some indication of “collusion”; I had
behaved too humanely towards the other party in the domestic conflict.
Apparently it was my legal duty to behave like Othello, or to do what
the relatives of Héloïse did to Abélard.
I understood, of course, what the decision meant; the Roman Catholic
judge had got his opportunity to step upon the nose of a notorious
Socialist, and he had taken it. My lawyer urged me to appeal the case,
but I remembered a talk I had had with James B. Dill three or four years
previously. Dill was the highest paid corporation-lawyer in America,
having been paid a million dollars for organizing the Steel Trust.
Before he died, he was judge of the highest court of New Jersey, and I
had spent long evenings at his home listening to his anecdotes. I
recalled one remark: “There are twenty-two judges of the Appellate Court
in New York State, and only three of them are honest. To each of the
other nineteen I can say, I know whose man you are; I know who paid you
and just how he paid you. And not one of them would be able to deny my
statements.” Reflecting on this, I decided that I would not spend any
more of my hard-earned money in appealing—more especially as by so doing
I stood to lose what little privacy the law had preserved to me; the law
required that in the event of an appeal I must pay to have the evidence
in the case printed, and made public property forever! I had received a
letter from my friend Dr. Frederik van Eeden, the Dutch poet and
novelist, assuring me that he lived in a civilized country, where
divorce was granted upon admission of infidelity, without evidence being
given. So I set out for Holland; and in establishing my residence I did
not have to resort to any technicalities. I really intended to spend the
rest of my life in Europe; it seemed to me that I could not bear the
sight of America again.
My earning power had, of course, been entirely destroyed; no one would
read my books, no one would publish what I wrote. As Mitchell Kennerley
said to me: “If people can read about you for one cent, they are not
going to pay a dollar and a half to do it.” Also, my health seemed
permanently undermined; I did not think I was going to live, and I did
not very much care. But I established my residence in Holland and
obtained my divorce, quietly, and without scandal. I wish to pay tribute
to the kindest and most friendly people I have ever met—the Dutch. When
I came to them, sick with grief, they did not probe into my shame; they
invited me to their drawing-rooms for discussions of literature and art,
and with tact and sweetness they let me warm my shivering heart at their
firesides. Their newspapers treated me as a man of letters—an entirely
new experience to me. They sent men of culture and understanding to ask
my opinions, and they published these opinions correctly and with
dignity. When I filed my divorce-suit they published nothing. When the
decree was granted, they published three or four lines about it in the
columns given to court proceedings, a bare statement of the names and
dates, as required by law. And even when I proposed to rid my home of
fleas by means of cyanogen gas, they did not spread the fact on the
front pages of their newspapers, making it a “comic relief” story for
the vacuous-minded crowd.
There were many men in Holland, as in England and Germany and Italy and
France, who hated and feared my Socialist ideas. I made no secret of my
ideas; I spoke on public platforms abroad, as I had spoken at home. When
reporters for the great Tory newspapers of England came to interview me,
I told them of the war that was coming with Germany, and how bitterly
England would repent her lack of education and modern efficiency, and
her failure to feed and house her workers as human beings. These
opinions were hateful to the British Tories, and they attacked me; but
they did not attack the author of the opinions, by making him into a
public scarecrow and publishing scandals about his private life. This,
as my Dutch chemist would have said, is “a characteristically American
procedure”!
CHAPTER XX
THE STORY OF A LYNCHING
The first American I visited in Europe was George D. Herron, then living
in Florence, the home of his favorite poet, Dante. Dante had been exiled
from Florence by the oligarchy which ruled that city, and in exactly the
same way Herron had been exiled from America by America’s oligarchy, the
capitalist press. I had known him for ten years, and had witnessed his
martyrdom at first hand. The story is told in full in some pages of
“Love’s Pilgrimage,” but I must sketch it here, where I am dealing with
the subject of marriage and divorce, and the attitude of our Journalism
thereto. As it happens, the story is timely, for Herron has again been
brought into the public eye, and the capitalist press has dragged out
the old skeleton and rattled its dry bones before the world.
George D. Herron had been a clergyman, a professor of Christian morals
in a Middle Western college. He had been married as a boy and was
wretchedly unhappy. I am not free to discuss that early marriage;
suffice it to say that when he told me the story, the tears came into
his eyes. He had become a Socialist, and had set out to preach the cause
of the poor and oppressed from one end of America to the other. Among
his converts was an elderly rich woman, Mrs. Rand, whose fortune came
from railroad and lumber interests in the Middle West. And now Herron
came to love the daughter of Mrs. Rand. Being a clergyman, he had no
idea of divorcing his wife, and the discovery that he loved another
woman only added to his misery. His health gave way under the strain,
but he held out—until finally his wife brought suit for divorce,
alleging desertion.
Herron had founded a Christian Socialist organization, and was one of
the most popular radical orators in the country. He was a dangerous man
to the “interests,” and here was the chance to destroy him. A perfect
storm of obloquy and abuse overwhelmed him. He was a “free lover,” they
declared, a proof of the claim that all Socialists believed and
practised “free love.” The Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis refused to shake
hands with him, turning his back upon him on a public platform: Newell
Dwight Hillis, whose greed for money led him into a series of disgusting
scandals, and forced him finally to bow his head with shame and confess
his financial sins before his congregation! The Rev. Thomas Dixon wrote
a novel, “The One Woman,” in which he portrayed Herron as a sort of
human gorilla: Dixon, dealer in pulpit-slang, who has since turned to
the movies as a means of glorifying race-hatred and militarism, and
pouring out his venom upon all that is humane and generous in life.
I have many friends who were present at the marriage of George D. Herron
and Carrie Rand. They were married by a Congregational clergyman,
William Thurston Brown, and I have seen the marriage certificate. Yet
all over this country, and in fact all over the world, the newspapers
portrayed the ceremony as a “free love wedding,” no real marriage, but
just a say-so to be terminated at pleasure. The most horrible tales were
told, the most horrible pictures were published—of Herron, and of his
first wife, and of his “soul mate” and his “soul mate’s” mother.
I saw that the strain of the thing was killing Herron, and persuaded him
to go abroad to live and do his writing. Three or four years later old
Mrs. Rand died, leaving a part of her money to found the Rand School;
Herron and his wife came home to bury her, and again the storm broke
out. He had purchased a farm at Metuchen, New Jersey, intending to live
there; a reporter came, representing that the “Cosmopolitan Magazine”
wished to publish a series of articles about the wives of distinguished
American writers. On this pretext the reporter obtained a photograph of
a painting which Herron had had made of his wife and baby, and a week
later there appeared in the magazine section of the “New York Sunday
American” a horrible scare story about the “free love colony” which
Herron was founding in the midst of an exclusive residential suburb of
New Jersey. There was a picture of the free love wife and the free love
baby, and of Herron standing upon a ladder, tacking upon a wall his
repudiation of the institution of marriage. The headlines ran:
ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS TO PROMOTE THIS DOCTRINE
How the Vast Fortune of the Late Mrs. Rand, Who Gave Prof. Herron’s
Deserted Wife $60,000 to Divorce Him, is Being Used in an Amazing
Warfare on Marriage and Religion Under the Leadership of Herron and
Mrs. Rand’s Daughter.
This story went all over the country, and recently when Herron was named
by President Wilson as one of the delegates to confer with the Russian
Soviets, the story was rehashed in our newspapers, and made the subject
of indignant protest by religious bodies. Having visited this Metuchen
home and seen the whole story in the making, I am in a position to state
that the Metuchen “free love colony” was entirely a product of the
obscene minds of the editors of the “Sunday Yellows.” What is the moral
character of these “yellow” editors you may judge from the fact that,
soon after this, one of the editors of the “Sunday World” was arrested
by Anthony Comstock and sent to jail for a year or two, for having in
his possession several thousand obscene photographs which he used in the
corrupting of boys. In such minds the Metuchen story was born; and
seventeen years later its foul carcass is exhumed by the “Churchman,”
organ of “the Church of Good Society” in New York, and made the basis of
a vicious sneer at President Wilson. I quote:
In dealing with Russian liberals, it may be necessary to select as
mediators men who share their political ideas. It is not necessary to
choose men who share their moral practices. We read that the
Presbyterian Union of Newark has adopted resolutions protesting
against the appointment of George D. Herron as a representative of the
United States to confer with the Bolsheviks. The resolution condemns
Herron as a man who has flagrantly violated the laws of God and man,
and they call upon President Wilson to revoke his appointment. They go
into past history and assert that Mr. Herron endeavored at one time to
establish a free love colony at Metuchen, New Jersey.
Time wasted! We warn the Newark protestants. Mr. Herron’s appointment
will not be revoked. What is the marriage vow among the makers of
millenniums?
And lest you think this is merely _odium theologicum_, I give an example
of the comment of the laity, from “Harvey’s Weekly”:
Why not make Herron the Turkish Mandatory? Herron’s matrimonial views
are broad and comprehensive. His poultry-yard standard of morals might
possibly be a little looser than the Turkish, but he would doubtless
conform himself in theory and practice to the narrower Turkish
matrimonial prejudices.
I wonder which is the more disagreeable phenomenon, sexual license or
venal hypocrisy. It is a question I face when I read denunciations of
the morals of radicals in capitalist newspapers. I have known men and
women in a score of different worlds; I have talked with them and
compared their sexual ethics, and I know that the newspaper people
cannot afford to throw stones at the rest.
There are causes for this, of course. Their work is irregular and
exhausting; they squeeze out the juices from their nerve-centers, they
work under high pressure, in furious competition. Such men are apt to
make immoderate use of tobacco and alcohol, and to take their pleasure
where they find it. But this applies only to the rank and file in the
newspaper world, to reporters and penny-a-liners; it does not apply to
the big men at the top. These men have ease and security, and surely we
might expect them to conform to the moral laws which they lay down for
the rest of mankind!
I have in mind a certain editor. In this book where I am sparing no one,
I should perhaps give his name; but I yield to human weakness, having
been a guest at his home. Suffice it to say that this editor is one of
America’s very greatest, one to whom the masses of Americans look every
day for enlightenment. This man wrote and published a most atrocious
editorial concerning Herron’s sexual morals. And what was his own sexual
life at the time?
When the “Jungle” was published, this editor wrote to me that he had a
friend who wished very much to meet me. I accepted, and went to dinner
in a beautiful apartment in New York, luxuriously furnished, where I met
a charming and cultured lady whom I will call Mrs. Smith. There were two
lovely children, and there was Mr. Smith, a quiet, rather insignificant
gentleman. I spent an enjoyable evening, and went away with no suspicion
of anything unusual in the Smith family. But afterwards, when I
mentioned the matter to others who knew this editor, I learned that the
editor was the father of the children, and that Mr. Smith was maintained
in luxury as a blind to cover the situation. I could hardly believe my
ears; but I found that everybody who knew this editor intimately knew
all about it, and that the editor made no secret of it among his
friends. Later on, I came to know a certain brilliant and beautiful
young suffrage leader, since deceased, who told me how she had exercised
the privilege of the modern emancipated young woman, and had asked this
editor to marry her. His answer was that he was very sorry, but he was
not free, Mrs. Smith having given him to understand that if ever he left
her, she would kill herself.
Here again we face the New York State law, forced upon the public by the
Roman Catholic Church, making the grounds of divorce infidelity plus a
scandal. Driven by the terror of scandal, men have been led by thousands
and tens of thousands to make arrangements such as I have here
described. Believing as I do that this divorce-law is an abomination, a
product of vicious priest-craft, I hesitate before I blame these men;
but no one need hesitate to blame them when, knowing what the law is,
and what they themselves have been driven to, they publicly spit upon
and trample the face of a modern prophet like George D. Herron.
And lest you think this case exceptional, I will give you another. There
is a newspaper in New York, a pillar of capitalist respectability, the
very corner-stone of the temple of bourgeois authority. This paper, of
course, denounced Herron in unmeasured terms; recently it took up the
attack again, in its solemn and ponderous manner rebuking the President
for his lack of understanding of the moral sentiments of the American
people. This great newspaper is owned and published by a Hebrew
gentleman, intimately connected with the great financial interests of
New York. He is one of the most respectable Hebrew gentlemen imaginable.
And what are his sexual habits?
I know a lady, one of America’s popular novelists. She is a charming
lady, but without a trace of that appearance and manner which in the
world is called “fast”; on the contrary, she is one of the women you
know to be straightforward and self-respecting, the kind you would
choose for your sister. She came to New York, young and inexperienced,
desirous of earning a living. Naturally, she thought first of this great
publisher, whom she had known socially in her home city. She went to him
and told him that she had made something of a success at writing, and
she wanted to write for the great metropolitan paper. He answered that
he would be delighted, and arrangements were made. They were alone in
the office, and she stood by his desk to shake hands with him in
parting, and he pulled her over and took her on his knee; whereupon she
boxed his ears and walked out of the office, and never did any writing
for the great metropolitan paper.
The above anecdote is, of course, hearsay so far as I am concerned. I
was not in the publisher’s office, and I did not see him take the
lady-novelist on his knee; but my wife and I knew this lady-novelist
well, and she had no possible motive for telling us a falsehood. The
story came up casually in the course of conversation, and was told
spontaneously, and with humor; for the lady takes life cheerfully, and
had got over being angry with the publisher—satisfied, I suppose, with
having boxed his ears so thoroughly. I wrote to her, to make sure I had
got matters straight, and in reply she asked me not to use the story,
even without her name. I quote:
You know, of course, that I should be glad to do, at once and freely,
anything I could to be helpful in your affairs. I have thought it over
and it stands about like this in my mind. I am living a life that has
its own aims—a thing apart from public attack and defense. If I had
determined to make public—after all these years—any offense —— was
guilty of toward me, my own feeling is clear that I should do it
myself, openly and for reasons that seemed to me compelling.... So
leave me out of this matter, my dear Upton.
And so I confront a problem of conscience, or at any rate of etiquette.
Have I the right to tell this story, even without giving names? I owe a
certain loyalty to this friend; but then, I think of the great
publisher, and the manifold falsehoods I have known him to feed to the
public. I think of the prestige of such men, their solemn hypocrisy,
their ponderous respectability. After weighing the matter, I am risking
a friendship and telling the story. I hope that in the course of time
the lady will realize my point of view, and forgive me.
A different kind of problem confronts me with another story, which I
heard three or four years ago, just after it happened. I had this book
in mind at the time, and I said to myself: “I’ll name that man, and take
the consequences.” But meantime, alas, the man has died; and now I ask
myself: “Can I tell this story about a dead man, a man who cannot face
me and compel me to take the consequences?” I think of the man’s
life-long prostitution of truth, his infinite betrayal of the public
interest, and I harden my heart, and write the story, naming him. But
then I weaken, and ask advice. I ask women, and they say: “Name him!” I
ask men, and they say: “You cannot tell such a story about a dead man!”
Which is right?
Everything that the profit-system could do for one of its darlings had
been done for this man. Millions of books, millions of magazinelets went
out bearing his name; wealth, power, prominence, applause—all these
things he had; his life was one long triumph—and one long treason to
public welfare. And what was the man’s private life? What use did he
make of his fame, and more especially of his wealth?
The story was told to me by a woman-writer—not the one I have just
referred to, but as different from her as one woman can be from another:
a vivid and dashing creature, especially constructed both in body and
mind for the confounding of the male. This lady was standing on a corner
of Fifth Avenue, waiting for the stage, when a man stepped up beside
her, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ll give you five
dollars if you come with me.” The lady made no response, and again the
voice said, “I’ll give you ten dollars if you come with me.” Again there
was no response, and the voice said, “I’ll give you twenty-five dollars
if you come with me.” The stage arrived, and the auction was
interrupted. But it happened that evening that the lady was invited to a
dinner-party, to meet a great literary celebrity, a darling of the
profit-system—and behold, it was the man who had bid for her on the
street! “Mr. —— and I have met before,” said the lady, icily; and, as
she writes me, “this paralyzed him.”
I ask this lady if I may tell the story. She answers: “Go the limit!” So
here, at least, my conscience is at ease!
CHAPTER XXI
JOURNALISM AND BURGLARY
I was obliged to return to America to give testimony concerning an
automobile accident of which I had been a witness. I had been sitting in
the rear seat of a friend’s car, which was proceeding at a very moderate
rate of speed along a down-town street, when a fruit-peddler leaped out
from behind an ice-wagon. He had a bunch of bananas in his hand and was
looking up toward a woman in a window; he was not two feet ahead of the
car when he sprang in front of it, and was struck before those in the
car could move a finger. The account in the news column of the “New York
Times” made clear that I had been merely a passenger, in another man’s
car, yet the “Times” found space on its editorial page for a letter from
some correspondent, sneering at me as a Socialist who rode down poor men
in automobiles!
During my return to America I remarried. The ceremony took place in
Virginia, at the home of relatives of my wife’s family, and I was
interested to observe that the “Times,” which had pursued me so
continually, printed a perfectly respectful account of the wedding, with
no editorial sneers. I was not puzzled by this, for I observed that the
“Times” had taken the trouble to telegraph to Mississippi, to make
inquiries concerning the lady I was marrying, and the report from their
correspondent stated that the bride’s father was “one of the wealthiest
men in this section, and controls large banking interests.” How many,
many times I have observed the great organ of American plutocracy thus
awed into decency by wealth! When Frank Walsh, as chairman of the United
States Commission on Industrial Relations, made a radical speech in New
York, the “Times” telegraphed to Kansas City and learned that Walsh was
a lawyer earning an income of fifty thousand dollars a year. It was
comical to observe the struggle between its desire to lambast a man who
had made a radical speech, and its cringing before a man who was earning
fifty thousand dollars a year!
In the same way, I have observed the attitude of the New York newspapers
toward my friend, J. G. Phelps Stokes, a Socialist who is reputed to be
a millionaire, and who belongs to one of the oldest families in New York
“society.” So it makes no difference what he says or does, you never see
a disrespectful word about him in a New York newspaper. On one occasion,
I remember, he and his wife made Socialist speeches from a fire-escape
in the tenement-district of New York—and even that was treated
respectfully! Upton Sinclair, who is not reputed to be a millionaire,
gave a perfectly decorous lecture on Socialism, at the request of his
fellow passengers on an ocean-liner—and when he landed in New York he
read in the “Evening World” that he had delivered a “tirade.” I might
add that the above remarks are not to be taken as in any manner
derogatory to Stokes, who is in no possible way to blame for the fact
that the newspapers spare him the treatment they give to other American
Socialists, including Mrs. Stokes.
At this time ten or twenty thousand silk-workers in Paterson, New
Jersey, went on strike, affording the usual spectacle—a horde of
ill-paid, half-starved wage slaves being bludgeoned into submission by
policemen’s clubs, backed by propaganda of lying newspapers. The
silk-mill owners of Paterson of course owned the city government, and
were using the police-force to prevent meetings of the strikers; but it
happened that the nearby village of Haledon had a Socialist mayor, and
there was no way to keep the strikers from walking there for open air
mass-meetings. There was clamor for the State troops to prevent such
gatherings, and the newspapers were called on to make them into
near-riots. My wife and I would go out to the place and attend a
perfectly orderly gathering, addressed by such men as Ernest Poole and
Hutchins Hapgood, and then we would come back to New York and buy a copy
of the “Evening Telegram” and read all across the front page
scare-headlines about riots, dynamite and assassination. I have before
me a clipping from the “New York World,” of Monday, May 19, 1913.
“_Paterson’s Fiercest Fight Feared Today_,” runs the headline.
On this same date my old friend the “New York Times” achieved a little
masterpiece of subtle knavery. I quote:
UPTON SINCLAIR IS HEARD
After Mohl came another newcomer so far as Paterson is concerned—Upton
Sinclair.
“I just simply could not stand it any longer,” said Sinclair, “and I
let my books go and came here to congratulate you. Yours is the finest
exhibition of solidarity ever seen in the Eastern States.”
Sinclair stated that the strikers had the police at their mercy, but
added that perhaps they did not realize it.
This, please understand, was part of a campaign to make the general
public regard the Paterson silk-workers as anarchists and desperadoes.
“The strikers have the police at their mercy,” says Sinclair; and what
conclusion does the reader draw from these words? Obviously, Sinclair is
advising the strikers to grab up clubs and brick-bats and overwhelm the
police. You would have drawn that conclusion, would you not? Perhaps
maybe you are one of the readers of the “Times,” and _did_ draw that
conclusion! As it happens, when I read that item, I took the trouble to
jot down what I actually did say, and to preserve the record along with
the clipping. I quote:
You fellows go out on the picket-line and the police fall upon you
with clubs, they ride you down with their horses, they raid your
offices, and suppress your papers and throw your leaders into jail,
and you think you are helpless. You don’t realize that you have the
police at your mercy. All those policemen are appointed by the city
government; they get their orders from the city government and every
year or two you go to the ballot-box and say whether you like what
they have been doing. In other words, you vote for Republican or
Democratic politicians, instead of electing Socialists to office, and
having a city government that will give you your lawful rights.
To get the full significance of the above, you must realize that this
was an I. W. W. strike; I went out to a meeting conducted by Bill
Haywood and Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and was permitted
to preach a doctrine of political action which these leaders despised.
I, who have all my life urged upon the workers of America the futility
of the strike alone, and the necessity of political action, went out and
said my say in the midst of a campaign of “direct action”; and see how
much understanding I got from the great metropolitan newspapers for my
defense of political methods! One year later, after the Colorado
coal-strike, the little urchins in the village of Croton-on-Hudson where
I lived used to follow me on the street and shout: “I won’t work!” I
used to reflect that our great organs of publicity, the “New York Times”
and “World” and “Herald” and “Tribune” and “Sun,” stood upon precisely
the same level of intelligence as these little village urchins.
At this time the newspapers were trying to obtain from me a photograph
of the lady who went with me to strike-meetings, in spite of the fact
that her father was “one of the wealthiest men in this section, and
controls large banking interests.” They didn’t get the photograph, so
they were in desperate straits. A reporter for a Philadelphia
newspaper—I have the clipping, but unfortunately not the name of the
paper—went to Arden to look me up, and was told by my friend Donald
Stephens that I was not there. The homes in Arden are scattered about
through the woods, and life is informal; I had locked the doors of my
house, but the windows were not fastened. I am not in a position to
prove that the reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper burglarized my
house and stole a picture of my wife. I cannot state positively that a
course in house-breaking is a part of the training of newspaper
reporters in the City of Brotherly Love. All I can state is the
following set of facts:
1. In my desk in the house there lay a kodak-picture of my wife and
myself and my wife’s younger sister.
2. This copy was the only one in existence, having been taken by my
sister-in-law in an out-of-the-way place, and developed by a
photographer who knew nothing about us.
3. Upon my return to Arden, this picture was discovered to be missing
from my desk.
4. This missing picture was published in a Philadelphia newspaper.
CHAPTER XXII
A MILLIONAIRE AND AN AUTHOR
The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public
interests, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but
property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise,
or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth.
And suppose that you wished to make a test of this thesis, a test of the
most rigid scientific character—what would you do? You would put up two
men, one representing property, the other representing humanity. You
would endeavor rigidly to exclude all other factors; you would find one
man who represented property to the exclusion of humanity, and you would
find another man who represented humanity to the exclusion of property.
You would put these two men before the public, having them do the same
thing, so far as humanly possible, and then you would keep a record of
the newspaper results. These results would give you mathematically, in
column-inches, the relative importance to each newspaper of the man of
property and the man of humanity. Such an exact, scientific test I have
now to record.
I introduce the two persons. First, the man of humanity: At the time the
test was made, in December, 1913, he was thirty-five years of age; he
was known everywhere throughout the United States, and was, with the
possible exception of Jack London, the most widely known of living
American writers throughout the world. At the time of the test he did
not own more than a couple of hundred dollars.
Second, the man of property. He was at this time twenty-two years of
age, and had done four things which had been widely heralded: First, he
was born. Second, he decided to conduct some experiments in farming.
Third, he decided to marry a young lady of his acquaintance. Fourth, he
inherited sixty-five million dollars. Three of these things are not at
all unusual; many a farmer’s boy has done them, and has not had the
distinction of seeing the newspapers devote columns of space to them.
But the other thing is quite unique; since the beginning of American
history, no other person has ever inherited sixty-five million dollars.
So it may be asserted beyond dispute that this young man’s reputation
depended upon property, and nothing but property; he was the perfect
specimen which the sociological scientist would require for his test—the
man of property pur sang.
And now for the action of the two men. It appears that the “New York
Times,” a great organ of world-capitalism, in its efforts to camouflage
its true functions, had resorted to the ancient device of charity, used
by the Christian Church ever since it sold out to the Emperor
Constantine. Early in December of each year the “Times” publishes a list
which it calls “One Hundred Neediest Cases,” and collects money for
these hundred families in distress. The “Times” never goes into the
question of the social system which produces these harrowing cases, nor
does it allow anyone else to go into this question; what it does is to
present the hundred victims of the system with enough money to preserve
them until the following December, so that they may again enter into
competition for mention in the list, and have their miseries exploited
by the “Times.”
In addition to this, the “Times” publishes every Sunday an illustrated
supplement of pictures to entertain its variety of readers; and it
happened that on the Sunday when it published the “Hundred Neediest
Cases” it published also a photograph of a “recreation building” which
young Mr. Vincent Astor was erecting on his country estate at a cost of
one million dollars. This building was for the use of Astor and his
friends; it had no place for the public. It was devoted to tennis and
swimming and gymnastics; it had no place for literature, music, art,
science, or religion—it was a typical product of the private property
régime. So the man who represented humanity sat himself down and wrote a
“Christmas letter” to the millionaire, in substance asking him how he
could enjoy his Christmas, how he could be content to play in a
million-dollar “recreation building,” when he had before him such
positive evidence that millions of his fellow-beings were starving. This
letter was picturesque, interesting and well-written; as news it was in
every way “live.”
So came the first test. This “Christmas letter” to Vincent Astor was
offered to every newspaper in New York City on the same date, addressed
“City Editor,” special delivery. It was sent to both morning and
afternoon papers. And how many published it? Just one—the New York
“Call”—the Socialist paper. No other paper in New York, morning or
afternoon, printed a line of it, or referred to it in any way. It was
offered to every big news agency in the country. And how many handled
it? Not one. Outside of New York it was published in the “Appeal to
Reason,” and in one Chicago paper which happened to be edited by a
personal friend of the author’s. So here you have the first verdict of
the capitalist journalism of New York City; a letter written by a man of
humanity represents a total news-value of precisely 0.
There the matter might have rested, the test might never have been
completed, but for the fact that the millionaire disagreed with the
judgment of his newspaper editors; he thought the letter of the author
was important, and he answered it.
How this came to happen I have no idea. Maybe the millionaire’s
conscience was touched; maybe he had ambition to be something else than
a man of property pur sang. Maybe he himself wrote the answer; maybe
some shrewd family lawyer wrote it; maybe his secretary or some other
employe wrote it—all I know is that two or three weeks later the
millionaire wrote to the author, and at the same time gave his letter to
the newspapers.
The author’s letter had been, of course, an attack upon capitalism. The
millionaire’s was a defense of it. And so came the second test. Every
New York newspaper was offered an opportunity to publish the
millionaire’s letter to the author. And how many availed themselves of
the opportunity? Every one, absolutely every one! Every one published
the letter, and published it _entire_! Most of them put it on the front
page, with the millionaire’s picture; some of them added columns of
interviews about it, and editorials discussing it. The New York
newspapers’ idea of the news-value of a man of property was precisely
one hundred per cent!
The above would have been sufficient for any sociological scientist;
but, as it happened, the test was carried one stage farther yet. The
author was not entirely overwhelmed by the evidence of his unimportance
as compared with a millionaire; he was a Socialist, and Socialists are
notoriously hard to squelch. He wrote a second letter to the
millionaire, answering the millionaire’s arguments; and again he offered
it to every paper and to every news agency in New York—the same ones
that had spread out the millionaire’s arguments in full. And how many
printed it? How many printed the whole of it? Just one—the “Call,” the
Socialist paper. How many printed parts of it? And how large were these
parts? Let us see.
The author’s first letter measured in newspaper columns sixty-three
inches; the millionaire’s reply measured nineteen, and the author’s
reply to that measured sixty-one. If it be objected that the author was
claiming more than his fair share, it should be pointed out that the
author was attacking an established institution, something one cannot do
in a few sentences. On the other hand, the most foolish person can
reply, “I don’t agree with you”—and claim the virtue of brevity. Also,
be it noted that the question here is not what the author _claimed_, but
what he _got_. Here is a table showing what he got, in column inches,
from the leading morning papers of New York:
Author Millionaire Author
Times 0 19 0
Herald 0 19 0
Press 0 19 0
Tribune 0 19 0
American 0 19 2
World 0 19 2¼
Sun 0 19 4½
Call 63 19 61
Let it be noted that the above takes no account of headlines, which were
all big for the millionaire and small for the author; it does not
include editorials, interviews and photographs, nor does it reckon the
advantage of first-page position.
In order to make the significance of the figures quite clear, let them
be reduced to percentages. Each paper had 124 author-inches offered to
it, and 19 millionaire-inches. To begin with the “Times”: this paper
printed all the millionaire inches—also a few extra which it hunted up
for itself; it printed none at all of the author-inches. Hence we see
that, to put it mathematically, the “Times” considers an author
absolutely _nothing_ in comparison with a millionaire. Exactly the same
is true of the “Herald,” the “Press,” and the “Tribune.” The “World”
printed 100 per cent of possible millionaire-inches and less than 2 per
cent of possible author-inches, thus giving the millionaire more than
fifty times the advantage. Similarly, the “American” favored him sixty
to one. The “Call” placed the two on a par—that is to say, the “Call”
printed the _news_.
I conclude the account of this little episode by quoting a passage from
the published “Memoirs” of a wise old Chinese gentleman, Li-Hung-Chang,
who happened to be a man of humanity as well as of property:
A poor man is ever at a disadvantage in matters of public concern.
When he rises to speak, or writes a letter to his superiors, they ask:
“Who is this fellow that offers advice?” And when it is known that he
is without coin they spit their hands at him, and use his letters in
the cooks’ fires. But if it be a man of wealth who would speak, or
write, or denounce, even though he have the brain of a yearling
dromedary, or a spine as crooked and unseemly, the whole city listens
to his words and declares them wise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE “HEART WIFE”
The next story has to do with the phenomenon known as “Hearst
Journalism.” It is a most extraordinary story; in its sensational
elements it discounts the most lurid detective yarn, it discounts
anything which is published in the Hearst newspapers themselves. At
first the reader may find it beyond belief; if so, let him bear in mind
that the story was published in full in the “New York Call” for August
9, 1914, and that no one of the parties named brought a libel suit, nor
made so much as a peep concerning the charges. I may fairly assert that
this story of “Hearst Journalism” is one which Mr. Hearst and his
editors themselves admit to be true.
William Randolph Hearst has been at various times a candidate for high
office in America, and has been able to exert much influence on the
course of the Democratic party—in New York, in Illinois, and even
throughout the nation. What are the Hearst newspapers? How are they
made? And what is the character of the men who make them? These
questions seem to me of sufficient importance to be worth answering in
detail.
In order to make matters clear from the outset, let me point out to the
reader that, for once, I am not dealing with a grievance of my own.
Throughout this whole affair my purpose was to get some money from a
Hearst newspaper, but I was not trying to get this money for myself; I
was trying to get it for a destitute and distracted woman. All parties
concerned knew that and knew it beyond dispute. The wrong was done, not
to me, but to a destitute and distracted woman, and so I can present to
the reader a case in which he can not possibly attribute an ulterior
motive to me.
The story began at Christmas, 1913. In the New York papers there
appeared one day an account of the death of a lawyer named Couch, in the
little town of Monticello, N. Y. This man was nearly 60 years old, a
cripple and eccentric, who lived most of the time in his little office
in the village, going once a week to the home upon the hill where lived
his wife and family. The news of his death in the middle of the night
was brought to a physician by a strange, terrified woman, who was
afterwards missing, but next day was discovered by Mr. Couch’s widow and
daughter, cowering in an inner portion of his office, which had been
partitioned off to make a separate room.
Investigation was made, and an extraordinary set of circumstances
disclosed. The man and woman had been lovers for fifteen years, and for
the last three years the woman had spent her entire time in this
walled-off room, never going outside, never even daring to go near the
window in the day-time. This sacrifice she had made for the sake of the
old man, because she had been necessary to his life, and there was no
other way of keeping secret a situation which would have ruined him.
The story seemed to make a deep impression upon the public, at least if
one could judge from the newspapers. There were long accounts from
Monticello day by day. The woman was described as grief-stricken,
terrified by her sudden confrontation with the world. She was taken to
the county jail and kept there until after the dead man’s funeral. No
charges were brought against her, but she remained in jail because she
had nowhere else to go, and because her condition was so pitiful that
the authorities delayed to turn her out. She was helpless, friendless,
with but one idea, a longing for death. She was besieged by newspaper
reporters, vaudeville impresarios and moving picture makers, to all of
whom she denied herself, refusing to make capital of her grief. She was
described as a person of refinement and education, and everything she
said bore out this view of her character. She was, apparently, a woman
of mature mind, who had deliberately sacrificed everything else in life
in order to care for an unhappy old man whom she loved, and whom she
could not marry because of the rigid New York divorce law.
One morning the papers stated that the relatives of this “hidden woman”
refused to offer a home to her. My wife wrote to her, offering to help
her, provided this could be done without any publicity; but time passed
without a reply. My wife was only three or four weeks out of the
hospital after an operation for an injury to the spine. We had made
plans to spend the winter in Bermuda, to give her an opportunity to
recuperate, and our steamer was to sail at midnight on Monday. On Sunday
morning, while I was away from home, my wife was called on the phone by
Miss Branch, who announced that she had left the Sullivan County jail,
and was at the ferry in New York, with no idea what to do—except to leap
off into the river. My wife told her to take a cab and come to our home,
and sent word to me what she had done.
Not to drag out the story too much, I will say briefly that Miss Branch
proved to be a woman of refinement, and also of remarkable mind. She has
read widely and thought for herself, and I have in my possession a
number of her earlier manuscripts which show, not merely that she can
write, but that she has worked out for herself a point of view and an
attitude to life. She was one of the most pitiful and tragic figures it
has ever been our fate to encounter, and the twenty-four hours which we
spent in trying to give her comfort and the strength to face life again
will not soon be forgotten by either of us.
We interested some friends, Dr. and Mrs. James P. Warbasse, in the case,
and they very generously offered to place Miss Branch in a sanitarium.
Before she left she implored me to make a correction of certain
misstatements about her which had appeared in the papers. She was deeply
grieved because of the shame she had brought upon her brother and his
family, and she thought their sufferings might be partly relieved if
they and others read the truth about her character and motives.
At this time, it should be understood, Miss Branch was the newspaper
mystery of the hour. She had vanished from Monticello, and on Monday
morning the newspapers had nothing on the case but their own inventions.
I sought the advice of a friend, J. O’Hara Cosgrave, a well known
editor, who suggested that the story ought to be worth money. “As you
say that Miss Branch is penniless, why not let one of the papers buy it
and pay the money to her? The ‘Evening Journal’ has been playing the
story up on the front page every day. Sell it to them.”
I said, “You can’t sell a newspaper a tip without first telling them
what the story is—and can you trust them?”
He answered, “I personally know Van Hamm, managing editor of the
‘Evening Journal,’ and if you will make it a personal matter with him,
you can trust him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
I talked the matter over with my wife, who was much opposed to the
suggestion, refusing to believe that any Hearst man could be trusted.
They would betray me, and use my name, and we should be in for
disagreeable publicity. Moreover, Miss Branch would never get the money,
unless I got a contract in writing. I answered that there was no time to
get it in writing. It was then about one o’clock in the afternoon, and
the matter would have to be arranged over the phone at once, if it were
to be of any use to an evening paper. So finally my wife consented to
the attempt being made, upon the definite understanding that she was to
stand beside me at the telephone and hear what I said, and that I was to
repeat every word the party at the other end of the wire said, in such a
way that both he and she would hear the repetition. In this way she
would be a witness to the conversation.
And now, as everything depends upon the question of what was said, let
me state in advance that this conversation was written down from the
memory of both of us a few hours afterward, and that we are prepared, if
necessary, to make affidavit that every word of it was spoken, not once,
but several times; that the various points covered in it were repeated
so frequently and explicitly that the party at the other end of the wire
once or twice showed himself annoyed at the delays. The conversation was
as follows:
“Is this Mr. Van Hamm, managing editor of the ‘Evening Journal’? Mr. Van
Hamm, I have called you up because Jack Cosgrave has told me that you
are a man who can be trusted. I wish to ask you if you will give me your
word of honor to deal fairly with me in a certain matter. I have some
information to offer you which will make a big story. I am offering to
sell it for a price, and I wish it to be distinctly understood, in
advance, beyond any possible question, that you may have this story if
you are willing to pay the price. If you don’t want to pay the price, I
have your word of honor that you will not in any manner whatever use any
syllable of what I tell you.”
This was repeated and agreed to, and then I told him what I had. “I am
not at liberty to tell you where Miss Branch is at present,” I said. “I
am offering you a story, and a statement which she desires me to give
out for her. The price for it is three hundred dollars for Miss Branch.
I don’t want the money myself—I won’t even handle it. Is the price
agreeable to you?”
The answer was, “Yes, I will send a man up at once.”
I said, “It is distinctly understood that you are to publish nothing
whatever about this matter unless the sum of three hundred dollars is
paid to Miss Branch?”
“Yes. Where is she, so that I can pay the money to her?”
“I will give you the name of a man who knows where she is. This man will
take the money and will bring you her receipt. I wish to give you the
name of this man in confidence, for he does not wish his name brought
into the case in any way.”
The answer was: “Put the name of the man in a sealed envelope and give
it to the reporter, who will give it to me. I will personally see that
the money is sent to him, and then will forget his name.”
“Very well,” I replied, and added, “I have written a thousand-word
article discussing the case. I will give you this article along with the
rest of the information. But you must not print either this article or a
single word about this matter unless you pay three hundred dollars to
Miss Branch. You understand that distinctly?”
He replied, “I understand. A man will be up to see you in half an hour.”
Fifteen minutes after the conversation there came a telephone-call; a
voice, sharp and determined, at the other end of the wire, “Is Miss
Branch there?” My wife was answering the phone and she beckoned to me.
We stared at each other, uncertain what to answer or what to think.
“Miss Branch?” said my wife. “No! Certainly Miss Branch is not here.”
“Then where is she?” came the next question, imperative and urgent.
“I do not know,” said my wife. “Who are you?”
“I have been sent by Sheriff Kinnie, of Sullivan County Jail, who has an
important message to be delivered to Miss Branch at once.”
Said I (taking the phone): “Have you credentials from Sheriff Kinnie?”
“No,” was the reply, “I have not.”
“Then,” I said, “you cannot see Miss Branch.”
“But,” said the voice, “I must see her at once. It is really very
important.”
“Come here and see me,” I said.
“No,” was the answer, “I cannot. Please tell me where Miss Branch is. It
is a matter of the utmost urgency to Miss Branch herself.”
This went on for several minutes, and, finally, having made sure he
could get nothing further, the man at the other end of the wire made an
appointment to see me at 5:30 P. M.
As soon as I hung up the receiver my wife said: “That is a newspaper
reporter. Some other paper knows about her.”
But how could this be? Miss Branch had assured us that she had not
mentioned our names to any one, nor shown the letter we had written to
her; that no one in Monticello had the remotest idea where she was
going, not even the kind sheriff; that no one had boarded the train at
her station. She had been most careful, because my wife in her letter
had laid such stress upon her distaste for publicity.
Of course, if other papers had the story of her having come to us, then
Miss Branch would not get the money from Mr. Van Hamm. I had sold an
exclusive story, and it would be said that I had not delivered the
goods. I at once telephoned to Mr. Van Hamm to tell him of this
incident, but I was told that he was out, and I left word for him to
call me up the minute he returned.
His reporter arrived, Mr. Thorpe by name. I will say for Mr. Thorpe that
I think he tried to be decent all through this ugly matter. I detected
in him before it was over the manner of a man who has been sent to do a
job he does not like. I explained to him that I had just had a call from
a man I suspected to be a reporter, and therefore I would not give him
the story until I had had another talk with Mr. Van Hamm and explained
the circumstances to him. So Mr. Thorpe sat for awhile in conversation
with me. My wife came out and talked to him—much to my surprise, for she
has a dread of reporters. Soon, however, I discovered that it was my
wife who was doing the interviewing. She called me out of the room and
said: “That telephone call was from the ‘Journal’ office.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“From everything this young man says, and from his manner. I’ve tried to
make him answer me, whether Mr. Van Hamm could have been responsible for
that telephone call, and he evaded the question.”
“But,” I said, “what object could they have?”
“They may have been trying to probe you. They have believed that Miss
Branch is still with us. This man is trying to find out right now, for
he cranes his neck and peers every time I open a door.”
I did not think this could be, but I was more than ever determined to
have another talk with Mr. Van Hamm. However, this gentleman continued
to be mysteriously absent. I will sum up this aspect of the matter by
saying that he continued to be “expected every few minutes” at his
office and at his home until 12 o’clock that night. I made not less than
twenty efforts to get him, but he would not even let me hear his voice.
As I still refused to give up my story, Mr. Thorpe was suddenly seized
with a desire for cigarettes, and went out to purchase some. I am not in
a position to say that he called up the office, and turned in what
information he had been able to get in the course of our conversation. I
will only say that such information appeared an hour or two later in the
columns of the “Evening Journal.”
Mr. Thorpe returned, and still Mr. Van Hamm was mysteriously missing. At
last I got tired of waiting, and I gave Mr. Thorpe the interview and the
article, and also a letter addressed to Mr. Van Hamm, in which I
explicitly repeated the specifications of my telephone conversation with
him. I read it to Mr. Thorpe and my wife.
It was then time for the mysterious stranger to appear, but needless to
say, he did not keep his appointment. I will conclude this aspect of the
story by quoting the following letter from Sheriff Frank Kinnie, of
Sullivan County, N. Y.
Your favor relative to Miss Branch received this morning and wish to
state that the statement is a falsehood absolutely, as I had no idea
whatever as to Miss Branch’s whereabouts, and if you meet Miss Branch
she will tell you that no one here in her confidence knew where she
was going. I trust a kind Providence will protect and care for her.
To continue: I had that evening to attend a reception given to the
delegates of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, at the home of a
friend of mine who conducts a boarding school for young ladies. Little
dreaming what an avalanche I was to bring down upon the head of this
unfortunate friend, I left word at the office that Mr. Van Hamm was to
call me at this school at 8 o’clock that evening.
My wife and I then proceeded to pack our belongings for the steamer—the
first opportunity we had had in all this excitement. The superintendent
of the apartment-house came to us to ask if we could leave an hour
earlier than we had intended, as there were two gentlemen who had rented
it and wanted to move in immediately. My wife said: “Surely no one can
move into an apartment in the state of disorder in which we are leaving
this!”
“It seems strange,” was the reply, “but that is what they want to do.
They do not want to wait to have it put in order. They are waiting, and
they want to come in the minute you leave.”
If I had been dealing with Hearst newspapers for a sufficiently long
time, I would have understood in advance the significance of this
phenomenon. As it was, I simply pitied the two unfortunate young men,
who would have to spend the night in the midst of the chaotic mass of
torn manuscripts and scraps of letters and envelopes which littered the
floor. Later on I was glad that I had married a lawyer’s daughter—when
my wife informed me she had gone over this trash and burned every scrap
of paper relating to Miss Branch and her affairs!
I went to the reception, and at about 8 o’clock in the evening the
“Journal” called me up—“Mr. Williams” on the wire—to say that Mr. Van
Hamm had considered my article and regretted to say that he could not
use it. The information that I had offered him was not considered worth
the sum of three hundred dollars. I asked what it was worth, and was
told twenty-five dollars. I said, “That won’t do. I will offer it
somewhere else.” I demanded the right to speak to Mr. Van Hamm himself
on the subject, but was told that he was “out.” I was obliged to content
myself with impressing upon “Mr. Williams” the fact that not a syllable
that I had confided to Mr. Van Hamm was to be used by the “Journal.”
“Mr. Williams” solemnly assured me that my demand would be complied
with—and this in face of the fact that the last edition of the “Evening
Journal,” containing the whole story, was then in the “Journal” wagons,
being distributed over the city! I called up a friend of mine on the
“World” to offer him the story, and the reader will need a vivid
imagination to get an idea of my emotions when this friend exclaimed,
“Why, that story has already been used by the ‘Journal’!”
“That is impossible!” I exclaimed.
He answered, “I have a copy of it upon my desk.”
It was not until I was going on board the steamer that I got a copy of
the “final extra” of the “New York Evening Journal,” the issue of
Monday, December 29, 1913. At the top of the front page, in red letters
more than one-half inch high, appeared the caption:
“JOURNAL FINDS MISS BRANCH HERE”
with two index hands to point out this wonderful news to the reader. A
good portion of the remainder of the front page was occupied by an
article with these headings:
HEART-WIFE IS IN NEW YORK
Found Here by Journal.
Miss Branch Traced to Well-Known Writer’s Home After Secret Flight.
Adelaide M. Branch, for three years the heart-wife of Melvin H. Couch,
former District Attorney of Sullivan County, is today in New York
City. She is secluded at the home of a well-known sociologist and
writer who has interested himself in her case and has offered her a
home, at least until she can make definite plans for the future.
Miss Branch was traced to her hiding place in this city by the
“Evening Journal.” The former “love slave” of Couch told the
sociologist that she wished to be absolutely quiet and undisturbed. So
for the present it is not possible to give her address.
And so continued a long article, which contained practically everything
of what I gave to Mr. Thorpe, sometimes even using the very phrases
which I had used in the presence of my wife.
I will not trouble the reader with a description of the state of mind we
were in when our steamer set out for Bermuda. I will simply give a brief
summary of what else occurred in this incredible affair:
First, someone got, or pretended to get, from the hall-boy at the
apartment where I had been staying, an elaborate and entirely fictitious
account of how Miss Branch had arrived, and how she had swooned and my
wife had caught her in her arms, and how some other people had come and
carried her away in an automobile. This account was published in full.
Then the records of my telephone-calls were consulted, and every person
whom I had called up in my last two days in the apartment was hounded.
My poor mother was driven nearly to desperation. In our telephone-call
list was found the name of Dr. Warbasse, who had taken Miss Branch away,
and Dr. Warbasse later received a wireless message from Bermuda, as
follows:
“Give Branch story to papers.”
Shortly afterward the doctor was called up by the “Evening Journal,” and
was told that the “Journal” had received a wireless message from me,
instructing them to call on him for information concerning Miss Branch.
I quote from Dr. Warbasse’s letter to me:
I believed the only way they could have learned of my connection with
the case was from you, and accordingly gave them a short statement of
the facts, but withheld the location of Miss Branch. They published
very distorted versions of what little I gave them. They were
particularly solicitous for her whereabouts. A few days later I had
another wireless from you, asking me to send you Branch’s address. By
this time I had grown suspicious, and sent you my address instead. I
am now wondering whether the wireless messages were from you or were
newspaper fakery. If the latter is the case, it was well done, believe
me, and does great credit to the unscrupulousness of the press.
Needless to say, I had sent no such message. What is more significant, I
did not receive the message which Dr. Warbasse sent to me, giving me his
address! Is the “Evening Journal” able to intercept cablegrams? I don’t
know; but soon after my arrival in Bermuda I received a letter from my
friend who conducts the school for young ladies, scolding me for the
terrible trouble into which I had got her. The “Journal,” she said, had
become convinced that Miss Branch was hidden in the school, and it was
only by desperate efforts that she had kept this highly sensational
rumor from going out to the world. I thought, of course, that I was to
blame for my thoughtlessness in having given her telephone number to the
“Evening Journal” on the eve of my departure from New York, and I wrote
abjectly apologizing for this. What was my consternation to receive a
letter assuring me that this was not what had angered her, but the fact
that I had been so foolish as to send her a wireless message,
instructing her to give the story of Miss Branch to the paper, and had
wired the “Journal” to call upon her for the information!
Mr. Arthur Brisbane is the man whom I had always understood to be the
editor in charge of the “Evening Journal.” I wrote him asking him to
investigate this affair; and I sent a registered copy of the letter to
Mr. Hearst, who, I assumed, would be jealous for the journalistic honor
of his papers. I pointed out the fact that on the Monday afternoon in
question every newspaper in New York had had the story that Miss Branch
was going West to see a brother of hers. In all editions of the “Evening
Journal,” except the final edition, the following statement had
appeared:
Heart-wife flees to asylum. Miss Branch is in hiding in a sanitarium
within ten miles of Monticello. As soon as she recovers her strength
she will probably join her brother.
I said that I wished to know what Mr. Van Hamm had to say, as to how the
“Journal” had got the information it published in its final edition. If
it was an independent tip, who gave that tip? And if the telephone-call
alleged to be from the Sheriff had come from any other paper than the
“Journal,” why had not that paper used the story?
Mr. Brisbane replied that he was now in Chicago, and had no longer
anything to do with the “New York Evening Journal,” but that the matter
would undoubtedly be investigated by Mr. Hearst.
A friend of mine, an old newspaper man, wrote me à propos of this:
“Don’t imagine for one minute that anything will be done about it; don’t
imagine but that Van Hamm is Hearst. Hearst knows exactly what Van Hamm
does, and if Van Hamm failed to do it, he would lose his job.” This
sounded somewhat cynical, but it seemed to be borne out by Mr. Hearst’s
course. He chose to veil himself in Olympian silence. I wrote him a
second courteous letter, to the effect that unless I heard from him and
received some explanation, I would be compelled to assume that he
intended to make the actions of his subordinates his own. He has not
replied to that letter, so I presume that I am justified in the
assumption. And this man wishes to be United States Senator from New
York!
Several years ago he desired to be Governor, and there resulted such a
tempest of public wrath, such a chorus of exposure and denunciation,
that he was overwhelmed; if he had not had a very tough skin he would
have fled from political life forever. Unquestionably a deal of this
denunciation came from vested interests which he had frightened by his
radicalism; but, on the other hand, it betrayed a note of personal
loathing that was unmistakable. I marvelled at it at the time; but now I
think I understand it.
The story of Miss Branch is forgotten, but other stories are filling the
Hearst papers day by day. Are they all got with the same disregard for
every consideration of decency, for all the rules which control the
dealings of civilized men with one another? Get clear the meaning of
this story of mine—the reason for all this lying, sneaking, forging of
cablegrams, bribing of hall-boys, violation of honor and good faith. Was
it to get a story? No—the “Journal” had the story offered to it on a
silver tray! The reason for all the knavery was to avoid the payment of
three hundred dollars to a destitute and distracted woman—that, and that
alone! And if such be Hearst’s attitude to his pocket-book, if such be
the methods of his newspaper-machine where his pocket-book is concerned,
there must be thousands and tens of thousands of people in New
York—politicians, journalists, authors, business-men—who have run into
that machine as I did, and been knocked bruised and bloody into the
ditch. When Mr. Hearst runs for office, all these men jump into the
arena and get their revenge!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MOURNING PICKETS
I had a book to write that winter, and my wife’s health to think about.
We had got as far from the newspapers as we knew how—a little cottage in
one of the remotest parts of the Bermuda Islands, with sand-dunes and
coral-crags all about us, and a sweep of the Southern ocean in front.
There we lived for several months, and thought we were safe. I never
went anywhere, except to play tennis—so surely I ought to have been
safe! But I wasn’t.
All at once my clipping-bureau began sending me articles from newspapers
all over the United States. I was starting a ranch for the training of
incorrigible boys in Nevada! First, I was in Chicago for an assortment
of boys; I wanted the very wildest and most blood-thirsty that could be
found; I had picked out several young criminals who had been given up by
reformatories. Then, a little later, I was out in Nevada, starting this
“Last Chance Ranch,” with a score or two of boys. And then one of the
boys ran away; he complained that I fed him on vegetarian food, and he
couldn’t stand it. As it happened, I had not been a vegetarian for a
long time; also, as it happened, I was in Bermuda instead of Nevada; but
what did that matter to the newspapers? Before long I found myself
riding on horseback across the desert, chasing this runaway boy, John
Fargo. I had been riding for three days and had nothing in my
saddle-bags but peanuts and canned beans.
And there I was left. To this day I don’t know what happened to me;
whether I caught “John Fargo,” or what became of my “Last Chance Ranch.”
Is there a phantom Upton Sinclair, still chasing “John Fargo” over the
Nevada desert, and living on peanuts and canned beans?
It may have been, of course, that there was some one impersonating me. A
friend of mine, a school-teacher, told me the other day that one of her
pupils had assured her quite solemnly that he knew me well; I was a
cripple, and went about in a wheel-chair. Also, I was told by a waiter
in a Los Angeles hotel that a bald-headed man had reserved a table in my
name, and given an elaborate dinner, and that the hotel staff had
thought they were dining me. I am wondering what would have happened in
the newspapers if that bald-headed man had drunk too much champagne, and
had thrown a bottle through one of the dining-room mirrors?
I came back to America, and made an investigation of the Colorado
coal-strike, and so began one of the most sensational episodes of my
life. It is a long story, but I shall tell it in full, because it is not
a personal story, but a story of eleven thousand miners with their wives
and children, living in slavery in lonely mountain fortresses, making a
desperate fight for the rights of human beings, and crushed back into
their slave-pens by all the agencies of capitalist repression.
I had been to Colorado, and knew intimately the conditions. Now the
strike was on, and the miners and their families living in tent-colonies
had been raided, beaten, shot up by gunmen. Finally a couple of
machine-guns had been turned loose on them, their tent-colony at Ludlow
had been burned, and three women and fourteen children had been
suffocated to death. I sat in Carnegie Hall, New York City, amid an
audience of three thousand people, and listened to an account of these
conditions by eye-witnesses; next morning I opened the newspapers, and
found an account in the “New York Call,” a Socialist paper, and two
inches in the “New York World”—and not a line in any other New York
paper!
I talked over the problem with my wife, and we agreed that something
must be done to break this conspiracy of silence. I had trustworthy
information to the effect that young Rockefeller was in charge of what
was going on in Colorado, though he was vigorously denying it at this
time, and continued to deny it until the Walsh commission published his
letters and telegrams to his representatives in Denver. Evidently,
therefore, Mr. Rockefeller was the shining mark at which we must aim. It
happened that one of the speakers at the Carnegie Hall meeting had been
Mrs. Laura G. Cannon, whose husband was an organizer for the United Mine
Workers, and had been thrown into jail by the militia and kept there
without warrant or charge for a considerable time. So we called on Mrs.
Cannon to go with us to the offices of Mr. Rockefeller.
We were received by a polite secretary, to whom we delivered a carefully
phrased letter, asking Mr. Rockefeller to meet Mrs. Cannon, and hear at
first hand what she had personally witnessed of the strike. We were
invited to come back an hour later for our reply, and we came, and were
informed that Mr. Rockefeller would not see us. So we presented a second
letter, prepared in advance, to the effect that if he persisted in his
refusal to see us, we should consider ourselves obligated to indict him
for murder before the bar of public opinion. To this letter the polite
secretary informed us, not quite so politely, there was “no answer.”
What was to be done now? I had learned by experience that it would be
necessary to do something sensational. An indignation meeting in
Carnegie Hall, attended by three thousand people, was not enough. At
first I thought that I would go to young Mr. Rockefeller’s office and
watch for him in the hall, and give him a horse-whipping. But this would
have been hard on me, because I am constitutionally opposed to violence,
and I did not think Mr. Rockefeller worth such a sacrifice of my
feelings. What I wanted was something that would be picturesque and
dramatic, but would not involve violence; and finally I hit on the idea
of inviting a group of people to put bands of crepe around their arms,
and to walk up and down in front of 26 Broadway in dead silence, to
symbolize our grief for the dead women and children of Ludlow. I called
a group of radicals to discuss the project; also I called the newspaper
reporters.
Picketing, except in labor strikes, was a new thing at that time, though
the suffragists have since made it familiar. The novelty of the thing,
plus the fact that it was being done by a group of well-known people,
furnished that element of sensation which is necessary if radical news
is to be forced into the papers. A dozen reporters attended our meeting
at the Liberal Club, and next morning the newspapers reported the
proceedings in full.
So at ten o’clock, when I repaired to 26 Broadway, I found a great crowd
of curious people who had read of the matter; also, a number of
reporters and camera-men. The reporters swarmed about me and besought me
for interviews, but according to agreement I refused to speak a word,
and began simply to walk up and down on the sidewalk. I was joined by
three ladies who had been present at the meeting of the night before,
one of them Elizabeth Freeman, a well-known suffragette. A number of
others had promised to come, but apparently had thought better of it in
the cold light of the morning after. However, the deficit was made up by
a lady, a stranger to us all, who had read about the matter that
morning, and had hastily made herself a white flag with a bleeding
heart, and now stood on the steps of 26 Broadway, shrieking my name at
the top of her voice. It had been agreed that the “mourning pickets”
were all to preserve silence, and to make no demonstration except the
band of crepe agreed upon. But alas, we had no control over the actions
of this strange lady!
Of course there were a number of policemen on hand, and very soon they
informed me that I must stop walking up and down. I explained politely
that I had made inquiry and ascertained that I was breaking no law in
walking on the sidewalk in silence; therefore I didn’t intend to stop.
So I was placed under arrest, and likewise the four ladies. We were
taken to the station-house, where I found myself confronting the
sergeant at the desk, and surrounded by a dozen reporters with
note-books. The sergeant was considerate, and let me tell the entire
story of the Colorado coal-strike, and what I thought about it; the
pencils of the reporters flew, and a couple of hours later, when the
first edition of the afternoon newspapers made their appearance on the
street, every one of them had three or four columns of what I had said.
Such a little thing, you see! You just have to get yourself arrested,
and instantly the concrete-walls turn into news-channels!
There is one detail to be recorded about this particular action of the
news-channels. The United Press, which is a liberal organization, sent
out a perfectly truthful account of what had happened. The Associated
Press, which is a reactionary organization, sent out a false account,
stating that my wife had been arrested. My wife, knowing how this report
would shock her family and friends in the South, sent a special delivery
letter to the Associated Press calling their attention to the error, but
the Associated Press did not correct the error, nor did it reply to this
letter. My wife’s mother, an old-fashioned Southern lady, took the first
train out of Mississippi, to rescue her child from jail and from
disgrace; but by the time the good lady reached New York, she was so ill
with grief and shame that if her child had really been in jail she could
have rendered but little assistance. All she could do was to inform her
that even though she was not in jail, her father had disinherited her
after reading his morning paper. My wife was informed by lawyers that
she was in position to collect large damages from the Associated Press,
and from every newspaper which had printed the false report. Some thirty
suits were filed, but my wife’s health did not permit her to go on with
them.
We were taken to the Tombs prison, where the ladies sang the
Marseillaise, and I wrote a poem entitled “The Marseillaise in the
Tombs,” and again found it possible to have my poetry published in the
New York newspapers! The magistrate who tried us was an agreeable little
gentleman, who allowed us to talk without limit—the talk all being taken
down by the reporters. The charge against us read “using threatening,
abusive and insulting behavior.” The witnesses were the policemen, who
testified that my conduct had been “that of a perfect gentleman.”
Nevertheless we were found guilty, and fined three dollars, and refused
to pay the fine, and went back to the Tombs.
The newspapers tore me to pieces for my “clownish conduct,” but I
managed to keep cheerful, because I saw that they were publishing the
news about the Colorado coal-strike, which before they had banned from
their columns. The “New York World,” for example, published a sneering
editorial entitled, “Pink-tea Martyrdom.” “No genuine desire to effect a
reform actuates them, but only morbid craving for notoriety.” But at the
same time the “World” sent a special correspondent to the coal-fields,
and during the entire time of our demonstration and for a couple of
weeks thereafter they published every day from half a column to a column
of news about the strike.
I spent two days and part of a third in the Tombs. Every day the
reporters came to see me, and I gave interviews and wrote special
articles—all the news about Colorado I could get hold of. And every day
there was a crowd of ten thousand people in front of Twenty-six
Broadway, and young Rockefeller fled to his home in the country, and
“Standard Oil,” for the first time in its history, issued public
statements in defense of its crimes.
My wife had taken up the demonstration after my arrest, and I was amused
to observe that the police did not arrest her, nor did the newspapers
ridicule her. Was it because she was a woman? No, for I have seen the
police beat and club women doing picket-duty—working-women, you
understand. I have seen the newspapers lie about working-women on
picket-duty; in the course of this Colorado campaign I saw them print
the vilest and most cowardly slanders about the wives of some strikers
who went to Washington to make appeal to President Wilson. No, it was
not because my wife was a woman; it was because she was a “lady.” It was
because in the files of the New York newspapers there reposed a clipping
recording the fact that her father was “one of the wealthiest men in
this section and controls large banking interests.”
Please pardon these personalities, for they are essential to the thesis
of this book—that American Journalism is a class institution, serving
the rich and spurning the poor. It happens that M. C. S. is
conspicuously and inescapably what is called a “lady”; she not merely
looks the part, she acts it and speaks it in those subtle details that
count most. All her young ladyhood she spent as what is known in the
South as a “belle”; incidentally, of course, as an ungodly little snob.
She has got over that; but in case of an emergency like our Broadway
affair, she naturally used every weapon she had. Against the New York
reporters and the New York police department she used the weapon of
snobbery—and it worked.
In the South, you see, a “lady” takes for granted the slave-psychology
in those she regards as her “social inferiors.” Not merely does she
expect immediate obedience from all members of the colored race; she
feels the same way about policemen in uniform—it would never occur to
her to think of a policeman as anything but a servant, prepared to
behave as such. I assured her that she might not find this the case with
the husky sons of St. Patrick who lord it over the New York crowds. But
M. C. S. answered that she would see.
Far be it from me to know to what extent she did these things
deliberately; my advice in such matters is not sought, and I am allowed
to see the results only. What I saw in this case—or rather learned about
later—was that M. C. S. arrived in front of 26 Broadway an hour late,
clad in supple and exquisite white broadcloth, military cape and all;
and that on sight of this costume the New York City police department
collapsed.
For two weeks the “lady” from the far South marshalled the
demonstration, walking side by side with eminent poets from California,
and half-starved Russian Jews from the East side slums, and gigantic
lumber-jacks from the Oregon forests. If those Russian Jews and Oregon
lumber-jacks had tried such a stunt on Broadway by themselves, they
would have had their scalps split open in the first five minutes. But
the lady in the white military cape was there—never speaking, but
looking firmly ahead; and so for two weeks the New York police
department devoted itself to keeping everybody else off the sidewalks in
front of 26 Broadway, so that our “free silence” advocates might have
room to walk up and down undisturbed. They even had mounted policemen to
clear lanes in the street, so that the cars might get through; and when
some one hired thugs to try to pick quarrels with us and cause a
disturbance, the police actually drove the thugs away. I feel quite
certain that this was the first time in New York City’s history that
thugs employed by a great corporation to terrorize strike-pickets had
met with opposition from the police.
And lest you think that M. C. S. is still a snob, and got a sense of
triumph from all this, I ought to add the humiliating truth—that each
day after going through with her ordeal, she would come home at night
and cry! She would talk quietly and firmly to the reporters who came to
our apartment; but after they had gone, she would be in a nervous fever
of rage, because we had had to do such a “stunt,” in order to get the
truth into the rotten newspapers.
Ladies in the South are, of course, not accustomed to having their
husbands in jail; so on the third day M. C. S. collected all our most
respectable-looking “mourners,” Leonard Abbott, George Sterling, Frank
Shay and Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Walker, and put them on duty. Then she betook
herself to the Criminal Courts Building, where she caused much
embarrassment to several gentlemen in high station. The
District-Attorney told her what to do, and helped her to make out the
necessary papers; then she set out to find the judge. But the Criminal
Courts Building is confusing to strangers; there is a central balcony,
and all four sides of it look exactly alike, and M. C. S. got lost. She
stopped a gentleman coming out of a court-room, and asked where she
could find Justice So-and-so. “He is in room seventeen,” was the answer.
“But I can’t find room seventeen,” said M. C. S. “Please show me.” “What
do you wish with Justice So-and-so?” inquired the gentleman, politely.
“Why,” said M. C. S., “some imbecile of a judge has sent my husband to
jail.” “Madam,” said the gentleman—still politely, “I am the judge.”
She found Justice So-and-so. His court was in session and he could not
be interrupted. But in the South, you understand, anything from a court
to a fire-engine will stop to pick up a lady’s handkerchief. And
moreover, the father of M. C. S. is a judge, so she knows about them.
She walked down the aisle and addressed his honor with her quietest
smile, and—the court proceedings halted while the necessary papers were
signed, and a Socialist muck-raker was released from jail.
The reason for this step was our desire to test in the higher courts the
question whether a man whose conduct had been “that of a perfect
gentleman” could properly be found guilty of “using threatening, abusive
and insulting behavior.” In order to appeal the case it was necessary to
pay the fine under protest, so I paid one dollar, and came out on the
last day—to behold the crowd of ten thousand people, and the mounted
policemen, and the moving-picture operators in the windows of nearby
office-buildings. And so, day after day, we were enabled to give
information about the Colorado coal-strike to a group of reporters for
the New York papers!
Several of these reporters were men of conscience. One, Isaac Russell of
the “Times,” became our friend, and day after day he would tell us of
his struggles in the “Times” office, and how nearly every word favorable
to myself or to the strikers was blue-penciled from his story. So during
this Broadway demonstration, and the affair in Tarrytown which followed
it, we lived, as it were, on the inside of the “Times” office, and
watched the process of strangling the news. We have seen the tears come
into Russell’s eyes as he told about what was done. And on top of it
all, Mr. Adolph Ochs gave a banquet to the “Times” staff, to celebrate
some anniversary of the paper, and got up and made a speech to them—a
speech to Isaac Russell!—telling what a wonderful institution he had
made out of the “Times,” and how it stood consecrated to the public
welfare and the service of the truth!
P. S.—Isaac Russell reads the above, and corrects one serious error. He
writes in emphatic capitals:
“WE REPORTERS PAID FOR THAT DINNER!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE CASE OF THE “A. P.”
It must be understood that at this time the Colorado coal-strike had
been going on for six or seven months. Most of the tent-colonies had
been broken up, and the miners were being slowly starved into
submission. To one who comes into close touch with such a situation and
realizes its human meanings, it becomes an intolerable nightmare, a slow
murder committed in a buried dungeon. My mail was full of letters from
the miners and their leaders, and I went out to Colorado to see what
else could be done to reach the consciences of the American people. I
arrived in Denver at a time when the first public fury over the Ludlow
massacre had spent itself, and silence had once more been clamped down
upon the newspapers. I spoke at a mass meeting in the State capitol,
attended by one or two thousand people, and when I called on the
audience to pledge itself never to permit the prostituted State militia
to go back into the coal districts, I think every person in the
legislative chamber raised his hand and took the pledge. Yet not a line
about my speech was published in any Denver newspaper next morning, and
needless to say, not a line was sent out by the Associated Press.
The Associated Press was playing here precisely the same part it had
played with the “condemned meat industry;” that is, it was a concrete
wall. I have now to tell about a thorough test of this leading agency of
capitalist repression. I consider the incident the most important which
this book contains, and therefore I shall tell it in detail. By far the
greater part of the news which the American people absorb about the
outside world comes through the Associated Press, and the news they get
is, of course, the raw material of their thought. If the news is colored
or doctored, then public opinion is betrayed and the national life is
corrupted at its source. There is no more important question to be
considered by the American people than the question, Is the Associated
Press fair? Does it transmit the news?
Some time previous to the Colorado coal-strike I had attended a dinner
of the Socialist Press Club, at which the question of dishonest
newspapers was debated, and one of the speakers was Mr. Fabian Franklin,
then editor of the “Evening Post,” an amiable old gentleman who quite
naïvely referred to the Associated Press as he would have referred to
the Holy Trinity. He told of some radical friend of his who had pointed
out that the Associated Press had circulated the news of a defeat of the
Initiative and Referendum in Oregon, and subsequently, when the
Initiative and Referendum had been victorious, had failed to report the
victory. “Just think of it!” said this amiable old gentleman. “My
radical friend actually believed that the Associated Press would have
some motive in suppressing news about the success of the Initiative and
Referendum in Oregon!”
I was called upon to answer this argument. I quote from an account of
the discussion in the “New York Call”:
Sinclair was saying that when the fusion of capitalism beat Seidel
(Socialist) in Milwaukee, the wires were full of it, but when Duncan
(Socialist) beat a fusion in Butte, the press was as silent as the
tomb. Franklin said that it was merely that Butte had no news value,
while Milwaukee, “Schlitz beer—everybody wants to know about
Milwaukee.”
Incidentally I might mention in passing that this amiable old gentleman,
Mr. Fabian Franklin, who thinks that the Associated Press would be
incapable of suppressing news about a triumph of the Initiative and
Referendum, and that it would naturally send out political news about
Milwaukee because Schlitz beer is made in Milwaukee, has just recently
been selected by a group of reactionaries to conduct a weekly organ of
safety and sanity, “The Review.” The reader will be able from the above
anecdote to form an idea of the intellectual status of Mr. Franklin, and
the likelihood of his having anything worth while to say to the American
people in this greatest crisis of history!
Shortly afterwards came the case of the “Masses,” which published a
cartoon representing the president of the Associated Press as pouring a
bottle labeled “Poison” into a reservoir entitled “Public Opinion.” The
Associated Press caused the arrest of Max Eastman and Art Young on a
charge of criminal libel. They knew that by starting such a proceeding
they would gain an opportunity of propaganda, and of this they hastened
to make use. They issued an elaborate statement attacking the “Masses”
and defending their own attitude toward the news, which statement was
published in practically every paper in New York. I remember
particularly that our organ of civic virtue, the “New York Evening
Post,” published it in full. It included this sort of “dope”:
If these young men had investigated before they spoke, they would
never have said what they did; for if there is a clean thing in the
United States it is the Associated Press. The personnel of the service
is made up as a whole of newspaper men of the finest type; throughout
the profession employment in its service is regarded as an evidence of
character and reliability. No general policy of suppression or
distortion could be carried on without the knowledge and indeed the
active connivance of these men, stationed at strategic points all over
the world. Aside from that, the Associated Press has the active
competition of several other aggressive press associations and
thousands of special correspondents, and any laxity or deliberate
failure on its part would be exposed instantly to its members, who
would be quick to resent and punish any such procedure. These members,
some nine hundred in number, represent every shade of political and
economic opinion, and it is absurd to suppose that a general policy of
distortion or suppression could be carried on without immediate
exposure.
The editors of the “Masses,” of course, proceeded to collect evidence,
and the Associated Press must have realized very quickly that they were
in for serious trouble. They caused a subservient district attorney to
bring another indictment, charging libel against the individual who had
been portrayed in the cartoon: the purpose of the change being that they
hoped to exclude from the trial all evidence against the Associated
Press as an organization, and to force the “Masses” to prove that this
one individual had had personal knowledge of each instance of news
suppression and perversion.
Gilbert E. Roe, who was preparing the case for the “Masses,” asked me to
tell him of my experiences with the Associated Press, and in talking the
matter over he explained what would be required to constitute legal
evidence of the suppression of news. I had no such legal evidence in the
case of the “condemned meat industry,” because I had not kept copies of
my letters to the Associated Press, and I had not kept the clippings of
what they actually did send out on the story. I promised Mr. Roe that
the next time I went to the bat with the “A. P.,” I would take pains to
get proper evidence; and now in Denver I came suddenly upon my
opportunity. I got real legal evidence, and the Associated Press knows
that I got it, and I have been told that because of this they will never
again dare to bring radicals into court, or to defend the thesis that
they handle the news impartially. In my challenge I deliberately
repeated the words for use of which the “Masses” editors were indicted,
as follows:
I now, over my own signature and as a deliberate challenge, charge
that the Associated Press has poisoned the news of the Colorado
situation at its source. Will the owners and managers of the
Associated Press take up this challenge and make an attempt to send me
to prison? I am waiting, gentlemen, for your answer.
This was published May 30, 1914, and I am still waiting. I made every
effort, both public and private, to get this answer. I besieged the
Associated Press and also the Associated Press newspapers, but no answer
could be had, so I think I may fairly say that the Associated Press
admitted its guilt in this case. The story, first published in the
“Appeal to Reason,” was written within a few hours of the events
narrated, and gave all the documents. With the addition of a few
explanations, made necessary by the lapse of time, the story is given
unchanged in the next two chapters. It is a long story, but it will
repay study, for there are few narratives of recent events which take
you quite so far into the “inside,” or reveal quite so clearly how
Politics, Journalism, and Big Business work hand in hand for the
hoodwinking of the public and the plundering of labor. I urge the reader
to follow the narrative carefully, for every detail is necessary to the
proper comprehension of the plot.
CHAPTER XXVI
A GOVERNOR AND HIS LIE
The crux of the struggle in Denver during these critical months was the
State militia. This militia had been called out and sent to the
strike-field because of violence deliberately and systematically
committed by the armed thugs of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.
There were one or two thousand of these thugs in the field, and they had
beaten up the strikers and their wives, and turned machine-guns upon
their tent-colonies. The militia had come, supposedly to restore law and
order, but the militia authorities had proceeded to recruit new
companies from among these detectives and thugs. This was systematically
denied by the newspapers, not merely in Colorado, but all over the
country; later on, however, the State legislature forced the production
of the roster of the militia, and it appeared that of one single
company, newly recruited, one hundred and nineteen members out of one
hundred and twenty-two had been employes of the strike-breaking
agencies, and had continued on the pay-rolls of the coal-companies while
serving in the State militia! They had been armed by the State, clothed
in the uniform of the State, covered by the flag of the State—and turned
loose to commit the very crimes they were supposed to be preventing! The
culmination of this perversion of government had been the Ludlow
Massacre, which drove the miners to frenzy. There had been a miniature
revolution in Colorado; armed workingmen had taken possession of the
coal-country, and the helpless State government had appealed to the
Federal authorities to send in Federal troops.
The Federal troops had come, and the miners had loyally obeyed them.
From the hour that the first regulars appeared, no shot was fired in the
whole region. The Federal authorities preserved law and order, and
meantime the State legislature was called to deal with the situation.
This State legislature was composed of hand-picked machine politicians,
and all its orders were given from the offices of the Colorado Fuel &
Iron Company. Senator Van Tilborg, machine-leader, personally declared
to me his opinion that all the State needed was “three hundred men who
could shoot straight and quick.” The State authorities meant to find
these three hundred men; they passed a bill appropriating a million
dollars for military purposes, and another bill providing for the
disarming of all people in the State who were not in the service of the
corporations.
The strike at this time had continued for seven months, and the strikers
were in their tent-colonies, sullenly awaiting developments. The program
of the corporations was to strengthen the State militia, then have it
take charge and maintain itself by machine-guns. The attitude of the
general public to this proposition may be gathered from the mass-meeting
in the State capitol, where one or two thousand people raised their
hands and pledged themselves that they would never permit the
prostituted militia to go back to the mines.
So stood the situation on Saturday, May 16, 1914, the day the State
legislature was scheduled to adjourn. President Wilson, who had sent in
the Federal troops reluctantly, was waiting in Washington to see what
measures the State authorities would take to put an end to the
prevailing civil war. By Saturday morning he had come to realize that no
adequate measures were being taken, and he sent from Washington a
telegram to Governor Ammons of Colorado:
Am disturbed to hear of the probability of the adjournment of your
legislature, and feel bound to remind you that my constitutional
obligations with regard to the maintenance of order in Colorado are
not to be indefinitely continued by the inaction of the State
legislature. The Federal forces are there only until the State of
Colorado has time and opportunity to resume complete sovereignty and
control in the matter. I cannot conceive that the State is willing to
forego her sovereignty, or to throw herself entirely upon the
government of the United States, and I am quite clear that she has no
constitutional right to do so when it is within the power of her
legislature to take effective action.
And now begins a story of political crookedness, the like of which had
never come under my personal observation. I had been in Denver four
days, and had opportunity to meet a score of people who knew the
situation intimately, and who were able to put me on the “inside.” So I
can invite you into the Governor’s private office at eleven o’clock on
Saturday morning, when the above telegram from President Wilson arrived.
First, let me describe this Governor, as I wrote about him in the
“Denver Express”:
I went yesterday afternoon to see your Governor. I wish to be very
careful what I say of him. He is apparently a kindly man; in
intellectual caliber fitted for the duties of a Sunday-School
superintendent in a small village. He is one of the most pitiful
figures it has ever been my fate to encounter. He pleaded with me that
he was a ranchman, a workingman, that he was ignorant about such
matters as mines. When I pointed out to him that, according to
government figures, there were twelve times as many miners killed and
injured by accidents in the southern Colorado fields as elsewhere, his
only answer was that he had heard some vague statement to the effect
that conditions were different in other places. He pleaded tearfully
that he had brought upon himself the hatred of everyone, he admitted
that he was utterly bewildered, and had no idea what to do in this
crisis. His every word made evident his utter ignorance of the
economic forces which have produced this frightful situation. He cried
out for some solution; yet, every time that I sought to suggest a
solution, and to pin him down to a “yes” or a “no” upon a certain
course of action, he lost control of himself and cried out that I was
trying to make him “express an opinion.” He, the Governor of the
State, had no business to have opinions about such a dispute!
It is no accident, of course, that a man of this type comes to be
governor of a State like Colorado. The corporations deliberately select
such men because they wish to be let alone, and they prefer men who are
too weak to interfere with them, even if they wish to interfere. So now
at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning this poor pitiful Governor sends
for his advisors—the leaders of the hand-picked machine majority in the
State legislature. What is to be done? If the President’s telegram is
sent to the legislature, it may refuse to adjourn, and insist upon
considering the President’s demand. Therefore, at all hazards, the
telegram must be suppressed. Also, it must be sent to the coal-operators
in the city, in order that they may consult and tell the Governor what
reply to make to the President. All the newspaper men in Denver knew the
names of the two men who took the message about to the operators. It was
considered by the operators for three or four hours, and a reply drafted
and sent; and meantime desperate efforts were made by the machine
leaders to obtain the adjournment of the legislature. The reply drafted
by the operators and sent by the Governor was as follows:
Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Washington:
I regret exceedingly that you have been misinformed. The legislature
has just passed an act, which I have approved, providing for a bond
issue of one million dollars for the purpose of paying the
indebtedness which has been incurred and which may be incurred in
suppressing insurrection and defending the State. As soon as these
bonds can be issued, these funds will be available and this State can
and will control the situation. This is the only constitutional method
of raising funds in immediate future. In addition to this act the
legislature has enacted a law permitting the Governor to dose saloons
in time of disorder, and also a law prohibiting the carrying and
disposition of firearms in time of disorder. Moreover, a committee on
mediation on the present strike has been provided for and appointed.
Now the heart of our story is this last sentence in the Governor’s
telegram: this “committee on mediation on the present strike.” If such a
committee had been appointed, the legislature might fairly claim to have
done its best to settle the strife. But _had_ such a committee been
appointed? It had _not_. The coal-operators, confused by the President’s
sudden action, had caused their poor Governor to telegraph the President
a lie; and now all their agencies of repression were brought to bear to
keep the truth, not merely from the President, but from the whole
country.
First of all, it must be kept from the State legislature itself! A
senator tried to have the President’s telegram and the Governor’s answer
read in the senate, but by parliamentary juggling this was prevented.
All debate was forbidden; but a Democratic woman senator, Helen Ring
Robinson, succeeded in getting in a few words of protest, under the
guise of an “explanation” of her vote. Senator Robinson read the last
sentence of the Governor’s answer: “Moreover a committee on mediation on
the present strike has been provided for and appointed.” Said Senator
Robinson: “I know of no such committee which has been appointed by this
assembly.”
Lieutenant-Governor Fitzgarald replied that the resolution providing for
the “strike investigating committee” provided for mediation.
“But,” protested Senator Robinson, “I can’t find a sentence in that
resolution that mentions ‘mediation.’ I can’t see a word on ‘mediation’
in the resolutions.”
“Whereupon” (I am quoting the account from the “Rocky Mountain News” of
May 17th), “Senator A. N. Parrish, conservative Republican, objected
that the motion was not debatable. Further discussion was shut off, the
motion to read the President’s telegram was laid on the table, and the
senate adjourned.”
Now on that critical Saturday evening it happened that I was a guest at
the home of the late Chief Justice Steele of Colorado, and there I met
Senator Robinson. She asked me if I could not do something to make this
matter clear to the country. Could I, for example, find out if the
Associated Press had gotten the point straight? With the Senator sitting
by my side I called the Associated Press on the ’phone and spoke with
Mr. A. C. Rowsey, its night editor in charge in Denver. I told Mr.
Rowsey that I was in consultation with an opposition Senator, and that
my attention had been called to this point, which I endeavored to
explain.
Mr. Rowsey laughed good-naturedly at my effort to enlighten his great
institution. He informed me that they had trained men up at the capitol
watching every point of the procedure, and that they had got the story
quite correct. I endeavored to make the precise point about the phrase
“mediation”; but not having any copy of the proceedings before me, and
being really unable to believe that Senator Robinson could be correct in
attributing such an open falsehood to the Governor of the State, I
permitted Mr. Rowsey to back me down, and hung up the receiver feeling
that I had made a fool of myself.
But later that evening I went to the office of the “Rocky Mountain
News,” where I was able to see a copy of the official record in the
case, the House Journal of the proceedings of May 15, 1914. The measure
was contained on pages 7, 8, and 9, and on page 47 there was an
amendment. I read the bill and amendment, line by line, and I did not
find in it the word “mediation.” The measure provided as follows:
Resolved, That a joint committee of six members, three selected by the
senate and three by the house, said members to be selected by the body
of each house shall be appointed and directed to confer and advise
with the Governor and other executive officers of the State to the end
that the legislative department may render all assistance in its power
to the executive department in the enforcement of law and the
maintenance of order, and to consider ways and means of restoring and
maintaining peace and good order throughout the State; and to
investigate and make report at the next session of the legislature
upon the following matters and subjects:
The bill then goes on to outline an elaborate series of matters for
investigation—whether the coal companies have obeyed the laws; what
wages they have paid; the terms of the mining leases; the employment of
gunmen; what efforts have been made to settle the strike, etc. The
amendment provides for further inquiry into the names of strike leaders,
their nationality, etc., and the causes of violence. These subjects
were, of course, enough to occupy a committee for many months. There was
nowhere in the bill anything suggested about settling the present
strike. On the contrary, the express task of the committee was said to
be “to generally investigate all matters connected with said strike;
that remedial legislation may be enacted _at the next General Assembly_
which will tend to prevent _a recurrence of insurrection and public
disorder_.”
Now, do not think that I am juggling words over the question of the
precise meaning of the above bill. The distinction between the bill
which had actually been passed, and the bill which the Governor told
President Wilson had been passed, was vital and fundamental. Here was a
desperate struggle, the class-war in literal truth, involving the two
greatest forces in modern society. The whole State was torn apart over
it, and if anybody were going to “mediate” and “settle” it, the whole
State wished to know it, and must have known it. At the time that this
investigation bill was passed, it was an investigation bill and nothing
else, and this was understood by everyone who had anything to do with
it. The measure was regarded as of so little importance that the “Rocky
Mountain News” of the day after its passage did not even refer to it. It
was one more “committee to investigate,” and the State was sick of such.
By actual count there had been more than _sixty_ such committees
appointed already—one of them a committee from Congress, which had taken
testimony filling ten volumes! It was perfectly understood by everyone
that the purpose of this new legislative committee was to collect a lot
of facts prejudicial to the strikers. Its members were all machine
politicians of the very worst type. The idea of such a committee
attempting to “mediate,” or to “settle the strike,” would have been
regarded as a joke by the whole State; but no one had any such idea. It
was not until Governor Ammons and his advisors found themselves “in a
hole,” that they hit upon the scheme of calling this a “committee on
mediation.”
Also, let us get clear the purpose of this trickery. The purpose was to
keep the President of the United States from intervening to force a
compromise, as he was threatening to do. The legislature was to be
adjourned, and the President was to find himself in a position where he
would have to keep the Federal troops in the field and do the work of
repression which the prostituted State militia of Colorado could no
longer do. Such was the plan—and I might add that it was carried out
completely.
Next morning, by consulting with other members of the legislature, and
with several lawyers in Denver, I made quite certain of the facts. Also
I made certain that the Associated Press had sent out no hint of these
facts. The Associated Press had sent merely the President’s telegram and
the Governor’s answer. Presumably, therefore, the President had
swallowed the Governor’s lie. Beyond question the country had swallowed
it. It seemed to me that here was an occasion for an honest man to make
his voice heard; so I sent a telegram to President Wilson, as follows:
President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C.:
As one in position to observe from inside the events in this capital,
I respectfully call your attention to the lack of fairness of Governor
Ammons in withholding your telegram from the legislature for four
hours while efforts were made to adjourn. All newspaper men know that
during that time your telegram was in the hands of all coal-operators
in this city, and they know the men who took it to them. Furthermore,
they know that Governor Ammons’ telegram to you contains a falsehood.
The word “mediation” did not appear in the measure referred to, which
provides for investigation only. There has been a ten-volume
investigation already. Governor Ammons declared to me personally that
he means to return the militia to the strike-fields. Twenty
independent investigators, reporters, lawyers, relief-workers assure
me result will be civil war on a scale never before known in American
labor dispute. Miners by thousands pledged to die rather than submit
to more government by gunmen.
UPTON SINCLAIR.
I took this telegram on Sunday evening to the editor of the “Rocky
Mountain News.” He said, “It is a splendid telegram; it covers the
case.” I said, “Will you publish it?” He answered, “I will.” I said,
“Will the Associated Press get it from the News?” He answered, “It
will.” It might be well to finish this part of the matter by stating
that on the next evening I had a conversation with Mr. Rowsey, in charge
of the Associated Press, as follows: “Did you get my telegram from the
‘News’?” “We did.” “You did not send it out, I believe?” “We did not.”
The “Rocky Mountain News” had been for many years a hide-bound
corporation newspaper, but at this moment the owner of the paper had, so
I was told, some kind of a personal quarrel with the coal operators. At
any rate, he had placed in charge a young Chicago newspaper man, Wm. L.
Chenery, with orders to publish the truth. That the “News” was not
favoring me personally will be clearly seen from the fact that on
Tuesday morning it published a ferocious attack upon me by Gov. Ammons,
and refused to publish a word of what I offered in reply. Nevertheless,
on Monday morning the “News” published a two-column editorial headed:
“To the Patriots of Colorado.” Says the “News”: “Not one word about
mediation is contained in the entire resolution. The committee is given
no power to mediate. They may investigate, examine and report, and that
is all.” And elsewhere the editorial says: “A committee on mediation has
not been provided for; and none has been appointed. Think of the
inutterable weakness of such conduct! Think of its stupidity!”
Such was the voice of unprejudiced opinion in the city of Denver on the
subject of the Governor’s telegram. And what did the country hear about
the controversy? Not a word! The Associated Press had all facts. It came
to the “News” office and got everything the “News” had; and it sent out
not one word! On the contrary, the Associated Press did its best to
persuade the country that the President was pleased with Ammons’ reply.
It sent out the following:
Washington, May 16.—President Wilson expressed satisfaction with the
situation after he received Governor Ammons’ reply late tonight. It
was said by officials in close touch with the President that Wilson
was greatly pleased with what had been done after he had been informed
by Governor Ammons of the work of the Colorado legislature, and that
he hoped the State would assume control of the situation in the near
future so the Federal troops might be withdrawn.
That this was an Associated Press invention, made to help out the poor
Governor, was made clear the next morning by the “News,” whose own
correspondent wired the following:
Washington, May 17.—At the White House it was stated that nothing had
been given out which would justify the statement printed in some of
the morning papers that the President is entirely satisfied with the
telegram received yesterday from Governor Ammons.
I was by this time thoroughly wrought up over the situation, determined
that the country should somehow hear the truth. I besieged the offices
of the Denver newspapers; as a result the “Denver Post,” on Monday
afternoon, published on its front page, with a heading in large red
letters, an interview with Governor Ammons, in which that worthy
denounced me as an “itinerant investigator,” also as a “prevaricator.”
The Governor’s defense on the point at issue was this:
In regard to Sinclair’s declaration that the word “mediation” did not
appear in the resolution appointing a committee to investigate the
strike, Ammons explained:
“Probably that particular word does not occur, but a reading of the
resolution will show that it gives the legislative committee power ‘to
assist in settling the strike.’ If that isn’t mediation I’d like to
know the true meaning of the word.”
I felt pretty sick when I read that interview; I thought the Governor
must “have” me for sure! With sinking heart I went and procured a copy
of the House Journal, to see if I could possibly have overlooked such a
phrase as “to assist in settling the strike.” I read over line by line
the three pages of the bill, and the one page of amendment; and, behold,
there was no such phrase: “to assist in settling the strike.” There was
nothing in any way remotely suggesting it! On the contrary, there was
the explicit statement of the purposes of the committee “_to generally
investigate all matters connected with said strike; that remedial
legislation may be enacted_ AT THE NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY _which will
tend to prevent_ A RECURRENCE OF INSURRECTION AND PUBLIC DISORDER.”
The Governor had lied again!
So then I wrote the Governor a letter. I said:
You have relied upon the fact that the man in the street has not
access to the volume of the House Journal, and will accept your
statements upon their face. This, of course, puts me at a cruel
disadvantage, for you are a prominent official and I am only an
“itinerant investigator.” But I propose, if possible, to compel you to
face this issue. I will name two friends as a committee to represent
me to settle this question at issue. I request you to name two
friends. I request you to point out to them in the measure in question
the word “mediation” or the phrase “to assist in settling the strike.”
Your two friends will then bring it to my two friends, who, seeing the
phrase in print in the House Journal, will be obliged to admit that I
am wrong. You have objected to my presence in the state, upon the
ground that I am meddling in the affairs of the people of Colorado.
Very well, sir, I hereby offer you a simple way to rid the state of my
presence. I hereby agree that if your two friends can point out to my
two friends the word or phrase in question, I will quit the borders of
your State within twenty-four hours and never return to it. Upon your
acceptance of this proposition, I shall name my two friends.
This letter was mailed to the Governor on Monday night; also copies were
mailed to the newspapers. At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, while
dictating my article for the “Appeal to Reason,” I called up Mr. F. G.
Bonfils, editor in charge and one of the owners of the “Denver Post.”
The following conversation occurred:
“Good morning, Mr. Bonfils; this is Upton Sinclair. Did you receive the
copy of the letter which I mailed to Governor Ammons last night?”
“I did.”
“May I ask if you intend to publish it?”
“I do not.”
“May I ask what is your reason for refusing?”
“The reason is that things have been stirred up enough, we think. The
people in this city want peace.”
“Does it seem to you that this is fair journalism?”
“Now, listen, my boy, don’t try to argue with me; you have had plenty of
room to spread your ideas in our paper.”
“You are entirely mistaken, Mr. Bonfils. You have not reported a single
speech that I made in this town. You did not even print my telegram to
President Wilson. But you print the Governor’s answer to it.”
“Well, now, we don’t want to stir up this question any further. We think
this State is very much in need of peace. We are not looking for
trouble. If we printed your answer to the Governor, we should have to
print the Governor’s answer to you. And so it would go on indefinitely,
and we don’t want people calling each other names in our paper.”
“If that is the case, why did you print the Governor’s attack upon me?”
“Now, listen, kid, don’t get excited.”
“I was never less excited in my life, Mr. Bonfils. I am simply asking
politely for an explanation.”
“Well, now, we don’t care to argue this question with you.”
“You have called me a liar in your paper, and refuse me an opportunity
to defend myself? Is that correct?”
“Yes; it’s correct.”
“Well, then I simply wish to tell you this one further thing. I am at
present in a stenographer’s office dictating an account of this
conversation for a publication which has a circulation of five hundred
thousand——”
“I don’t care if it has a circulation of five hundred million.”
“Then you are willing for this conversation to be reported as expressing
the attitude of the ‘Post’?”
“Say, Bill, we have been attacked so often by fellows like you, and we
have got so prosperous on it, that we don’t care anything about it.”
“Very well, then; good morning.”
The above conversation was recorded in the following way. The
stenographer sat by my side at the telephone, and took down every word
that I said. Immediately afterwards this was read off to me, and I
filled in Mr. Bonfils’ answers. As it happens that I have a good memory
for words, I can state that the above is for practical purposes a
stenographic record of the conversation. And later on I went out and
bought an early edition of the “Post,” and found the man had “carried
over” the Governor’s attack, a reprint from the day before! And then,
walking down the street, I came to the building of the “Post,” and
looked up and saw—oh, masterpiece of humor!—an inscription graven all
the way across the stone front of the building:
JUSTICE, WHEN EXPELLED FROM OTHER HABITATIONS, MAKE THIS THY
DWELLING-PLACE.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT THE BAR
Let us return to Monday evening, and to our main theme, the Associated
Press. I saw here my long-awaited chance to put this organization on
record. I believed, and still believe, that this was a perfect case of
news-suppression. Here was the closest approach yet made to social
revolution in America; here was the class-war, naked and undisguised—on
the one side the lives of thirty or forty thousand wage-slaves, on the
other side a hundred million dollars of invested capital, controlling
the government of an entire state, and using this control to suppress
every legal and constitutional right of American citizens, and to drive
them to armed revolt. To this conspiracy the Associated Press had lent
itself; it was being used, precisely as the Baldwin-Felts Detective
Agency, precisely as the puppets of the State government. The directors
and managers of the Associated Press were as directly responsible for
the subsequent starvation of these thousands of Colorado mine-slaves as
if they had taken them and strangled them with their naked fingers. If
it had been such individual crimes of strangling, all society would have
agreed on the need of publicity. I have made it my task in life to force
the same kind of publicity for the economic crimes of predatory social
classes. I considered now that the time for action had come, and as my
final test of the “A. P.” I prepared a second telegram to President
Wilson, as follows:
President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C:
In interview tonight, Governor Ammons brands me as prevaricator for my
statement to you that commission of mediation was not provided. He now
admits the word “mediation” does not appear, but insists that the
phrase “to assist in settling the strike” is equivalent. No such
phrase occurs. I urgently request you to get the full text of this
resolution and realize what it means that the Governor of this State
is wilfully and deliberately endeavoring to deceive you and the public
in this crisis.
Wishing to make quite certain in this vital matter, I took the trouble
to write out my plan of action, and took it to a personal friend, a
leading newspaper editor in Denver. He said, “Don’t do it.” I asked,
“Why not?” The answer was, “It will make you so many powerful enemies
that you will be unable to do anything more to send out news.” I
answered that I had never been able to do anything with the Associated
Press—it was always and invariably closed to what I had to say, and only
mentioned me when it had something considered discreditable, such as my
being sent to jail. My friend answered, “Well, if you can stand being
hated and suppressed for the balance of your life, go ahead.”
I could stand that. So I took the volume of the House Journal and a copy
of my telegram to President Wilson, and went down to the office of the
Associated Press in the Ernest & Cranmer Building, and saw Mr. A. C.
Rowsey, with whom I had talked over the phone the night before. He was
very pleasant and friendly; and I wish to state that the attitude
manifested by the Associated Press in this test case was in no way due
to any personal difficulty or ill feeling. Mr. Rowsey showed himself a
gracious host, and I never had a more pleasant interview with anyone.
I showed him the House Journal, and he read the four pages with
interest. He read my telegram to the President, and then stated that
they would refuse to carry it, as they had refused to carry the one they
had got from the “News” on the previous day. His explanation was that it
was the policy of the Associated Press “to avoid controversy.” If they
once got started they would never know where to stop.
I said, “But Mr. Rowsey, this controversy is the most important item of
news on the Colorado situation tonight. I have here put before you
indisputable documentary evidence that Governor Ammons has lied to
President Wilson; and surely the public would want to know that fact.
Surely the public has at least a right to know of the charge, and to
make up its own mind as to its truth or falsity.” Mr. Rowsey’s answer
was, “Our wire from Colorado is very much crowded these days, and this
controversy does not seem to us to be news.” I said, “Very well, Mr.
Rowsey; will you now permit me to hand to you this letter, which I have
drafted to serve as a record of the circumstances.”
He took the letter and read as follows:
Denver, Colo., May 18, 1914.
CORRESPONDENT ASSOCIATED PRESS,
Denver, Colorado.
_Dear Sir_:
Yesterday I sent President Wilson a telegram, which I believed and
still believe was of vital public importance. A copy of this telegram
was put into your hands last night by the “Rocky Mountain News” and
was refused by you. I now offer you a second telegram, bearing upon
this subject. At the same time I offer for your inspection a copy of
the House Journal in order that you may verify the truth of the
statements contained in my telegram to President Wilson. I shall
first, in a personal interview, politely request you to send this
telegram over your wires. If you refuse to do so, I shall—in order to
put you upon record—place this letter in your hands and request you to
sign the statement below. If you refuse to sign it, I shall understand
that you refuse to send out this telegram over your wires, and I shall
proceed to send it to the papers myself, and I shall subsequently take
steps to make these circumstances known to the public.
Respectfully,
UPTON SINCLAIR.
MR. UPTON SINCLAIR, City:
_Dear Sir_:—The undersigned, correspondent of the Associated Press in
Denver, agrees to send your telegram to President Wilson over its
wires tonight.
........................................
Mr. Rowsey read this letter and handed it back to me, with the smiling
remark: “I see you are getting a good story.” I thanked him, and left. I
went down-stairs to the telegraph-office and sent a copy of my telegram
to President Wilson to a selection of newspapers all over the country.
They were as follows: New York “Times,” “World,” “Herald,” “Sun” and
“Call”; Chicago “Examiner” and “Tribune”; Philadelphia “North American”
and “Press”; Baltimore “Sun”; Washington “Times”; Boston “Herald” and
“Journal”; Topeka “Journal”; Kansas City “Star”; Milwaukee “Journal”;
Atlanta “Georgian”; New Orleans “Times-Democrat”; Omaha “News”;
Pittsburg “Post.”
Now, I submit that here is a definite test of the service of the
Associated Press. Is it sending out all the material which its papers
want? Is it suppressing anything which its papers would be glad to
publish if they could get it? Let the reader observe that these
newspapers are not merely radical and progressive ones; they include
some of the staunchest stand-pat papers in the country, the New York
“Times” and “Herald,” for example. They are all save two or three of
them Associated Press papers. To make the test automatic I sent the
telegrams “collect.” The editors had the right to read the message, and
if they did not want it, to refuse to pay for it, having it sent back to
me for collection. Out of the twenty papers, how many took this step?
Only five! The other fifteen took the story that the Associated Press
refused to send out. This is a remarkable showing, considering the fact
that I sent the telegram late in the evening, and too late for most of
the Eastern papers. It should be pointed out that a newspaper editor is
far less disposed to print a dispatch which comes from an unauthorized
person. My charge was a startling one, and an editor would naturally
doubt it. He would say, “If it is true, why doesn’t the Associated Press
send it?” Mr. Rowsey, in Denver, had the House Journal before him; but
the city editors of newspapers all over the country did not have this
advantage, and would naturally be disposed to rely upon Mr. Rowsey.
It might be worth while to add that the claims made in my two telegrams
to President Wilson were fully vindicated by subsequent events. The
committee of six machine legislators, appointed to collect material
discreditable to the strikers and their leaders, proceeded to vindicate
the Governor and redeem his reputation by going through a pretense of
“mediation”; but the public paid so little attention to the farce that
it petered out in two or three days. The strike lasted for another seven
months, and all that time the Federal troops remained in the field—the
very thing which President Wilson had declared himself determined to
avoid, and which the coal-operators had been determined to force upon
him!
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ITS NEWSPAPERS
I am giving a great deal of space in a small book to this one test of
the Associated Press. I think that the subject is an important one, and
that the documents in the case should be available to students. In the
present chapter I give the reaction of the press of America to this
particular test. If the reader is not interested in such details, he may
skip this chapter.
I have talked over this case with many lawyers, and shown them the
documents, and asked: “Is there any legal flaw in them?” They have never
been able to point out one. Also I have talked the case over with
journalists—some of the most eminent of capitalist journalists, as I
shall presently narrate, and have asked them to point out a flaw. They
have pointed out what they think is a flaw—that in presenting to the
Associated Press my telegram to President Wilson, I was asking the
Associated Press to give publicity to my name and personality, and the
Associated Press might have been justified in refusing the request.
I answer that there were many ways in which the “A. P.” could have
handled this matter without mentioning my name: a fact which I plainly
pointed out to Mr. Rowsey. The first time I spoke to him—over the
telephone—I was speaking, not for myself, but for Senator Robinson. She,
a duly elected representative of the people of Colorado, speaking in
their legislature, had nailed the Governor’s lie, and it was Mr.
Rowsey’s unquestionable duty to report her words. It was only when I
realized how completely the “A. P.” was in the hands of the
coal-operators that I “butted in” on the matter at all. And when my
telegram was refused by Mr. Rowsey, I was careful to point out to him
that there were other ways he might handle this news. He might give the
story as coming from Senator Robinson; he might send extracts from the
editorial of the “Rocky Mountain News”; he might send a dispatch saying,
“It is generally reported in Denver,” or “Protests are being made in
Denver.” All this I made clear, and he in return made clear why he did
not do so. Anyone who had been present at our long and partly humorous
interview would have perceived that this was no error in judgment of an
individual employe of the “A. P.,” but a definite policy of the great
machine. Mr. Rowsey went so far as to say to me that he was a Socialist,
in sympathy with my point of view, and that he personally would have
been willing to send out a straight story.
In exactly the same way, when I took this story to various newspapers
and magazines, I tried to suppress my own personality. I said to the
editors: “If you are not willing to discuss the grievance of Upton
Sinclair, then make an investigation of your own. Send a representative
to Denver and interview Senator Robinson and write about the efforts of
a progressive woman senator for fair play in this strike. Take the
telegrams which passed between the President and the Governor of
Colorado, take the pretenses of the fake mediation commission and the
false reports of the Associated Press about it, and write the story
without mentioning my name.” But all such suggestions were in vain.
There was no capitalist magazine or newspaper in the United States that
would take up the conduct of the Associated Press in the Colorado
strike.
In one of its published statements in the “New York Evening Post,” the
Associated Press had explained its stern attitude toward the editors of
the “Masses”:
The Associated Press is not prosecuting the case in any vengeful
spirit, but is fighting for a public vindication. For several years
the association has sat silent under accusations of this kind,
reflecting upon the integrity of the service and the personal honor of
its responsible officers, because the charges were made either on the
floor of Congress, where no redress is possible, or by persons who
were careful or lucky in avoiding the legal limitations of civil or
criminal libel. In several cases the persons making the charges
retracted them absolutely. At last they have a case involving libel
per se, and they purpose to avail themselves of the opportunity to
present to the public the facts regarding the service.
This, you perceive, is dignified and impressive; dignity and
impressiveness are virtues permissible to great capitalist institutions.
But now make note: my challenge to the Associated Press, published in
the “Appeal to Reason,” repeated the identical words for which the
editors of the “Masses” had been arrested; and I sent a copy to all the
leading officers of the Associated Press; I afterwards saw a letter,
signed by Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press,
acknowledging that he had seen it. Here surely was a charge “involving
libel per se,” and one which I had taken pains to make as emphatic, as
unconditional, as damaging as possible. It was a public challenge,
appearing on the front page of a newspaper whose circulation for that
week was five hundred and forty-eight thousand and forty. Yet the
Associated Press did not take up the challenge; it swallowed the insult.
Not only that, but every newspaper having the Associated Press service
did the same; some nine hundred newspapers throughout the United States
sat in silence and let this challenge pass unanswered. I had the “Appeal
to Reason” send a marked copy of this issue to every one of the nine
hundred Associated Press papers, and I wrote to my clipping-bureau,
asking them to watch especially for mention of the matter. This
clipping-bureau is the best in the country, and seldom misses anything
of importance. It could not find me a single mention of my challenge to
the Associated Press.
I next selected a list of forty of the leading papers of the country,
including the twenty to which I had sent the telegram from Denver. I
sent them a marked copy of the article, with a letter addressed to the
managing editor, pointing out what my challenge meant—that I had
publicly indicted the source from which this paper got the news which it
gave to the public. Would the paper defend the integrity of its news?
Would it force the Associated Press to explain this incident? Three
papers replied to my letter. I shall deal with them a little later. The
other thirty-seven papers left my letter unanswered. And let it be noted
that this included all the papers which make the greatest pose of
dignity and honor, such as the “Boston Evening Transcript,” the
“Springfield Republican,” the “New York Times,” the “Philadelphia Public
Ledger,” the “Baltimore Sun,” the “Chicago Tribune,” the “Louisville
Courier-Journal,” the “Memphis Commercial-Appeal,” the “Atlanta
Constitution.” Also, I tried the magazines. One week after the
publication of my challenge to the Associated Press there had appeared
in “Collier’s Weekly” a leading editorial entitled “In Justice to the A.
P.”:
The officers and members of the Associated Press have been kept busy
lately repelling attacks upon that organization. In so far as they are
defending themselves from the charge of wilful distortion of the news,
we sympathize with them. Six or seven years ago we printed a series of
articles which dealt with the general subject of “tainted news,” and
from time to time since then we have pointed out examples of this
insidious practice. During this time not less than a score of persons
have come to us with alleged examples of tampering with the news on
the part of the Associated Press. All of these cases we looked into
with care and pains, and many of the same were investigated by other
publications and persons. We have never found a case that justified us
in publishing the details or in making any charge of wilful distortion
against the Associated Press.
I wrote now to “Collier’s Weekly.” They had investigated a score of
cases, here was one more. Would they agree to investigate this, and to
publish the facts? To this challenge “Collier’s Weekly” made no
response. “Collier’s Weekly” did not investigate, and it never published
a line about the matter. Then I wrote to the editors of the “Outlook,”
the extremely pious instrument of the “clerical camouflage.” In its
issue of May 30, 1914, the “Outlook” had published two articles dealing
with the Associated Press. I now wrote and invited it to take up this
case, and the “Outlook” did not reply. Also I wrote “The Independent,”
which was once a liberal paper, and it too refused any publicity.
To return to the three newspapers which answered my letter: Mr.
Frederick S. Forbes, acting managing editor of the “Philadelphia North
American,” replied that his paper had “frequently had occasion to
criticize the news distributing agencies of the country,” and would
investigate my story. That was the last I ever heard from the matter.
When I wrote to remind the “Philadelphia North American,” they did not
answer. In the course of a year I wrote several times, but they did not
answer.
And then the “New York World.” The “World” had published a challenge,
defying anyone to point out where it had failed to print important news.
I now took this case of the Associated Press to the “World,” and the
“World” answered that having published my telegram to the President from
Denver, the “World” had published the news! The fact that the “World”
had got this telegram from me instead of from the Associated Press—that
was not news! The fact that I had published a challenge, deliberately
repeating the words of the “Masses” editors, and that the Associated
Press and all its newspapers had passed my challenge by—that was not
news, in the judgment of the “World”!
The third paper which replied to me was the “New York Evening Post”; the
only one which took up the matter in what I considered the proper
spirit. Mr. John P. Gavit, managing editor of the “Evening Post,” wrote
as follows:
Your letter of recent date, together with the exhibit embodied in the
first page of the “Appeal to Reason” for May 30th, is hereby
acknowledged. I have undertaken an investigation of the matter which
will take considerable time and I am writing now only to prevent your
having the mistaken impression that your communication is to be
ignored. I attach for your information copy of a self-explanatory
letter which I have addressed to Mr. Melville E. Stone, General
Manager of The Associated Press.
Dear Mr. Stone:
I hand you herewith copy of the letter which we have received from Mr.
Upton Sinclair, together with a page from the “Appeal to Reason”
published at Girard, Kansas, under date of May 30th, 1914. I have been
out of town, which fact will explain my delay in taking this matter up
with you.
I am perfectly aware of Mr. Sinclair’s reputation among newspaper men
as an insatiable hunter of personal publicity; but it seems to me that
his telegram to President Wilson, making specific allegations in
connection with a matter of the utmost public consequence at a
critical time, ought to have been transmitted by the Associated Press
men at Denver. Of course, it is perfectly absurd for any Associated
Press man to say that it is the policy of the Associated Press “to
avoid controversy”; that theory of the service is long out of date,
and two-thirds of its news reports relate to controversies in one way
or another. I have not examined the reports of the matters to which
Mr. Sinclair refers, but on its face his article certainly creates a
prima facie of suppression of important facts regarding the situation
at Denver. At the time to which he refers, I realize that the Denver
correspondent was in a very difficult position in all this business,
but in this case I think he made a palpable mistake.
It is evidently necessary under the circumstances that the “Evening
Post” should deal with this subject, and I shall be glad to have at
your early convenience any statement which you will be willing to have
published over your signature. I personally believe that this should
include some explanation from the Denver correspondent as to his
reason for refusing to mention Sinclair’s telegram to the President;
though, of course, that is a matter entirely within your discretion.
Yours very truly,
JOHN P. GAVIT,
Managing Editor.
The above letter was perfectly satisfactory to me. It did not trouble me
what either Mr. Gavit or Mr. Stone thought about my reputation among
newspaper men. All that I was concerned about, all that I have ever been
concerned about, was that the truth about social injustice should be
made public. Mr. Gavit sent me a copy of Mr. Stone’s reply, promising to
make an immediate investigation of the matter and report. I felt so sure
of the outcome that I ventured to make an announcement in the “Appeal,”
June 20, 1914, to the effect that the “A. P.” was to be “smoked out,” it
was to be compelled to answer my charges.
But alas for my hopes of fair play, my faith in the organ of arm-chair
respectability! Time passed, and I wrote to Mr. Gavit, again reminding
him of his promises, and in reply he asked me to call to see him. I
called, and found myself up against the concrete wall. Mr. Gavit was as
polite as I could have requested; all that he failed in was action. He
would not tell me the result of the investigation which Mr. Stone had
made, or had promised to make. He would not tell me anything, except
that the case was a subtle and difficult one to judge, and that he could
not see his way to take it up. I quoted to him his letter to Mr. Stone,
“It is evidently necessary under the circumstances that the ‘Evening
Post’ should deal with this subject”; Mr. Gavit was uncomfortable and
embarrassed, but he would not make good his words, nor would he publish
in the “Evening Post” the facts about my challenge to the Associated
Press. He never published a line about it, and on the basis of the facts
above stated, I believe that I can claim to have proven positively that
the “New York Evening Post” is not what it pretends to be, a newspaper
serving the public interest.
I make the same claim concerning the “New York Times.” The “Times” did
not answer my letter, it did not pay any attention to me; but it happens
that I read the “Times,” and know some of its editors, so I went after
it again and again. I will quote from the last of my letters, so that
the reader may see how desperately I tried to get something done:
New York City, June 15, 1914.
EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Some time ago I wrote you a letter with regard to charges I had made
against the Associated Press. I asked you to consider these charges
and lay them before your readers, and give them an opportunity to
decide of their truth. Not hearing from you, I wrote a second time, to
ask you to do me the courtesy to let me know your intentions in the
matter. Still not hearing from you, I assume that it is your intention
to treat my communication with contempt. I want to call your attention
to the fact that in writing to you I am making a test of the sense of
honor of your publication. I am putting you on record, and I shall
find means to make your attitude known to the public. You are an
Associated Press newspaper, and your honor is definitely bound up with
that of the organization which serves you. You sell Associated Press
news to the public. If the Associated Press news is false news, you
are selling false news to the public, and you are refusing the public
any opportunity to judge a most serious, a carefully documented charge
that this news is false. It is true that you published my telegram to
the President in one edition of your paper. But it is also true that
you published it only because I sent it to you. The Associated Press
did not send it to you. And I cannot always be in Colorado, and cannot
always make it my business to supply you with antidotes to the poison
which you are getting from the Associated Press. Only today, for
example, you are, through the agency of the Associated Press,
responsible for suppressing an important piece of news from Colorado:
that is to say, the fact that Judge Lindsey has issued a statement
defending himself, and especially the women who went with him, against
the charges which have been made against them by the “interests” in
Colorado. The “New York World” gave that letter a column, from its
special correspondent. The “New York Call,” having the Laffan Service,
also had some account of the letter. You, having the Associated Press
service, have not a word about it. And this is a vital and most
important piece of news.
I then went on to tell about the “Evening Post” and its promise to
investigate. I said:
The “Times” is involved in the matter in exactly the same way, and to
exactly the same extent as the “Evening Post.” The “Times” published
the officially inspired defense of the Associated Press in exactly the
same way as the “Evening Post.” I believe that it is up to you to
explain the reasons for your silence in this matter. I believe that if
you maintain silence, I shall be justified in declaring to all the
world that you have shown yourself in this matter a newspaper without
a high sense of honor, and false to the motto which you carry, “All
the News that’s Fit to Print.” I assure you that I shall make this
charge against you on many occasions in future. You may think that the
five hundred thousand a week circulation of the “Appeal to Reason” is
a factor which you can afford to neglect, but I believe that in the
course of time you will realize that you were mistaken in permitting
me to place you on record in this matter.
So ends the story of my test of the Associated Press and its newspapers.
In the second part of this book, which deals with causes, I shall return
to the subject, and show exactly why these things happen: Why the “New
York Times” is without honor where the Associated Press is concerned,
and just how many thousands of dollars it would have cost the “New York
Evening Post” if its managing editor had carried out his bold promise to
me.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SCANDAL-BUREAU
There is one other incident which must be told before I finish with the
subject of Denver, its criminal government and prostitute newspapers. I
had been in Denver before, also I had read Ben Lindsey’s “The Beast”; so
I knew, before I arrived, what I might expect to encounter. Standing in
the Pennsylvania station, bidding my wife farewell, I said: “Let me give
you this warning; whatever you read about me, don’t worry. If there is
any scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in
Denver.”
And when I reached my destination, I had cause to be glad of my
forethought. John Reed, who had just come up from the coal-country, told
me of the vile slanders which had been invented and circulated
concerning the women of the coal-fields who had been active in defense
of their cause. The scandal-mongers had not even spared a poor,
half-crazed Italian woman, whose three babies had been burned to death
in the holocaust at Ludlow! Louis Tikas, a young Greek idealist, a
graduate of the University of Athens, who had been trying to uplift his
people and had been foully murdered by corporation thugs, they
blackguarded as a “brothel hanger-on” before his corpse was under
ground! John Reed himself they had got involved with a charming young
widow in Denver; he had met her twice at dinner-parties! (In passing, to
show you how far Colorado had progressed toward civil war, I might
mention that this lady, upon learning what had been done to the
strikers, sent to the East and purchased two machine-guns and hid them
in her cellar, ready to be shipped to the strike-field for use by the
strikers in case the militia attempted to return.)
Every Socialist and magazine-writer, even every writer for conservative
publications, was taken in hand upon his arrival in Denver, and fitted
out with a scandal. So far as I know, the only one who escaped was
Harvey O’Higgins—and this because he took the precaution to bring his
wife along. I had not brought my wife; also I was a “divorced man,” and
an easy victim. There was a young Jewish girl, a probation-officer in
Judge Lindsey’s court, whom I was so indiscreet as to treat to a
sandwich in a dairy lunch-room; that was sufficient for the
scandal-bureau, which had to hustle in these crowded days. I recollect a
funny scene in the home of James Randolph Walker, where several of these
“affinities” learned for the first time to whom they had been assigned.
We had a merry time over it; but meanwhile, at the meetings of the Law
and Order League, and other places where the ladies of “good society” in
Denver gathered to abuse the strikers, all these scandals were solemnly
taken for granted, and quoted as evidence of the depravity of “foreign
agitators” and the radicals who abetted them!
For myself, let me explain that during my three weeks in Denver I kept
two stenographers busy all day; I wrote a score of articles, I sent
hundreds of telegrams and letters—working under terrific pressure,
hardly taking time to eat. My wife was back in New York, risking her
frail health in the midst of public uproar, and with reason to fear that
she might be assaulted by thugs at any moment. Every thought I had to
spare was for her, all my loyalty was for her; yet “good society” in
Denver was imagining me involved in a dirty intrigue! In several
intrigues—such a Bluebeard I am! I had been in the city perhaps a week,
when a young lady came to me and spoke as follows:
“Mr. Sinclair, I represent the ‘Denver Post.’ We have a rumor concerning
you about which I wish to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“We understand that you are about to move from your hotel.”
“I have no such intention. Who told you that?”
“Well, I hope you will not take offense; I will tell you the report,
just as it was given to me.”
“Very well, go ahead.”
I am sorry I cannot remember the exact words of the rigmarole; it was
five years ago, and I have had more important things to remember.
Suffice it to say that it was a new scandal—not the Jewish
probation-officer; I had uttered a mysterious and portentous sentence,
expressive of my guilty fear; if my wife were to learn why I had left
the hotel, “it would be all over.” I looked the young lady from the
“Denver Post” in the eye and answered: “Standing in the Pennsylvania
station, bidding my wife farewell, I said to her: ‘Let me give you one
warning; whatever you may read about me, don’t worry. If there is any
scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in
Denver.’” And so the young lady from the “Denver Post” went away, and
did not publish that awful “rumor.”
There are people who live upright and straightforward lives, and
concerning whom no breath of scandal is ever whispered; such people are
apt to think that all anyone has to do to avoid scandal is to lead
upright and straightforward lives as they do. They see some man who
keeps dubious company, and is given to “smart” conversation; concerning
such a man an evil report is readily believed; and they conclude that if
any man is a victim of scandal, he must be such a man as that. But how
if a scandal were deliberately started, concerning a person who had done
nothing whatever to deserve it? My wife tells of a woman in her home
town who would destroy the reputation of a young girl by the lifting of
an eyebrow, the gesture of a fan in a ballroom. She would do this,
sometimes from pure malice, sometimes from jealousy for her daughter.
You can understand that among sophisticated people such practices might
become a subtle art; and how if it were to occur to great “interests,”
threatened in their power, to hire such arts? Let me assure you that
this thing is done all over the United States; it is done all over the
world, where there is privilege defending itself against social protest.
There was a certain labor leader in America, who was winning a great
strike. It was sought to bribe him in vain, and finally a woman was sent
after him, a woman experienced in seduction, and she lured this man into
a hotel room, and at one o’clock in the morning the door was broken
down, and the labor leader was confronted with a newspaper story, ready
to be put on the press in a few minutes. This man had a wife and
children, and had to choose between them and the strike; he called off
the strike, and the union went to pieces. This anecdote was told to me,
not by a Socialist, not by a labor agitator, but by a well-known United
States official, a prominent Catholic.
I cite this to show the lengths to which Big Business will go in order
to have its way. In San Francisco they raised a million dollar fund, and
with the help of their newspapers set to work deliberately to railroad
five perfectly innocent labor-men to the gallows. In Lawrence,
Massachusetts, the great Woolen Trust planted dynamite in the homes of
strike-breakers, and with the help of their newspapers sought to fasten
this crime upon the union; only by an accident were these conspirators
exposed, and all but the rich one brought to justice. Do you think that
“interests” which would undertake such elaborate plots would stop at
inventing and circulating scandal about their enemies?
Most certainly they did this in Denver. I was assured by Judge Lindsey,
and by James Randolph Walker, at that time chairman of Denver’s reform
organization, that the corporations of that city had a regular bureau
for such work. The head of it was a woman doctor, provided with a large
subsidy, numerous agents, and a regular card catalogue of her victims.
When someone was to be ruined, she would invent a story which fitted as
far as possible with the victim’s character and habits; and then some
scheme would be devised to enable the newspapers to print the story
without danger of libel suits.
There are a hundred ways by which this can be done; watch “Town Topics”
in New York, or “Town Talk” and the “Wasp” in San Francisco, and you
will see. The victim will be asked if there is dissension between him
and his wife; when he denies it, there will be an item to the effect
that he denies it—the item being so worded as to cause people to smile
knowingly. I know a radical whose wife nearly died of appendicitis;
while she was still bed-ridden, she was taken to a sanatorium by her
mother and her family physician, a man old enough to be her grandfather.
The day after she left, her husband was called upon to “deny” a report
that his wife “had eloped with a Jew.”
Or perhaps maybe a report will be brought to the man that somebody else
has made charges against him; he is naturally indignant, and when he is
asked if he will bring a libel suit, he answers that he will think about
it; so the newspaper has a story that the man is thinking about bringing
a libel suit. Or someone will be hired to slander him to his face, and
when he knocks the slanderer down, the newspaper will have a story of a
public disturbance, so worded as to put the victim in the wrong, and at
the same time to make known the slander.
In extreme cases they will go as far as they did with Judge
Lindsey—hiring perjured affidavits, and getting up a fake reform
organization to give them authority. Lindsey, you understand, has made
his life-work the founding of a children’s court, which shall work by
love and not by terror. Love of children—ah, yes, all scandal-bureaus
know what that means! So they had a collection of affidavits accusing
Lindsey of sodomy. They brought the charges while he was in the East; a
reporter went to the Denver hotel where his young bride was staying, and
when she refused to see the reporter, or to hear the charges against her
husband, the reporter stood in the hallway and shouted the charges to
her through the transom, and then went away and wrote up an interview!
Or perhaps the Scandal-Bureau will maintain for its foul purposes a
special publication which is libel-proof; one of those “fly-by-night”
sheets, whose editor-in-charge is an office-boy, and whose worldly
possessions are a telephone address and three pieces of furniture. This
was a part of their scheme in Denver. The publication was called—oh,
most delicious allurement!—“Polly Pry”! I don’t know if it is still
published, but I saw copies of it during the coal-strike, and it was
full of the cruelest libels concerning everybody who stood for the
strikers.
I remember one full-page story about “Mother Jones,” a white-haired old
woman of eighty-two years, who was being held in jail without warrant or
charge for several months, because she persisted in coming back to the
strike-field every time she was deported. And what do you think they
said about “Mother Jones”? In her early years she had been the keeper of
a house of prostitution! They went into the most elaborate detail about
it; they gave the names of people who knew about it, they gave the
address of the house—and then they had their “kept” congressman, a man
by the name of Kindel, to read this number of “Polly Pry” into the
“Congressional Record”! So, of course, it was “privileged”; all the
“kept” newspapers all over the state of Colorado and elsewhere might
quote the story without danger of punishment! They might quote it, not
from “Polly Pry,” but from the “Congressional Record”!!
I took the trouble to ask “Mother Jones” about this story. It appears
that in those early days she was a sewing woman; she earned a precarious
living, and felt herself justified in working for anyone who would pay
her. She did some sewing for a girl of the streets, and this girl died
of tuberculosis, and the Catholic church refused her a burial service,
and “Mother Jones” wrote to a newspaper to protest against this
action—her first appearance in public life, her first utterance of
radicalism. And this had been remembered all these years, it was brought
up against her in one labor struggle after another; only they made her
the “madame” of the house where the poor girl of the streets had lived!
We who sympathize with the cause of labor grow used to such things, and
do not care for ourselves. What hurts us is this—that in a time of
crisis, when the need of labor is so great, our influence with the
public is destroyed by these slanderers. The average law-abiding and
credulous citizen has no remotest idea of the existence of such
machinery for influencing his mind. He takes the truth of these stories
for granted, and concludes that a cause which is represented by such
advocates can have no claim upon him. While I was in Denver, the “Law
and Order League” held several meetings in the parlors of the great
hotels. I offered to address these ladies, and I know that if I had been
permitted to do so, I could have opened the eyes of some of them. But
the league voted against it, and I have no doubt that this vote was
because of the Scandal Bureau and its work. Instead of hearing me, the
league heard a clergyman, the Rev. Pingree, who declared that if he
could have his way he would blow up all the strikers’ homes with
dynamite! After that I always referred to this organization as the “Law
and Murder League.”
But the crowning achievement of the Scandal-Bureau was still to come. In
the effort to induce President Wilson to intervene in the strike, I had
evolved what I thought was a wonderful idea—that Judge Lindsey and his
wife should escort three of the miners’ wives to Washington to tell
their story to the President. It took days and nights of diplomacy, for
Lindsey had an election campaign ahead of him, and his wife was in
delicate health; but the emergency was extreme, and at last “our little
Ben,” as the children called him, made up his mind to the sacrifice. The
party set out, and spoke at large meetings in Chicago and New York, and
interviewed the President in Washington, and afforded the Associated
Press another opportunity to display its complete subservience to the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
And meantime, in Denver, the newspapers were pouring out an incessant
stream of invective upon Lindsey. The Scandal-Bureau revived the old
yarn, that he was “the insane son of insane parents.” (I knew his
mother, an excellent old lady, as sane as I am.) On every stage of this
journey Lindsey was accompanied by his young wife, to whom he had been
married only a few months; nevertheless, it was plainly stated in the
Colorado papers, and generally believed by Denver “society,” that the
three strikers’ wives constituted part of a harem. If only you could
have seen them—three pathetic, bedraggled poor women, two of them in
deep mourning! And when Mrs. Lindsey, owing to the strain of the
journey, suffered a miscarriage, and had to be carried from the train to
a hospital in Chicago, several Colorado newspapers reported that this
was owing to mistreatment by her husband! At a meeting of the Denver
Real Estate Exchange, it was proposed to appoint a committee to “spit on
Lindsey’s shoes” when he returned; and this was the kind of news that
was thought worth forwarding out of Denver!
I write to Judge Lindsey, so that you may have these incredible
incidents upon his authority, not upon mine. He confirms every statement
I have made. He tells of a woman detective, employed by the
Scandal-Bureau—
The Lewis woman circulated the story that my wife came out of a house
of prostitution, and that her mother was a “madame”; and the
corporations paid the woman for it. There is no doubt about this, and
it can be proved.
Judge Lindsey goes on to narrate the extraordinary circumstances under
which these proofs became available. One of the members of the State
legislature, a man named Howland, was caught receiving a bribe in the
legislature. He had introduced a “strike bill” against the Tobacco
Trust, and a messenger-boy had handed him an envelope of money, said to
be from an agent of the Tobacco Trust. In order to save this man
Howland, the head of the Scandal-Bureau, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates, came
forward and testified before the legislative committee that she had sent
this money to Howland in order to pay detectives to “get Lindsey.” Says
Lindsey in his letter to me:
Mind you, _she testified_ to her part in the infamy, and was backed up
by some of our rich citizens, feeling that she was quite safe from
prosecution—as she was. But Howland was found guilty of perjury in
this case, having sworn that the money came for an entirely different
purpose. Because of the general belief of the legislators that the
whole thing was part of a frame-up against me, and the fear that it
would lead to the truth being told about the fight against me, they
came to a compromise in the case against Howland, which was merely to
expel him from the legislature for perjury. He never was tried for
perjury or conspiracy to ruin me and my court work, as was undoubtedly
his plan.
And how stands the matter today? Let Lindsey tell it in his own words:
During the war I was absolutely outlawed from every opportunity to be
of any patriotic service here by the privilege and special interest
crowd who control all patriotism, especially in the food and other
administrations. When I returned from France I was permitted to speak
for the Liberty Loan, but the chairman of the meeting told me that one
of Boss Evans’ old tools had threatened to “read him out of the
Republican party” for daring to let me take part in that patriotic
celebration. Fourteen bills for the protection of women and children
were killed in the last legislature through the open statement of
certain members of the legislature who were tools of the Interests
that: “If Lindsey has anything to do with it, swat it.” All this you
will understand is my heritage of hate because of the part my wife and
I took in that strike, and against big crooks generally when they have
time and again tried to rob our city. Since “The Beast and the Jungle”
stories, and my part in the Colorado coal-strike, it has been almost
impossible for me to speak before such assemblies as High Schools,
Woman’s Clubs, Mothers’ Congresses and the like. As one woman said to
me frankly, “Mrs. So-and-so’s husband is a big contributor to our
club, and if we permitted you to appear on the program she would be
highly indignant and withdraw her support.” I am sure you will
understand just exactly what the influence is, and how insidiously it
works.
As I read the page-proofs of this book, the great coal strike comes, and
the miners in the Southern Colorado field are out again, and Federal
troops are guarding the mines. But this time it is not necessary for the
Scandal Bureau and the Associated Press to muzzle the strikers and their
sympathizers. This time the job has been done by the Federal court
injunction!
CHAPTER XXX
THE CONCRETE WALL
I returned to New York, and at a meeting in Berkeley Hall I told the
story of conditions in Colorado. I did not get myself arrested, however,
so the New York newspapers printed only a few words of what I said, and
the Associated Press sent out nothing. It was again the concrete wall,
impenetrable, insurmountable: on one side I, with my facts about the
outrages upon the miners; and on the other side the public—as far out of
reach as if it had been in the moon.
The greatest atrocity of the strike was the fact, previously set forth,
that the state militia in the coal-fields had been recruited from
strike-breakers and Baldwin-Felts gunmen. The facts had been refused,
even to the state legislature; until finally the legislature appointed a
committee to wait upon the militia general and not leave his office
until they got the roster of the guard. So it was disclosed that in
Company A of the state guard there had been one hundred and twenty-two
members, and all but three of them coal-company employes, receiving the
pay of coal-companies while they wore the uniform and carried the flag
of the state!
It was an incredible prostitution of government; and what did the
newspapers do with the story? What did the Associated Press do with it?
I was unable to find the story in a single newspaper, outside of Denver.
I brought the full-page story clipped from the “Rocky Mountain News” to
New York with me, and tried the big New York dailies, and could not get
one of them to publish it.
The “Chicago Tribune” had published in full a letter of mine to John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., setting forth these facts in detail. Also the
“Tribune” had published a very fair and just editorial, headed: “All the
Truth,” from which I quote:
Facts are charged by Mr. Sinclair—and others, it must be said—which,
if true, are a disgrace to the men responsible and to the community in
which they existed. To ascertain the truth and to deal with the
situation are duties which must be performed.... Let us have the facts
about this terrible industrial tragedy, and all the facts. Let us know
the guilty and all the guilty.
Three days later the “Chicago Tribune” took up my definite charges
concerning the guard. It said:
If, as he asserts, the Adjutant General’s report shows any such abuse
of the guard, the situation calls for prompt rebuke and effective
action, if such action is possible under our laws.... We suggest the
National Guard take cognizance of the above allegations of Sinclair,
and if they are substantiated by the Adjutant General of Colorado that
the guard publicly protest against the abuse.
Five days after that the “Chicago Tribune” published a letter from P. A.
Wieting of Denver, as follows:
Referring to your editorial “Abusing the Guard,” in your issue of June
5. If Upton Sinclair said that the official records of Adjutant
General Chase showed that an overwhelming majority of the Colorado
militia were mine guards and other employes of the coal companies, he
deliberately lied. Mr. Chase’s records showed nothing of the sort, and
could not; for the statement is absolutely false and absurd. The
National Guard of Colorado is made up like in other states, of young
business and professional men, students, farmer boys and the like, and
includes the sons of many of our best families.
It is surprising that a paper of the standing of the “Tribune” should
accept offhand such a preposterous charge against a great state made
by a professional muck-raker. If you still entertain the slightest
belief in Sinclair’s foolish charge, any banker, any reputable
business man, any college president in Colorado will tell you, as I
do, that the man who made the statement quoted lied and knew that he
lied.
Now here was a direct issue of fact. If P. A. Wieting were a real
person, living in Denver, Colorado, and if he read a morning newspaper,
he must have read the “Rocky Mountain News,” because that was the only
morning newspaper published in Denver. And on the entire front page of
the “Rocky Mountain News” had been published the roster of Company A of
the Colorado state militia, as given to the press by a committee of the
state legislature, also a report of this committee of the legislature,
giving all the facts as to these members of Company A, the capacity in
which one hundred and nineteen out of one hundred and twenty-two of them
were employed by the coal-operators or the Baldwin-Felts Detective
Agency, and the wages they were paid by these concerns. The evidence was
as complete and as authoritative as it was possible for evidence to be;
and therefore, when P. A. Wieting wrote this letter to the “Chicago
Tribune,” deliberately accusing me of deliberate lying, he was
deliberately lying himself.
I thought, of course, that the “Tribune,” having taken a brave stand and
called for the truth, really wanted the truth, and would push the
controversy to the end. Therefore I sent to the “Tribune” by registered
mail a copy of the “Rocky Mountain News,” containing the facts, and I
looked to see this full-page report transferred to a page of the
“Chicago Tribune.” Or I looked to have the “Tribune” have some
representative in Denver look up the facts, as it might so easily have
done. Instead of that, I saw not one line about the matter. What strings
had been pulled in the “Tribune” office, I don’t happen to know. All I
know is that I wrote several times, protesting, and that no attention
was paid to my letters. Now, while I am preparing this book, I write to
the “Tribune,” lest by any chance the “Tribune” published something in
some edition which I missed, and which my clipping bureau missed; but
the “Tribune” leaves my letter unanswered!
Also I write to Denver to find out about P. A. Wieting—if he is a real
person. I find that he is assistant cashier of the Colorado Fuel & Iron
Co., Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which broke the strike!
All this time, you must understand, the “kept” writers on the other side
of the concrete wall were having their will with the public. Arthur
Brisbane, for example, whose editorial against the strikers was
submitted to Mr. Rockefeller by Mr. Rockefeller’s press agent as a proof
of the press agent’s skill! And Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora—you will
find a special chapter in this book devoted to the “Fra,” and in it you
may read how he sought to sell out the Colorado strikers. And the Rev.
Newell Dwight Hillis, a clerical gentleman whom we have seen spurning
George D. Herron in public, and apologizing in tears before his
congregation because his greed for money had led him into a mess of
lawsuits. This clerical gentleman preached a sermon, in which he
referred to our Broadway “pickets” as “a lot of silly people,” and
incidentally told some score of lies about the strikers. Somebody, name
unknown, was circulating this sermon in expensive pamphlet form by the
hundreds of thousands of copies; so George Creel wrote to Hillis—but in
vain. If you are near a library, look up Creel’s “Open Letter” in
“Harper’s Weekly,” May 29, 1915, and see how many lies a greedy preacher
can pack into one sermon. I also wrote to the reverend gentleman, and
succeeded in getting a reply from him. I quote my final letter, which
covers the case, I think:
REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS,
Brooklyn, New York.
_My Dear Sir_:
I have your letter and note that you are going West to Colorado, and
that if you can find any errors in your sermon you will correct them.
I would say that definite and specific errors are pointed out in
George Creel’s letters; errors that you would not have to go to
Colorado to find out about. They are proven in the sworn testimony
given before the Congressional Investigation Committee and before the
hearings of the Commission on Industrial Relations. While you can, of
course, not recollect who gave you this or that detail of information,
you must certainly know from what source you took the definite false
statements of figures and facts to which Mr. Creel calls your
attention. Moreover, the most important questions in both Mr. Creel’s
letter and mine, you have entirely ignored. I wish to ask you, before
you go West, will you answer the following specific questions?
Who is circulating and paying for the expensive pamphlet form of your
sermon?
Second, did this party obtain your permission to circulate it in this
form?
Third, did you receive any payment for permitting this circulation?
Fourth, if, after investigation of Mr. Creel’s points in Colorado you
find that you were wrong and he was right, will you compel the party
who is circulating this pamphlet to give to your corrections the same
amount of circulation?
I have, of course no right to insist that you should answer any of
these questions. I will merely say that by failing to answer them, and
answer them promptly and explicitly, you will leave your name open to
exceedingly grave suspicions.
This letter remained unanswered; yet such utter lack of concern about
his good name has not injured the pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn,
with the great organs of capitalist opinion! Only recently “McClure’s
Magazine” has selected him for its prize anti-Bolshevik liar. Please
make a mental note of him, for reference when we come to the
anti-Bolshevik liars and their lies.
It was still our hope that President Wilson could be persuaded to
interfere in the strike and force the Rockefellers to some compromise.
It being the way of public officials to move only in response to public
clamor, we were driven to keep on butting our heads against the concrete
wall. Our “mourning picket” demonstration had gathered about us a group
of young radicals, who could not endure to see the effort die down and
the strangling of the strike completed. Every day one would come to us
with some new idea. One group wished to go up to Rockefeller’s home on
Madison Avenue, and walk up and down in front of it. We objected to
this, because we were not attacking Mr. Rockefeller personally, we were
attacking his business policy, and his office seemed the proper place.
Nevertheless, one boy ventured up on Madison Avenue, and was promptly
arrested and sent to jail for sixty days.
There was another group which wished to visit Tarrytown, where young
Rockefeller had retired to the seclusion of his country home, with a
high iron fence all around it, and iron gates, and a score or two of
armed guards patrolling day and night. This group tried to hold a street
meeting in the village of Tarrytown, and were arrested. So I was driven
into a campaign on behalf of free speech. I have told in Chapter XII of
my experience with the “Tarrytown News”; I have now to tell of my
experience with the “New York Herald.” It is one of the few of my
newspaper adventures from the contemplation of which I derive
satisfaction.
I had several sessions with the board of trustees of the village of
Tarrytown. They were courteous, and permitted me to argue the issue of
free speech—which I did courteously. I brought to them a charming letter
from Georg Brandes, then a visitor in New York. They held a public
session, addressed by Leonard Abbott, Theodore Schroeder, and myself,
and in the course of my talk I pointed out that the result of repression
of free speech was violence. In England, where the radicals were allowed
to gather in Hyde Park and say what they chose, crimes of political
violence were practically unknown. On the other hand, in America, where
it was customary for the police to arrest radicals and club and jail
them, such crimes were common. Only the other day the newspapers had
told of the assassination of the chief of police of Seattle, where the
I. W. W. had been prevented from speaking.
There were a dozen newspaper reporters present at this hearing, and
accounts of it appeared in the New York papers next morning. The
“Herald” stated that I had threatened the trustees of Tarrytown with
violence in case they refused my request. I quote from the “Herald’s”
narrative:
Suddenly Frank R. Pierson, president of the village, leaped to his
feet and said:
“We shall not be intimidated by threats. We will hear no more of this
kind of argument. For one, I was willing to listen to what these
people had to say and to hear them fairly and honestly, but when they
come here with threats of death, of assassination and of mob rule, I
will not hear them further.”
Now, concerning this account there is only one thing to be said: it was
absolute fiction. I have never met a more agreeable gentleman than Mr.
Pierson, president of the Tarrytown village board; he voted my way on
every occasion, and from first to last we never exchanged a word that
was not cordial. On reading this account I at once went to see him, and
ascertained that both he and the other trustees considered the report to
be false and inexcusable. I then sent a letter to the “Herald” informing
them that they had libeled me, and threatening them with a suit. They
sent a reporter to see me, and I explained to this reporter the basis of
my complaint, and next morning the “Herald” published my letter of
complaint, together with an article reiterating its statement, and
quoting three of the trustees as supporting its statement. I quote the
“Herald” reporter’s words:
I saw Frank R. Pierson, president of the village, and asked his
opinion of the correctness of the account published in the “Herald.”
Mr. Pierson carefully read the article and then said:
“Mr. Sinclair certainly made the remarks attributed to him in the
‘Herald,’ if I heard aright, and I did jump up and declare that we
should not be intimidated by threats. Mr. Sinclair may not have
intended to make a threat, but the inference was plain. The ‘Herald’
did not misquote either Mr. Sinclair or me.”
And concerning the above interview also there is only one thing to be
said; it was absolute fiction. I went to see Mr. Pierson again, and he
assured me that he had given no such interview, and would appear in
court and testify accordingly. Another of the trustees wrote me that the
“Herald” interview with him was a “fake,” and so I put the matter into
the hands of my attorneys, and a libel-suit was filed against the “New
York Herald.” It dragged for a year or two, and I came to California and
dismissed the matter from my mind. When the time came for the suit to
come to trial, I was unwilling to take the trip to New York, and asked
my lawyers to have the matter dropped. You may imagine my consternation
when I received a letter from them, telling me that they had been
negotiating with the attorneys for the “Herald,” and had succeeded in
settling the case upon the basis of a payment of twenty-five hundred
dollars damages! Never, if I live to be as old as Methuselah, shall I
spend money that will bring me more satisfaction than that twenty-five
hundred dollars!
Throughout these Tarrytown adventures, which lasted several weeks, each
newspaper had one reporter who followed the story day by day, and two or
three of these men became friendly to me. Isaac Russell, reporter for
the “Times,” invited me to lunch in a restaurant in Tarrytown, with a
couple of other men. I explained that I was ill and not eating anything,
but would sit and chat with them. As they were finishing, there came in
the reporter for the “World,” who, as it happened, had been drunk during
most of the time. Next morning there appeared in the “World” a
particularly nasty account of the day’s events, in which it was
described how I had come to Tarrytown with four women in my train, had
had lunch with several reporters, and had permitted them to pay the
bill. I took the trouble to go down to the office of the “World” and see
Mr. Frank Cobb, managing editor; explaining to him that I had come alone
to Tarrytown, had spoken to no woman in Tarrytown, and had eaten no
lunch in Tarrytown. Mr. Cobb admitted that I had a grievance, and by way
of recompense allowed me to dictate a column interview about the meaning
of the free speech fight in Tarrytown; incidentally he took the drunken
reporter off the assignment. From the other reporters I got the “inside”
story of what had happened, and it throws an amusing light upon
newspaper ethics. The drunken reporter had lost out in the contest with
me, not because he had been drunk, nor because he had lied about a
radical, but because he had implied in his article that a reporter was a
social inferior! Was not a reporter privileged to invite an author to
lunch, and to pay for the lunch if he saw fit?
CHAPTER XXXI
MAKING BOMB-MAKERS
It had been agreed by the trustees of Tarrytown that while we might not
tell about the Ludlow massacre at a street-meeting, we might tell about
it at a meeting in a theatre or hall. I set out to find a theatre or
hall, but there was no theatre or hall that could be rented for that
purpose. I then went up on the heights, where the Rockefellers live, and
appealed to the sense of fair play of Mr. Rockefeller’s neighbors. This
is the Pocantico hills country, a line of magnificent estates and
palatial homes, of which you see pictures in the “Sunday supplements.”
You might have thought it poor territory for radical propaganda;
nevertheless, I was able to persuade one of the residents, Mrs. Charles
J. Gould, to allow the use of her open-air theatre for a meeting in
defense of free speech. Imagine, if you can, the excitement of the New
York newspapers, when they learned that there was to be an I. W. W.
meeting—so they called it—in an open-air theatre on a millionaire estate
almost next door to the Rockefellers!
We held the meeting, attended by some three hundred people of the town,
rich and poor, including a number of laborers from young Mr.
Rockefeller’s estate. John W. Brown, organizer of the United
Mine-workers, told the story of the strike, and we moved a resolution
that it was the sense of the meeting that Mr. Rockefeller’s treatment of
his strikers had been such that we called upon the President of the
United States to confiscate his mines. We discussed that resolution for
a couple of hours, and we carried it _unanimously_! But alas, it
happened that Adolf Wolff, an Anarchist sculptor and poet, got up and
delivered a tirade, abusing me for having pleaded for free speech with
the trustees of Tarrytown. “We shouldn’t plead, we should take!”
declared Comrade Wolff. A lady from the South got up and sang
negro-songs to pacify the tumultuous meeting, and so the newspapers
could make a joke of the whole affair—which they did.
In their last public session with us, the trustees of the village had
admitted that there could be no interference with a meeting held upon
the strip of property through which ran the city aqueduct—this property
being under State control. So now the radicals whose friends were in
jail wanted to hold a meeting on this aqueduct property. They asked me
to come, but I happened to be ill. Leonard Abbott went with them, also a
boy named Arthur Caron, whose story I must briefly tell. Caron had been
one of the finest lads who had joined our Broadway demonstrations. He
was a French-Canadian, whose wife and baby had starved to death during
the Lawrence strike. He had come to New York and taken part in the
unemployed demonstration of the previous winter, and the police had
arrested him and beaten him in his cell, breaking his nose and one
ear-drum. He was a non-resistant, he told us, and had been one of the
most useful in helping us to keep our demonstration peaceable. Now he
went, at my suggestion, to avail himself of the public assurance given
by the Tarrytown trustees, that a meeting on the aqueduct would not be
interfered with.
But, as it happened, the “Tarrytown News” was carrying on a furious war
against the village trustees, because of their halfway-decent treatment
of the “agitators”; the “News” wanted us all exterminated, and it called
on the “law-abiding” citizens of the village to assemble at the aqueduct
and stop that meeting. So the speakers were met by a mob of rich men and
chauffeurs, who tooted horns and howled at them, threw rotten vegetables
and sand and stones into their faces, filling their eyes and mouth with
filth and streaming blood. Running through the village toward the
railroad-station, the little group was ridden down by mounted members of
the aqueduct police-force, who pursued them even on board the train, and
clubbed them over the heads when they sought refuge in the seats. These
incidents were described to me by several indignant newspaper reporters,
including my friend Isaac Russell, of the “Times.” But the “Times” cut
out from Russell’s story the incident of the clubbing on the train.
Here was another call for protest; but by this time the Sinclair family
had reached the point of exhaustion. My wife had been a semi-invalid at
the beginning of the affair, and was now near to nervous breakdown. We
had spent every dollar we owned, and a great many that we did not own;
so we were forced to retire, and let the Tarrytown rowdies and their
rowdy newspapers have their way. We remained in New York for a couple of
weeks to straighten our affairs; and on the very day we had planned to
leave for the country, the telephone rang, and my wife answered, and a
voice said: “This is the 100th St. Police Station. Do you know a man
named Arthur Caron?”
Yes, my wife knew Arthur Caron. “What about him?” she asked, and the
voice answered: “We found your name in a note-book in his pocket. Will
you come to the station and identify his body?”
There had been, it appeared, an explosion in a tenement-house on Third
Avenue. At first the police thought it was a gas-explosion, but soon the
truth became known; Arthur Caron and two or three of his friends had
been making bombs with the intention of blowing up the Rockefellers.
There had been a premature explosion, which had blown out several
stories of the tenement, and killed the three lads.
It was interesting to observe the conduct of the New York newspapers
during this affair. It made, of course, a tremendous excitement. Bombs
are news; they are heard all the way around the world. But the outrages
which have caused the bombs are not news, and no one ever refers to
them. No one makes clear that these outrages will continue to cause
bombs, so long as the human soul remains what it is.
Now the New York newspapers knew perfectly well that our Broadway
demonstration, our “Free Silence League,” as they had dubbed it, had
been a peaceable demonstration. They knew that at the opening meeting,
at which the plan was discussed, I had declared that I desired the
co-operation only of those who would pledge their word to me personally
that they would offer no resistance, no matter what was done to them;
that they would not even speak a word, nor argue with anyone, they would
do nothing but walk up and down. At our first meeting Frederick Sumner
Boyd, an I. W. W. leader, repudiated my ideas, and called upon the
meeting to organize itself to raise money and send arms to the
coal-strikers. I replied that if any wished to organize such a group, it
was his right, but I had called this meeting for the purpose of
organizing one kind of demonstration, and I thought that those who
wished to organize some other kind of demonstration should utilize one
of the other rooms of the Liberal Club; whereupon Boyd and about half
the audience withdrew. All this had been fully reported in the New York
papers, and was known to everyone.
Also it was known to the Rockefellers that at the headquarters of our
Colorado Committee I personally obtained the pledge of every man and
woman, before I allowed them to join us, that they would conform to the
rule laid down. I say this was known to the Rockefellers, because they
had spies among us; I knew perfectly well who those spies were, and
allowed one of them to think he was my friend. From first to last I had
nothing to hide, and for that reason I had nothing to fear, and this was
as well known to the newspapers as it was to the police who were probing
the explosion. Except for the first telephone call, which had come from
a desk-sergeant who knew nothing about the matter whatever, the police
did not trouble us, nor even question us; yet day by day, while that
sensation was before the public, the whole effort of the New York
newspapers was concentrated upon making it appear that Upton Sinclair
was in some way connected with the bomb-plot. Day after day there would
be circumstantial accounts of how the police and the coroner and other
officials were preparing to summon my wife and myself, and to subject us
to a “rigid examination” concerning Arthur Caron and the other victims
of the explosion. We would call up the police and the coroner and other
officials, and inform them that we were perfectly willing to be
questioned, but that we knew nothing but what we had told the public; to
which the police and the coroner and the other officials would reply:
“We have no wish to question you; that’s just newspaper talk.” All
officials understand what “newspaper talk” means; but the public doesn’t
understand, and so what the public carried away from this affair was the
general impression that my wife and I were dangerous characters. We were
too cunning to get caught, of course; but we incited obscure and
half-educated young people to make bombs and set them off, and then we
washed our hands of them and left them to their fate.
There is one final story which ought to be told in connection with these
“mourning pickets.” You may recall that I had appealed against the
decision of Police-magistrate Sims, to the effect that one whose conduct
had been “that of a perfect gentleman” might properly be found guilty of
“using threatening, abusive and insulting behavior.” I had told the
story of this court-decision at a public meeting in the State capitol in
Denver, and again at a dinner of the Progressive Party workers in
Chicago—saying: “I don’t know whom the magistrate supposed I had
threatened, abused and insulted—unless perhaps it were John D.
Rockefeller, Junior!” The audience had laughed appreciatively; they
thought that was a funny joke; I, too, thought it was a funny joke. But
now—can you believe it?—Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions
handed down his august decision, which had cost me several hundred
dollars in lawyer’s fees and court costs to obtain; and this Daniel come
to judgment upheld the decision of Police-magistrate Sims, and gave his
reasons therefor—and lo, his reasons were my funny joke! Seventeen
thousand, five hundred dollars per year the people of New York State pay
to Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions, for handing down such
august decisions; and forever and ever, so long as capitalist
civilization endures, that particular august decision will be printed on
expensive paper, and bound in expensive sheepskin, and treasured in the
libraries of learned jurists. Such a wonder of a decision deserves to be
read, as well as preserved in law-books; so I will quote it here, as
follows:
No citizen has a right to rebuke another citizen by subjecting him to
ridicule or insult.
The defendant intended by his conduct in the presence of others to
rebuke the conduct of Mr. Rockefeller. His action was in the language
of the statute, abusive or insulting; abusive because it is derogatory
to the one whose conduct is referred to, and the insult lies in part
in the subject matter of the rebuke and in part in the publicity of
the infliction.
Now let me put to you this problem. The “New York Herald” had published
a cartoon, in which I was portrayed as a hideous monster with a filthy
muck-rake; and now suppose that I had appealed to Justice Crain of the
Court of General Sessions, complaining that James Gordon Bennett had
“rebuked a citizen” by “subjecting him to ridicule or insult”—do you
think that Justice Crain would have sent Bennett to jail? And do you
think that the newspapers would have printed the decision with solemn
and respectful comment, praising it as a proper rebuke to a disturber of
public order?
I close the story of this long Colorado struggle with a benediction sent
to me all the way across the continent: the “Los Angeles Times,” July
9th, 1914:
It develops that Upton Sinclair only served two of his three days’
sentence, after all. He was on a hunger strike, and after he had gone
unfed for two days, his wife came and paid the rest of his fine and
forced him out of jail. Wait till they have been married a little
longer, and perhaps she will let him serve three years if he wants to
do it.
I enquire among friends and learn that the general impression is that I
declared a “hunger-strike,” and couldn’t stick it out, and let my wife
come to my rescue. Again the newspapers! The truth is that I was as
comfortable as any man ought to ask to be in jail; I had a cell to
myself, and it was clean, and near a window, and I was allowed to have
my mail, and all the books I wanted, and visitors at reasonable hours.
But I wanted to appeal from that stupid decision; and in order to
appeal, the lawyers explained, I must have something to appeal _for_. I
couldn’t appeal for the time I spent in jail, for no court could restore
that to me. I had to pay some money—one dollar at the least; and having
paid this, I had to come out, whether I would or no. So the newspapers
had a chance to report that Upton Sinclair, who had written a book
telling how he had fasted for ten or twelve days, had been unable to
stick out a three-day “hunger-strike”!
CHAPTER XXXII
THE ROOF-GARDEN OF THE WORLD
After these strenuous adventures I retired to private life to
recuperate. I edited “The Cry for Justice,” and then, finding that I was
still haunted by the Colorado situation, I wrote “King Coal.” Meantime I
had moved to Southern California, seeking an open-air life. I have been
here four years, and alas, I have had a new set of experiences with
newspapers. As preliminary to them, there must be given a brief account
of this “Roof-garden of the World.”
It exists because of climate. There are, of course, ranchmen who raise
fruits and vegetables, and there are servants and chauffeurs and
house-builders and plumbers, but the main industry of Southern
California is climate. Everybody is consuming climate, and in addition
to this, nearly everybody is trying to sell climate to “come-ons” from
the East. The country has been settled by retired elderly people, whose
health has broken down, and who have come here to live on their incomes.
They have no organic connection with one another; each is an individual,
desiring to live his own little life, and to be protected in his own
little privileges. The community is thus a parasite upon the great
industrial centres of other parts of America. It is smug and
self-satisfied, making the sacredness of property the first and last
article of its creed. It has a vast number of churches of innumerable
sects, and takes their aged dogmas with deadly seriousness; its social
life is display, its intellectual life is “boosting,” and its politics
are run by Chambers of Commerce and Real Estate Exchanges.
There are, of course, a great number of ladies in Southern California
with nothing to do. They have culture clubs, which pay celebrities to
come and entertain them, and next to marrying a millionairess, this is
the easiest way to get your living in Southern California. They will pay
you as much as a hundred dollars for a lecture, and such an opportunity
is naturally not to be sneezed at by a strike-agitator in debt. I had
been living quietly for a year or so, working on “King Coal,” when I was
invited to meet at luncheon one of the officials of the ultra-exclusive
Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles. I was duly inspected and adjudged
presentable, and received an invitation to set forth my intellectual
wares before the club assemblage.
Now, this was an important opportunity, as my friends pointed out. There
are many such clubs in Los Angeles, and scores of others in the
leisure-class towns round about. This first lecture was a test, and if I
“made good,” I would receive more invitations, and might be able to live
quietly and do my writing. The ladies who came to hear Upton Sinclair
would, of course, come expecting to be shocked. If I didn’t shock them
at all, my lecture would be a failure; I must be judicious, and shock
them just exactly enough, so that they would come for more shocks. I am
fortunate in having a wife who understands the psychology of ladies, and
who undertook to groom me for this new role of leisure-class lecturer.
In the first place, there was the question of clothes. “You haven’t had
a new suit in four or five years,” said my wife.
“How about the one I bought in England?”
“That heavy woolen suit? If you wore that on a summer day, the
perspiration would stream down your face!”
“Well,” I ventured, “mightn’t they think it proper for a Socialist to
wear old clothes? Mightn’t I be pathetic——”
Said M. C. S. “They don’t want anybody around who is not well dressed.
It’s depressing. You must have a new suit.”
“But—we just haven’t the money to spare.”
“You can get a Palm Beach suit for ten dollars.”
“Isn’t that rather festive? I never wore anything like it.”
“Idiot! Papa wears them all the time.”
Now “papa,” you must understand, is—well, what “papa” does is the
standard. So it was arranged that I should go into Los Angeles an hour
or two earlier in the morning, and provide myself with a Palm Beach suit
and pair of white shoes for two dollars. “They will be made of paper,”
said my wife, “but you won’t have far to walk, and they’ll do for other
lectures.”
M. C. S. does not go with me on these adventures, having not been well
since the Colorado excitement. She stays at home and mends socks and
writes sonnets, while I administer shocks to the leisure-class ladies.
Her last injunction was a hair-cut. “The day of long-haired geniuses is
past. Promise me you’ll have your hair cut.”
I promise, and I get the Palm Beach suit and the shoes, and then look
for a barber. It is ten or eleven months before America’s entry into the
war, but the “preparedness” enthusiasts are having some kind of
celebration in Los Angeles, and the streets are a mass of red and white
bunting; I walk a long distance, and find half a dozen places with red
and white ribbons wound about poles, but they are not barber-shops. At
last, however, I find one, just in the nick of time, and at ten o’clock
sharp I present myself, all freshly groomed, to the charming ladies of
the club, and am escorted onto the platform.
My theme is “The Voice of the Ages,” and I bring with me a copy of “The
Cry for Justice,” and read passages from eminent ancient authors,
startling my hearers by the revelation that Plato and Euripides and
Isaiah and Jesus and Confucius and Dante and Martin Luther and George
Washington were all members of the I. W. W. of their time. I read them
Isaiah on “Ladies of Fashion”—all save one obscene sentence, which could
not be uttered before modern ladies. I give them just exactly the proper
number of thrills, mixed with the proper number of smiles, and they
bombard me with questions for an hour, and we have a most enjoyable
time.
But one tragedy befalls. I am quoting Frederick the Great on the subject
of Militarism, and am moved to mention the fact that Los Angeles is now
in a military mood. “I promised my wife I would get a hair-cut before I
came here, but I almost missed it, because there were so many red and
white decorations on the streets that I couldn’t find a barber-shop.”
The instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had, as
the boys say, “spilled the beans.” Driving home with a friend who is a
member of the club, she told me what a success the lecture had been, and
I replied: “Ah, no, you are mistaken! I ruined everything!”
“How?” asked my friend.
“Didn’t you hear me confuse the American flag with a barber-pole?”
“Nonsense!” said my friend. “They all laughed.”
“May be so,” said I. “But wait until you see the papers tomorrow
morning!”
And sure enough, it was as I said! Next morning the “Los Angeles Times”
published an account of the lecture, in which I was portrayed as a
dandified creature who had appeared before the ladies decked in tennis
flannels. Having since met Alma Whitaker, the woman who wrote this
account, I dare stake my life that she knows perfectly well the
difference between a Palm Beach suit and tennis flannels; but she wanted
to make me hateful, and that was such a little lie! She went on to tell
about my lecture, in which I had sneered at Jesus, and compared the
American flag to a barber-pole! My audience had been highly indignant,
according to her account, and one eminent lady had left the room in
disgust.
And so next morning there was an editorial in the “Times,” of which I
will quote about half. You will be struck by its peculiar style, and may
be interested to know that it was written by General Otis himself, being
a fair sample of the vitriol which every day for thirty years he poured
out upon everything enlightened in California:
UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS
Many people believe that the prattlings of an anarchistic Upton
Sinclair before a woman’s club are unworthy of serious attention; but
the fact that the hall of the Friday Morning Club was filled to
overflowing at his programme, and that the great majority of them sat
throughout the entire lecture, would seem to prove that such illogical
ravings have at least some power to impress. Some few women have been
found courageous enough to voice their indignation that the club
rostrum should be used for such ungodly purposes.
It is depressing to find a great number of intelligent women, well
able to think for themselves, lending time and ear to a piffling
collection of more-or-less brilliant quotations upholding anarchy,
destruction, lawlessness, revolution, from the lips of an effeminate
young man with a fatuous smile, a weak chin and a sloping forehead,
talking in a false treble, and accusing them of leading selfish,
self-indulgent lives. It would be laughable if it were not a little
disconcerting. These women, who are doing such earnest work for their
city, who, indeed, rank among the best intellect of the city, who have
deeds rather than words to their credit—it seems incredible that they
should be prepared to lend encouragement to such unintelligent,
witless, anarchistic outpourings.
While slyly veiling his false doctrines as quotations from
“intelligent ancient peasants,” and the prophet Isaiah, and the Greek
classics, Upton Sinclair nevertheless makes no secret of his sympathy
with dynamiters and murderers, and considers it an example of
exquisite wit to speak of Jesus Christ with patronizing irreverence.
His sense of humor also demanded that he belittle the flag of the
United States, and, after pretending to confuse it with a barber’s
pole scoff at the great national wave of emotion for the country’s
righteous defense and honor.
An assembly of men of the same standing as the women of the Friday
Morning Club could never be induced to listen to such insults to their
creed and their country without violent protest. Never before an
audience of red-blooded men could Upton Sinclair have voiced his weak,
pernicious, vicious doctrines. His naïve, fatuous smile alone would
have aroused their ire before he opened his vainglorious mouth.
Let the fact remain that this slim, beflanneled example of perverted
masculinity could and did get several hundred women to listen to him.
Now, as a matter of fact, it happened that I had given a far more
radical lecture at the monthly dinner of the University Club, where
three hundred men of Los Angeles had heard me with every evidence of
cordial interest. The secretary of the club had told me that it was the
only occasion he could remember when none of the diners had withdrawn to
play chess until after the speaking was finished. But I had, of course,
no way to make known this fact to the readers of the “Times,” nor even
the true sentiments of the ladies of the Friday Morning Club. It
happened that my friend George Sterling spoke at the club the following
week, and I went with him and was asked to speak at the luncheon. I
referred playfully to what the “Times” had said about me, and was
astonished at the ovation I received. The women rose from their seats to
let me know that they appreciated the insult to them involved in the
“Times” editorial. It is the same thing that I have noted everywhere,
whenever I refer to the subject of our newspapers. The American people
thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no
idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on
reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!
CHAPTER XXXIII
A FOUNTAIN OF POISON
I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is literally a
fact that I have yet to meet a single person who does not despise and
hate his “Times.” This paper, founded by Harrison Gray Otis, one of the
most corrupt and most violent old men that ever appeared in American
public life, has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable
social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with abusiveness
which seems almost insane. To one who understands our present economic
condition, the volcano of social hate which is smouldering under the
surface of our society, it would seem better to turn loose a hundred
thousand mad dogs in the streets of Los Angeles, than to send out a
hundred thousand copies of the “Times” every day.
You cannot live in Southern California and stand for any sort of liberal
ideas without encountering the wrath of this paper. And when you have
once done this, it pursues you with personal vindictiveness; no occasion
is too small for it to lay hold of, nor does it ever forget you, no
matter how many years may pass. My friend Rob Wagner writes me an
amusing story about the feud between Otis and the city of Santa Barbara,
a millionaire colony about a hundred miles from Los Angeles:
When the big fleet came around here some years ago I was
director-generaling a very snappy flower festival at Santa Barbara,
and as the “Times” played up all the bar-room brawls the sailors got
into and belittled my pretty show, I got hold of the local
correspondent and says: “Mac, why are you crabbing the show and
featuring the rough stuff?” “Well the truth is, Bob, my pay depends
upon the kind of stuff I send. A rotten story is good for columns,
against a few paragraphs of the birds and the flowers. You know the
General has towns as well as individuals on his index, and Santa
Barbara is one of them. The General once owned the Santa Barbara
‘Press,’ and with his usual cave-man methods got in bad with the
villagers, and they bumped him socially so hard that he finally left
in great heat and swore vengeance, which he practices to this day.
This has been going on for years.”
Now the old “General” is gone, but his “index” still stands. The song
should read: “Old Otis’ body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, but his
soul goes cursing on!” It goes on cursing, not merely movements of
social reform and those who advocate them; it goes on cursing Santa
Barbara! Soon after we came to Pasadena there was an earthquake shock,
sufficiently severe to cause us to run out of our house. You understand,
of course, that earthquakes are damaging to real-estate values;
therefore there was no report of an earthquake in any Los Angeles paper
next day—save that the “Times” reported an earthquake in Santa Barbara!
A year or two later this happened again—and again it was an earthquake
in Santa Barbara.
Also, Rob Wagner tells me of his own amusing experience with the
“Times.” I quote:
During the Harriman campaign I deserted my class, kicked in and had
Socialist meetings at my studio, and even enjoyed the degradation of
offering hospice to Ben Reitman and Emma Goldman the night after they
were run out of San Diego. So the General paid me the amazing
compliment of putting me on his index, and gave orders that my name
should not appear thereafter in his art columns. Anthony Anderson
proved it to me by slipping in a harmless little notice of a portrait
exhibit I was holding, which got the blue pencil. So you see that even
an artist who might help the town in its very ingrowing aestheticism
got the General’s axe if the General didn’t like his politics!
It happens, curiously enough, that I have met socially half a dozen
members of the “Times” staff. They are cynical worldlings, doing a work
which they despise, and doing it because they believe that life is a
matter of “dog eat dog.” I met the lady, Alma Whitaker, who had written
the account of my Friday Morning Club lecture. She had enjoyed the
lecture, she said, but afterwards had gone to the managing editor and
inquired how I was to be handled; she took it for granted that I would
understand this, and would regard it tolerantly. I explained to her the
embarrassments of an author in relation to an unpaid grocer’s bill. As a
result of what she had written about me, I had not been invited by any
other woman’s club in Southern California!
Also I met one of the high editors of the “Times,” an important
personage whom they feature. Talking about the question of journalistic
integrity, he said: “Sinclair, it has been so long since I have written
anything that I believed that I don’t think I would know the sensation.”
My answer was: “I have been writing on public questions for twenty
years, and I can say that I have never written a single word that I did
not believe.”
I have had much to say about the Associated Press in the course of this
book. I need say only one thing about it in Southern California—that its
headquarters are in the editorial rooms of the “Los Angeles Times.” A
good part of what goes on the Associated Press wire is first strained
through the “Times” sieve; and so I can inform Mr. Fabian Franklin,
formerly of the “New York Evening Post” and now of the “Review,” that
his sacred divinity, the Associated Press, has established here in
Southern California a system which makes it impossible that any news
favorable to the radical cause should get onto the Associated Press
wires, and that everything dealing with the radical movement in Southern
California which goes over the Associated Press wires should be not
merely false, but violently and maliciously false. For example a
prominent criminal lawyer in Los Angeles is blown up by a bomb, and the
report goes out to the country that the police authorities believe that
this was the work of “radicals.” But next day the police authorities
state officially that they have no such belief; and a couple of days
later the crime is proven to have had a purely personal motive.
I have myself tested out, not once but several score of times, the
system of the concrete wall and the news channel as it works here in Los
Angeles. For example, when I read that Russia had a Socialist premier by
the name of Kerensky, and that he did not know what to do with the Tsar
and his family, I wrote to him a letter suggesting “An Island of
Kings”—one of the Catalina Islands, off Los Angeles, as a place where
the dethroned sovereigns of Europe might be interned, under the
guardianship of the United States government. This, you perceive, was a
“boost” to Southern California; it conveyed to the outside world the
information that Southern California has a wonderful out-door climate,
and beautiful islands with wild goats running over them, and deep sea
fishing off the shores. I offered this story to the “Los Angeles Times,”
and they grabbed it, and it went out at once over the Associated Press
wires.
Then, again, America went into the war, and I found myself compelled to
revise the conclusions of a life-time, and to give my support to a war.
I debated the issue at a gathering of Socialists; and here again was
news which world-capitalism desired to have circulated, here was a
well-known Socialist turning to the capitalist side! The “Times” printed
the story and the “A. P.” sent it out. In order to make the record
clear, I quote from the “Times”:
UPTON SINCLAIR FAVORS WAR
Has a Complete Reversal of Former Ideas.
Publicly Announces Views in Crown City.
Holds World’s Democracy Is in Danger.
Pasadena, Feb. 19.—After preaching vehemently against war for twenty
years, Upton Sinclair, the Socialist writer, has joined hands with
Mars. The propagandist’s exit from the ranks of the peace-at-any-price
Socialists was made unexpectedly and dramatically yesterday afternoon
at a mass meeting at the Pasadena High School. Sinclair’s announcement
of his change of heart came after an address by Prof. I. W. Howeth of
the University of California on the history and causes of war. In the
open forum, which followed the addresses, Sinclair was the storm
center in a discussion in which his stand was criticized by the
Socialists and other peace advocates and applauded by others in favor
of supporting the stand taken by President Wilson.
And then followed long extracts from my speech. As sent out by the
Associated Press it was so garbled that I will ask the reader to read
four paragraphs of the “Times” account. My reasons for asking this will
appear later:
“My one interest in the world is democratic self-government. I have
fought for this at every sacrifice of personal advantage for twenty
years. I consider that all modern governments are evil, based upon
injustice, but I am bound to recognize that there are degrees in this
evil. The test is whether the government leaves the people free to
agitate against it. This the British government to a great extent has
done; so has the French; the German has not.
“For us to permit the Prussian ruling class to beat England to her
knees by the methods of general piracy that have been adopted is to
put democracy in peril of its life, and to make certain an age of
military preparation in the United States, Canada and Australia.
“If we go into the war the thing to do is to decide in advance the
terms, and let these be such as to unite all the democratic forces of
the world behind us. We do not want Germany beaten to her knees and
territories given to her enemies. We do not want to underwrite the
program of Russia in Constantinople. We want to remove these points of
contention from the arena.
“We want to heal up the ancient wounds. We want to teach all rulers
and all peoples that civilization will permit no one to gain territory
by war. We want to inter-nationalize the Dardanelles, Alsace-Lorraine,
Belgium, Poland, and to say that we, all the world, will fight to put
down any state which at any time attempts to invade them.”
Again, on the first anniversary of the Russian revolution, before a mass
meeting of the Russian Revolutionary Society of Los Angeles, I defended
the idea that Russia must stand by the Allies until the Kaiser was
overthrown. The “Times” gave two columns to this story, with big
headlines. I quote the opening paragraphs, with apologies for the
“Times’” atrocious English:
TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINE
Invited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
Upton Sinclair threw a monkey-wrench of facts of American manufacture
into a mass meeting of Socialists and near-Socialists at the Labor
Temple yesterday, that after cheers and tears for the Bolsheviki,
their red riot of revolution, pledges of support of Lenine and his
associates, and a notable evasion of facts for the sake of indulgence
in rhetorical idealism, wound up by adopting a resolution for home
rule in Ireland.
“So long as the United States government is behind the small nations
and for justice in the world, every Socialist and every revolutionist
should be behind the American government,” Sinclair told more than
five hundred men and women, ranging in their sympathies from pale
pacifism and yellow disloyalty up, amid hisses and cheers.
Mr. Sinclair’s speech, while not unexpected by the committee in charge
of the arrangements, was not in keeping with the spirit of the meeting
and threw a damp blanket on the more radical element that had gathered
to pass resolutions and cheer the social revolution and the economic
disintegration of the Russian Empire.
The Sinclair speech, which bristled with loyal and patriotic
utterances, was sandwiched between an address by Michael Bey,
secretary to Prof. Lomonosoff of the Russian Mission, and the address
of Paul Jordan Smith.
Such was my stand during the war, as set forth in the news columns of
the “Times.” But when the Kaiser was overthrown, and I saw America’s war
for democracy being turned into a war to put down the first proletarian
government in history, I went back into the radical camp—and what
happened then? What happened was that instantly the news channels became
a concrete wall! If you know anything about my going back into the
radical camp, and the reasons therefor, you know it from the radical
press, and not from the capitalist press. Since the day when I announced
the change, the Associated Press has sent out _not one word_ about my
point of view or my utterances; while the “Los Angeles Times” goes
farther yet—the “Times” deliberately blinks the fact that I once “tossed
a wrench into the red Russian machine,” and embarks on a campaign to
make the public believe that I was disloyal during the war! You may find
this beyond believing; but I shall prove it to you. And so far
successful has it been that recently a high school principal in Los
Angeles, addressing the pupils of her school, referred to me as a
“notorious disloyalist and traitor”!
There are, of course, libel laws in California, so the “Times” dares not
come out fairly and squarely with the statement that I was disloyal
during the war. What it does is to scan my every word and action, and
report them with subtly chosen phrases which expose me to suspicion,
without making definite charges. Surely you must admit that such
calculated and systematic treachery on the part of an enormously rich
and powerful newspaper is of public importance. You will expect me to
prove my charge. Very well, here are two cases. Case one:
While I stood by the war, I didn’t stand by the Espionage act, and when
some of my friends were arrested as pacifists, and stood in danger of
ten or twenty years in jail, I went to the authorities and interceded,
and succeeded in having the cases settled on the basis of a plea of
guilty and the payment of fines. The “Times” knew what I was doing, and
was foaming at the mouth about it, so I was told by several of its
staff; but it dared not say anything, because I had won both the Federal
judge and the prosecuting authorities to my way of thinking.
The deputy United States attorney, Mr. Palmer, happened to be a
Southerner, a type of man I understand, and I got to know him during
these negotiations. Later on I went to see him and said: “Mr. Palmer, I
am writing a story, ‘Jimmie Higgins,’ which I want to publish serially
in my magazine. It is a story of a Socialist in war-time, and its
purpose is to win the Socialists to the idea of supporting the war. But
I am in this dilemma. If I am going to show a man converted from
opposition to the war, I first have to show how he felt when he was
opposing it; I have to make him a real character, I have to make his
arguments real arguments—which is a difficult thing to do in war-time. I
would not want anybody to misunderstand my purpose and point of view; so
I wonder if you would read the manuscript, and tell me if there is
anything in it that might be open to misunderstanding.”
Mr. Palmer’s answer was that he was forbidden to give official opinions
on anything before publication, but he would be very glad to give me a
personal, unofficial opinion. I answered that I would regard this as a
favor, and Mr. Palmer read the manuscript. No doubt he spoke about it to
others, and the “Times” must have heard of the matter. Some months later
appeared the following paragraph on the editorial page of the “Times”:
Upton Sinclair has stuck his fingers in the Tom Mooney mess. Sinclair
has dropped his pen that for some time has been engaged in preparing
the manuscript of a book whose loyalty had to be passed on by the
United States District-Attorney, and is therefore in a position to
sympathize with those who might run afoul of the law.
Now, note the subtle treachery of this phrasing. The loyalty of my
manuscript “had to” be passed on. Practically everybody who read that
paragraph would understand from it that the government had taken some
action in the matter, had placed me under compulsion to submit the
manuscript. Nobody would get the impression that the compulsion in the
matter was the compulsion of my own conscience and judgment, my wish to
make sure that my piece of fiction was not open to misunderstanding.
Needless to say, the “Times” didn’t mention the fact that Mr. Palmer,
having read the manuscript, wrote cordially to assure me that there was
no possibility of its being misunderstood, and no need of any changes
being made.
Case two—and still more significant:
It happened a year or more ago that I had to undergo an operation for
appendicitis. I requested the authorities at the hospital not to give
out news about this operation, because I do not care to have purely
personal matters exploited in the papers. Thus it was a couple of weeks
later, after I was out of the hospital, before anything was known about
my operation. A friend of mine called me on the phone to ask if I would
meet the Pasadena correspondent of the “Times,” Robert Harwood, a decent
young fellow who was trying to learn to write. I said that I could not
meet him at that time, because I had just come out of the hospital. My
friend explained these circumstances to Harwood, and Harwood sent in a
news item, which appeared next morning under the headline: “_Anarchist
Writer in Hospital_.”
Now, of course, the editors of the “Times” know perfectly well that I am
not an Anarchist. When they call me an Anarchist, they do it merely to
hurt me. When in war-time they add the words: “Sinclair is still under
surveillance,” they mean, of course, that their readers shall derive the
impression that the “Anarchist writer” is under surveillance by the
Department of Justice; but if I should sue them for libel, they would
plead that they meant I was under surveillance by a surgeon!
A couple of weeks later I met young Harwood, and he made an embarrassed
apology for the item, explaining that he had turned in to the “Times” a
perfectly decent and straight mention of my operation; the article had
been rewritten in the “Times” office, and the false headline put on by
the managing editor of the paper. The manuscript of the copy that
Harwood had turned in had been read in advance by another man who was
present at the dinner, Ralph Bayes, formerly city editor of the “Los
Angeles Record,” so there were two witnesses to the facts.
To call a man an Anarchist at this time was to place him in obloquy and
in physical danger. Both Harwood and Bayes were willing to testify to
the facts, and I considered the possibility of suing the “Times.” I
consulted a lawyer who knows Los Angeles conditions intimately, and he
said: “If you expect to win this suit, you will have to be prepared to
spend many thousands of dollars investigating with detectives the
records and opinions of every prospective talesman. The ‘Times’ will do
that—does it regularly in damage-suits. If you don’t do it, you will
find yourself confronting a jury of Roman Catholics and political
crooks. In any case you will have a jury which has no remotest idea of
any difference between a Socialist and an Anarchist, so the utmost you
could possibly get would be six cents.”
A few days later young Harwood came to see me again. He was anxious for
me to bring suit, because he was sick of his job. There was a strike of
the Pacific Electric Railway employes in Los Angeles. The city, you
understand, is celebrated as an “open shop” town, and the “Times” is the
propaganda organ of the forces of repression.
“Mr. Sinclair,” said Harwood, “I was at the car-barns here in Pasadena
all evening yesterday, and not a single car came in. I wrote the facts
in my story, and the ‘Times’ altered it, reporting that the cars had run
on schedule every ten minutes.”
This is the regular practice of the “Times.” All its accounts of strikes
are hate-stories, entirely disregarding the facts; all its accounts of
political events and conditions, local, state, or national, are
class-propaganda. It will write its own views of political conditions in
Washington, and label it “Exclusive Dispatch.” It will take the
dispatches which come through the Associated Press, and put hate
headlines over them—and sometimes it is so overpowered by hate that the
headlines do not fit the context! Thus I read a large headline, “STOKES
WOMAN SENT TO PRISON”; and when I read the dispatch under the headline I
discover, quite plainly stated, that the “Stokes woman” is _not_ sent to
prison! Again, the Western Union Telegraph Company defies the United
States Government, refusing to accept the decision of the War Labor
Board. This is placed under the headline: “TELEGRAPH COMPANY DEFIES
UNION LABOR.” A few days later comes the news that the telegraphers’
union is threatening to strike because of the company’s attitude. This
bears the title: “TELEGRAPHERS’ UNION DEFIES GOVERNMENT.”
Needless to say, a newspaper which thus lies in the interest of
privilege is deeply and reverently religious. Every Monday the “Times”
prints a couple of pages of extracts from sermons, and now and then its
editorial page breaks into a spiritual ecstasy of its own. I clipped one
sample during the war—two columns, twelve point leaded, with caps here
and there: “_The One Tremendous Thought_.”
And what is this thought which overwhelms the “Times”? The thought “that
in this war the world is to be made safe, not so much for democracy, as
for men’s souls.” This war, “sinister, cruel, bloody and bestial though
it be,” has placed our soldier-boys under the care of religion. “Upon
the Protestant soldiers are the sleepless eyes of the Young Men’s
Christian Association. Around our Catholic soldiers are the faithful
arms of the Knights of Columbus.” Christianity had been weakening before
“the noisy school of the sciences”; but—
Now cometh the war! And behold, a professedly Christian world that had
been slipping away from belief in THE GREAT MIRACLE OF THE AGES, now
swings back to the old belief again. The Christian world is more truly
Christian.
This then is the striking fact of the war.
And this is the one tremendous thought.
And from this overpowering sublimity, take a jump to the news columns,
in which the “Times” reports family scandals in minute detail. Observe
the chaste refinement of its headlines—this pious organ of sanctity!
RACY CHARGES MADE BY RICH
Says Wife Sneaked Paramour Into Room to Beat Him.
She Avers He Made Love to Widow in a Flat.
Sensational Accusations in Wealthy Man’s Fight.
Also the “Times” has deep convictions on the subject of Economics. I
quote about half of one editorial:
MY LADY POVERTY
There is many a thing in this world much dreaded by us that we have no
need to dread. We often regard as a foe that which is really a friend.
And how many times we think of as being ugly that which is indeed
beautiful.
Perverted thus as we are in our natures, how unwelcome at the door of
life is the presence of poverty. Next to sickness and disease we dread
to be poor. And yet poverty is not a curse but a blessing.
Have you ever dwelt upon the sweet dignity and the beauty with which
St. Francis of Assisi clothed poverty? “My Lady Poverty” he called it,
giving to his rags and his hunger a personality, and taking that
personality into his heart.
And richly did his Lady Poverty reward Francis for his devotion and
his love. She cast out the dross from his nature, made life
unspeakably sweet and joyous for him, endeared him to the world
forever and immortalized him as few men have ever been
immortalized....
It must be that you will have thought often, too, of old blind Homer
who begged his way from door to door in the old times of Greece. He
was the master singer. He was the greatest, by far, of all the poets
that sung before him or that since have sung. Not Sappho, nor
Shakespeare, nor Tasso, nor Longfellow nor any one of all that
palm-crowned company was the peer of old blind Homer begging his way
from door to door.
Now, had not My Lady Poverty claimed Homer as a lover, had he been
rich, with a palace to live in and servants to wait upon him, there
would have been no Odyssey, no Iliad.
It was My Lady Poverty that lured Schiller to his garret and the crust
that was there; it was she who wove her fingers in Goldsmith’s hair
when he wandered through Erin playing for pennies on his flute.
So, if some day, there shall be some among us who will wake to find
the Lady Poverty standing at the door, think not that fate will then
have served us ill. Fling back the creaking hinges and let her in.
Make room for her gracious presence in the wide guest chambers of your
heart.
This, you perceive, is exquisitely written and deeply felt. In order to
appreciate fully its passionate and consecrated sincerity you need to be
informed that the newspaper which features it boasts a profit of
something like a million dollars a year; this income being derived from
the publication of the filthiest patent medicine advertisements, of
pages upon pages of news about moving-picture rubbish, real estate
speculations, oil stocks, gold mines, every kind of swindling—all paid
for.
I shall have much to say in later chapters about the “Times” fortune and
the way it was made. For the moment I give one anecdote, to round out my
picture.
My authority is a gentleman who a few years ago was managing editor of
the “Los Angeles Herald.” The “Herald” was then a morning paper, a rival
of the “Times,” and was controlled and practically owned by the Farmers’
& Merchants’ National Bank of Los Angeles. The president of this
institution is the biggest banker on the coast, and was engaged, with
the connivance of the newspapers, in unloading upon the city for two and
a half million dollars a water company which was practically worthless.
It was found that the “Herald” was not paying, and the banker decided to
reduce the price from five cents to two cents. But Otis of the “Times”
got wind of it, and notified the banker that if he lowered the price of
the “Herald,” the “Times” would at once open up on the water company
swindle. “Oh, very well, General,” replied the banker. “If that’s the
way you feel about it, we’ll forget it.” So the price of the “Herald”
stayed up, and the paper lost money, and finally Otis bought it for a
song, ran it for a while in pretended rivalry to the “Times,” and then
sold it at a profit, upon condition that it be made an evening paper, so
that it should not interfere with the “Times.”
Reading this, you will not be surprised to learn that the particular
page upon which appeared the rhapsody to “My Lady Poverty” bears the
name of the particular “Times” editor who told me: “It has been so long
since I have written anything that I believe, that I don’t think I would
know the sensation!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE DAILY CAT-AND-DOG FIGHT
There are other newspapers published in this “Roof-garden of the World.”
There is the Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” which
publishes the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, and follows, somewhat
haltingly, the Hearst propaganda for government ownership. But so far as
its local policy is concerned, it is entirely commercial, its fervors
are for the local industry, of “boosting.” It has an especially annoying
habit of disguising its advertisements so as to trap you into reading
them as news. You will be informed in headlines of a notable event in
local history, and when you read, you learn that Johnnie Jones, of 2249
S. Peanut Street, sold all his chickens within two hours by using
“Examiner Want Ads.” Again, you read a headline about an aviator just
returned from France, and what you learn about him is that Jones & Co.
have put out twenty thousand pictures of him in twenty thousand boxes of
“Frizzlies.” “This confection is especially delicious,” says our naïve
“Examiner.” And now, as I write, some editor has an inspiration, and day
after day I am confronted with an illustrated article: “_Aspirants to
Shapely Limbs Title_. Who owns the most beautiful limbs on the stage?
Look them over.”
Later on I shall tell of the “Examiner’s” treatment of various radicals.
For the present I am dealing with personal experiences, so I relate that
in the spring of 1919 I was invited to speak at a mass-meeting of the
Jews of Los Angeles, in protest against the pogroms in Poland. The other
speakers at this meeting expressed indignation at these pogroms; I
endeavored to explain them. The French bankers, who now rule the
continent of Europe, are engaged in setting up a substitute for the
Russian Tsardom on the east of Germany; and this new Polish empire is
using the Jews as a scapegoat, precisely as the Russian Tsardom did.
Referring to President Wilson, I said; “I have supported him through the
war, and I am not one of those who are denouncing him now. I think he
has made a pitiful failure in Europe, but I understand that failure; it
is due in part to the fact that the American people do not realize what
is going on in Europe, and do not make clear their determination that
American money shall not be poured out in support of reaction and
imperialism.”
Such was the substance of my argument. Next day the “Los Angeles Times”
did not mention it; while the “Los Angeles Examiner” reported it with
outraged indignation, under the scare headline: “SINCLAIR ATTACKS
WILSON.” In this form it was telegraphed all over the country. The
amusing feature of the story is that the “Examiner” itself was at this
time attacking Wilson most venomously—both on its editorial page and in
its Washington dispatches. But it did not want my aid; it would not
permit a Socialist to “attack” the President of the United States!
In various cities there are various standards prevailing for the conduct
of newspapers in their rivalries with one another. In New York the rule
is that they never praise one another, and only denounce one another in
extreme cases. One thing they absolutely never do is to mention one
another’s libel suits. But here in Los Angeles the rivalry between the
“Times” and “Examiner” is a daily cat-and-dog fight. Not merely do they
spread each other’s libel suits over the front page; they charge each
other with numerous crimes, they call names and make faces like two
ill-mannered children. And they keep this up, day after day, for weeks,
so that it is impossible to get the news of world-events in Southern
California without having their greeds and spites thrust upon you.
One day you read in the “Times” that the “Examiner” is dressing up
agents as soldiers, and circulating slanders against the “Times.” Next
day there begins in the “Examiner” a series of cartoons of Harry
Andrews, managing editor of the “Times,” representing him in grotesque
and disgusting positions. Next day you read in the “Times” that William
Bayard Hale, a former correspondent of the “Examiner,” is charged with
having taken German money. Next day you read in the “Examiner” that
Harry Carr, assistant managing editor of the “Times,” has been shown to
have had his travelling expenses in Germany paid by the German
government; also that Willard Huntington Wright, former literary editor
of the “Times,” is accused of having taken German money. Next day you
read in the “Examiner” that the mayor of Los Angeles has been indicted
upon a charge of taking bribe-money from negro brothel-keepers, and that
his chief confederate is Horace Karr, former political editor of the
“Times.” Next day you read in the “Times” about this same Horace
Karr—only he isn’t a former political editor of the “Times,” he is a
former reporter for the “Examiner”! This particular civic scandal is
spread over a page of both papers for a month, the “Examiner” playing it
up, the “Times” playing it down, both of them telling patent falsehoods,
and both of them continuing, day after day, to describe Horace Karr as a
former employe of the other!
One of the funniest instances of this rivalry occurred recently upon the
death of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, mother of William Randolph Hearst, owner of
the “Examiner.” I made a study of the “Examiner” and the “Times” next
morning. The “Examiner” gave three columns on the first page and five
columns on the third page to accounts of Mrs. Hearst and her virtues.
There were two pictures, one a picture of Mrs. Hearst, occupying
fifty-eight square inches, and the other a picture of “the family of
William Randolph Hearst visiting their grandmother,” this occupying
forty square inches.
The “Times,” of course, was not so much interested in Mrs. Hearst. It
gave her only the amount of space which it would give to any California
millionaire who died—that is, two columns. The picture of Mrs. Hearst
occupied only twenty-four square inches, and the contrast with the
picture in the “Examiner” was most diverting. The picture in the
“Examiner” showed a magnificent and stately lady, some duchess by
Gainsborough. How the picture in the “Times” originated I do not know,
but it appeared as if the editor of the “Times” had said to his artist:
“Find me a picture of the ugliest old woman you have on file; or better
yet, get me a picture of a grim old man with a double chin, and draw me
a woman’s bonnet on top of him, and a woman’s dress over his shoulders,
and label it ‘Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst’.”
Also there are three afternoon papers in Los Angeles—all three
sensational, all three commercial, with hardly the pretense of a public
policy. There was brought to my attention the case of Raoul Palma, a
young Mexican Socialist of an especially fine type, who had earned the
enmity of the Los Angeles police by persisting in speaking on the Plaza.
They had brought against him a charge of murder, as perfect a case of
“frame-up” as I ever saw. I spent much time investigating the case,
which failed for lack of evidence when brought before a jury. But the
city editors and managing editors of the Los Angeles newspapers, to whom
I took the evidence of this “frame-up,” were not moved to any fervors. I
was able to get one or two small items published, but I was not able to
find a spark of human feeling, nor yet an ideal of public welfare in the
management of the journals upon which I called. But suppose that I had
gone to them with the news that I was about to build a new million
dollar hotel in Los Angeles; or that I had purchased the Catalina
Islands, and was about to develop them for tourists; or that I was about
to start an airplane service up the coast!
Quite recently a great rubber concern has started a six million dollar
factory in Los Angeles; and such ecstasies as seize our papers! Columns
and columns, day after day; pictures of the wondrous structure, and of
the president of the company—I think I have had the features of this
pudgy little person thrust upon me not less than a dozen times! And his
ideas—not merely about the rubber business and the commercial prospects
of Southern California, but about the League of Nations, and the “Plumb
plan” and labor unions and strikes and Bolshevism!
On the other hand, there is a movement now under way to organize the
actors in the motion-picture industry in Southern California; and how
much space does this get from the Los Angeles newspapers? On August 18,
1919, there was held in the Hollywood Hotel a mass meeting of members of
the theatrical profession, to inform them concerning the meaning of the
actors’ strike in New York, and to solicit donations for the strikers.
Not a line about this meeting in any Los Angeles paper! And not a line
about the strike of the moving picture workers which came soon
afterwards!
Now, as I finish this book, the office of the “Dugout,” a returned
soldiers’ paper, is raided by the Federal authorities. The editor,
Sydney R. Flowers, served three years as a volunteer in the Canadian
army, was twice wounded, and once gassed. He joined a veterans’
organization in Los Angeles, but found it was being courted by the
Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association as a strike-breaking agency;
so he rebelled, and started a rival organization, and now the “M. and
M.” plotters have persuaded the government to raid his rooms and break
up his propaganda. It happened that I myself was present, and saw the
raid, and half a dozen witnesses can testify to the condition in which
the offices were left. At my instance the “Examiner” sent a photographer
and took a flashlight of the scene; but then it suppressed the picture!
As for the “Times,” it quite solemnly informs its readers that the war
veterans wrecked their own offices, in order to have a ground of
complaint against the government! It repeats this, in circumstantial
detail, two days in succession!
This is a somber tale I am telling, so let us not miss the few laughs
that belong. Some time ago I had a call from a young lady reporter for
the “Los Angeles Record.” She was a very young lady indeed—just out of
school, I should say—and she explained that Max Eastman had given an
interview on the subject of “free love,” and would I please to give an
interview on the subject of “free love.” In reply I explained to this
young lady that as a result of previous painful experiences I had made
an iron-clad rule on the subject of the sex-question. I would not trust
any newspaper reporter, not even the most amiable, to interpret my views
on that delicate subject.
The young lady argued and pleaded. She did her very charming best to get
me to give her a hint of my opinion of Max Eastman’s opinion of “free
love.” But I have become a wise bird—having had my wing-feathers shot
out so many times; I gave no hint, either of my own opinions or of my
opinions of Max Eastman’s opinions.
Finally the young lady said: “Do you ever write on the subject, Mr.
Sinclair?”
I answered: “Sometimes I do. When I write, I choose my own words and say
what I mean, and then I am willing to stand by it.”
“Well,” said the young lady, “will you write an article on ‘free love’
for the ‘Record’?”
“Certainly I will,” said I—“if the ‘Record’ will pay my price.”
“What is your price?”
“Ten cents a word.”
The young lady looked troubled. “I don’t know if the ‘Record’ could pay
that,” said she, “but this is my position—I will explain frankly, and
hope you won’t mind. I’ve just started to be a newspaper woman, and I’m
very anxious to make good. I don’t have to earn my living, because my
parents have money. What I want to do is to have a career. If I go back
to the ‘Record’ and report that I failed to get an interview, I won’t
keep this job. So won’t you please write an article for me, and let me
pay for it at the rate of ten cents a word?”
You may share a smile over this queer situation. I pleaded
embarrassment, I argued with the young lady that I couldn’t possibly
take her money. But she argued back, very charmingly; she would be
heart-broken if I did not consent. So at last I said: “All right, I
will write you an article. How many words do you want?”
The young lady meditated; she figured for a while on the back of her
note-book; and finally she said: “I think I’d like fifty words, please.”
Really, I explained, I couldn’t express my views on such a complicated
subject in the limits of a night letter; so the young lady raised her
bid to a hundred words. In the end we had to break off negotiations, and
she went away disappointed. I was told afterwards by friends that she
published an article in the “Record,” describing this interview, and
having an amusing time with me; so presumably her job was saved. I
didn’t see her article, for the “Record” is an evening paper, and
publishes half a dozen editions, no two alike, and the only way you can
find out what it says about you is to stand on the street-corner for six
or eight hours, and catch each fleeting edition as it fleets.
I have come to the end of my own experiences. I read the manuscript and
the proofs, over and over, as I have to do, and a guilty feeling haunts
me. Will the radical movement consider that I have forced upon it a
ventilation of my own egotisms, in the guise of a work on Journalism? I
cannot be sure; but at least I can say this: Have patience, and read the
second part of the book, in which you will find little about myself, and
a great deal about other people, to whom you owe your trust and
affection; also a mass of facts about your Journalism, without reference
to anybody’s personality.
PART II
THE EXPLANATION
CHAPTER XXXV
THE CAUSES OF THINGS
I studied Latin for five years in college, and from this study brought
away a dozen Latin verses. One of them is from Virgil: “Happy he who has
learned to know the causes of things.” The words have stayed in my mind,
summing up the purpose of my intellectual life: Not to rest content with
observing phenomena, but to know what they mean, how they have come to
be, how they may be guided and developed, or, if evil, may be
counteracted. I would not have taken the trouble to write a book to say
to the reader: I have been persecuted for twenty years by prostitute
Journalism. The thing I am interested in saying is: The prostitution of
Journalism is due to such and such factors, and may be remedied by such
and such changes.
Here is one of the five continents of the world, perhaps the richest of
the five in natural resources. As far back as history, anthropology, and
even zoology can trace, these natural resources have been the object of
competitive struggle. For the past four hundred years this struggle has
been ordained by the laws and sanctified by the religions of man. “Each
for himself,” we say, and, “the devil take the hindmost.” “Dog eat dog,”
we say. “Do others or they will do you,” we say. “Business is business,”
we say. “Get the stuff,” we say. “Money talks,” we say. “The Almighty
Dollar,” we say. So, by a thousand native witticisms, we Americans make
clear our attitude toward the natural resources of our continent.
As a result of four centuries of this attitude, ordained by law and
sanctified by religion, it has come about that at this beginning of the
twentieth century the massed control of the wealth of America lies in
the hands of perhaps a score of powerful individuals. We in America
speak of steel kings and coal barons, of lords of wheat and lumber and
oil and railroads, and think perhaps that we are using metaphors; but
the simple fact is that the men to whom we refer occupy in the world of
industry precisely the same position and fill precisely the same roles
as were filled in the political world by King Louis, who said, “I am the
State.”
This power of concentrated wealth which rules America is known by many
names. It is “Wall Street,” it is “Big Business,” it is “the Trusts.” It
is the “System” of Lincoln Steffens, the “Invisible Government” of
Woodrow Wilson, the “Empire of Business” of Andrew Carnegie, the
“Plutocracy” of the populists. It has been made the theme of so much
stump-oratory that in cultured circles it is considered good form to
speak of it in quotation marks, with a playful and skeptical
implication; but the simple fact is that this power has controlled
American public life since the civil war, and is greater at this hour
than ever before in our history.
The one difference between the Empire of Business and the Empire of
Louis is that the former exists side by side with a political democracy.
To keep this political democracy subservient to its ends, the industrial
autocracy maintains and subsidizes two rival political machines, and
every now and then stages an elaborate sham-battle, contributing
millions of dollars to the campaign funds of both sides, burning
thousands of tons of red fire, pouring out millions of reams of paper
propaganda and billions of words of speeches. The people take interest
in this sham-battle—but all sensible men understand that whichever way
the contest is decided, business will continue to be business, and money
will continue to talk.
So we are in position to understand the facts presented in this book.
Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its
control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day,
between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept
in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election
comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the
two candidates of their exploiters. Not hyperbolically and
contemptuously, but literally and with scientific precision, we define
Journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the
news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.
A modern newspaper is an enormously expensive institution. The day is
past when a country printer could set up a hand-press and print news
about the wedding of the village blacksmith’s daughter and the
lawn-party of the Christian Endeavor Society, and so make his way as a
journalist. Now-a-days people want the last hour’s news from the
battle-field or the council-hall. If they do not get it in the local
paper, they get it in the “extras” from the big cities, which are thrown
off the fast express-trains. The franchise which entitles a paper to
this news from all over the world is very costly; in most cities and
towns it is an iron-clad monopoly. You cannot afford to pay for this
service, and to print this news, unless you have a large circulation,
and for that you need complicated and costly presses, a big building, a
highly trained staff. Incidentally you will find yourself running an
advertising agency and a public employment service; you will find
yourself giving picnics for newsboys, investigating conditions in the
county-hospital, raising subscription funds for a monument to Our Heroes
in France. In other words, you will be an enormous and complex
institution, fighting day and night for the attention of the public,
pitting your composite brain against other composite brains in the
struggle to draw in the pennies of the populace.
Incidentally, of course, you are an institution running under the
capitalist system. You are employing hundreds, perhaps thousands of men,
women and children. You are paying them under the iron law of wages,
working them under the rule of “the devil take the hindmost.” You have
foremen and managers and directors, precisely as if you were a
steel-mill or a coal-mine; also you have policemen and detectives,
judges and courts and jailers, soldiers with machine-guns and sailors
with battleships to protect you and your interests—precisely as does the
rest of the predatory system of which you are a part.
And, of course, you have the capitalist psychology; you have it complete
and vivid—you being the livest part of that system. You know what is
going on hour by hour; you are more class-conscious, more alert to the
meaning of events than anyone else in the capitalist community. You know
what you want from your wage-slaves, and you see that they “deliver the
goods.” You know what you are furnishing to your advertisers, and your
terms are “net cash.” You know where you get your money, your “credit”;
so you know “Who’s Who” in America, you know whom to praise and whom to
hate and fear.
There are perhaps a dozen newspapers in America which have been built up
by slow stages out of the pennies of workingmen, and which exist to
assert the rights of workingmen. The ones I happen to know are the “New
York Call,” the “Jewish Daily Forwards,” the “Milwaukee Leader,” the
“Seattle Union Record,” the “Butte Daily Bulletin.” It should be
understood that in future discussions I except such newspapers from what
I say about American Journalism. This reservation being made, I assert
there is no daily newspaper in America which does not represent and
serve vested wealth, and which has not for its ultimate aim the
protection of economic privilege.
I am trying in this book to state the exact facts. I do not expect to
please contemporary Journalism, but I expect to produce a book which the
student of the future will recognize as just. So let me explain that I
realize fully the differences between newspapers. Some are dishonest,
and some are more dishonest; some are capitalistic, and some are more
capitalistic. But great as are the differences between them, and clever
as are the pretenses of some of them, there is no one which does not
serve vested wealth, which has not for its ultimate aim the protection
of economic privilege. The great stream of capitalist prosperity may
flow irregularly, it may have eddies and counter-currents, stagnant
places which deceive you for a while; but if you study this great stream
long enough, you find that it all moves in one direction, and that
everything upon its surface moves with it. A capitalist newspaper may
espouse this cause or that, it may make this pretense or that, but
sooner or later you realize that a capitalist newspaper lives by the
capitalist system, it fights for that system, and in the nature of the
case cannot do otherwise. Some one has said that to talk of regulating
capital is to talk of moralizing a tiger; I would say that to expect
justice and truth-telling of a capitalist newspaper is to expect
asceticism at a cannibal feast.
It would be instructive to take the leading newspapers of America and
classify them according to the nature of their financial control,
showing precisely how and where this control shapes the policy of the
paper. There will be certain immediate financial interests—the great
family which owns the paper, the great bank which holds its bonds, the
important local trade which furnishes its advertising. Concerning these
people you observe that no impolite word is ever spoken, and the début
parties given to the young ladies of these families are reported in
detail. On the other hand, if there are interests aggressively hostile
to the great family, the great bank, the important local trade, you
observe that here the newspaper becomes suddenly and unexpectedly
altruistic. It will be in favor of public ownership of the gas-works; it
will be in favor of more rigid control of state banks; whatever its
policy may be, you will, if you sit at the dinner-tables of the rich in
that city, have revealed to you the financial interests which lie behind
that unexpected altruism.
In the days of the ancient régime, nations went to war because someone
made a slighting remark about the king’s mistress; and in our present
Empire of Business you find exactly the same thing happening. I know of
a newspaper which is still living upon the reputation it made by
defending the strikers in a great labor struggle. The paper had never
defended strikers before, it has never defended strikers since; but on
this occasion it happened that the president of the corporation involved
in the strike had remarked at a dinner-party that the owner of the
newspaper was living with an opera-singer.
Some ten years ago I remember that the city of Chicago was torn wide
open by a teamsters’ strike. Brickbats were flying, mobs were swarming
in the streets, militiamen were stabbing people with bayonets. Some time
afterwards there was an investigation, and it transpired that a certain
labor-leader, Sam Parks by name, had been paid five or ten thousand
dollars by a great mail-order house to call a strike on a rival
mail-order house. And in precisely this way great newspapers quarrel,
and the public has no idea what it means. I have heard a leading Hearst
editor tell, quite simply and as a matter of course, how Mr. Hearst
would come into the office at twelve o’clock at night and turn the
batteries of the “New York American” and “Journal” upon the business and
politics of August Belmont, because Mr. Belmont had slighted Mr. Hearst,
or Mr. Hearst’s wife—I forget which—at a dinner-party. One year you
would see Mr. Hearst printing a cartoon every day, showing “Charlie”
Murphy, boss of Tammany Hall, in convict’s stripes; next year Mr. Hearst
would make a deal with Tammany—and the other newspapers of New York
would be showing Mr. Hearst in convict’s stripes!
Or come to the other side of the continent, and consider the “San
Francisco Chronicle,” owned by “Mike” de Young. Here is a picture of Mr.
de Young, drawn by one of his wage-slaves, a man who for many years has
helped to run his profit-machine:
He uses much perfume, and is extremely conceited. He is author of the
remark that no reporter is worth more than twenty dollars a week, or
ever will be. He is a secret laugh-producer because of his inordinate
love for the camera spotlight. Strangely enough, his likeness is
seldom to be found in any paper except his own; the “Chronicle’s”
camera men have standing instructions at public gatherings to pay as
little attention to other men as possible and to concentrate on de
Young. On his own paper everybody is Jones or Smith except himself. He
must always be referred to as Mr. de Young. Owner of much valuable
real estate near Golden Gate park, he made a vigorous fight to have
the Panama-Pacific Exposition located in the park, hoping thereby to
increase the value of his holdings. Defeated, he turned his wrath on
the exposition officials, and denounces them at every opportunity.
Mention of President C. C. Moore of the Exposition Company is
forbidden in the columns of the “Chronicle.”
There are differences, of course, in the moral character of men. There
are some men who do not take part in large-scale real-estate intrigues,
and some who do not live with opera-singers; there are capitalists who
pay their debts, and regard their word of honor as their bond. And there
have been newspapers owned by such men, and conducted according to such
principles. You could not buy the editorial support of the “Springfield
Republican” or the “Baltimore Sun”; you could not buy the advertising
space of these papers for the cheaper and more obvious kinds of fraud.
But ask yourself this question: Is there a newspaper in America which
will print news unfavorable to department-stores? If the girl-slaves of
the local department-store go on strike, will the newspaper maintain
their right to picket? Will it even print the truth about what they do
and say?
Some years ago a one-time teacher of mine was killed by falling down the
elevator-shaft of a New York department-store. I noted that my newspaper
did not give the name of the department-store. As a matter of curiosity,
I bought all the newspapers, and discovered that none of them gave the
name of the department-store. It was not absolutely essential, of
course; my one-time teacher was just as dead as if the name of the store
had been given. But suppose the accident had taken place at the People’s
House, owned by the Socialists—would all the newspapers of New York have
withheld the name of the place?
In New York City one of the Gimbel brothers, owners of a Philadelphia
department store, was arrested, charged with sodomy, and he cut his
throat. Not a single newspaper in Philadelphia gave this news! This was
in the days before Gimbel Brothers had a store in New York, therefore it
occurred to the “New York Evening Journal” that here was an opportunity
to build up circulation in a new field. Large quantities of the paper
were shipped to Philadelphia, and the police of Philadelphia stopped the
newsboys on the streets and took away the papers; and the Philadelphia
papers said nothing about it!
And this department-store interest supervises not only the news columns,
but the editorial columns. Some years ago one of the girl-slaves of a
New York department-store committed suicide, leaving behind her a note
to the effect that she could not stand twenty-cent dinners any longer.
The “New York World,” which collects several thousand dollars every day
from department-stores, judged it necessary to deal with this incident.
“The World,” you understand, is a “democratic” paper, a “liberal” paper,
an “independent” paper, a paper of “the people.” Said the “World”:
There are some people who make too large a demand upon fortune. Fixing
their eyes upon the standards of living flaunted by the rich, they
measure their requirements by their desires. Such persons are easily
affected by outside influences, and perhaps in this case the recent
discussions, more often silly than wise, concerning the relation of
wages to vice, may have made the girl more susceptible than usual to
the depressing effects of cheap dinners.
And do you think that is a solitary instance, the result of a temporary
editorial aberration? No, it is typical of the capitalistic mind, which
is so frugal that it extracts profit even from the suicide of its
victims. Some years ago an old man committed suicide because his few
shares of express-stock lost their value. The “New York Times” was
opposing parcel-post, because the big express-companies were a prominent
part of the city’s political and financial machine; the “New York Times”
presented this item of news as a suicide caused by the parcel-post!
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE EMPIRE OF BUSINESS
Let the reader not misunderstand my thesis. I do not claim that there
exists in America one thoroughly organized and completely conscious
business government. What we have is a number of groups, struggling for
power; and sometimes these groups fall out with one another, and make
war upon one another, and then we see a modern application of the
ancient adage, “When thieves fall out, honest men come into their own.”
If, for example, you had studied the press of New York City at the time
of the life insurance exposures, you would certainly have concluded that
this press was serving the public interest. As it happens, I followed
that drama of life insurance with the one man in America who had most to
do with it, the late James. B. Dill. Judge Dill ran a publicity bureau
in New York for several months, and handed out the greater part of this
scandal to the newspaper reporters. He told me precisely how he was
doing it, and precisely why he was doing it, and I knew that this whole
affair, which shook the nation to its depths, was simply the Morgan and
Ryan interests taking away the control of life insurance money from
irresponsible people like “Jimmy” Hyde, and bringing it under the
control of people who were responsible—that us, responsible to Morgan
and Ryan. The whole campaign was conducted for that purpose; the
newspapers of New York all understood that it was conducted for that
purpose, and when that purpose was accomplished, the legislative
investigations and the newspaper clamor stopped almost overnight.
And all through this terrific uproar I noticed one curious thing—there
was never in any single newspaper or magazine or speech dealing with the
question the faintest hint of the one intelligent solution of the
problem—that is, government insurance. I made several efforts to get
something on the subject into the New York papers; I gave interviews—I
have forgotten now to what papers, but I know that these interviews
never got by the blue pencil. It took the emergency of war-time to force
government insurance—and now the lobby of the private insurance
companies is busy in Washington, trying to scuttle government insurance,
as government telegraphs and telephones, government railroads,
government shipping, government employment agencies, have all one by one
been scuttled.
The thieves fall out; and also new thieves are continually trying to
break into the “ring.” There is always an enormous temptation presented
by our peculiar newspaper situation; our Journalism is maintaining a
vacuum, with incessant pressure on the outside. The people want the
news; the people clamor for the news; and there is always a mass of
vitally important news withheld. The Socialist papers are publishing
scraps of it, orators are turning it into wild rumor on ten thousand
soap-boxes; if only the people could get it in a newspaper or a
magazine, what fortunes they would pay! And of course there are
wide-awake men in the world of Journalism who know this: what more
natural than that one of them should now and then yield to the
temptation to get rich by telling the truth?
The whole history of the American magazine-world is summed up in that
formula. Some fifteen years ago our magazine publishers made the
discovery of this unworked gold-mine; “McClure’s,” “Success,”
“Everybody’s,” “The American,” “Hampton’s,” “Pearson’s,” the
“Metropolitan,” even the staid and dignified “Century” jumped in to work
this mine. Their circulations began to go up—a hundred thousand increase
a month was not unknown in those days of popular delirium. Magazine
publication became what it had never before been in American history,
and what it has never been since—a competitive industry, instead of a
camouflaged propaganda. Is it not a complete vindication of my thesis,
that in a couple of years half a dozen magazines were able to build up
half a million circulation, by no other means whatever than telling what
the newspapers were refusing to tell? And is it not a proof of the
pitiful helplessness of the public, that they still go on reading these
same magazines, in spite of the fact that they have been bought up by
“the interests,” and are filled with what one of their “kept” editors
described to me, in a voice of unutterable loathing, as: “Slush for the
women!”
For, of course, the industrial autocracy very quickly awakened to the
peril of these “muck-raking” magazines, and set to work to put out the
fire. Some magazines were offered millions, and sold out. Those that
refused to sell out had their advertising trimmed down, their bank-loans
called, their stockholders intimidated—until finally, in one way or
another, they consented to “be good.”
“Success” refused to “be good”; it persisted in exposing Cannonism, and
maintaining a “People’s Lobby” in Washington; so “Success” was put out
of business. The “National Post” adopted a radical policy, and it was
put out of business; likewise “Human Life,” edited by Alfred Henry
Lewis; likewise the “Twentieth Century Magazine,” edited by B. O.
Flower; likewise the “Times Magazine”—a monthly having nothing to do
with the “New York Times,” but edited by a young man of means who
naïvely supposed that he would be allowed to tell the truth to the
people of New York. “Pearson’s” of the old régime was brought to ruin,
and it survives in its new form by the defiant genius of one man, Frank
Harris. “Harper’s Weekly” started out bravely, with Norman Hapgood as
editor, and Charles R. Crane as “angel”; for two or three years it
fought the advertising boycott, and then it died.
In the “Profits of Religion” I told in detail the story of how
“Hampton’s Magazine” was put out of business. I did not intend to repeat
this story, but it happens that I have just met my old friend Ben
Hampton again, and have gathered fresh details. I will let him tell his
own story:
Never in the history of magazine-publishing was there such a great
success in such a short time as that of “Hampton’s.” This is not my
conversation. It is simply the records of the American News Company.
We had, I think, 425,000 circulation, and we broke all records for the
same length of time. No other magazine ever succeeded with an
investment as small as ours. When they took the magazine away from me
I think we had nearly thirty thousand dollars a month advertising.
But it is a peculiarity of magazines that when they grow too fast they
lose money for a time. You have contracted for a year to publish
advertisements, based on a circulation of a hundred thousand copies. If,
three months later you have four hundred thousand circulation, you are
giving four times as much as you were paid for; also, you have to have
four times as much paper and press-work, for which you do not get
returns until three months later. Hampton put in all his fortune and his
wife’s, and then he started selling stock to his readers. He had just
got by the difficult place; his printing-company and the bank which
owned the printing-company had audited his books, and the bank-auditor
had certified that in the first four months of 1911 the magazine “had
earned a profit of not less than three thousand and not more than seven
thousand dollars per month.”
Yet they put “Hampton’s Magazine” out of business! Hampton had started
Charles Edward Russell’s articles exposing the “New Haven” swindle—two
or three years before the truth broke out, you understand. An agent from
the “New Haven” came to inform him that if he started this publication,
he would be put out of business. I now learn for the first time the name
of this agent—Sylvester J. Baxter. Readers of the “Profits of Religion”
will give a start of recognition: the same gentleman who contributed
that wonderful boost of the “New Haven” to the “Outlook,” organ of the
Clerical Camouflage! And the “Outlook” pretended not to know that this
was an official boost of the “New Haven,” and to have been astonished
when the “New Haven” ordered a big edition of this issue!
Let Ben Hampton tell the rest of the story:
A nice young man got a job in our accounting department. He was one of
the finest fellows we had ever had around. He was willing to work days
and nights, and he did work days and nights, and one night when he was
working, he took a copy of our list of stockholders. Of course, we did
not find this out for months. In the meantime, a man and a woman,
working separately, visited all our stockholders they could reach and
told them I was robbing the Company. They said I had a large estate in
the Adirondacks and a home in the Fifth Avenue district of New York
City. At that time Mrs. Hampton and I were having a time to buy
clothing for the children. We were drawing almost no salary from the
magazine, and we had put all our money in the undertaking. In fact, we
were near the line of desperation, we were so hard up.
Something like twenty brokers on the Wall Street curb began to
advertise our five dollars par stock at four dollars, down to three
dollars a share. We sent to them and offered to buy the stock and were
never able to buy one share. One of the brokers afterwards admitted to
us that they had none of the stock, and that they were paid to do the
advertising.
All these methods, of course, created confusion in the minds of our
stockholders, and practically killed our efforts to raise thirty
thousand dollars, which was the insignificant sum of money needed to
pay off our paper bill. We were entitled to a line of credit of three
hundred thousand dollars at the paper makers. We owed the paper maker,
I think, about forty thousand dollars and he notified us arbitrarily
on a Monday that we would have to pay the bill Wednesday, or he would
decline to furnish paper for the current edition, which was then on
the press.
When I saw trouble coming I got together a committee of my
stockholders in New York City, and a group of about a dozen men
endorsed three notes of ten thousand dollars each. The net worth of
these dozen men was over two million dollars. We took the notes to one
bank in New York City. The bank accepted them. We checked against
them, and got money on them, and the next day were notified we would
have to take the notes out of the bank.
Of course you say this is an illegal proceeding, and can’t be done. I
assure you it was done. We were thrown out of that bank, after the
bank had accepted our paper, and after we had checked against it. The
manager of the bank told me that he was powerless—that the “down-town”
folks had thrown us out. Several other banks that had loaned me money
for ten years told me that they could not do anything for me now—that
I was in bad “down-town.”
One banker who flatly said he would loan us money whether Morgan’s
crowd wanted him to or not, was put out of business himself within a
few months. This man’s name is Earle. He was then running the Nassau
Bank. I do not know whether Earle would tell his story or not, but the
way the Morgan crowd drove him out of the banking business was one of
the coldest-blooded things I ever heard of. They punished him for
trying to accept perfectly good banking-paper to help me out of my
crisis.
The foregoing facts are dictated hurriedly but there are some points
in them that I believe you will want. Of course you know the finish of
the properties. Within ten days after the thing began to close in on
me, I had to turn my affairs over to the lawyers, and then a group of
people appeared who were said to be the “International Correspondence”
group of Scranton, Pa. They brought in letters from bankers, etc.,
showing they were very reputable and high-classed, and I had the
choice of going into the hands of the receiver, or letting them take
the property. They paid me just money enough so I could get my stock
out of hock. The rest of the money they were to pay me was evidenced
by a contract. I turned the contract over to my attorneys for
protection of my preferred stockholders. Within a few weeks’ time we
became convinced that the fellows who had taken over the property
intended to loot it. The bookkeeper told me they took one hundred and
seventy-five thousand dollars out of the property in a few months, and
took the books down to the East River and threw them off the bridge.
The result of it all was that I worked with the United States
Government and had the crowd indicted. In time we brought them to
trial. The trial lasted four or five weeks. We literally could not
prove anything. We did prove that “Hampton’s Magazine” was a valuable
piece of property and that it was making money, but we could not prove
that the fellows who got it were crooks. All the records were
destroyed. The result was, the judge threw the case out of court,
after it had been in court for four or five weeks, and we never got
back any of the money. Of course, the property in the meantime had
been ruined.
I have told about several of the magazines which consented to “be good.”
I have shown the pitiful plight of the “American,” and the miserable
piffle they are publishing. And what is the meaning of it? The meaning
was given in an item published in the “New York Press” early in 1911,
when the “American Magazine” was taken over by the Crowell Publishing
Company. The “Press” stated that this concern was controlled by Thomas
W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan and Company, and declared “The ‘American’
will do no more muck-raking.” In answer, the “American” in its next
issue made a statement, haughtily announcing that the same editors, John
S. Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell and Finley Peter Dunne were
remaining in charge, and that “the policy of the magazine will be
unchanged.” To a discussion of this, my own language is inadequate; I
have to employ the vocabulary of my son, a student in high school: “The
poor boobs!” Four years these editors stuck it out, and then they quit,
and a couple of young fellows who had been their office-clerks are now
the “editors” of the “American Magazine”—which boasts a million
circulation, and fifty-eight thousand lines of advertisements per month!
Now, as I write, I learn that this Crowell Publishing Company has
purchased “Collier’s,” and we shall see the same thing happening to our
“National Weekly”!
In the same tragic way, my old friend Ridgway, who published the
“Condemned Meat Industry,” is out of “Everybody’s,” and a new and wholly
“tame” staff is in charge, acceptable to the Butterick Publishing Co. In
the same way S. S. McClure was turned out of his magazine, which once
published Ida Tarbell’s exposure of Standard Oil, and now publishes the
solemn futilities of Cleveland Moffett, and anti-Socialist propaganda by
the unspeakable Newell Dwight Hillis. It happened the other day that I
was glancing over a back number of “McClure’s,” and my eye was caught by
the opening instalment of a serial, announced in this style:
At last! A great new novel by the author of “The Broad Highway.”
“BELTANE THE STRONG,” by JEFFREY FARNOL, who also wrote “The Amateur
Gentleman” and “The Money-Moon.” This is no ordinary story. Many
novelists would have written three books, some six, in the time
Jeffrey Farnol has given to this tremendous love-tale of Beltane and
Lady Helen. The result is the finest thing of its kind “McClure’s” has
ever printed—by all means the novel of the year.
And opposite this is a full-page pink and purple illustration of a
misty, mystical girl in a thrilling state of semi-nudity, with this
quotation:
Breathless and as one entranced he gazed upon her: saw how her long
hair glowed a wondrous red ’neath the kisses of the dying sun; saw how
her purpled gown, belted at the slender waist, clung about the
beauties of her shapely body: saw how the little shoe peeped forth
from the perfumed mystery of its folds—and so stood speechless, bound
by the spell of her beauty.
“The perfumed mystery of its folds!” Such is the perfumed garbage now
being fed to the American public in the name of Sam McClure!
Or take the “Metropolitan,” which a few years ago announced itself as a
Socialist magazine. We were all tremendously thrilled by the idea that
the money of Harry Payne Whitney was to be used to bring about Social
Justice in America; but then we saw the “Metropolitan” suppress its
exposé of Rasputin at behest of the embassy of the late Tsar; now we see
it turning over its editorial columns to Gen. Leonard Wood, to be used
in a propaganda for universal military training! In this greatest crisis
of history, the people’s cause is left without a single champion in our
popular magazines. There are only the Socialist papers, and two or three
radical weeklies of limited circulation; the rest is Barbarism.
In every newspaper-office in America the same struggle between the
business-office and the news-department is going on all the time. The
business of getting the news involves “hustle,” and young brains are
constantly being brought in, and these young brains have to be taught
the discipline of special privilege, and sometimes they never entirely
submit. They have powerful arguments on their side. “You want
circulation, don’t you? What’s the use of a paper without circulation?
And how can you get circulation if you let the fellow around the corner
have this ‘scoop’?” So the owner of the paper has to get busy and make a
gentleman’s agreement with the other papers to suppress the news; and
sometimes it turns out that the other fellow isn’t a gentleman, and
there is a row, and the live young “hustlers” get their way for a while,
and the public gets a bit of the news.
Various stages of this struggle are exemplified by different newspapers,
or by the same newspaper at different times. You may see a staid old
family organ—say the “New York Tribune,” owned by a rich capitalist,
Whitelaw Reid, who publishes it as a side issue to gratify his vanity,
taking his pay in the form of an ambassadorship. The circulation of such
a paper will go steadily down. But then perhaps the old man will die,
and his sons will take charge, and his sons won’t feel like paying out
twenty or thirty thousand dollars a month, and will get a “live
newspaper man” to “put life into” the paper; or perhaps they will sell
out to people who have less money, and will be tempted to give the
public a little of what it wants.
The fundamental thing that the public wants is, of course, enough to
eat. Modern society is complex, and there are thousands of public issues
clamoring for newspaper attention, but in the final analysis all these
questions boil down to one question—why is the cost of living going up
faster than wages and salaries? So the spectre of “radicalism” haunts
every newspaper office. The young publisher who wants to make money, the
“live newspaper man” who wants to make a reputation, find themselves at
every hour tempted to attack some form of privilege and exploitation.
So come “crusades.” The kind of crusade which the newspaper undertakes
will depend upon the character of circulation for which it is bidding.
If the paper sells for three cents, and is read by bankers and elderly
maiden aunts, the newspaper will print the sermons of some clergyman who
is exposing the horrors of the red-light district, or it will call on
the district attorney to begin prosecuting the loan-sharks who are
robbing the poor, or it will start a free ice fund for babies in the
tenements. Any cause will do, provided the victims are plunderers of a
shady character—that is, small plunderers.
Or perhaps the newspaper is a popular organ. It sells at a low price to
the common people. In that case it may go to extremes of radicalism; it
may clamor for government ownership, and attack big public service
corporations in a way that seems entirely independent and fearless. You
say: “Surely this is honest journalism,” and you acquire the habit of
reading that newspaper. But then gradually you see the campaign die
down, the great cause forgotten. The plundering of the public goes right
on, the only thing that has been changed is that you, who used to be a
reader of the “World,” are now a reader of the “Journal”; and that is
the change which the “Journal” had in mind from the outset. You will see
the “Journal” tabulating the amount of advertising it publishes each
week or each month, and boasting that it is greater than the “World”
publishes; and maybe you feel proud about that, you like to be in the
boat with the best fishermen—even though you are there as a fish.
Anyone who is familiar with the newspaper-world can think of a score of
publications to which the above statement would apply. There exists a
chain of one-cent evening papers scattered over the country, the Scripps
papers, catering to working-class audiences. They were founded by a real
radical and friend of the people, E. W. Scripps, and for a decade or two
were the main resource of the workers in many localities. Now E. W.
Scripps is a sick man, out of the game, and his eldest son, who runs the
papers, is a young business man, interested in the business management
of a great property; so in one city after another you see the Scripps
papers “toned-down.” They espouse the cause of strikers no longer. The
other day I was staggered to find them dragging out that shop-worn old
bugaboo, the nationalization of women in Russia! In the Seattle strike
the Scripps paper, the “Star,” “scabbed” on the strike, and its
editorial attitude won it the name, the “Shooting Star.”
Or take the “New York World.” This paper was built up by one crusade
after another; it was the people’s friend for a generation. Today it is
a property worth several million dollars, living on its reputation. It
still makes, of course, the old pretenses of “democracy,” but when it
comes to a real issue, it is an organ of bitter and savage reaction, it
is edited by the telegraph and railroad securities in which the Pulitzer
fortune is invested. The “New York World’s” opinion of the “Plumb plan”
is that of a Russian grand duke discussing Bolshevism.
Or the Hearst papers. They too have been made out of the pennies of the
masses; they too have lured the masses by rainbows of many-colored
hopes. They still ask for government ownership—when they happen to think
of it; but they lie remorselessly about radicals, and exclude the word
Socialism from their columns, except when some Socialist is sent to
jail. They support Sinn Fein and twist the lion’s tail, because it
brings in the Irish-Catholic pennies; but the one revolution in which
their heart is really engaged is the one which is to make Hearst’s
Mexican acres into American acres.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE DREGS OF THE CUP
I would call the reader’s attention to the fact that in this book I am
dealing with our standard magazines and newspapers, the ones which are
considered respectable, which all ladies and gentlemen accept as they
accept the doctor’s pills and the clergyman’s sermons, the Bible and the
multiplication table and Marian Harland’s cook-book. I have not made my
case easy by dwelling on the cultural content of the “mail order” and
“household” publications, of which there are scores with a circulation
of a million or more; or of the agricultural papers of the country,
whose total circulation amounts to tens of millions. How I could freeze
your blood if I were to summarize the contents of the “Ladies’ World,”
the “Gentlewoman,” the “Household Guest,” “Home Life,” the “Household,”
“Comfort,” the “Home Friend,” “Mother’s Magazine,” “Everyday Life,” the
“People’s Popular Monthly,” the “Clover Leaf” weeklies and the “Boyce”
weeklies, the “Saturday Blade” and the “Chicago Ledger”! If I were to
tell about the various “Family Story Papers,” which are left in
area-ways for servants! Or the “fashion-papers,” the “Butterick Trio,”
with close to two millions, the “Woman’s World,” with two millions, and
“Vogue,” the “Delineator,” the “Parisienne,” the “Ladies’ Pictorial,”
“Needlecraft” with their half million or more. Or the “fast” papers,
which cultivate a taste for perfumed smut—and which I will not advertise
by naming! Or the papers of the sporting and racing and gambling worlds,
down to the “Police Gazette,” with its “leg-shows” and illustrated
murders!
Also the local papers, the small dailies, the weeklies and
semi-monthlies and monthlies by the thousands and tens of thousands! If
you wish to get a complete picture of American Journalism, you must take
these into account; you must descend from the heights of metropolitan
dignity into the filthiest swamps of provincial ignorance and venality.
Hardly a week passes that someone does not send me a copy of some
country paper which calls for the stringing-up of Socialists to
lamp-posts, and denounces highly educated Bolshevik leaders in
editorials with half a dozen grammatical errors to the column.
And if you go to the small town in Pennsylvania or Arkansas or Colorado,
or wherever this paper is published, you find a country editor on the
level of intelligence of the local horse-doctors of Englewood, New
Jersey, and Tarrytown, New York, whose proceedings I have described in
this book. Frequently you find this editor hanging on by his eye-teeth,
with a mortgage at the local bank, carried because of favors he does to
the local money-power. You find him getting a regular monthly income
from the copper-interests or the coal-interests or the lumber-interests,
whatever happens to be dominant in that locality. You find him heavily
subsidized at election-time by the two political machines of these great
interests. His paper is used to print the speeches of the candidates of
these interests, and five or ten or fifty thousand copies of this
particular issue are paid for by these interests and distributed at
meetings. Campaign circulars and other literature are printed in the
printing-office of this newspaper, and of course the public advertising
appears in its columns—a graft which is found in every state and county
of the Union, and is a means by which hundreds of millions of dollars
are paid as a disguised subsidy by the interests which run our two-party
political system.
Our great metropolitan newspapers take a fine tone of dignity, they
stand for the welfare of the general public, they are above all
considerations of greed. But the conditions under which these small-town
newspapers are published do not permit them to pretend to such
austerity, or even to conceive of it. They are quite frankly “out for
the stuff”—as everybody else they know is “out for the stuff.” For
example, the “Tarrytown News,” which jumped on me with its cloven hoofs,
declaring that my home had been raided as a “free love” place. This
“Tarrytown News” explained quite honestly why it was opposed to allowing
agitators to come to Tarrytown and denounce the Rockefellers. And why
was it? Because the Rockefellers stood for religion and the home, the
Constitution and the Star-Spangled Banner and the Declaration of
Independence? No, not at all; it was because the Rockefellers carried a
payroll in Tarrytown of thirty thousand dollars a month!
The average country or small-town editor is an entirely ignorant man;
the world of culture is a sealed book to him. His idea of literature is
the “Saturday Evening Post”—only as a rule he doesn’t have time to read
it. His idea of art is a lithograph of the President and Vice-President
with a stand of flags. His idea of music is “Onward, Christian
Soldiers,” and “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” He has an idea what is
good for his readers; “optimism” and “boost,” “cheer-up” stuff, “mother,
home and heaven” stuff, “sob” stuff, “slush for the women.” He has no
money to pay writers, of course; he doesn’t even set type, except for
local news. He gets his “filler” in the form of “boiler-plate,” sent
practically free from Washington and New York—this matter containing
fiction, poetry, “special stories,” novelty and gossip of the sort his
readers find entertaining. What difference does it make if sandwiched in
between this reading matter is the poison propaganda of the Merchants’
and Manufacturers’ Association, of the tariff-lobbyists, the
railroad-lobbyists, the liquor-lobbyists, the whole machine of
capitalist graft and greed?
Several years ago I had a brilliant and wonderful idea. I was finishing
“King Coal,” and thought that I had an excellent serial, timely, and
full of swift incident. I ascertained that there were seventeen thousand
weekly newspapers in America; surely among this number must be a few
hundred which would like to give their readers the truth about labor
conditions in a basic American industry! I would build up a little
syndicate of my own, I would market my future books, and perhaps those
of other writers! I prepared a circular, outlining the plan, and
offering the entire serial for some nominal sum, ten or fifteen dollars,
plus the cost of the plates from which the printing would be done. I
prepared a sample sheet, containing the first half-dozen chapters of
“King Coal”; you may consult the volume and satisfy yourself as to
whether they are interesting chapters. I sent out the offer to thousands
of weeklies, and waited for replies. How many do you think I got? I
didn’t keep a record, but you could have counted them on your fingers,
without your thumbs!
No, the editors of country and small-town newspapers are not giving
their readers the truth about labor conditions in basic American
industries. They know, as the phrase is, “which side their bread is
buttered on,” and they keep that side up with care. I have said that
there are fortunes to be made by giving the news to the people; I must
qualify the statement by explaining that it must be done on a large
scale, and you must have capital to keep you going until you reach the
people who can understand you. If you try it on a small scale, and
without capital, you are crushed before you get your head out of the
mud. And you know that, and govern yourself accordingly. The other day I
had a call from the editor of a small newspaper, out here in this broad
free West, about which you read in romances. The editor explained that
he hadn’t dared to write and order my books; he couldn’t afford to let a
check, payable to me, go through his bank; he called personally, and
would carry the books home in his trunk!
Also this chapter would be incomplete without mention of the swarm of
“house organs,” published by big industrial concerns for the edification
of their employes. According to the “New York Times” (Oct. 26, 1919),
there are three hundred and seventy-five such publications in America,
many with circulations running into thousands. During the war
seventy-three were started in the shipyard industry alone. “During the
past spring and summer they multiplied like bacteria.” And the “Times”
tells admiringly of the subtle arts whereby slave-labor is cajoled and
idealized: “saying it in ragtime ... jazz variations to the vast delight
of its reading public ... a Diamond Dick sort of tale ... the story has
punch ... all as intimate as the small town weekly” ... and so on
through columns of poison prescriptions. They trap the poor devils in
their homes:
The woman’s page is one of the most carefully thought out departments,
on the theory that the influence of the family is counted on to sway
the man from radicalism. Fully half of this group of publications is
sent to the man’s home by mail, to give the wife first innings. In
this particular magazine the woman’s page is fairly crawling with
babies....
You hardly notice the propaganda even when you’re looking for it with
a microscope, but it is there. It is in the weave and the woof, rather
than in the conspicuous pattern. You find it in similes, “like soap in
the home of a Bolshevik. Some novelty!” The agitator is taken down
from the dignity of his soapbox throne and flippantly advised to
bathe.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
OWNING THE PRESS
The methods by which the “Empire of Business” maintains its control over
Journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership
of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery.
By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of
current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry.
This statement may sound extreme, but if you will think about it you
will realize that in the very nature of the case it must be true. It
does not destroy the steel trust if there are a few independent
steel-makers, it does not destroy the money trust if there are a few
independent men of wealth, but it does destroy the news trust if there
is a single independent newspaper to let the cat out of the bag.
The extent to which outright ownership of newspapers and magazines has
been acquired by our financial autocracy would cause astonishment if it
were set forth in figures. One could take a map of America and a
paint-brush, and make large smudges of color, representing journalistic
ownership of whole districts, sometimes of whole states, by special
interests. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan would be swept with a yellow
smudge—that is copper. The whole state of Montana would be the same, and
the greater part of Arizona. A black smudge for Southern Colorado, and
another in the Northern part—that is coal. A gray smudge in Western
Pennsylvania, and another in Illinois—that is steel. A green smudge in
Wisconsin, and another in Oregon and Washington—that is lumber. A white
smudge in North Dakota and Minnesota—that is the milling trust, backed
by the railroads and the banks. A dirty smudge in central California,
representing “Southern Pacific” and “United Railways,” now reinforced by
“M. and M.”
Ten years ago there was a terrific reform campaign in San Francisco, and
the reformers started a little weekly called the “Liberator.” I quote
from one issue:
Many San Francisco weekly papers were bought up with cash payments,
coming principally from the offices of the “United Railroads.” But
this did not seem to satisfy the plans of the defense, and suddenly
the Calkins Syndicate developed into a concern of astonishing
magnitude. From the publisher of obscure weeklies and dailies, it
established a modern publishing plant, and took over much of the
printing of the “Sunset Magazine,” which contract alone brought the
Calkins outfit several thousand dollars a month. The “Sacramento
Union” and the “Fresno Herald” were purchased, and a bid made for the
“San Francisco Post.” The syndicate failed to get the “Post.” The “San
Francisco Globe” was started instead. Whatever money could do in the
newspaper line, Calkins for a few months did. Newspaper men knew, of
course, that the losses were enormous. The questions were, “Who is
filling the sack? How long will the sack last?”
And wherever in America there has been an honest investigation, the same
conditions have been revealed. The Calkins syndicate had its exact
counterpart in Montana; or rather two counterparts, for Senator Clark
and Marcus Daly, copper kings, were carrying on a feud, and each
purchased or established a string of newspapers to slander the other.
Now the gigantic “Anaconda” has swallowed them both, and there are only
two newspapers in Montana which are not owned or controlled by “copper.”
One of these is owned by a politician who, I am assured, serves the
“interests” without hire; and the other is the “Butte Daily Bulletin,”
Socialist, whose editor goes in hourly peril of his life. In Oklahoma
nearly everything is “Standard Oil”; and at the other end of the
continent is the New York “Outlook,” one of whose important stockholders
was discovered to be James Stillman, of the National City Bank of New
York—Standard Oil!
I have given elsewhere a picture of conditions in Los Angeles. In San
Diego are two papers owned by the sugar-king, and one paper of the
Scripps group. In San Francisco are two Hearst papers, the “Examiner”
and the “Call”; the “Chronicle,” owned by “Mike” de Young, whom I have
portrayed; and the “Bulletin” whose assorted knaveries will soon be set
forth in detail. Also there is a monthly, the “Sunset,” formerly owned
by the Southern Pacific, and now serving the anti-union campaign of the
“M. and M.”—the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association which has
raised a million dollar slush fund; also a weekly, popularly known as
“the Rich Man’s Door-mat,” and a number of gossip-weeklies and “kept”
political sheets. The “Labor Digest” has recently gone over with
startling suddenness to the cause of capital, reversing itself
absolutely on the Mooney case. The publisher, a veteran labor union
official, recently informed an applicant for the job of editor that he
was “running the paper to make money.” The applicant said that he
favored the Plumb plan; so there was “nothing doing.”
Moving on up the coast, there is the “Portland Oregonian,” owned by the
estate of a huge-scale lumber operator, one of the richest men in the
Northwest. An employee of this paper writes to me:
He was so public-spirited and free-handed that the appraisal of the
estate showed that he had invested to the extent of five dollars in
war savings stamps and in only five thousand dollars worth of war
bonds, and that under direct compulsion, so it was revealed, of his
fellow-citizens. The “Oregonian” is born of corporate power, conceived
for corporate purposes, and exists to do the corporate bidding,
avowedly so.
Also there is the “Portland Telegram,” owned by the two sons of a timber
magnate, who obtained most of his lands by the popular “dummy entry”
system. The same informant, who once worked for this paper, writes me of
these owners:
Neither has ever had to do a stroke of work in his life, and the
attitude of both toward the man on the payroll is the most typically
snobbish I have ever encountered. The younger brother directs the
paper, although he could not earn fifteen dollars a week salary in any
department if he were put on his own. The paper consequently is so
wobbly in its policies and practices that it rapidly is becoming a
joke.
In this vicinity is a third paper, owned by a politician of whom friends
tell me that he has in past times taken the popular side, but now is
old, and has got himself a business manager. A friend who knows this
young man describes him:
“Energetic, cold as steel, a typical corporation, business, money man,
who is wiping the paper clean of every trace of democracy.”
And then, moving farther North to Seattle, there is the “Times,” an
enormously valuable property, built up with the financial assistance of
the Hill interests and the Great Northern Railroad—which, I believe,
made more money out of a small investment than any other enterprise in
America. The “Times” is paying five per cent dividends on six million
dollars, and so naturally believes in the profit system. Also there is
the “Star,” a Scripps paper—the “Shooting Star,” which was willing to
lose thirty-five thousand readers in order to smash the Seattle strike.
And finally there is the “Post-Intelligencer,” which was purchased in
the interest of James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad, and
placed one hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of its bonds in
the hands of these interests. The paper was taken over, says my
informant, by “the notorious Jacob Furth interests of Seattle. Furth was
head of the Seattle transportation lines and the Seattle National Bank,
and was the village pawnbroker. The paper had gradually gotten more and
more into debt to the banks, and its present ownership arose out of that
fact.”
Such is the newspaper plight of the Pacific coast! And now come to the
Atlantic coast, and take one of our great centers of culture; take the
Hub of the Universe, take Boston. The newspaper plight of Boston is
beyond telling. There is the “Evening Transcript,” owned by an extremely
wealthy and reactionary family, serving every wealthy and reactionary
interest, and incidentally taking advertising bribes, as I shall
presently show. There is the “Boston American,” owned by Hearst, and the
“Boston Daily Advertiser,” also owned by Hearst. The latter is the
oldest newspaper in Boston, and a year ago its circulation was cut down
to a thousand copies, its publication being continued merely in order
that Hearst may retain its Associated Press franchise. There is the
“Boston Globe,” and its evening edition, controlled, I am informed, by
Standard Oil. There is the “Boston Herald,” and its evening edition, the
“Traveler,” owned by the Plant and United Shoe Machinery interests, with
ex-Senator Crane holding the balance of power. There is the “Post,” also
heavily in debt to Crane—who is one of the leading reactionaries of New
England. The owner of the “Post” is described to me by one who knows him
as “a sick man, who like all men who have accumulated a great deal of
wealth, is inclined to be conservative and fearful of change.”
Finally, there is the “Christian Science Monitor,” owned and run by a
group of wealthy metaphysicians, who teach that Poverty is a Delusion of
Mortal Mind, and that Hunger can be relieved by Thinking. I make it a
practice when a public emergency arises, and I have something to say
which I think is important, to send it to leading newspapers by
telegraph collect. Sometimes the newspapers publish it, nearly always
they accept it and pay for it—because they judge there is a possibility
of their getting something important by this method. The “Christian
Science Monitor” stands alone among American newspapers in that it wrote
me not to send it telegrams, because there was no chance of its caring
to print what I might have to say!
Or take Cincinnati, where I happen to have friends on the “inside.”
There is the “Cincinnati Inquirer” and “Post,” owned by the estate of
McLean, who made thirty million dollars out of street railway and gas
franchises, obtained by bribery. This estate also owns the “Washington
Post,” whose knaveries I shall tell about later on. And there is the
“Times-Star,” owned by Charles P. Taft, brother of our ex-president.
“Charlie” Taft married twenty million dollars, and bought a newspaper,
and started out as a valiant reformer, and everybody in Cincinnati
thought how lovely that a fine, clean, young millionaire was going in
for civic reform. But at the very outset he trod on the toes of Boss
Cox, and Boss Cox showed how he could injure the Taft fortune; whereupon
“Charlie” made a deal with the boss, and since then his paper has been
the leading champion of civic corruption.
In most big cities you find papers owned by big local “trusts,” and one
or two others belonging to a “trust” of newspapers, a publishing-system
like that of Calkins or Capper or Munsey or Scripps or Hearst. For the
rule that the big fish swallow the little ones applies in the newspaper
world as elsewhere. The publisher of a big newspaper comes upon a chance
to buy a small newspaper in a neighboring city, and presently he finds
himself with a chain of newspapers. Then he learns of a magazine that is
“on the rocks,” and it occurs to him that a magazine can help his
newspapers, or vice versa. So you find Munsey, a self-confessed
stock-gambler, with three magazines and several newspapers; the Hearst
machine with a dozen newspapers, also “Hearst’s Magazine,” the
“Cosmopolitan,” and four other periodicals. Every month in the Hearst
newspapers you read editorials which are disguised advertisements of
these magazines.
Also it has been discovered that magazines can combine to their
financial advantage. The agents who come to your home and pester the
life out of you for subscriptions find that they can get more of your
money by offering clubbing-rates for a group of magazines: a farm paper,
another paper with “slush for the women,” a third paper with slush for
the whole family—such as I have quoted from the “American” and
“McClure’s.” So you see a vast commercial machine building itself up.
There is Street and Smith, with no less than eight magazines, all of
them having enormous circulations, and devoted exclusively to trash.
There is the Butterick Company, with seven; “Vanity Fair” and the
Crowell Company, with four each; the Curtis Company, “Munsey’s,” the
“Atlantic,” the “World’s Work,” the “Smart Set,” the “Red Book”—each
with three. In England we have seen great chains of publications built
up in connection with the selling of cocoa and soap; in America we see
them built up in connection with the selling of dress-patterns, as with
the Buttericks; with the boosting of moving pictures, as formerly done
by “McClure’s”; with grocery-stores and stock-manipulation, as
“Munsey’s”; with the selling of subscription-books, as “Collier’s,” or
dictionaries, as the “Literary Digest.” Or perhaps it will be a magazine
run by a book-publisher, as a means of advertising and reviewing his own
books; and if you investigate, you find that the book-publisher in turn
is owned by some great financial interest, which sees that he publishes
commercial stuff and rejects all new ideas. This process of
centralization has continued in England until now Lord Northcliffe owns
fifty or sixty magazines and newspapers of all varieties.
Northcliffe had a personal quarrel with Lloyd George, and that part of
British “Big Business” which makes its profits out of the Lloyd George
policies felt the need of more publicity, and went into the market and
bought the “Chronicle” for several million dollars. When the masters of
industry pay such sums for a newspaper, they buy not merely the building
and the presses and the name; they buy what they call the
“good-will”—that is, they buy _you_. And they proceed to change your
whole psychology—everything that you believe about life. You might
object to it, if you knew; but they do their work so subtly that you
never guess what is happening to you!
By way of illustration, let me tell you the amusing story of one
American newspaper which was thus bought in the open market. Some years
ago there was a Standard Oil magnate, H. M. Flagler, who took a fancy to
the state of Florida, and entertained himself by developing it into a
leisure-class resort. He owned all the railroads, and a great chain of
hotels, and also, as a matter of course, the State legislature. He had
the misfortune to have an insane wife, and the laws of Florida did not
permit him to divorce this wife, so he caused to be introduced and
passed a bill permitting divorce on grounds of insanity. But, being a
moral citizen, who believed in the sanctity of marriage for everybody
but himself, Mr. Flagler allowed this law to stand only long enough for
him to get his divorce. He then had his legislature repeal the law, so
that no one might be corrupted by his evil example.
He married another woman, and shortly afterwards left her a widow with a
hundred million dollars. Needless to say, such widows are not left very
long to mourn; Mrs. Flagler espoused a certain Judge Bingham, a leading
citizen of Kentucky. A pre-nuptial contract barred him from inheriting
her estate; nevertheless she managed, eight months after their wedding,
and six weeks before her death, to present to him a trifling matter of
five million dollars. Then she died, and he, being lonely, and in
possession of spare cash, looked around for something to play with. He
decided to play with you—that is, with a newspaper!
There was an old newspaper in Louisville, the “Courier-Journal,” which
had been made by the genius of Col. Henry Watterson, a picturesque
old-style Democrat, a radical of the Jeffersonian type, who stormed with
vivid and diverting ferocity at the “robber barons” of Wall Street. The
paper had got into financial difficulties, owing to family quarrels of
the owners, and Judge Bingham bought it, with its evening edition, the
“Louisville Times,” for something over a million dollars. Col. Watterson
was to stay as “Editor Emeritus”; that is, he was to be a figurehead, to
blind the public to the sinister realities of modern capitalism. But
modern capitalism is too greedy and too ruthless a force for the
old-style gentleman of the South; Col. Watterson could not stand the
editorial policy of his new owner, so he quit, and today the
“Courier-Journal” challenges the “Los Angeles Times” as an organ of
venomous reaction. I quote one sample of its editorials—the subject
being that especially infamous variety of pervert known as the
“Christian Socialist clergyman.” Behold him!—
Some person who has never worked in his life—except his tongue—and yet
talks to his “congregation” about problems of workingmen. This rogue
is sometimes an elocutionary shyster who rambles about the
downtrodden—meaning his prosperous followers and, of course,
himself—the expected revolution, the rights of the pee-pul, and so on.
What he desires to do is to heroize himself, to appear to his pee-pul
as a courageous leader against oppression; which is to say, against
the law and the Government which protect this people in the possession
of their homes, automobiles and liberties.
Col. Watterson resigned. But as a rule the professional journalist
pockets his Brass Check, and delivers the goods to his master in the
silence and secrecy of the journalistic brothel. A professional
journalist may be defined as a man who holds himself ready at a day’s
notice to adjust his opinions to the pocket-book of a new owner. I have
heard Arthur Brisbane remark that the “New York Times” was sold on
several occasions, and on each occasion its “editor” was sold with it.
Yet when you read this “editor’s” preachments, they are all so solemn
and dignified, high-sounding and moral—you would never dream but that
you were reading actual opinions of a man!
Quite recently we saw the “New York Evening Post” put up on the
journalistic bargain-counter. I have told how the “Evening Post” treated
me at various times, so you will see that the paper was hardly to be
classified as “radical.” But during the war it became treasonable to the
gigantic trading corporation which calls itself the British Government;
it persisted in this stubborn course, even when it knew that J. P.
Morgan & Company were selling billions of British bonds, and handling
all the purchases of the British Government in America. When the
Bolsheviki gave out the secret treaties of the Allies, the “Evening
Post” was the one non-Socialist newspaper in America which published
them in full. So it was evident that something must be done, and done
quickly, about the “Evening Post.”
The paper was in financial difficulties, because of the constantly
increasing cost of material and wages. Its owner gave an option to his
associates, with the pledge on their part that they would not take the
paper to “Wall Street”; then, three weeks later, the paper was sold to
Thomas W. Lamont, of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company; the owner being
kept in ignorance of the name of the purchaser. So now the “New York
Evening Post” looks upon the peace treaty, and finds it “a voice from
heaven.” “A voice from heaven” commanding the French to grab the Saar
Valley, and the Japs to seize Shantung! “A voice from heaven” commanding
the workers of Russia to pay the bad debts of the Tsar—and to pay them
through the banking-house of J. P. Morgan & Company!
And if you do not care to get your opinions from the gigantic
trading-corporation which calls itself the British government, you may
read the “New York Evening Mail,” which was bought with the money of the
German government! Or you may read the “New York Evening Sun,” which was
bought by Frank A. Munsey, with part of the million dollars which he
boasted of having made out of your troubles in the 1907 panic. If you do
not like papers which are bought and sold, you may read the “New York
Evening Telegram,” which has remained the property of the Bennett
estate, and is working for the pocket-book of the Bennett estate,
forty-one editions every week. In the morning, you may read the
“Herald,” which is working for the same estate. If you get tired of the
point of view of that estate, you may try the estate of Whitelaw Reid,
capitalist, or of Joseph Pulitzer, invested in railroads and telegraphs,
or of Searles, of the Sugar Trust. Or, if you prefer living men, you may
give up your mind to the keeping of Adolph Ochs, of the Traction gang,
or of William Rockefeller of Standard Oil, or of William Randolph Hearst
of Eternal Infamy. This concludes the list of choices that are open to
you in New York—unless you are willing to read a Socialist paper, the
“New York Call”; and of course you cannot get the “Call” all the time,
because sometimes the police bar it from the stands, and sometimes the
soldier-boys raid its offices and throw the editors out of the windows,
and sometimes the Postmaster-General bars it from the mails, and at all
times he refuses it second class entry. So if I wish to get it out here
in California, I have to pay two and one half times as much as I pay for
the papers of the Searles estate and the Pulitzer estate and the Hearst
estate and the Bennett estate and the Reid estate.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE WAR-MAKERS
What is the moral tone in the offices of these great “kept”
institutions? The best description I know of the inside of such a
newspaper is found in an article, “The Blue Pencil,” by Maxwell
Anderson, published in the “New Republic” for December 14, 1918. It is
very evident that Mr. Anderson has worked in the office of some
newspaper; he doesn’t give names, but his text indicates that the city
is San Francisco. The name of the imaginary owner is H. N. De Smith, and
if you are familiar with San Francisco affairs, you don’t have to be a
wizard to make your guess.
Mr. Anderson portrays one after another of the staff of the paper: the
managing editor, the assistant managing editor, the city editor, the
copy reader, the reporter, the dramatic critic, the artist, the
designer, the copy boy. Every one of these persons is a slave with a
chain about his neck; everyone of them clearly understands that his
function in life is to subserve the glory of his owner.
They think unkindly of Hank De Smith; they speak derisively of his
park, his policies, and the amount he is supposed to drink up in a
day. But they obey him. Pasted before each man is a typed schedule of
prejudice, known technically as the son-of-a-bitch list, and
consisting of the names of men who must be given no free publicity.
Here all prominent radicals and the business men who have refused to
advertise in the paper are lumped in an eternal obloquy of silence.
“Refer to Dealer
“Any copy containing name
of: ............., ............., ............., .............,
“Names Not to Appear in
Headlines: ............., ............., ............., .............
“Use Title of ‘Mr.’
“Only in connection with H. N. De Smith.”
What smouldering envies or balked ambitions may lie behind this absurd
catalogue they do not know. But when this same De Smith buys a block
of charity stock, as a matter of course they run headlines across the
second title page to inform the city of it
“Praise Hank, from whom all blessings flow,” the tall and heavy Texan
sneers gravely.
And here is the assistant managing editor; I have interviewed such a
managing editor as this, not once, but fifty times; and not only in San
Francisco, but in a score of other American cities:
He is acute and politic, as you discover when first you hear him call
up Henry N. De Smith to ask for a decision. Such action is very seldom
necessary. The assistant managing editor knows the owner’s prejudices
and failings by long association. He is versed in a most essential
knowledge of what may be printed in the paper, and what it would be
dangerous for the public to know. Under his care comes the immense
problem of general policy, the direction of opinion in the city in the
paths most favorable to his master’s fame and fortune. Nothing
unpleasing to friend or advertiser must by any chance appear. It means
nothing to him that given such conditions, advertising becomes a kind
of legitimate blackmail, for his mind is not attuned to delicate moral
vibrations.
Such is San Francisco; and lest you think that is prejudice, or an
anomaly, come to Chicago and have a glimpse of the insides of the
“Chronicle,” given in a book of confessions, “The Career of a
Journalist,” by William Salisbury:
It was no easy matter, either, to be Copy Reader on the “Chronicle.”
In addition to the average Copy Reader’s immense fund of knowledge,
one had to know almost by heart the names of the sixteen corporations
in which owner Walsh was interested, such as banks and street railways
and gas and contracting companies. He had to know, too, the names of
the prominent men Mr. Walsh liked or disliked, so as to treat them
accordingly. A mistake in such things would much more quickly bring a
telephone order from Mr. Walsh’s banking offices for changes in the
staff than any other error.
It may seem an extreme statement; but I doubt if there is a
newspaper-office in America in which such things as this do not happen.
There may be newspapers whose owners sternly refrain from using them as
a means of personal glorification; there may be newspapers which do not
give special attention to the owner’s after-dinner speeches, and to the
social events that go on in the owner’s home. But is there any paper
which does not show consideration for the associates and intimate
friends of the owner? It happened to me once to be sitting in a
hotel-room with a millionaire who was under arrest and liable to serve
ten years in jail. This man’s relatives were among the rulers of the
city, and I heard him go to the telephone and call up his relatives, and
advise them how to approach the newspapers, and precisely what
instructions to give; next morning I saw those instructions followed by
the newspapers. Has any man ever held an executive position on a
newspaper in America without witnessing incidents of this sort? The
testimony available is not merely that of radicals and “muck-rakers.”
Here is a most conservative editor, Hamilton Holt, in his book,
“Commercialism and Journalism,” mentioning “a certain daily whose editor
recently told me that there was on his desk a list three feet long of
prominent people whose names were not to be mentioned in his paper.”
Is there any newspaper which does not show consideration for the
business interests of its owners? Come to Los Angeles, which I happen to
know especially well, because I live only twelve miles away from it. It
calls itself the “City of the Angels”; I have taken the liberty of
changing the name to the “City of the Black Angels.” This city gets its
water-supply from distant mountains, and its great financial interests
owned vast tracts of land between the city and the sources of supply.
There were four newspapers, all in a state of most ferocious rivalry;
but all of them owned some of this land, and all of them united in the
campaign for an aqueduct. For years they kept the population terrified
by pictures of failing water-supply; people say they had the water run
out of the reservoirs, and the city parks allowed to dry up! So they got
their aqueduct, and land that had cost forty dollars an acre became
worth a thousand dollars. A single individual cleared a million dollars
by this deal.
I have given in this book a fairly thorough account of the “Los Angeles
Times,” the perfect illustration of a great newspaper conducted in the
financial interest of one man. The personality of that man infected it
so powerfully that the infection has persisted after the man is dead. I
have never heard anybody in Los Angeles maintain that the “Times” is an
honest newspaper, or a newspaper which serves the public interest; but I
have heard them say that Otis was “sincere according to his lights,”
that “you always knew where to find him.” I have heard this said by
several different men, and it is extraordinary testimony to the extent
to which newspaper knavery can be successful.
No, you didn’t “always know where to find Otis”; for many years it was a
toss-up where you would find him, for Otis had two offices in Los
Angeles. One was the office of the “Times,” a “Republican” newspaper,
maintaining ferociously the “open-shop” policy—so ferociously that some
outraged labor leaders blew it up with a dynamite-bomb. But at the same
time Otis owned secretly another Los Angeles newspaper, the “Herald”;
and the “Herald” was an “independent” newspaper, a “Democratic”
newspaper, a “closed-shop” newspaper! So here was Otis handing out one
kind of dope to the Los Angeles public with one hand, and handing out
the opposite kind of dope to the Los Angeles public with the other
hand—and taking in money from the Los Angeles public with both hands.
When you read my statement that “Big Business stages a sham-battle every
now and then, to make the people think they are controlling the
government,” you smiled, no doubt—taking it for the exuberance of a
radical. But what better proof could you have of a sham-battle, than to
find the same man fighting furiously on both sides?
And how comes it that the public of Los Angeles is ignorant of this
extraordinary situation? Why, simply that when the news came out, there
was no Los Angeles newspaper that would feature it; the newspapers were
in on some “deal,” and the only place the story could be exploited was
in “La Follette’s,” in Wisconsin! It was told there by Frank E. Wolfe,
formerly managing editor of the “Herald,” the man who took the orders of
Otis and carried them out.
Some thirty years ago my friend Gaylord Wilshire started in Los Angeles
a publication called the “Nationalist,” advocating the ideas of Edward
Bellamy. This paper was printed at the office of the “Los Angeles
Express,” and one day, walking down the street, Wilshire met General
Otis.
“I see you people have got a weekly paper,” said the General.
“Yes,” said Wilshire.
“Well, now, the ‘Times’ has a new and modern printing-plant. We would
like very much to do that work for you. Suppose you give us a trial.”
“Well, General, it’s all right so far as I am concerned, because I don’t
mind such things; but some of my associates consider that you don’t
treat our ideas fairly in the ‘Times’.”
“Oh, now, now, you don’t mind a thing like that! Surely, now, you ought
to understand a joke!”
“Well, as I say, I don’t mind, but some of my associates take it
seriously.”
“Well, I’ll show you about that. We’ll fix that up very easily.”
So the General went off, and next day there appeared in the “Times” an
editorial speaking very cordially of the Edward Bellamy brand of social
idealism. And thereafter for two or three weeks, the “Times” spoke
pleasantly of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism, and it
faithfully reported the meetings of the Nationalists. But the
“Nationalist” did not change its printing-plant, and so the General got
tired of waiting, and shifted back to his old method of sneering and
abuse. This, you understand, for a job-printing contract worth fifty, or
perhaps a hundred dollars, a week!
By methods such as these Otis grew wealthy, and later on he purchased
six hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in Northern Mexico. When
the Diaz régime was overthrown, Otis had trouble in getting his cattle
out, so he wanted a counter-revolution in Mexico, and for years the
whole policy of his paper has been directed to bringing on intervention
and conquest of that country. At one time the Federal authorities
indicted Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Otis, and his successor in
control of the “Times,” for conspiracy to ship arms into Mexico. Mr.
Chandler was acquitted. If you will turn back to page 209 of this book,
you will find a statement by a prominent Los Angeles lawyer as to jury
trials in the “City of the Black Angels.”
Mr. Hearst also owns enormous stretches of land in Mexico, and Mr.
Hearst also understands that if Mexico were conquered and annexed by the
United States, the value of his lands would be increased many times
over. Therefore for fifteen years the Hearst newspapers have been used
as a means of forcing war with Mexico. Mr. Hearst admits and is proud of
the fact that it was he who made the Spanish-American war. He sent
Frederick Remington to Cuba to make pictures of the war, and Remington
was afraid there wasn’t going to be any war, and so cabled Mr. Hearst.
Mr. Hearst answered: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.”
That was in 1897 or 1898. I was a boy just out of college, and fell
victim to this modern kind of “war-making.” I was walking on the street,
and heard newsboys shouting an extra, and saw these words, printed
across the front page of the “New York Evening Journal”:
_WAR
DECLARED!_
So I parted with one of my hard-earned pennies, and read:
_WAR_
may be
_DECLARED_
soon
But did that bit of knavery keep me from buying the Hearst newspapers
forever after? It did not. I am an American, and can no more resist
sensational headlines printed in a newspaper than a donkey can resist a
field of fat clover. So I still take a Hearst newspaper, the “Los
Angeles Examiner,” and watch Mr. Hearst prepare my mind for the bloody
process of annexing millions of Hearst acres to my country. Both the
Hearst paper and the Otis paper print elaborate accounts of how the
government is preparing to invade Mexico. There are details of
diplomatic negotiations and of military preparations, stories elaborate,
complete, and apparently entirely authentic. Once in a while the State
Department issues a formal denial that it has any such intentions, or is
making any such preparations; the “Times” and “Examiner” print these
denials—and then go on blandly printing their stories! I am left to
wonder which is lying, the American government or the American press.
You know the part which the newspapers of Europe took in the making of
the late war, the “last” war, as we were told. You know that the Krupps
owned and subsidized the “reptile press” of Germany, using it to foment
hatred of France. You know that at the same time they subsidized some of
the leading Chauvinist newspapers of France, to publish denunciations
and threats against Germany, so that the new war appropriations might be
forced through the Reichstag. Karl Liebknecht exposed this infamy in
Germany, and the ruling caste of the country never forgave him, and in
the crisis of the late rebellion they found their chance to pay him
back.
Among the secret documents made public by the Bolsheviki were some
letters from the Russian Minister to France, informing his home
government of negotiations whereby Russia was to be allowed to seize
Constantinople. He told how the French newspapers might be used, and
pointed out how Italy did this while she was grabbing Tripoli:
It is of the highest importance to see to it that we have a good press
here.... As an example of how useful it is to have money to offer the
press ... I know how Tittoni has worked up the leading French papers
most thoroughly and with the most open hand. The result is now
manifest to all.
We read about such infamies in Europe, and shudder at them, and
congratulate ourselves that our “sweet land of liberty” is more clean.
But put yourself in the place of an educated Mexican, and see how it
appears to him. American financial promoters bring their wealth to
Mexico, and buy the Mexican government, and obtain ownership of the most
valuable land and oil and minerals of the country. The Mexican people
overthrow this corrupt government, and attempt to tax these legally
stolen properties; but the foreign governments say that these properties
may not be taxed, and the newspapers owned and published by these
foreign interests carry on for years an elaborate campaign of slanders
against Mexico, to the end that the American people may make war upon
the Mexican people and exploit them. And this is done, not merely by the
Otis paper and the Hearst papers, which all thinking people know to be
corrupt; it is done by papers like the “New York Times” and “Tribune”
and “Chicago Tribune,” which are considered to be entirely respectable.
As I write, the correspondent of the “New York Tribune” in Mexico, L. J.
de Bekker, resigns, and states as his reason that his dispatches were
suppressed or cut in the “Tribune” office.
And of course, in a campaign of this sort they count upon the cordial
help of the Associated Press. Says the “Heraldo de Mexico,” August 15,
1919: “We see that the Associated Press lies with frequency.” And you do
not have to take this solely on the word of a Mexican newspaper. The
Mexican minister of foreign relations gives out a letter from the
vice-president of the Mexican Northwestern Railroad, whose offices are
in Toronto, Canada: “I see that the Associated Press mentions with
frequency, in its reports, the name of our company.” He goes on to
explain that the Associated Press has stated that his company complains
of the confiscation of lands, whereas these reports are wholly false;
his company has had no difficulty whatever with the Mexican government.
He says: “It is intolerable that our name should be used.” And also the
Associated Press sends out a circumstantial story of the alleged
withdrawal of the Canadian Pearson’s from business in Mexico. The
vice-president of this company issues a point-blank denial that he has
had any difficulty with the Mexican government. Says Mr. de Bekker,
protesting to the assistant manager of the Associated Press: “It is a
most marked example of the A. P.’s unfairness. And it is a fair
presumption that the A. P. will not carry this denial.”
The Mexicans are a backward people, and we complain that there are
bandits among them. But which is worse, the spontaneous violence of a
primitive people, or the organized and systematic treachery of a highly
developed people? You have a child; and suppose that, instead of loving
this child, understanding and helping it, you do nothing but scold at
it, menace it, and tell falsehoods about it—would you be surprised if
the child now and then kicked your shins?
CHAPTER XL
OWNING THE OWNERS
The second of the methods by which our Journalism is controlled is by
far the most important of all the four. I do not mean merely that the
owners are owned by mortgages, and such crude financial ties. They are
owned by ambition, by pressure upon their families, by club
associations, by gentlemen’s agreements, by the thousand subtle
understandings which make the solidarity of the capitalist class. I have
written elsewhere of labor-leaders, otherwise incorruptible, who have
accepted “the dress-suit bribe.” These same bribes are passed in the
business-world, and are the biggest bribes of all. When you have your
shoes shined, you pay the bootblack ten cents; but can you figure what
you are paid for having your shoes shined? When you buy a new suit of
clothes, you pay the dealer, say, one hundred dollars; but can you
figure what you are paid for being immaculately dressed, for having just
the right kind of tie, just the right kind of accent, just the right
manner of asserting your own importance and securing your own place at
the banquet-table of Big Business?
If you are the publisher of a great newspaper or magazine, you belong to
the ruling-class of your community. You are invited to a place of
prominence on all public occasions; your voice is heard whenever you
choose to lift it. You may become a senator like Medill McCormick or
Capper of Kansas, who owns eight newspapers and six magazines; a
cabinet-member like Daniels, or an ambassador like Whitelaw Reid or
Walter Page. You will float upon a wave of prosperity, and in this
prosperity all your family will share; your sons will have careers open
to them, your wife and your daughters will move in the “best society.”
All this, of course, provided that you stand in with the powers that be,
and play the game according to their rules. If by any chance you
interfere with them, if you break their rules, then instantly in a
thousand forms you feel the pressure of their displeasure. You are “cut”
at the clubs, your sons and daughters are not invited to parties—you
find your domestic happiness has become dependent upon your converting
the whole family to your strange new revolutionary whim! And what if
your youngest daughter does not share your enthusiasm for the “great
unwashed”? What if your wife takes the side of her darling?
It is such hidden forces as this which account for much of the snobbery
in American newspapers; the fact that in every department and in every
feature they favor the rich and powerful, and reveal themselves as
priests of the cult of Mammon. I have watched the great metropolitan
dailies, and those in many smaller cities and towns; I have yet to see
an American newspaper which does not hold money for its god, and the
local masters of money for demi-gods at the least. The interests of
these Olympian beings, their sports, their social doings, their
political opinions, their comings and goings, are assumed by the
newspapers to be the object of the absorbed interest of every American
who knows how to read.
On every page and in every column of every page the American newspaper
preaches the lesson: “Get money, and all things else shall be added unto
you—especially newspaper attention.” When Mr. John P. Gavit, managing
editor of the “New York Evening Post,” wrote to Mr. Melville E. Stone,
general manager of the Associated Press, that I had a reputation “as an
insatiable hunter of personal publicity,” what Mr. Gavit meant was that
I was accustomed to demand and obtain more space in newspapers than the
amount of my worldly possessions entitled me to. Some years ago my wife
went for a visit to her home in the far South, after the unusual
adventure of marrying a Socialist; she met one of her girlhood friends,
who exclaimed:
“My, but your husband must be a rich man!”
“My husband is a poor man,” said M. C. S.
Whereat the girl-friend laughed at her. “I know better,” said she.
“But it’s true,” said M. C. S. “He has no money at all; he never had
any.”
“Well,” said the other, skeptically, “then what are the papers all the
time talking about him for?”
A large part of what is called “conservatism” in our Journalism is
this instinctive reverence for wealth, as deeply rooted in every
American as respect for a duke in an English butler. So the average
American newspaper editor is a horse that stands without hitching, and
travels without a whip. But emergencies arise, a fork in the road, a
sudden turn, a race with another vehicle; and then a driver is
needed—and perhaps also a whip! I showed you Mr. Ochs pulling the
“Metropolis” story off the front page of the “New York Times” at one
o’clock in the morning. Every Hearst editor has stories to tell of
one-o’clock-in-the-morning visits from the owner, resulting in the
whole policy of the paper being shifted. And where the owner is owned,
maybe somebody will call _him_ up and lay down the law; maybe an agent
will be set to keep watch over his doings, and to become the real
master of his paper. I could name more than one famous editor and
publisher who has been thus turned out of his job, and remains nothing
but a name.
For great “interests” have a way of being wide-awake even at the late
hour when the forms of newspapers close; they have a way of knowing what
they want, and of getting it. “I am a great clamorer for dividends,”
testified old Rockefeller; and imagine, if you can, a publishing
enterprise controlled by old Rockefeller—how closely the policy of that
enterprise would be attended to! Imagine, if you can, one controlled by
Pierpont Morgan!
It happens that I can tell you about one of these latter. The story has
to do with one of the most famous publishing-houses in America, a house
which is a national institution, known to every literate person—the
ancient house of “Harper’s,” which now has the misfortune to have an
eight hundred thousand dollar mortgage reposing in the vaults of J. P.
Morgan & Company. Would you think me absurd if I should state that the
publishing-business of Harper & Bros. is managed to the minutest detail
by this mortgage?
First, recall to mind “The Money-changers,” a novel dealing with the
causes of the 1907 panic. The “villain” of this novel is a certain “Dan
Waterman,” a great financier who dominates the life of Wall Street, and
who in his relations to women is an old wild boar. The veil of fiction
was thin, and was meant to be. Every one who knew the great Metropolis
of Mammon would recognize Pierpont Morgan, the elder, and would know
that the picture was true both in detail and in spirit. Naturally old
“J. P.” himself would be furious, and his hired partisans would be
looking for a chance to punish his assailant.
Very well. Five years passed, and I was editing an anthology of
revolutionary literature. I was quoting authors from Homer to H. G.
Wells, several hundred in all, and as part of the routine of the job, I
addressed a long list of authors and publishing-houses, requesting
permission to quote brief extracts from copyrighted books, due credit of
course to be given. Such quotations are a valuable advertisement for any
book, the more valuable because they are permanent; the request is a
matter of form, and its granting a matter of course. It proved to be
such in the case of all publishing-houses both in America and in
England—all save one, the house of the eight hundred thousand dollar
mortgage! This house informed me that no book of mine might contain a
line from any book published by them. My reputation was such that I
would injure the value of any book which I quoted!
I am interested in this capitalistic world, and try to find out as much
about it as I can. So I took the trouble to visit the dingy old building
in Franklin Square, and to interview the up-to-date gentleman who had
rendered this unexpected decision. He was perfectly polite, and I was
the same. I pointed out to him that some of the authors—“his”
authors—were personal friends of mine, and that they themselves desired
to be quoted in my anthology. Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy, for example, was
a Socialist. Mr. William Dean Howells was one of Harper’s own editors;
he was in that very office, and I had in my hand a letter from him,
giving cordial consent to the publication of two passages from “A
Traveller from Altruria”! Also Mr. H. G. Wells, an English Socialist,
who had honored me with his friendship, had published “When the Sleeper
Wakes” through “Harper’s,” and now requested that I be permitted to
quote from this book in my anthology. Also Mark Twain had honored me
with his friendship; he had visited my home in Bermuda, and had
expressed appreciation of my writings. He was no longer where I could
consult him in the matter, but I offered evidence to Messrs. Harper &
Bros. proving that he had not regarded me as a social outcast. But no
matter; the decision stood.
I took the question to the authors themselves, and I am sorry to have to
record that neither Mr. William Dean Howells nor Mr. Charles Rann
Kennedy cared to support a fellow-Socialist in this controversy with a
great capitalist publishing-house. So it comes about that you will not
find Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Howells quoted in “The Cry for Justice”; but you
will find “When the Sleeper Wakes” quoted, the reason being that Mr.
Wells did stand by me. Mr. Wells lives farther away, and is not so
deeply influenced by an eight hundred thousand dollar mortgage in the
vaults of a Wall Street banking-house!
The point of this story is the petty nature of the vengeance of this
mortgage, the trouble it took, the minute detail into which it was
willing to go. The moral for you is just this: that when you pick up
your morning or evening newspaper, and think you are reading the news of
the world, what you are really reading is a propaganda which has been
selected, revised, and doctored by some power which has a financial
interest in you; and which, for the protecting of that financial
interest, has been willing to take trouble, and to go into the most
minute detail!
You will miss the point of this book if you fail to get clear that the
perversion of news and the betrayal of public opinion is no haphazard
and accidental thing; for twenty-five years—that is, since the day of
Mark Hanna—it has been a thing deliberately planned and systematically
carried out, a science and a technique. High-priced experts devote their
lives to it, they sit in counsel with the masters of industry, and
report on the condition of the public mind, and determine precisely how
this shall be presented and how that shall be suppressed. They create a
public psychology, a force in the grip of which you, their victim, are
as helpless as à moth in the glare of an arc-light. And what is the
purpose of it all? One thing, and one only—that the wage-slaves of
America shall continue to believe in and support the system whereby
their bones are picked bare and thrown upon the scrap-heap of the
profit-system.
CHAPTER XLI
THE OWNER IN POLITICS
What counts with newspapers, as everywhere else in the business world,
is not so much the bulk of the wealth as its activity. Wealth which is
invested in government bonds and farm-mortgages is asleep, and will stay
asleep until the profit system itself is threatened. On the other hand,
one or two hundred thousand dollars which happens to be in the hands of
new men, trying to break into the game, may be exercising an influence
out of all proportion to its amount. Such wealth may be bidding for a
new franchise. It will come to the newspaper publisher and offer him
stock; or it will point out to him that if the franchise is granted,
certain real estate that he holds will be increased in value; or it will
offer to help nominate him for mayor; or it will point out to him that
his rival newspaper is enlisted on the other side, and is looking for
some unrighteous graft. The story of every newspaper is a story of such
a game of power-politics incessantly going on. No newspaper can exist
without taking part in it, because every newspaper wields influence, and
every newspaper must cast its decision on every issue that arises. Every
paper is expected to have its candidates for political office; every
paper is expected to have its political policies, and inevitably in our
system these candidates and these policies are a screen behind which
great financial interests move to their ends.
For example, here is the “Denver Post,” as portrayed by Judge Lindsey,
founder of the children’s court. Lindsey is telling in his book, “The
Beast,” how one of the political machines sought to use him as a
candidate for Governor:
A few days later the “Post” endorsed me editorially as a candidate for
Governor, and there was a flurry in the corporation camp. The paper
was no more than on the streets before Mr. Field (telephone
magnate) ... made a frantic effort to have the edition stopped and the
paper’s support reconsidered. But the “Post” had just lost in a fight
with Evans (gas magnate) about a public franchise deal, and the
proprietors were eager for revenge. Their newspaper rivalry with
Senator Patterson made them ambitious to defeat him as leader of the
reform Democrats, by forcing my nomination in spite of him. I found
myself in the storm-centre of a small political cyclone.
You may recall Mr. Bonfils, one of the owners of the “Denver Post,” who
“jollied” me over the telephone during the time of the Colorado
coal-strike. Now hear Judge Lindsey:
When this latter ticket was named I found it largely composed of Speer
corporation Democrats. Mr. Fred G. Bonfils, one of the proprietors of
the “Denver Post” (which was still supporting me), assured me that
Speer and his city organization would aid me if I would agree to lend
my name to this ticket.
In short, the corporations being sure of Adams (the opposition
candidate), now wished to make sure of me by tying me to the candidacy
of a lot of corporation tools who would never allow us to obtain a
reform law. I refused to lend my name to any such business, and I lost
thereby the support of the “Post” and the Speer Democrats.
And then, of course, Judge Lindsey was marked for destruction by the
“Post.” He tells how a false news dispatch reported him as saying in a
public lecture in the East that the copper king of the state ought to be
hanged. The Denver Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution declaring
Lindsey “an enemy of the state.” Says Lindsey: “The ‘Denver Post’
followed the resolution with a demand that I be driven from town, and
stirred up all possible enmity against me as a ‘defamer’ of my state.”
Or take San Francisco. Here is Fremont Older, for twenty-five years
managing editor of the “Bulletin,” telling the story of his life. I
shall have more to say about Older later on; for the present, take one
incident from his book. Older, leading a terrific reform campaign, is
after the “man higher up,” and decides that the highest of all is
Herrin, head of the law department of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
“Herrin is the man behind the corruption of our whole state. Herrin is
the man who has broken down the morals of thousands of our young men,
debauched our cities and our towns and our villages, corrupted our
legislatures and courts.” But it appears that Crothers, owner of the
“Bulletin,” has been taking money from Herrin in times past.
Crothers became very nervous about it and suggested several times to
me that he didn’t want Herrin attacked. I felt then that he feared
Herrin would expose the Wells money paid the paper, but in spite of
that power which Herrin held over us, I continued to go on with the
campaign against him.
Frequently Crothers would go into the printing office and look over
the headlines himself, and if he discovered Herrin’s name, would
insist on its being lifted out of the paper, but even with this
interference I managed to keep up the fight.
Finally, he told me flatly that he wanted the attacks on Herrin
stopped, the criticism of Herrin to cease. I replied frankly that it
was impossible for me to do that, that the entire reportorial force
was under full headway in the fight, and they were writing, all of
them, from the angle of the paper’s policy as it appeared to them, and
I could not go to each man and tell him that he must not criticise
Herrin.
“I can’t do it, Mr. Crothers, because I am ashamed for you. If it’s to
be done, you’ll have to do it yourself. I can not.”
He did not have the courage to do it, and it was never done. However,
all the time our opponents were trying to reach into the office. They
succeeded in getting the business manager at that time to undertake to
break me down, but I resisted all his efforts. The fight became more
burdensome, because it extended into the very building in which I
worked.
The political campaign waxed warmer, and Crothers demanded that Older
should support Herrin’s candidate; but Older refused.
He replied that he owned the “Bulletin,” and that it would support
whomever he chose. I grew very angry and excited and replied, “Yes,
what you say is perfectly true. You do own the ‘Bulletin,’ but you
don’t own me, and I won’t stand for Crocker.”
I walked out of the room, very angry, determined never to return. I
went to my wife and told her that I was through with the “Bulletin.”
She wanted to know the reason and I told her that Crothers had gone
back to his old methods. He was determined to get behind the candidate
who represented the men we had been fighting, and I could not bring
myself to continue in my position.
Or take St. Paul, Minnesota. Here is the grain country, entirely
possessed by the milling interests, with their allied railroads and
banks. Until the Farmer’s Nonpartisan movement arose, the politics and
journalism of Minnesota were exclusively in the hands of these
interests. In the “Nonpartisan Leader” for May 27, June 3 and June 10,
1918, appeared a series of articles by Walter W. Liggett, formerly
exchange editor of the “St. Paul Pioneer Press” and its evening edition,
the “St. Paul Dispatch.” Mr. Liggett made a great number of damaging
charges against these newspapers, and in order to make sure of the
facts, I address their managing editor, inquiring if he has ever
published any denial of the charges, or if he cares to deny them to me.
His answer is:
We never made any reply at all to them.... Nor do I care, as you
suggest, to make any denial to you personally. It seems to me the
record of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press” is the important
thing, and this is open to anybody who cares to read our files.
The letter concludes by warning me of the risk I shall run if I reprint
“the assertions of a dismissed employe.” I reply to the writer, Mr. H.
R. Galt, managing editor of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press,” that
his letter is unsatisfactory. The strong point about Mr. Liggett’s three
articles is that they are based upon precisely the thing Mr. Galt
invites—a study of the files of the newspapers. Mr. Liggett states that
certain things are found in these files. I offer to send Mr. Galt copies
of the articles, which he says he does not possess; I again invite him
to point out to me in detail which of Mr. Liggett’s charges are false. I
also ask him why, if the charges are false, he did not take Mr. Liggett
up at the time, and inflict upon him the legal penalties with which he
threatens me. I suggest that any jury of Americans will display
curiosity about that point. To which Mr. Galt replies:
I shall be content to advise you again, as I did in my previous
letter, that the articles upon which you have apparently based your
verdict are untruthful in every particular in which they reflect upon
the “Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press,” and that in republishing them or
any part of them, or in repeating any statements reflecting on these
newspapers which may be contained in them, you will not only be
publishing falsehoods, but having been advised in advance that they
are falsehoods, you will publish them maliciously.
Now pray proceed with your indictment of American Journalism as
reported by Mr. Liggett, and do not worry yourself about the curiosity
of any jury so far as we are concerned. At the proper time we shall be
abundantly able to satisfy any curiosity on this point.
Now, when a man comes at me making a face like that, I have but one
impulse in my soul—that is, to jump into a pair of seven-league boots,
and turn and skedaddle as hard as I know how to the other side of the
world and hide in a coal-bin. I am not joking; that is really the way I
feel. There is nothing in the world I dread so much as a personal
wrangle, and these fierce and haughty and powerful men throw me into a
tremble of terror. The things I enjoy in this world are my books and my
garden, and rather than go into a jury-room, and wrangle with fierce and
haughty and powerful men, I would have my eye-teeth pulled out. But then
I think, as I have thought many times in my life before, of the millions
of pitiful wage-slaves who are exploited by these fierce and haughty and
powerful men. I think of the millions of honest and true Americans who
swallow the poison that is fed to them by our capitalist newspapers; and
so I clench my hands and bite my lips together and turn on the fierce
and haughty and powerful men with a yell of rage. Then a strange and
startling, an almost incredible thing happens—the fierce and haughty and
powerful men jump into _their_ seven-league boots, and turn and
skedaddle to the other side of the world and hide in a coal-bin!
Why is this? Is it because I am an especially terrifying person, with an
especially terrifying face? No; it is simply because, in these contests,
I have always taken one precaution at the outset—I have made certain of
having the truth on my side. I have cast in my lot with the truth;
whereas these fierce and haughty and powerful men with whom I enter the
lists of combat have made all their success out of falsehood, and fear
truth as they fear nothing else on God’s earth.
Before I go to the bat with Mr. Galt, managing editor of the “St. Paul
Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press,” I will point out one important fact about
my life, as follows:
In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special
privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in
America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to
deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to
have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man’s life. I have
been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in
all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a
court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American
citizens. Several times they have come near to doing it. I was told, by
a lawyer who was present at the event, that there was a conference,
lasting three days and a good part of three nights, between Mr. J. Ogden
Armour and his lawyers, in which Mr. Armour insisted upon having me
arrested for criminal libel, and his lawyers insisted that he could not
“stand the gaff.” As you have seen in this book, Mr. William E. Corey
threatened to sue me for libel; I am informed that young Mr. Rockefeller
desired ardently to do it, and Madame Tingley, the “Purple Mother” of
Theosophy, actually sent her lawyers after me for my jests about her in
“The Profits of Religion.” But, if Mr. H. R. Galt actually files a suit
against me, he will be the first of our captains of privilege who has
ventured that far.
Now, to return to the “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press”: I have
not made a detailed study of the files of these papers, but I have made
a study of the Nonpartisan League movement and its “Nonpartisan Leader,”
also I have made a study of Mr. Walter W. Liggett, formerly exchange
editor of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press.” Mr. Liggett assures me
that every statement he makes can be abundantly proven from the files of
the papers, and I believe Mr. Liggett. Accordingly I take the risk of
summarizing the statements which Mr. Liggett published concerning these
two papers, and which these two papers allowed to pass unchallenged. My
guess is that Mr. H. R. Galt will do one of two things: either he will
do what Mr. Ogden Armour did, and what Mr. Corey did, and what Mr.
Rockefeller did, and what Madame Tingley did—that is, nothing. Or else
he will do what the Associated Press did in the case of the “Masses”—he
will file a suit, or ask for an indictment, and thus get occasion to
publish in his papers a high-sounding and dignified statement of his own
righteousness; he will put me to the expense of employing lawyers and
making a thorough study of his files; and then, when the case comes up,
he will drop it, and say not one word about it in his papers!
Now, what is it that Mr. Liggett has to say? His statements are briefly
as follows:
The “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press” were financed and put on
their feet by a street-car magnate, and for twenty years, from a
generous and pure emotion of gratitude, have supported this street-car
magnate in all his doings; hiding his tax-dodging and his franchise
grafting, ridiculing and misrepresenting his employes when they go on
strike. The papers could probably not be purchased for a million
dollars, yet they pay taxes on less than fifty-seven thousand dollars.
Until quite recently they were charging the city an illegal price for
the publication of city advertisements, and only quit when an
independent citizen forced an exposure. They have defended the Hill
railroad interests systematically; they have suppressed news of public
agitation against the packers and the millers, and have editorially
defended these and other profiteers. After borrowing three hundred
thousand dollars from the Capital Trust and Savings Company, they did
their best to start a run on the St. Paul municipal bank, and only
failed because their false statements were promptly exposed. They have
lied systematically about the farmers’ movement, and have refused to
publish corrections, even in the form of paid advertisements. They were
ultra-patriotic, and urged all employers to continue their employes’
wages while the latter were in the army; but they themselves failed to
follow this advice!
And now come, Mr. Galt, and explain to a jury of American citizens how
it happened that these articles, “untruthful in every particular in
which they reflect upon the ‘Dispatch’ and the ‘Pioneer Press’,” were
allowed by you to be published in a paper having two hundred thousand
circulation in Minnesota and adjoining states, and were left unanswered
and unchallenged by you for a period of fifteen months!
The Nonpartisan League is an issue, not only in Minnesota and North
Dakota, but all over the country where the interests are in terror of
a farmers’ revolt. And so the whole power of the kept press is
enlisted to malign it. The League is doing business through the
Scandinavian-American Bank of Fargo, and the enemies of the League
raid this institution, with the help of subservient public officials,
and throw it into the hands of a receiver. From one end of the country
to the other goes the story of crooked banking by the farmers’ party,
and is featured by the capitalist press. The “New York Times” has
several detailed dispatches, also solemn editorials. A week or two
later the Supreme Court of the State denounces the proceedings as a
conspiracy, declares the bank sound, and orders its return to the
owners. The “Times” gives this—not one line! Or take the “Kansas City
Star,” a most completely respectable organ, which features the
smash-up of the bank, and reports the restoration in a tiny item,
giving the name of the bank, but not mentioning it as the League
bank—understanding perfectly well that ninety-nine out of a hundred
readers will not make the connection, and will not know that the
League has been vindicated!
And then, a few days later, the American Bar Association issues a
denunciation of the League, declaring it is “pure Socialism,” and
Socialism means the “nationalization of women.” The “Chicago Tribune”
gets out a big headline:
“SOCIALISTS HOPE TO COMMUNIZE U. S. GIRLS, CLAIM.”
The “Chicago Tribune” is in politics you see; and like Richard Croker,
it is working for its own pocket all the time. Let us hear William
Marion Reedy, a journalist of forty years’ training:
In Chicago there is the case of two great newspapers, one of them
Republican and the other Independent, which have been found clearly
guilty of robbery of the school children of that city. Through the
connivance of a school board, one of the members of which was an
attorney for one of these newspapers, the land occupied by both these
journals, in the very heart of the business center of Chicago, was
leased to these great institutions for the moulding of public opinion,
on a basis of a site-value absolutely absurd and ridiculous, and upon
terms very much lower than those granted on similar lands to other
lease-holders in the same neighborhood. This favor exacted of a public
body, and at public expense was given solely through fear of attack
by, or desire to stand well with the publications in question. When
there came into power in the school board, under Mayor Dunne, a number
of men who could not be reached by political or other interests, and
these men attempted to set aside the outrageous lease in question,
both these papers began a crusade against the honesty and intelligence
of the school board, and developed the campaign into one for the
election of a mayor who would oust these school board members who
tried to win back the property for the school children. They rallied
to their support all the corrupt and vicious element of the Chicago
slums, likewise the forces that could be controlled by the street
railways and other public service corporations, elected the mayor, and
turned the honest members of the school board out of office. They have
since been reinstated, but not until the corporation Mayor had
appointed a sufficient number of “safe and sane” friends of the powers
that be, to block any effort that might be made by the honest members
to secure from these great publications a just compensation for the
use of the land belonging to the public schools of Illinois and
Chicago.
Reedy omits to give us the names of these two Chicago newspapers. As I
am dealing with names in this book, I state that one of them is the most
“respectable” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Tribune,” which carries
on its front page the legend: “The World’s Greatest Newspaper.” The
other is the most “liberal” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Daily
News,” owned by Victor F. Lawson, who is generally cited as the one
among the fifteen directors of the Associated Press who has any trace of
progressive sympathy.
CHAPTER XLII
OWNING THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
When it comes to the Associated Press, the clearest statement I have
read was made by Charles Edward Russell in “Pearson’s Magazine,” April,
1914. Says Russell:
About nine hundred daily newspapers in the United States, comprising
the great majority of the journals of influence and circulation,
receive and print the news dispatches of the Associated Press.
This means that concerning any event of importance an identical
dispatch is printed about fifteen million times and may be read by
thirty million persons.
According to the construction and wording of that dispatch, so will be
the impression these thirty million persons will receive, and the
opinion they will form and pass along to others.
Here is the most tremendous engine for Power that ever existed in this
world. If you can conceive all that Power ever wielded by the great
autocrats of history, by the Alexanders, Caesars, Tamburlaines, Kubla
Khans and Napoleons, to be massed together into one vast unit of
Power, even this would be less than the Power now wielded by the
Associated Press.
Thought is the ultimate force in the world and here you have an engine
that causes thirty million minds to have the same thought at the same
moment, and nothing on earth can equal the force thus generated.
Well-informed men know that the great Controlling Interests have
secured most of the other sources and engines of Power. They own or
control most of the newspapers, most of the magazines, most of the
pulpits, all of the politicians and most of the public men.
We are asked to believe that they do not own or control the Associated
Press, by far the most desirable and potent of these engines. We are
asked to believe that the character and wording of the dispatches upon
which depends so much public opinion is never influenced in behalf of
the Controlling Interests. We are asked to believe that Interests that
have absorbed all other such agencies for their benefit have
overlooked this, the most useful and valuable of all. We are even
asked to believe that, although the Associated Press is a mutual
concern, owned by the newspapers, and although these newspapers that
own it are in turn owned by the Controlling Interests, the Controlling
Interests do not own, control or influence the Associated Press, which
goes its immaculate way, furnishing impartial and unbiased news to the
partial and biased journals that own it.
That is to say that when you buy a house you do not buy its
foundations.
The point about the Associated Press upon which it lays greatest stress,
and which it never fails to bring forward in defending itself, is that
it is a “mutual” corporation; it is owned and controlled by the many
hundreds of newspapers which use its services. In La Follette’s magazine
during the year 1909 there appeared a series of articles on the
Associated Press by William Kittle. Mr. Kittle showed, taking the
figures of the year 1909, that the seven hundred newspapers which then
used the service had less than one-seventh of the voting control of the
organization. The rest of the votes were cast on bonds which had been
sold to certain of the members. These bonds represented a
voting-strength of four thousand, eight hundred and ninety as against
seven hundred and seventy-five votes of the member newspapers. The total
of fifty-six hundred and sixty-five votes elected the board of
directors, and this board, having power to issue new bonds at any time,
could keep its control absolute. Could anyone imagine a smoother scheme
for holding a corporation in bondage? And then fancy Melville E. Stone
coming before the public and making this statement concerning his
organization:
It is purely mutual in its character, and in this respect is unique.
All of the other news-supplying agencies of the world are proprietary
concerns. It issues no stock, makes no profit, and declares no
dividend. It does not sell news to any one. It is a clearing-house for
the interchange of news among its members only.
I wrote to Mr. Stone, explaining that I was discussing his organization
in my book, and wished to be scrupulously fair in every statement I
made; would Mr. Stone tell me the present status of these bonds and
their votes? Mr. Stone delayed for some time to answer, and when he did
so, explained the delay:
First, because I have been taking a vacation, and have had no leisure
to think of you, and second, because in the slight reading I have
given to your publications, I was led to believe that any failure to
acquaint yourself with the facts of a matter would in no wise
embarrass you in presenting your case.
My answer was that, curiously enough, this was precisely the impression
I had formed of Mr. Stone’s organization; the only difference being that
whereas he admitted having given only a slight reading to my
publications, I had had intimate first-hand experience with his
organization over a period of fifteen or twenty years.
However, Mr. Stone consented to give me a list of the present
bond-holders; also his explanation of the matter:
In the organization of the Associated Press in 1900 it was necessary
to provide a certain sum to buy fixtures, etc., and certain first
mortgage bonds were issued and sold to the members, the proceeds being
applied in the way indicated. The Charter authorized an issuance of
$150,000. But this sum was found to be unnecessary. The actual issue
was $131,425. This has since been reduced by redemption in certain
cases so that today there is outstanding $113,125. Under the law of
New York, holders of first mortgage bonds are entitled to vote for
Directors in proportion to their holdings. They have no right to vote
upon bonds on any other matter in the conduct of the business.
Many times, in the course of my experiences as a muck-raker, I have had
great captains of privilege endeavor to impose upon my intelligence; but
I cannot recall having ever been offered so childish a pretext as I am
here offered by Mr. Stone. I am asked to believe that in the nineteen
years of its history, this enormous concern has been able to pay off
less than twenty thousand dollars of the debt incurred for its office
furniture! I am asked to believe that these bond-holders have votes
because the law requires them to have votes; and that never once has it
occurred to the shrewd gentlemen who manage the Associated Press that by
the simple device of remaining in debt for their office furniture, they
can keep their organization permanently and irrevocably in the control
of the big reactionary newspapers of the country!
Will Irwin, writing in “Harper’s Weekly” five years ago, speaks of the
“ring of old, Tory, forty-one vote papers in control” of the Associated
Press. It appears that the bonds of the organization are for twenty-five
dollars each, and when the association was formed, the big insiders each
took one thousand dollars worth—giving them forty votes, with one
additional vote as member.
I look down the list which Mr. Stone sends me, and I see that these
“forty-one vote papers” include all of the biggest reactionary sheets in
America. One after another I look for those which I have pilloried in
this book—they are all here! The “Los Angeles Times” is here, and de
Young’s “San Francisco Chronicle,” and the “San Francisco Bulletin,” of
the itching palm, and the “San Francisco Examiner,” which sent out my
Shredded Wheat story, and the “Sacramento Union,” which was sold to the
Calkins syndicate. Here is the “Pueblo Chieftain,” which circulated the
foul slanders about Judge Lindsey and the miners’ wives. Here is the
“Baltimore News” of Munsey, the stock-gambler. Here is the “Washington
Post,” which, as I shall narrate, had a typewritten copy of a speech by
Albert Williams, and deliberately made up false quotations. Here is the
“Chicago Tribune,” which slandered Henry Ford, and the “Chicago Daily
News,” which, with the “Tribune,” robs the Chicago school-children. Here
is the “Cincinnati Times-Star,” which set out to fight Boss Cox, and
didn’t. Here is the “Boston Herald,” which, I shall show you, refused
President Wilson’s speech as an advertisement, and the “Boston
Traveller,” which lied about my magazine. Here is the “Kansas City
Star,” which hounded Mrs. Stokes to jail, and the “St. Paul Dispatch,”
whose misdeeds I have just listed. Here is the “Oil City Derrick,” owned
by Standard Oil, and the “Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” whose bonds were
found in the vaults of the Great Northern Railroad. Here is the
“Portland Oregonian,” which exists for large-scale capital, and the
“Milwaukee Sentinel,” owned by Pfister, who owns most of Milwaukee. Here
is the “New York Herald,” which suppressed my Packingtown story, and
paid me damages for the Tarrytown libel. Here is the “New York Evening
Post,” which failed to expose the Associated Press, and the “New York
World,” which favors twenty-cent meals for department-store girls; here
is the “New York Tribune,” which lied about the Socialist state
legislators, and the “New York Times,” which has lied about me so many
times that I can’t count them.
Such are the newspapers which control the Associated Press: a
“stand-pat” machine, precisely like the Aldrich machine which once
controlled the United States Senate, and the Cannon machine which once
controlled the House. Mr. Stone does his best to persuade me that in the
maintenance of this control the bonds have not played any part. He
writes:
Since the organization, over one hundred elections of directors have
taken place. In one case only, I believe, was the result different
from what it would have been if no votes had been cast upon the bonds.
And here again Mr. Stone is treating me as a child. Of the total bonds
the big insiders control nine-tenths. Of the total number of votes cast
at elections, they control five-sixths. A successful rebellion is thus
obviously impossible; and the penalty of an unsuccessful rebellion, as I
shall presently show, is annihilation; yet Mr. Stone feels virtuous
because nobody rebels! Let Mr. Stone pay off his debts for office
furniture, and place all the nine-hundred-odd members of the Associated
Press on an equality as regards votes, and then let him boast that the
bonds have no effect upon elections!
Ten years ago Mr. Kittle made a study of the fifteen directors of the
Associated Press. They were all publishers of large newspapers, and from
these newspapers could be judged. Just one was a “liberal,” Nelson, of
the “Kansas City Star”—and he has since died. All the other fourteen
were classified as “conservative or ultra-conservative.” Said Mr.
Kittle:
The other fourteen papers are huge commercial ventures, connected by
advertising and in other ways with banks, trust companies, railway and
city utility companies, department-stores and manufacturing
enterprises. They reflect the system which supports them.
There have been many changes of personality in the Associated Press in
the last ten years, but there has been no change in this respect; the
statement of Mr. Kittle’s remains the truth about the fifteen directors.
And likewise there has been no change in the policy of the organization,
as Mr. Kittle reported it:
The dispatches themselves disclose the attitude of the management.
They give scant courtesy to movements for constructive legislation in
the public interest. The reports, scores of which have been examined,
are meager, fragmentary, isolated. Every time Tom Johnson was
successful in more than fifty injunction suits, the general public in
other states heard little or nothing of it. When an election recently
went against him, everybody heard of the “failure” of municipal
ownership. When La Follette for five years, by a continuous contest,
was placing law after law on the statute-books, the matter was ignored
or briefly reported in distant states; and temporary defeats were
given wide publicity. When Kansas, in 1908, rejected a conservative
and elected a progressive United States Senator, the general public at
a distance from that state did not know the real issue involved. For
more than two years, there has been a strong movement in California
against the rule of that state by special and corrupt interests, but
that fact, merely as news, has never reached the general public in the
East. The prosecution of offenders in San Francisco has only been a
part of the wider movement in California. The strong movement in New
Hampshire, headed by Winston Churchill, to free that state from the
grasp of the Boston and Maine Railway Company and the movement in New
Jersey led by Everett Colby, which resulted in the defeat of Senator
Dryden, the president of the Prudential Insurance Company, have not
been given to the people adequately as matters of news.
And this is the testimony of every independent-minded newspaper man with
whom I have talked about the Associated Press. Will Irwin, writing in
“Harper’s Weekly,” shows how the old reactionary forces shape the policy
of the organization. “The subordinates have drifted inevitably toward
the point of view held by their masters.” And again, of the average
Associated Press correspondent: “A movement in stocks is to him news—big
news. Wide-spread industrial misery in a mining camp is scarcely news at
all.” At a conference at the University of Wisconsin, the editor of the
“Madison Democrat” stated that he had been a correspondent of the
Associated Press for many years, and had never been asked “to suppress
news or to color news in any way whatever.” Reply was made by A. M.
Simons: “I have had many reporters working under me, and every one of
you know that you will not have a reporter on your paper who cannot
‘catch policy’ in two weeks.”
The general manager of the Associated Press makes public boast of the
high character of his employes. “Throughout the profession, employment
in its service is regarded as an evidence of character and reliability.”
Such is the glittering generality; but investigate a little, and you
find one Associated Press correspondent, Calvin F. Young, of Charleston,
West Virginia, engaged in sending strike-news to his organization, and
at the same time in the pay of the mine-owners, collecting affidavits
against the strikers. You find a second Associated Press correspondent,
E. Wentworth Prescott, of Boston, dipping into the slush funds of the
New Haven Railroad, and giving an explanation of his services, so
lacking in plausibility that Interstate Commerce Commissioner Anderson
remarks: “I don’t see why they couldn’t just as well have hired you to
count the telegraph poles on the street!”
The Associated Press is probably the most iron-clad monopoly in America.
It was organized originally as a corporation under the laws of Illinois,
but the Illinois courts declared it a monopoly, so it moved out of
Illinois, and reorganized itself as a “membership corporation,” thus
evading the law. Today, if you wish to start a morning newspaper in the
village of Corn Center, Kansas, you may get an Associated Press
franchise; but if you want to start one in any city or town within
circulating distance of the big “forty-one-vote” insiders, you might as
well apply for a flying-machine to visit the moon. The members of the
Associated Press have what is called “the right of protest”—that is,
they can object to new franchises being issued; and this power they use
ruthlessly to maintain their monopoly. Says Will Irwin:
To the best of my knowledge, only two or three new franchises have
ever been granted over the right of protest—and those after a terrible
fight. Few, indeed, have had the hardihood to apply. When such an
application comes up in the annual meeting, the members shake with
laughter as they shout out a unanimous “No!” For owing to the
exclusive terms of the charter, an Associated Press franchise to a
metropolitan newspaper is worth from fifty thousand dollars to two
hundred thousand dollars. Abolish the exclusive feature, throw the
Association open to all, and you wipe out these values. The publishers
are taking no chances with a precedent so dangerous.
A few years ago the editor of the “News” of Santa Cruz, California,
applied for the Associated Press franchise for his paper. The San
Francisco manager of the Associated Press refused it, and gave this
explanation, according to a statement by the editor of the “News”:
The San Francisco daily papers owned all the Associated Press
franchises for that city, and they also controlled a vast outlying
territory, including Santa Cruz, eighty miles away, and would refuse
to permit Associated Press dispatches to be printed by me or anyone
else in Santa Cruz.
There is only one way to get by this barrier, and that is to pay the
price. Joseph A. Scranton, proprietor of the “Scranton Republican,”
forced a man who wished to start another newspaper in Scranton to pay
him ten thousand dollars before he could have the Associated Press
franchise for that small city. When the “San Francisco Globe” wanted the
Associated Press franchise, it had to buy the “San Francisco Post” at
the price of a hundred and ten thousand dollars. Admittedly the “Post”
had no value, it was not a competitor in any sense; the price paid was
for the franchise alone—and it was stated by the “San Francisco Star”
that the greater part of the value consisted in a lower telegraph rate,
a special privilege granted by the Western Union telegraph company to
the Associated Press.
Also the Associated Press, being a membership corporation or club,
possesses the legal right to expel and to discipline its members. This
right it has specifically asserted in its charter; it may expel a member
“for any conduct on his part, or on the part of anyone in his employ or
connected with his newspaper, which in its absolute discretion it shall
deem of such a character as to be prejudicial to the welfare and
interest of the corporation and its members, or to justify such
expulsion. The action of the members of the corporation in such regard
shall be final, and there shall be no right of appeal or review of such
action.”
This, you perceive, is power to destroy any newspaper overnight. Not
merely may a franchise worth two hundred thousand dollars be wiped out
at the whim of the little controlling oligarchy; the entire value of the
newspaper may be destroyed; for of course a big morning newspaper cannot
exist without its franchise. The masters of the “A. P.” hold this whip
over the head of every member; and Will Irwin tells what use they make
of it:
Two or three liberal publishers have expressed to me, after mutual
pledges of confidence, their opinion of the “A P. cinch.” And they
have finished by saying something like this:
“But for heaven’s sake don’t quote me in print, and don’t tell anyone
I’ve said this. The fine for such an offense runs from fifty thousand
dollars up!”
In my story of the Colorado coal-strike, I showed you the “A. P.”
suppressing news, and the newspapers of the country, without one single
exception, keeping silence about it. I showed you one bold managing
editor promising to tell the truth, and then suddenly stricken dumb, and
not carrying out his promise. Now I have shown you the meaning of the
phenomenon.
And yet, in spite of everything, members of the Associated Press do
“kick”; they “kick” repeatedly, and word of their “kicks” gets out.
Fremont Older complained repeatedly, and so did Van Valkenburg, of the
“Philadelphia North American.” Herman Ridder complained—as Mr. Stone
himself admitted when a Senate committee pinned him down. I quote a
significant colloquy from a Senate “lobby” investigation:
Senator LaFollette: Mr. Stone, has there ever been any complaint made
by members of your association of unfairness on the part of the
manager or the management of the Association regarding news?
Mr. Stone: Oh, yes, sir. There is hardly—
Senator LaFollette: Have the members of your association or any member
of your association complained that you suppressed important news?
Mr. Stone: Oh, yes, sir, we have had that for years.
Senator LaFollette: That you have colored news?
Mr. Stone: No, sir, I do not think anybody has ever said that. Well, I
don’t know about that. We have had complaints on all sides.
This is the Committee on Finance of the United States Senate, holding
hearings on the subject of reciprocity with Canada (Senate Document 56,
Sixty-second Congress, First Session, Vol. II). The newspapers of the
country want a clause by which they can get free paper-pulp from Canada;
so the Associated Press sends out full reports of the testimony of
newspaper publishers before the Senate Committee. But when certain
farmers appear and oppose the reciprocity scheme—listen to Senator
McCumber, questioning Herman Ridder, a director of the Associated Press:
How do you account for the fact, which every senator here must have
noticed, that while these farmers were giving their testimony the
reporters of the Associated Press leaned back in their chairs day
after day scarcely taking a note, and that the moment any man came
forward to give testimony in favor of this bill every pencil came out
and every pad was on the table and all of our good friends were
studiously at work? And that has been the case all through these
hearings.
And again:
It is a notorious fact that we have been able to get but one side of
the question before the public so far as these hearings are concerned.
Also, consider the testimony brought out by the Senate Committee on the
Judiciary (sixty-third Congress, First Session, Senate Resolution 92,
Vol. II). It appears that the head of the Sugar Trust had issued a long
statement, advocating free raw sugar, and this press-agent material had
been sent out in full by the Associated Press. The senators question
Melville E. Stone, to find out why, and they cannot even get the name of
the Associated Press correspondent who handled the material! It is
brought out that the beet sugar interests of the West, which are
fighting the Sugar Trust, have made bitter complaint concerning this
article, and have been to the head of the Denver office of the
Associated Press to demand that their side too shall be given a hearing.
You remember how I went to the head of the Denver office of the
Associated Press, to try to get a hearing for _my_ side—the people’s
side—and how completely I failed? Needless to say, it is different when
a representative of Big Business makes complaint; this gentleman obtains
the promise of the Associated Press to send out six hundred and fifty
words, and later on Mr. Stone is found writing to his Denver manager:
Personally I am inclined to discourage the carrying of long statements
of a controversial nature, but inasmuch as we carried Mr. Arbuckle’s
statement rather fully, my judgment is that we might have handled a
little more of Mr. Hamlin’s provided it was prepared as briefly as our
copy here indicates.
Here, you see, we are close to the heart of a grave problem. Here are
enormous sums of “easy money” in sight. If the managers and district
managers and correspondents of our great press associations all sternly
decline to touch this “easy money,” they are all, all honorable men;
also, they are different from most other men in most other branches of
Big Business in America.
Do they all decline? I sincerely hope so. But I recall how Max Eastman,
in the “Masses” for July, 1913, made very specific charges against the
Associated Press, which thereupon caused Eastman’s arrest for criminal
libel. The indictment brought by the Grand Jury against Eastman and Art
Young quotes a paragraph from the offending editorial, as follows:
I am told that every trust is to be encouraged to live its life and
grow to such proportions that it may and must be taken over by the
working public. But one trust that I find it impossible to encourage
is this Truth Trust, the Associated Press. So long as the substance of
current history continues to be held in cold storage, adulterated,
colored with poisonous intentions, and sold to the highest bidder to
suit his private purposes, there is small hope that even the free and
the intelligent will take the side of justice in the struggle that is
before us.
The indictment goes on to interpret the above:
Meaning and intending thereby that the said corporation intentionally
withheld, suppressed and concealed from its members information of
important items of news and intelligence and intentionally supplied
its members with information that was untruthful, biased, inaccurate
and incomplete, and that the said corporation _for and in
consideration of moneys paid to it_ intentionally supplied to its
members misinformation concerning happenings and events that
constituted the news and intelligence of the day.
Then the indictment quotes another paragraph from the editorial:
The representative of the Associated Press was an officer in that
military tribunal that hounded the Paint Creek miners into the
penitentiary in violation of their constitutional liberties; and this
fact is even more significant and more serious than the abrogation of
those liberties. It shows that the one thing which all tribes and
nations in time have held sacred—the body of Truth—is for sale to
organized capital in the United States.
The indictment interprets this as follows:
Meaning and intending thereby that the said corporation was willing to
and did _in consideration of money paid to it_ knowingly supply to its
members information of such untruthful, biased and prejudiced nature
and so distorted and incomplete _as the person paying such money might
desire_.
This indictment was widely heralded in the press, and everybody thought
they were going to get the truth about the Associated Press at last. But
when the case was ready for trial, it was mysteriously dropped. For six
years I have wondered why it was dropped. I cannot say now that I know;
but I have just met Max Eastman, and heard from his lips the story of a
certain eminent corporation lawyer in New York, who on several occasions
has “kicked over the traces” of Big Business. This man knows a great
deal about the Associated Press, and he came forward in this “Masses”
case, offering to assist the defense, and to conduct the trial. It was
his plan to summon the heads of high finance in New York, beginning with
Pierpont Morgan, and to question them as to the precise details of their
relationship to the Associated Press! Aren’t you sorry that trial didn’t
come off? And don’t you think it a very serious matter that the
Associated Press did not face this precise and definite issue, which it
had so publicly raised? Let me speak for myself: If any man accused me
in the specific and damaging way above quoted, I would consider that my
time, my money, my energy, my very life must be called to the task of
vindicating my honor. And if, instead of fighting, I put my tail between
my legs and sneaked away from the scene, I would expect men to conclude
that there was some guilt upon my conscience.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE OWNER AND HIS ADVERTISERS
The third method by which the “kept” press is kept is the method of the
advertising subsidy. This is the “legitimate” graft of newspapers and
magazines, the main pipeline whereby Big Business feeds its journalistic
parasites. Financially speaking, our big newspapers and popular
magazines are today more dependent upon their advertisers than they are
upon their readers; it is not a cynicism, but the statement of a
business fact, that a newspaper or popular magazine is a device for
submitting competitive advertising to the public, the reading-matter
being bait to bring the public to the hook.
And of course the old saying holds, that “he who pays the piper calls
the tune.” The extent to which the bait used in the game of journalistic
angling is selected and treated by the business fishermen, is a subject
which might occupy a volume by itself. Not merely is there general
control of the spirit and tone of the paper; there is control in minute
details, sometimes grotesque. For example, Arthur Brisbane wrote an
article on dietetics, deploring the use of package cereals. The
advertising men of the “Evening Journal” came to him, tearing their
hair; he had knocked off a hundred thousand dollars a year from the
“Journal’s” income! Brisbane wrote an editorial pointing out that stiff
hats caused baldness, and the “Journal” office was besieged by the
hat-dealers who advertised in the paper. Brisbane went to Europe and
wrote editorials supporting a municipal subway. Said the advertising
man: “Don’t you know that Mr. —— at Wanamaker’s is dead against that
sort of thing?”
Max Sherover, in his excellent little pamphlet, “Fakes in American
Journalism,” writes:
The editor of a New York paper wrote an instructive editorial on the
right kind of shoes to wear. The editorial was not inspired by any
advertiser. It was simply the result of the editor’s study and
investigation of the problem of footwear. He advised against the
wearing of the shoe with the curved point and urged in favor of the
square-toed shoe. One of the big advertisers somehow got wind of the
shoe-editorial that was intended to appear on the following day. It so
happened that this store-keeper had a shoe-sale scheduled for the
following week. He called up the business manager of the newspaper on
the ’phone. After five minutes of conversation the editorial went to
the waste-basket.
And if the advertisers censor the general ideas, needless to say they
censor news about themselves. Henry Siegel owned a department-store in
New York; his wife divorced him, and nothing about it appeared in the
New York papers—that is, not until after the department-store failed!
Our great metropolitan dailies are, as you know, strong protectors of
the sanctity of the home; you saw how they treated Upton Sinclair, when
he got tied up in the divorce-courts; you saw how they treated Gorky and
Herron. But how about the late C. W. Post, of “Postum” fame, when he
decided to divorce his wife and marry his stenographer? Hardly a line in
the newspapers throughout the country!
I have told how the Philadelphia newspapers suppressed the suicide of
one of the Gimbel brothers. This same firm has a store in Milwaukee, and
I have before me a letter from the District Attorney of Milwaukee
County, setting forth what happened when the vice-president of this firm
was indicted for bribing an alderman:
Representatives of Gimbel Brothers requested, as I am credibly
informed, the newspapers in which their commercial advertisements
appeared to suppress the facts connected with the proceedings of Mr.
Hamburger’s trial. With two exceptions, so insignificant as to justify
their being entirely ignored, the English press did so. The five daily
English newspapers published no account whatever of the trial, which
occupied about one week and disclosed sensational matter which would
have undoubtedly been published broadcast in an ordinary case. Some of
these papers printed a very brief notice at the time the case was
called, stating this fact, but not all of them did even this much....
It was shown that all the books of account of the Gimbel Brothers,
together with their correspondence and legal documents pertaining to
the transaction in connection with which the bribery was alleged were
burned under the direction of the defendant immediately after it was
brought to his attention that the grand jury which indicted him was in
session and about to investigate this case. This destruction of the
books and documents occurred within the period of the statute of
limitation, and less than three years after some of the entries had
been made in them. The only explanation for this singular proceeding
given by defendant or his business associates was that they lacked
room in their vault and found it necessary to do away with papers,
books and documents which they felt they could dispense with. I
mention this particular line of evidence because I am satisfied that
if such a showing had been made in an ordinary case of bribery the
facts disclosed would have been given the widest publicity by the
daily press. That the proceedings of this trial were suppressed by the
English papers of this city for commercial reasons which appealed to
their advertising department is unquestioned. Every newspaper man of
my acquaintance to whom I have mentioned the matter has admitted the
fact and deplored it.
In the same way, when Wanamaker’s was detected violating the customs
laws, only one Philadelphia newspaper reported the circumstances. There
was organized a league for honest advertising, and you might have
thought that such a league would have appealed to our highly moral
newspapers; but when this league prosecuted a merchant in New York for
selling furs under false names, not one newspaper mentioned the
circumstances. This merchant was convicted, and again not one New York
newspaper mentioned it. In Chicago various firms were prosecuted for
misbranding goods, and the local papers suppressed the news. In
Milwaukee four firms were prosecuted for selling a potted cheese doped
with chemicals, and the newspapers withheld the names of the firms. Says
Will Irwin: “I have never seen a story of a shop-lifting case in which
the name of the store was mentioned.” Also he makes the following
statement concerning the most august of the Brahmin newspapers of New
England:
The “Boston Evening Transcript” published in its issue of April 8th
the fact that a workman had fallen from a tree, that an aged pauper
had been found dead in bed, that the Harvard Shooting Club was about
to hold a meet, but not the fact that “Harvard Beer,” known to every
consumer of malt liquors in Massachusetts, was in peril of the law for
adulteration. Neither was the fact noted on Monday, April 10. But on
Tuesday, April 11, “Harvard Beer—1,000 pure” appeared in the pages of
the “Transcript”—as a half-page advertisement!
Every newspaper editor feels this pressure—even though he feels it only
in his imagination. A horse that travels in harness does so, not because
he likes to travel, but because he carries in his subconsciousness the
memory of the whip and the bit which “broke” him in the days of his wild
youth. And if, by any chance, he forgets this whip and bit, he is
quickly reminded. William Winter, a dramatic critic who had served the
“New York Tribune” for forty-four years, was forced to resign because
his reviews of plays injured the advertising business of the “Tribune.”
Certain managers were making money out of producing indecent plays; Mr.
Winter rebuked these plays, the advertisers protested to the “Tribune,”
and the managing editor of the “Tribune” censored Mr. Winter’s reviews.
During the controversy, Mr. Winter wrote to the managing editor that he
had desired to injure the business of the producers of indecent plays;
to which the managing editor replied; “My instructions with regard to
that page are that the articles are not to be framed with any such
purpose.”
The same thing happened to Walter Pritchard Eaton, dramatic critic of
the “New York Sun.” I learned of it just as my book was going to press,
and wired Mr. Eaton for the facts. Here is his answer:
Syndicate withdrew ads from “Sun” after my review of Soul Kiss,
demanding my discharge. Six months later I was fired, no cause given.
Next Sunday all ads back in paper. No actual proof but conclusion
pretty plain.
Everywhere in the world of Journalism, high and low, you see this power
of the advertiser. I live in the beautiful millionaire city of Pasadena,
and every afternoon I get my news of the world from a local paper, which
is in some ways among the best. It publishes no scare headlines, and
practically no scandal; but in its attitude toward its big commercial
advertisers, the attitude of this newspaper is abject. There is a page
of moving-picture advertisements, and side by side are columns of
“write-ups” of these plays. Nine out of ten of these plays are
unspeakable trash, but from the notices you would think that a new era
of art was dawning upon Pasadena. All this is “dope,” sent out by the
moving-picture exploiters; such a thing as an independent and educative
review of a moving-picture is not conceivable in my local newspaper. And
it is the same with “write-ups” of bargain-sales, and new openings of
department-stores. It is the same with the chain of leisure-class
hotels; the man who manages and finances these hotels is a local god,
and everything he does and says takes the top of the column.
This system of publicity in return for advertising is a fundamentally
dishonest one, but it is inseparable from the business of publishing
news for profit, and the legitimate and the illegitimate shade into one
another so gradually that it would be hard for an honest editor to know
where to draw the line. The rule will differ with every newspaper; it
may differ with every editor and every mood of every editor. I have made
a little study of it with my local newspaper, and had some amusing
experiences. Belonging to the Socialist local in Pasadena, I several
times had occasion to solicit publicity for Socialist meetings. Being a
naturally polite person, I did not go to the editor and say, “I’ll buy
ten dollars worth of advertising space, if you’ll publish a quarter of a
column of news about my radical venture.” What I did was to insert the
advertisement, and then send to the editor the matter I wanted
published, and it was published. So I thought this was a regular rule;
but some time later, when the labor-men of Pasadena started a
co-operative store, and I became vice-president of the enterprise, I
inserted an advertisement of the store, and again presented my “copy” to
the newspaper, and I did not get so much space. The advertising manager
of the newspaper explained to the manager of the store that his paper
could not boost a co-operative store, because the local merchants which
supplied the bulk of its advertising were hostile to such an enterprise!
At the last election the people of California had to decide upon a
social insurance measure, and a friend of mine wrote an article in favor
of this measure, and could not get it published. I suggested that she
publish it as an advertisement, but the “Pasadena Star-News” refused it,
even in that form, and explained to me the reason—that the lady had
referred to Christian Science as “a foolish belief”! The partisans of
Christian Science are accustomed to rent a page in this paper every now
and then, and to have their foolishness published without question.
A still stranger experience befell a gentleman in Boston, Sinclair
Kennedy by name. In April, 1918, Mr. Kennedy learned that his state was
falling far behind in the purchase of war savings and thrift stamps, and
by way of helping his government in its thrift campaign, he prepared an
advertisement consisting of three quotations, the first from a speech by
President Wilson, the second from a speech by the Secretary of the
Treasury, and the third from a speech by the Chairman of the National
War Savings Committee: all three of the quotations urging that people
should purchase only necessities, so that the energies of the country
might go to war-production. The “Boston Herald and Journal” contracted
to publish this advertisement in four issues; it published it in two
issues, and then refused to publish it again, and paid to Mr. Kennedy
the sum of five hundred dollars damages for breach of contract. The
“Boston Post” refused to publish the advertisement at all, its manager
giving the reason that it was “contrary to public policy”! I have read
of many Socialists being sent to jail upon a charge of interfering with
the government’s war activities, but if the manager of the “Boston Post”
was sent to jail, the other newspapers did not report it!
What this amounts to is a censorship of the small and occasional
advertisers by the large and permanent ones; this censorship is common,
and sometimes it is made to wear the aspect of virtue. The best-paying
advertisements are those of automobiles and other leisure-class
luxuries; as such advertisers will not publish alongside cheap patent
medicine fakes, publications like “Collier’s” and the “Outlook” make a
boast of censoring their advertisements. But when it comes to protecting
their high-priced advertisers, these publications are, as I have shown,
every bit as unscrupulous as the sellers of cancer-cures and
headache-powders. I, who wish to attack these high-priced advertisers,
am forced to publish what I have to say in a paper which can only exist
by publishing the advertisements of cancer-cures and headache-powders.
This is very humiliating, but what can I do? Stop writing? If I could
have my way, of course, I would write for a publication having a large
circulation and publishing honest reading matter and honest advertising
matter. But no such publication exists; and I have to decide the
question, which does the least harm, a publication with honest
advertising matter and dishonest reading matter, or a publication with
honest reading matter and dishonest advertising matter.
Also, of course, there will be censorship of advertisements containing
news. If the newspaper is suppressing certain facts, it will not permit
you to make known these facts, even for money. The “Los Angeles Times,”
although it bitterly opposed single tax, was willing to take my money
for an advertisement in favor of single tax; but the “Times” would not
take my money for an advertisement reporting a meeting at which the
truth about Russia was told. The “Times” would not sell me space to make
known that the Socialists of the city had challenged the Superintendent
of Schools to debate the truth of certain false statements which he had
made about Russia.
In Louisville is the “People’s Church,” conducted by an independent
clergyman in a theatre, and attended by one or two thousand people every
Sunday. The “Louisville Courier-Journal” and its evening edition, the
“Times,” have not contented themselves with suppressing all news about
these meetings for several years; they have also refused all
advertisements of this “People’s Church.” (Since this was written they
have put the “People’s Church” out of business!)
Some fifteen years ago the most important news being put before the
American people was in the form of paid advertisements signed by Thomas
W. Lawson. The “New York Times” refused to publish these advertisements,
and tens of thousands of New Yorkers, myself among them, were obliged to
buy other newspapers in consequence. It cost the “Times” large sums of
money to refuse these Lawson broad-sides, but the “Times” made a virtue
of it, because the broad-sides threatened the entire profit system,
without which the “Times” could not exist. In the same way the
newspapers of Baltimore and Boston refused advertisements of a magazine
run by Thomas E. Watson in Georgia, on the ground that he was publishing
in his magazine articles attacking foreign missions. If you do not
believe that interests like this exercise pressure upon newspapers, just
try to publish in any capitalist newspaper an advertisement of a book or
pamphlet attacking the Roman Catholic Church!
Here in Los Angeles I know a man who set himself up in business as a
land-appraiser, and interfered with the leading industry of our
community, which is selling real estate to “come ons” from the East. He
advised one client that some land in Imperial Valley was worthless,
because it contained nearly three per cent of alkali; and this judgment
was later vindicated by a report of the U. S. Bureau of Soils, which I
have read. But it happened that this land lay perilously near to the
tracts of a great land company, in which the heads of Los Angeles
newspapers are interested. The three leading newspapers of Los Angeles
broke their contracts with this land-appraiser, threw out his “copy” and
ruined his business, and now he is working as a cowboy in the “movies.”
And if you think that the power of the real estate sharks is confined to
the places where they prey, consider the experience of Rob Wagner, who
wrote two articles about the Southern California land-sharks for the
“Saturday Evening Post.” The first article, being full of fun, a
farce-comedy, was accepted and paid for at once; the second, giving the
real story, and being full of meat, was turned down.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT
If the newspaper fails to protect its big advertisers, the big
advertisers will get busy and protect themselves. This happens every now
and then, and every newspaper editor has seen it happen. Sometimes an
editor gets sick of the game and quits, and then we have a story. For
example, William L. Chenery, who was editor of the “Rocky Mountain News”
during the Colorado coal-strike, tells me that “the business men of
Denver attempted both an advertising and a social boycott in order to
prevent the publication of strike news.... I was told that the owner of
the paper would not be admitted to the Denver Country Club so long as
our editorials seemed to support the cause of the strikers.”
Or take the case of Boston. George French, managing editor of a Boston
paper, told how his paper lost four hundred dollars on account of one
item which the “interests” had forbidden. Says Mr. French, “That led to
a little personal conversation, and to my retiring from the paper.” He
goes on to state:
You cannot get anything into the newspapers that in any way rubs up
against the business policy of the banks and department stores, or of
the public service corporations. Those three great departments of
business are welded together with bands ever so much stronger than
steel, and you cannot make any impression on them. News of department
stores that is discreditable, or in any way attracts unfavorable
attention, is all squelched, all kept out of the papers.
I have told how Otis of Los Angeles ran the “Times” as a Republican
paper and an “open-shop” paper, and at the same time ran secretly the
“Herald,” a Democratic paper and a “closed-shop” paper. Here is a
glimpse of the “Herald” office, as narrated by Frank E. Wolfe, former
managing editor of the paper.
The Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association took up the proposition
of an aviation meet at Domingues Field. This was managed by the
walking delegate of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association. The
manager gave out the concessions. I went to Domingues Field personally
after the meet had been running a few days and found conditions so
abhorrent there that I came back and personally wrote a story about
fourteen or sixteen “blind pigs” running....
Immediate reprisals came through the M. and M.—which controls all the
advertising placed in the newspapers of the city—by way of taking out
of the “Herald” the advertising of a certain department-store—the
manager or proprietor of this store being one of the chief moguls of
the aviation field. They took their ad out, and the business-manager
of the “Herald” came storming in to see me, as they always do in cases
of this sort, to see who wrote the story. And when I told him I wrote
it myself from facts I had, he wanted me to print an apology. That I
have not yet done.
There is a law against workingmen getting together and enforcing a
boycott; the Danbury hatters tried it, and the courts fined them several
hundred thousand dollars, and took away their homes and turned them out
onto the street. But if big advertisers choose to get together and
boycott a magazine, the law of course would not dream of being impolite.
At the very time that this Danbury hatters case was in the courts, the
late C. W. Post was explaining in “Leslie’s,” our barber-shop weekly,
how he broke the newspapers and magazines to his will.
A friend of mine once had the honor of meeting Mr. Post and standing in
his private vault and being permitted to handle a package containing
four million dollars worth of government bonds. All this had been made
out of advertisements, which had persuaded the public to buy package
cereals, of precisely the same food-value as bread, at a price several
times as high as bread. On January 23rd, 1913, Mr. Post published in
“Leslie’s” an article, urging business men to organize and refuse to
give advertisements to “muck-raking” publications; and “Leslie’s”
contributed an illuminating cartoon, “The Fool Who Feeds the Monster!”
On April 10th Mr. Post contributed another article, describing his
methods. He had his clerks go over all publications, listing
objectionable matter, and he sent a form letter to offending
publications, threatening to withdraw his valuable advertising unless
they promised to be “good” in the future.
Mr. Post told what he was doing. There were others who preferred to work
in the dark. Perhaps the most significant case was that of “Collier’s
Weekly” and the Ballinger “land fraud” scandals. Norman Hapgood and
Robert Collier broke the Taft administration on that issue, and
President Taft, a venomous old man when he was crossed, issued a furious
denunciation of “Collier’s”: whereupon the National Association of
Manufacturers, the most powerful organization in the country, took the
field against “muck-raking” magazines. They not only applied the
advertising boycott to “Collier’s,” they set the banks to work, as in
the case of “Hampton’s,” and they took away control of the magazine from
Robert Collier, and put it into the hands of a banking committee, where
it stayed. “Robbie” took to flying aeroplanes, and a year or two ago he
died, and “Collier’s” published a full-page obituary of him, telling the
many services he had performed for the public—except the one really
important service, that he had broken the Taft administration over the
Ballinger “land fraud” issue! Imagine a magazine, that, on the death of
its owner, does not dare to mention the greatest event of its owner’s
life!
I had an opportunity to watch, from the inside, the operation of this
advertising boycott, in the case of my article, the “Condemned Meat
Industry.” Many pages of advertising were withdrawn from “Everybody’s
Magazine”—not merely advertisements of hams and lard, but of
fertilizers, soaps and railways. Lawson several times tried to publish
the names of these boycotting advertisers, but “Everybody’s” would not
let him. “Everybody’s” possibly reflected that it might not keep up this
muck-raking business always; when it had secured enough readers, it
might let down and become respectable, and then all the big advertisers
would come back to it—as they have done!
The few men who really did mean business knew that the advertisers would
never come back to them, so they fought the fight through to a
finish—their own finish. So it was with “Hampton’s,” so it was with
“Pearson’s” under the old régime. “Pearson’s” tried publishing on the
cheapest newsprint paper and with no advertisements, and for two or
three years “Pearson’s” was the only popular magazine in America from
which you could get the truth. It was the only one which dared to fight
the Railroad Trust and the Beef Trust, the only one which dared tell the
truth about the Associated Press, and about Capitalist Journalism in
general.
Early in 1914 it published a series of articles by Charles Edward
Russell: “Keeping the Kept Press,” “The Magazine Soft-Pedal,” and “How
Business Controls the News.” Russell told the story of the “Boston
Traveller,” which was bought by a young reformer, and put under the
control of a real newspaper man, Marlin E. Pew. The young reformer died,
and the Shoe Machinery Trust bought the paper and ordered Pew to be
good. He refused, and stood on the contract which he had with the paper.
He had a story affecting a big financial house. Threats were made, the
business manager was confronted with ruin, the paper was tied up, and
Pew was forced to sell his contract for cash. I write this story, and
the name of the paper sounds familiar to me. I search my memory. Oh,
yes! It was the “Boston Traveller,” which, a couple of years ago,
published a report to the effect that the authorities of Boston were
about to confiscate copies of my magazine, and that copies had been
thrown out of the library of Radcliffe College. I wrote to the librarian
of Radcliffe College, and she replied that the report was a complete
fabrication.
Also Russell told how someone tried to run an independent newspaper in
Indianapolis, where the street-railway companies, by various
manipulations, had boosted the capitalization of the railways from three
million dollars to fifty-seven million dollars. The “Indianapolis Sun”
exposed the fact that the congestion on these railways was caused by the
fact that all the cars were forced to pass in front of certain big
department-stores. Then the wage-slaves of the railways started to
organize; the “Sun” backed them, and told how the companies had
automobiles which threw their lights on the entrance to the hall where
the men met, and took the name of every man who entered. Also the “Sun”
reported how the railway-companies were having the union leaders
slugged—and so the “Sun” reporter was slugged! The Merchants’
Association got busy, and the “Sun” advertisers were warned of a
boycott. A “safety commission” of the Chamber of Commerce was organized,
and a meeting was held, at which explicit instructions were given to all
newspaper editors. The circulation of the “Sun” had gone up from
seventeen thousand to forty thousand, but the advertising was cut off,
and so the paper had to quit.
In the same way the “Akron Press” ventured to support a strike against
the tire-companies, and was boycotted. The same fate befell the
“Cincinnati Post,” which ventured to expose a peculiar procedure
engineered by a street railway corporation. There was a limitation of
twenty-five years upon public franchises, so the state legislature
passed a bill, permitting fifty-year franchises. The city council of
Cincinnati then passed one fifty-year franchise, after which the
legislature repealed the bill permitting fifty-year franchises for
anybody else!
In an article in the “Atlantic Monthly” for March, 1910, Prof. Ross
explained just how tight the hold of the advertiser upon the newspaper
had then become:
Thirty years ago, advertising yielded less than half of the earnings
of the daily newspapers. Today it yields at least two-thirds. In the
larger dailies the receipts from advertisers are several times the
receipts from the readers, in some cases constituting ninety percent
of the total revenues. As the newspaper expands to eight, twelve, and
sixteen pages, while the price sinks to three cents, two cents, one
cent, the time comes when the advertisers support the newspaper.
And in “Pearson’s,” Charles Edward Russell gave the figures for the
magazines. He shows that at the prices then prevailing (1914), a
magazine publishing four hundred thousand copies a month would support a
net loss of over sixteen hundred dollars for manufacturing costs alone,
not including the cost of illustrations, articles, salaries, rent, etc.
All this, plus any profit from the enterprise, must come from the
advertising. So largely did magazines depend upon the advertising that
some of them were practically given away in order to get circulation.
One large magazine was sold wholesale at an average price of three
cents, another magazine was paying out a total of five dollars for every
one dollar it took in through subscriptions.
And what if the advertising did not come? Why then, of course, the
magazine or newspaper went out of business. One case of this sort I
happened to see from the inside, as the experience befell one of my
intimate friends—Gaylord Wilshire, the first of America’s heroic band of
“millionaire Socialists.” Wilshire came from the West with a couple of
hundred thousand dollars, and established a Socialist magazine in New
York. He had got the figures from experts; he must have four hundred
thousand circulation, and then he would be safe. So he set out to get
this circulation. He had a subscription contest, with a trip around the
world for a prize. He had another with a grand piano for a prize. He
gave away small fortunes; also he published the truth about American
public affairs, and he published the most penetrating editorial comment
then to be read in America. So he got his four hundred thousand
subscribers. But alas, he had reckoned without his advertisers! For some
strange reason the packers of hams and bacon, the manufacturers of
automobiles and ready-made clothing, of toilet perfumeries and fancy
cigarettes, would not pay their money to a Socialist magazine! Wilshire
was close to the rocks, and decided that to publish a Socialist magazine
in America a man needed a gold-mine. He bought a gold-mine, and for the
last twelve or thirteen years has been wrestling with it. He has just
about got it ready to pay; I wonder, will he get his Socialist paper
started before we have Socialism?
CHAPTER XLV
THE ADVERTISING ECSTASY
Such was the fate of a magazine which rebelled. As for those which
submitted, the answer is writ large on our newsstands. “McClure’s,”
“Collier’s,” “Everybody’s,” the “American” have survived, as a woman
without virtue, as a man without honor, of whom his friends say that he
would better have died. The masters of finance have taken not merely the
conscience from them, they have taken the life from them. If there was a
man on the editorial staff with red blood in his veins, they turned him
out to become a Socialist soap-boxer, and in his place they put a pithed
frog. (You know, perhaps, how the scientist takes the nerves out of a
frog’s body and puts in pith?)
Not merely have the money-masters stamped their sign upon the contents
of the magazines, they have changed the very form to suit their
purposes. Time was when you could take the vast bulk of a magazine, and
rip off one fourth from the front and two fourths from the back, and in
the remaining fourth you had something to read in a form you could
enjoy. But the advertising gentry got on to that practice and stopped
it. They demanded what they call “full position,” next to
reading-matter. One magazine gave way, and then another; until now all
popular magazines are cunning traps to bring your mind into subjection
to the hawkers of wares. I pick up the current number of the “Literary
Digest”; there are a hundred and twenty-eight pages, and the advertising
begins on page thirty-five. I pick up the current number of the
“Saturday Evening Post”; there are a hundred and fifty-eight pages, and
the advertising begins on page twenty-nine. You start an article or a
story, and they give you one or two clean pages to lull your suspicions,
and then at the bottom you read, “Continued on page 93.” You turn to
page ninety-three, and biff—you are hit between the eyes by a powerful
gentleman wearing a collar, or swat—you are slapped on the cheek by a
lady in a union-suit. You stagger down this narrow column, as one who
runs the gauntlet of a band of Indians with clubs; and then you read,
“Continued on page 99.” You turn to page ninety-nine, and somebody
throws a handful of cigarettes into your face, or maybe a box of candy;
or maybe it is the crack of a revolver, or the honk of an
automobile-horn that greets you. The theme of the reading-matter may be
the importance of war-savings, but before you get to the end of the
article you have been tempted by every luxury from a diamond scarf-pin
to a private yacht, and have spent in imagination more money than you
will earn in the balance of your life-time.
The culmination of this process may be studied in the supreme product
of Capitalist Journalism, the “Curtis Publications”; the peerless
trilogy of the “Saturday Evening Post,” the “Ladies’ Home Journal,”
and the “Country Gentleman.” How many boys in college are making
fortunes in their spare time, selling this trilogy to all America? I
don’t know, but if you write to the circulation department in
Philadelphia, they will tell you, and perhaps let you join the opulent
band. One hundred and thirty times every year these Curtis people
prepare for their millions of victims a fat bulk of “high-class”—that
is to say, high-paying—advertising. As street-urchins gather to
scramble for pennies, so gather here all the profit-seekers of the
country to compete for your attention; they wheedle and cajole and
implore, they shriek and scream, they dance and gesticulate and turn
somersaults. I say “they” do it; in reality, of course, they hire
others to do it; they take the brains and vitality and eagerness of
our youth—they waste in a single week enough writing talent and
drawing talent to create an American literature and an American art.
The stake is a colossal one. Writing ten years ago, Hamilton Holt showed
that the American people were spending a hundred and forty-five million
dollars a year for advertisements in periodicals. Also he stated that
one Chicago department-store had spent half a million in advertising to
sell fifteen million in goods. At this rate of thirty to one, the public
was being persuaded, by means of advertising, to purchase four and a
half billion dollars worth of goods. Allowing for the increase in
extravagance and in prices today, the expenditure cannot be less than
ten or twenty billions. Such is the prize to be scrambled for; and when
you realize it, you no longer wonder at the raptures to which our
advertisement-writers are impelled, the exhibitions of language-slinging
to which they treat us.
What is your literary taste? Are you poetical? Does your temperament run
to the flowery and ecstatic? If so, you will be “landed” by the
full-page advertisement which I find in my evening newspaper, displaying
a spreading peacock and half a dozen peacock-ladies in a whirl of
ruffles and frills. “THE RAINBOW OF FASHIONS,” runs the heading, and
continues in this fine, careful rapture:
Other than this the impression is inadequate, that glimpse beheld of
this Fashion Salon, this inimitable Third Floor of Goldstein’s.
What but the Rainbow with its inexpressible sunburst of color could be
the source—the inspiration from which Fashion has modeled these
veritable Exquisites—these beautiful new Frocks and Suits and Coats,
these Skirts and Capes—these Blouses and Hats for Milady’s luxury?
Truly the Genii of Fashionery are leading us into glory Fields of
Beauty never before attained, although it seemed for a time that
Artists of Vogue had decided to paint indefinitely upon that picture
of yesterday, with an occasional new tint perhaps to relieve somewhat
the monotonous restrictions both in style and in fabric.
But now—today—at Goldstein’s—the picture is a new one—startling and
irresistible—to be elaborated upon each day—for it is each day that
new thoughts are added as new Express Packages are opened from
Fashiondom.
Come, take a pencil peek with me—and ONLY as a pencil sees them—not at
all as they are—or as you may see them if you come where these
“Pretties” are all assembled—where fashions are wont to congregate at
Goldstein’s.
Or does your taste run to humor? Are you bluff and hearty, a real fellow
and a good sport? Then maybe your purse-strings will be loosened by the
full-page advertisement which appears in all the magazines for August,
1919, portraying a stout and sensual gentleman with a pipe in his mouth
and a wink in both eyes. Cries this gentleman:
SCRUB UP YOUR SMOKEDECKS AND CUT FOR A NEW PIPE DEAL! Say, you’ll have
a streak of smokeluck that’ll put pep-in-YOUR smokemotor, all right,
if you’ll ring-in with a jimmy pipe or the papers and nail some
“Devil’s-dung” for packing!
Just between ourselves, you never will wise-up to high-spot-smoke-joy
until you can call a pipe or a home-rolled cigarette by its first
name, THEN, to hit the peak-of-pleasure you land square on that
two-fisted-man-tobacco, “Devil’s-dung!”
Well, sir, you’ll be so all-fired happy you’ll want to get a
photograph of yourself breezing up the pike with your smokethrottle
wide open! TALK ABOUT SMOKE-SPORT!
And now, stop and consider what proportion of the total energies of the
community are devoted to the production of poisonous filth such as this.
I do not count the people who read and answer the advertisements; I
count only those who write them and sell them, those who set the type
and manufacture the paper, those who distribute the publications and
keep the accounts of the complicated operations. There cannot be less
than a million people thus occupied with the advertising business in
America; and all of them buried to the eyes in this poisonous filth, all
compelled to absorb it, to believe it, to have their personalities
befouled by it! It means, of course, that these people are permanently
excluded from the intellectual life. These people cannot know beauty,
they cannot know grace and charm, they cannot know dignity, they cannot
even know common honesty. To say that they are bound as captives to the
chariot-wheels of Mammon is not to indulge in loose metaphor, but to
describe precisely their condition. They are bound in body, mind, and
soul to vulgarity, banality, avarice and fraud.
You, perhaps, are not connected with the advertising business, so you
think you may ignore the fate of these pitiful captives. You are a
banker, perhaps; you handle the money of advertisers, and your mind is
shaped by the effort to understand them and their ways. Or you are a
telegrapher, and send telegrams for the advertising business; or you are
a farmer, and raise food for the million advertisement-makers; or you
are a steel-worker, and help to make their typewriters, the nails for
their shoes, and the rails over which their products are carried.
Or perhaps you are a person of leisure; you dwell alone in an ivory
tower of art. Now and then, however, you have to know something about
the world in which you live; and competitive commercialism ordains that
when you seek to learn this, you shall have the maniac shrieks of
advertisers resounding in your brain, you shall have the whirling
dervishes of this new cult of Publicity for Profit cavorting about in
your ivory tower. More than that, you shall have the intellectual
content of everything you read distorted by the advertisements which
adjoin them; your most dignified editor, your most aloof, “art for art’s
sake” poet will be a parasite upon advertisements, and if he thinks the
advertisements have nothing to do with him, it is only because the
dignified editor and the aloof, “art for art’s sake” poet are fools.
Take the “American Magazine”; that awful flub-dub I quoted earlier in
the book. What can it mean, save that the “American Magazine” had to
have advertisements, and to get the advertisements it had to please the
sort of people who read advertisements? Or take the “Curtis
Publications”; what is the obvious fact about this colossal
advertisement-distributing machine? The owner of this machine, needless
to say, is not in the business of distributing advertisements for his
health. On the contrary, he has lost his health and made eleven million
dollars. His price for advertisements is six thousand dollars per page.
To carry these advertisements, he must have reading matter, and to
select this reading matter he employs a group of men and women called
“editors.” These “editors” are, of course, in position to offer prices
such as thrill the soul of every hungry author, and cause him to set
diligently to work to study the personalities of the “editors,” so as to
know what they want. If he doesn’t find out what they want, he doesn’t
write for the publications—that is obvious enough. On the other hand, if
he _does_ find out what they want, he becomes a new star in America’s
literary firmament—and at the cost of pretty nearly all his ideals of
truth, humanity and progress.
Take up the “Saturday Evening Post.” Here is Harry Leon Wilson, who used
to show signs of brains, telling a story of how a labor union tried to
take control of a factory. He exhausts his imagination to make this
proposition ridiculous, to pour contempt over these fool workingmen. And
here is a short story writer named Patullo, solemnly setting forth that
Socialism means dividing up! And here is George Kibbe Turner, who I used
to think was one of America’s coming novelists, with a short story,
which turns out not to be a short story at all, but a piece of preaching
upon the following grave and weighty theme: that the trouble with
America is that everybody is spending too much money; that the railroad
brotherhoods are proposing to turn robbers and take away the property of
their masters; and that a workingman who is so foolish as to buy a piano
for his daughter will discover that he has ruined himself to no purpose,
because workingmen’s daughters ought not to have pianos—they are too
tired to play them when they get through with their work!
CHAPTER XLVI
THE BRIBE DIRECT
We are accustomed to the idea that in Europe there exists a “reptile
press,” meaning a press whose opinions are for sale, not merely to
politicians and governments, but to promoters and financiers; we read of
the “Bourse press” of Paris, and understand that these papers accept
definite cash sums for publishing in their columns news favorable to
great speculations and industrial enterprises. I have heard America
congratulated that it had no such newspapers; I myself was once
sufficiently naïve so to congratulate America!
Naturally, it is not so easy to prove direct bribery of the press. When
the promoter of an oil “deal” or of a franchise “grab” wishes to buy the
support of a newspaper, he does not invite the publisher onto the
sidewalk and there count a few thousand dollar bills into his hands. But
as a person who steals once will go on stealing, so a newspaper
proprietor who takes bribes becomes a scandal to his staff, and sooner
or later bits of the truth leak out. America has been fortunate in the
possession of one bold and truth-telling newspaper editor, Fremont
Older; and when you read his book, “My Own Story,” you discover that we
have a “reptile press” in America, a press that is for sale for cash.
The chances are that you never heard of Fremont Older’s book. It was
published over a year ago, but with the exception of a few radical
papers, American Journalism maintained about it the same silence it will
maintain about “The Brass Check.” For twenty-five years Older was
managing editor of a great newspaper, and now, in the interest of public
welfare, he has told what went on inside that newspaper office. Older
began as a plain, every-day hireling of privilege, but little by little
his mind and his conscience awakened, he took his stand for
righteousness in his city, and fought the enemies of righteousness, not
merely at peril of his job, but at peril of his life. The first time I
met Older, ten years ago, he had just been kidnapped by thugs and
carried away in an automobile and locked under armed guard in a
compartment of a sleeping-car, to be carried into Southern California,
where the “S. P.” controlled everything, and could “put him away.” He
told me the story, and to this day I remember my consternation. Two or
three years later I happened to tell it in England, to a group of
members of parliament; they were Englishmen, and were too polite to say
what they thought, but I knew what they thought. It was hopeless to tell
that story to Englishmen; such things did not happen—except in “movies”!
The story of the “San Francisco Bulletin,” as Fremont Older tells it, is
a story of corruption, systematic and continuous. The “Bulletin” was
controlled in all four of the ways I have described; not merely by the
owner, by the owners of the owner, and by the advertising subsidy, but
by the bribe direct. The owner of the “Bulletin” was a man named
Crothers, and he had an itching palm. It was itching at the beginning of
the story, when it was empty, and it was still itching at the end of the
story, when it was full. Says Fremont Older:
In addition to this, the “Bulletin” was on the payroll of the Southern
Pacific Railroad for $125 a month. This was paid not for any definite
service, but merely for “friendliness.” Being always close to the line
of profit and loss, it was felt the paper could not afford to forfeit
this income.
These were in the early days, you understand, when Older was playing the
dirty game for his owner. He tells us, quite frankly, how he did it. For
example, here is a picture of a great newspaper in politics:
I hoped to convince Charley Fay, Phelan’s manager, to accept the same
plan in Phelan’s fight that I used in the McKinley campaign; that is
to get Phelan to buy a certain number of extra “Bulletin” editions. I
suggested the idea to Fay that if I could be allowed several 10,000
editions of the “Bulletin” in addition to our regular circulation, for
which we would charge $500, I thought I could hold the paper in line
throughout the campaign.
But this was not enough for the itching palm, it appears:
He (Crothers) felt that the “Bulletin’s” support was worth more than
an occasional $500. His pressure upon me for more money finally became
so strong that I called on Charley Fay and told him that I would have
to get out another extra edition to the number agreed upon between us.
And then, a year or two later:
The fight had barely started when Crothers came to me and said that W.
H. Mills, who handled the newspapers of California for the railroad
company, had agreed to raise the “Bulletin’s” pay from $125 to 50 a
month if we would make only a weak support of the new charter.
And again:
Crothers felt that the influence of the “Bulletin” was worth more than
the Southern Pacific had been paying. He insisted that I go to Mills
and demand $25,000 from the railroad for supporting Gage. I told him
that this was ridiculous, that they wouldn’t consider such a sum for a
minute. He insisted that he would have 5,000 or he wouldn’t support
Gage, and demanded that I tell Mills that.
In these campaigns the “Bulletin” had been supporting the Democratic
candidate; but it was supposed to be a Republican paper, and in the next
campaign the owner decided that unless the Democrats paid him more
money, he would become really and truly “Republican.” So Older went on
the hunt once more.
Poniatowski said: “I will do all I can, but the best I can do
personally is $500 a month for three months through the campaign. I
will put up the $1500 out of my own pocket.”
I did not dare to go to anyone else, and I hoped, but faintly, that
this would be enough. I went to Crothers with the information that I
had got $1500 to support Tobin, and he said, “It isn’t enough.”
I was in despair. Only one other ruse remained by which I might hold
him. I asked former Mayor E. B. Pond, banker and millionaire; James D.
Phelan, mayor and millionaire, and Franklin K. Lane, then a rising
power in California, to call on Crothers and see if they could not
prevail on him to stand by Tobin. Always greatly impressed by wealth,
I felt that their prominence and financial standing might hold him.
They called, and did their best, but made no impression.
A few days later the railroad paid Crothers $7500. It was paid to him
by a man not openly connected with the railroad. I learned of it
almost instantly. The report was confirmed by Crothers ordering me to
support Wells.
And now Fremont Older has been forced out of the “Bulletin,” and the
paper has become rancid in the cause of reaction, and carries at the top
of its editorial page this proud slogan: “R. A. Crothers, Editor and
Proprietor.”
And do you think that the owner of the “Bulletin” was alone among San
Francisco newspaper owners in the possession of an itching palm? The
“San Francisco Liberator,” organ of the reformers, showed how, in the
effort to keep the president of “United Railroads” out of jail, every
crime up to murder had been committed. Armed mobs had been organized to
resist the city’s authority; thieves had been hired and safes broken
open, juries had been bribed and witnesses spirited away; last, but not
least, public sentiment had been corrupted through the press. The
“Liberator” gives names and dates, a whole mass of detail, which would
fill a chapter of this book. One example, well authenticated: One little
local paper had been purchased for seventy-five dollars, and in a period
of thirteen weeks had obtained thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars from
the publicity-bureau of “United Railroads”!
And as I write there comes to me a letter from an editor of one of San
Francisco’s largest newspapers, a man who knows the game from A to Z. He
tells me the sordid history of “Mike” de Young’s “San Francisco
Chronicle”:
The owner’s brother was murdered not many years ago, because of a
blackmail story run in the paper. During the war it was he who got the
San Francisco Publishers’ Association to charge the government full
advertising rates for all war loan organizations, etc. He was a strong
ally of the Southern Pacific when that road ran California, and still
fights for the railroads whenever he gets a chance.
I write to others in San Francisco, to be sure that I am making no
mistake. One sends me a letter by Arthur McEwen, a well-known
journalist, made public twenty-five years ago. Mr. de Young, says
McEwen, has a grammar of his own; he speaks of being “attackted,” and he
made famous the phrase, “the tout ensemble of the whole.” He is a
multi-millionaire, but for years had refused to pay fifteen dollars a
month to keep his insane brother out of the paupers’ ward of the asylum.
He plunders the big corporations mercilessly, “having never been able to
see why he should not share in their prosperity.” Says McEwen:
He set up in court the contention that it is legitimate for a
newspaper to sell its editorial columns, and though he was reviled by
his startled contemporaries for that dangerous frankness, there is no
reason to doubt that he was sincere or unaffectedly astonished at the
notion of there being aught disgraceful in his admission.... Not until
the archives of the Crocker family have been opened to the historian
will it be known whether or not the common report be true which
affirms that “the title deeds to his California street mansion are the
intercepted love letters of a millionaire.”
Another friend sends me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, entitled “A Lifted
Finger.” It is one of the most withering denunciations of a human being
ever penned. As a sample I quote the last stanza, in which the victim is
forbidden to kill himself:
Pregnant with possibilities of crime,
And full of felons for all coming time,
Your blood’s too precious to be lightly spilt
In testimony to a venial guilt.
Live to get whelpage and preserve a name
No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame.
Live to fulfill the vision that I see
Down the dim vistas of the time to be:
A dream of clattering beaks and burning eyes
Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies;
A dream of gleaming teeth and fetid breath
Of jackals wrangling at the feast of death;
A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues—
The whole world’s gibbets loaded with de Youngs!
Let us go to Denver, where there lives another fighter and teller of
truth, Ben Lindsey. I have made you acquainted with the “Denver Post,”
and with one of its owners, Mr. F. G. Bonfils, who made his “pile” as a
lottery-promoter, and went into partnership with another man. Now let
Judge Lindsey introduce us to this other man:
The “Post” was then as independent as a highwayman. One of its
proprietors, H. H. Tammen, had begun life as a bar-keeper, and he
would himself relate how he had made money by robbing his employer.
“When I took in a dollar,” Tammen said, “I tossed it up—and if it
stuck to the ceiling, it went to the boss.” He had a frank way of
making his vices engaging by the honesty with which he confessed them;
and he had boasted to me of the amount of money the newspaper made by
charging its victims for suppressing news-stories of a scandalous
nature in which they were involved. He admitted that he supported me
merely because it was “the popular thing to do”—it “helped
circulation.” I knew it was a very precarious support, although the
editorial writer, Paul Thieman, seemed to me an honest and
public-spirited young man.
Or come to Kansas City, where William Salisbury is working on the
“Times.” There is a fight on with the gas companies, which have formed a
trust and doubled the price of gas. A solitary alderman named Smith has
spoken against the ordinance.
When I returned to the “Times” office that night the city editor came
up to my desk, sat down, and said, confidentially: “We’ll have to
print a favorable story on this consolidation. I wouldn’t give much
space to that man Smith’s remarks. I don’t know what the gas people
have done here in this office, but you can guess. They’ve bought the
Council.”
Mr. Salisbury, you see, is only a reporter, so all he gets is gossip and
suspicion. He notes that the Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf Railway is
completing a line to Port Arthur, Texas; the railway company is
advertising heavily in the “Times,” and he is sent to write up “a
two-column interview upon the beauties of Port Arthur.” Again, he tells
us:
I could write columns about Cuban revolutions, and anti-cigarette and
anti-high hat laws. But there were things that I couldn’t write about
at all, and other things that I had to write as the city editor told
me, and as the owner or managing editor told him to tell me. These
included street railway and paving and gas and telephone and other
corporation measures, and anti-department store bills. And the City
Hall reporters of the three other newspapers wrote of such things just
as I did—from dictation.
Again, in Kansas City are great packing-houses, and the people of Kansas
City think they should have cheaper meat. The newspapers take up the
campaign, and Mr. Salisbury tells what comes of it:
I did some detective work. At the end of several days I found that all
the packing-houses were represented at a meeting each week in the
Armour Building, at Fifth and Delaware Streets. I gave a negro porter
five dollars to show me the room. It was his business to bring the
packers wine and cigars during the sessions at which they fixed the
prices of food for millions of people. He pointed out the chairs in
which each of them sat. He told me their names. He was willing to
arrange for me to listen in the next room when the meeting was held
again.
I returned to the “Times” office in a fever of excitement. I told what
I knew. The managing editor consulted with the business manager. Then
he came to me and said: “We won’t print any more meat trust stories
for a while.”
Several days later I saw packing-house advertisements in all the
newspapers. But none of the papers published any more news about the
price of meat for a very long time.
I quote this story, and then I realize that I have got out of my
classification; this isn’t a bribe, this is an advertisement! I can only
plead that it is hard to keep to a classification, because those who are
corrupting the press do not keep to it. They use various methods; and
sometimes the methods shade into one another, so that only a legal
expert could sort them out!
When is a bribe not a bribe? When it is an order for extra copies? When
it is a share in a land deal? When it is a nomination for senator? When
it is an advertising contract? For example, is this a bribe? Arthur
Brisbane, the most highly paid and most widely read editorial writer in
America, serves announcement to the public that he is going to follow
with regard to the drama a policy of “constructive criticism”; he is
going to tell the people about the plays that are really worth seeing,
so that the people may go to see them. He writes a double-column
editorial, praising a play, and two or three days later there appears in
the “Evening Journal” a full-page advertisement of this play. Brisbane
writes another editorial, praising another play, and a few days later
there appears a full-page advertisement of this play. This happens again
and again, and all play-producers on Broadway understand that by paying
one thousand dollars for a full-page advertisement in the “New York
Evening Journal,” they may have a double-column of the “constructive
criticism” of Arthur Brisbane!
Or is this a bribe? There is a fight for lower gas-rates in Boston, and
Louis Brandeis, now a Justice of the Supreme Court, makes a plea in the
interest of the public. One Boston newspaper gives half a column of
Brandeis’ arguments; no other Boston newspaper gives one word of
Brandeis’ arguments; but every Boston newspaper prints a page of the gas
company’s advertisements, paid for at one dollar per line!
If you will count these things as bribery, you are no longer at a loss
for evidence. You discover that great systems of corruption of the press
have been established; the bribing of American Journalism has become a
large-scale business enterprise, which has been fully revealed by
government investigations, and proven by the sworn testimony of those
who do the work.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE BRIBE WHOLESALE
Every now and then some pillar of Capitalism is overthrown, and a mess
of journalistic worms go wriggling to cover. For example, the “New
Haven” scandal: Some five years ago the Interstate Commerce Commission
revealed the fact that the band of pirates who had wrecked the great
“New Haven” system had been paying four hundred thousand dollars a year
to influence the press; and more significant yet, the president of the
railroad swore that this was “relatively less than was paid by any other
large railroad in the country!” The “New Haven” had a list of reporters
to whom it paid subsidies, sometimes two hundred dollars in a lump,
sometimes twenty-five dollars a week. It was paying three thousand
dollars a year to the “Boston Republic.” “Why?” was the question, and
the answer was, “That is Mayor Fitzgerald’s paper.” The agent of the
road who had handled this money stated that “All the newspapers and
magazines knew what it was for.” He had paid money to over a thousand
papers, among them the “Boston Evening Transcript,” for sending out
railroad “dope.” This “New Haven,” you understand, was the road which
wrecked “Hampton’s” for refusing to be bought. It was a “Morgan” road.
It was the same way with the Mulhall revelations, brought out by a
committee of the United States Senate. Here was the “National
Association of Manufacturers” and the “Merchant Marine League,” spending
enormous subsidies for propaganda with newspapers. When the La Follette
Seamen’s Law was being fought in the Senate, it was shown that the great
newspapers were distributing every year two million dollars for shipping
advertisements, and they claimed and got their return in the form of
bitter opposition to this bill. During the Life Insurance investigations
in New York, it was shown that every one of these great financial
enterprises maintained not merely an advertising bureau, but a “literary
bureau.” The Mutual Life Insurance Company had employed a certain
“Telegraphic News Bureau,” which supplied newspapers with propaganda
which they published as reading matter. For one item, supplied to about
one hundred different papers, the agent had been paid over five thousand
dollars. What the newspapers were paid was not brought out, but the
agent testified that he had been paid one dollar a line, while the
papers had been paid as high as five dollars a line. Also there was
another agency, through which the Mutual Life was sending out what it
called “telegraphic readers.” The big newspapers had special advertising
agents to solicit this kind of paid material, and they had regular
printed schedules of rates for publishing it.
In the same way Attorney-General Monnett of Ohio brought out that the
Standard Oil Company maintained the “Jennings Advertising Agency” to
distribute and pay for propaganda upon this contract:
The publisher agrees to reprint on news or editorial pages of said
newspaper such notices, set in the body type of said paper and bearing
no mark to indicate advertising, as are furnished from time to time by
said Jennings Agency at the rate of —— per line, and to furnish such
agency extra copies of paper containing such notes at four cents per
copy.
In the same way the Standard Oil Company was shown to have paid from
five hundred to a thousand dollars for the publication of a single
article in Kansas newspapers. The Standard Oil had a subsidized press of
its own—for example, the “Oil City Derrick”—and it had subsidized
“Gunton’s Magazine” to the extent of twenty-five thousand dollars a
year.
In the same way it was brought out by Governor Hunt of Arizona, during
the recent great copper strike, that the mine-owners had been bribing
the local newspapers in Greenlee County for printing “plate-matter”
favorable to them. It was shown that the liquor lobby had maintained an
enormous “slush” fund for the press. It was shown that the great public
utility interests of the Middle West had maintained a publicity bureau
to send out material against municipal ownership. It was shown that the
high tariff interests had been maintaining a Washington bureau and
sending out “news letters,” all paid for. It was shown that the railroad
companies were doing the same thing; in a single office of their
publicity department—that in Chicago—they had forty-three employes, and
the manager stated to Ray Stannard Baker that before this bureau began
its work, four hundred and twelve columns of matter opposed to the
railroads had appeared in the newspapers of Nebraska, but after the
bureau had been in operation for three months, in one week the
newspapers of Nebraska had published two hundred and two columns
favorable to the railroads, and only four columns against them!
And year by year, as the plundering of the people increases, this “bribe
wholesale” becomes a greater menace; today, as I write, it has become a
nation-wide propaganda. Testifying before the Committee on Agriculture
and Forestry of the United States Senate, January 14, 1919, Frank Heney
shows that to defeat the bill for government regulation of the packing
industry now before Congress, Swift & Company alone are spending a
million dollars a month upon newspaper advertising! Heney testifies that
he has had an examination made of every newspaper in California, and
every one has published the full-page advertisements of this firm.
Senator Norris testifies that he has had an examination made in New York
State, and has been unable to find a single paper without the
advertisements—which, it is pointed out, are not in any way calculated
to sell the products of Swift & Company, but solely to defeat government
regulation of the industry. Armour & Company were paying over two
thousand dollars a page to all the farm publications of the country—and
this not for advertisements, but for “special articles”! J. Ogden Armour
was put on the stand, and some amusement developed. He had given a
banquet to the editors of these farm-journals; he did not expect this
banquet to have any influence upon the advertising, but he did have a
vague hope that both banquet and advertising might dispose the editors
to look with less disfavor upon the Armour business!
Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their
danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more
aggressive. The war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it
has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the
minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose. They have been
terrified by what happened in Russia and Hungary, and they propose to
see to it that the foreign population of America is innoculated against
modern ideas. They form the “Publishers’ Association of the American
Press in Foreign Languages,” whose purpose it is “to foster unswerving
loyalty to American ideals”—that is to say, to keep America capitalist.
Then a group of our biggest exploiters, headed by Coleman du Pont of the
Powder Trust, buy the “American Association of Foreign Language
Newspapers.” They give a dinner to the heads of all the newspaper
advertising agencies, at the Bankers’ Club of New York, and explain that
in future all advertising must be placed through this great association.
So the massed advertising power of American corporations is to be
wielded as a club, to keep the newspaper columns and the editorial
columns of foreign language newspapers free from radicalism. So when
there is a strike anywhere in the “Powder barony,” and Poles and
Hungarians are being bayonetted and shot, the powder barons will know
that Polish and Hungarian newspapers are printing no news of the
shooting, and giving no encouragement to the strike.
I write the above _a priori_; that is to say, I understand American
Capitalism so well that I venture to guess what it plans to do with its
foreign-language press machine. And six months later, as I am sending
this book to the printer, I discover that I have guessed correctly! The
great steel-strike is on, and the following appears in an Associated
Press dispatch from Youngstown, Ohio:
Managers of five foreign language newspapers today decided to publish
special editions of their papers explaining to their countrymen that
if they are satisfied with present mill-conditions they should meet
and vote on the question of returning to work.
And, on the other hand, if the foreign-language newspapers decide to get
along without advertising, and to stand by the workers, what then? Then
we denounce them as Bolsheviks, and demand deportation of their editors
and publishers; we raid their offices and confiscate their lists and bar
them from our mails. If necessary, some of our corrupt interests “frame
up” evidence against them, and throw their editors and publishers into
jail.
The above may sound to you an extreme statement. But as this book is
going to press I come upon definite evidence of precisely such a case,
and you will find it in full in the last chapter.
CHAPTER XLVIII
POISON IVY
I have asked the difficult question, When is a bribe not a bribe? When
it is “legitimate business”? When, for instance, the “New Haven” is
discovered to have ordered 9,716 copies of the “Outlook” containing a
boost of the “New Haven” system by Sylvester J. Baxter, a paid writer of
the “New Haven”? You may read the details of this in “The Profits of
Religion”; the president of the “Outlook” corporation wrote to me that
the “New Haven” bought these copies “without any previous understanding
or arrangement.” They are so naïve in the office of this religious
weekly; nobody had the slightest idea that if they boosted some railroad
grafters in peril of discovery, these grafters might come back with a
big order! And right now, while the railroads are trying to get their
properties back, and all their debts paid out of the public treasury,
the spending of millions of dollars upon advertising is perfectly
legitimate—it does not have the slightest effect upon newspaper
editorial policy! When the miners of Colorado go on strike, and the
Rockefellers proceed to fill every daily and weekly newspaper in the
state of Colorado with full-page broad-sides against the miners, this of
course is not a bribe; the fact that on the page opposite there will
appear an editorial, reproducing completely the point of view of the
advertisements—that is a pure coincidence, and the editorial is the
honorable and disinterested opinion of the newspaper editor! When the
United States Commission on Industrial Relations exposes the fact that
these attacks on the miners contain the most outrageous lies, and that
the thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers knew they
were lies—it is a pure coincidence that very little about this
revelation is published in the Colorado newspapers!
This last incident is so important as to deserve fuller exposition. The
thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers was a gentleman
by the name of Ivy L. Lee, and after the strikers had experienced his
methods for a while, they referred to him as “Poison Ivy.” He took the
published annual report of the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine
Workers, which showed that the national vice-president of the union in
charge of the Colorado strike had received a yearly salary of $2,395.72
and a year’s expenses of $1,667.20. He put these two figures together,
calling it all salary, $4,062.92; and then he added the expenses again,
making a total of $5,730.12; and then he said that all this had been
paid to the national vice-president for nine weeks’ work on the
strike—thus showing that he was paid over ninety dollars a day, or at
the rate of thirty-two thousand dollars a year!
By the same method, he showed that another official was paid sixty-six
dollars a day; that John R. Lawson had received $1,773.40 in nine weeks!
Old “Mother” Jones was listed at forty-two dollars a day; the actual
fact being that for her work as organizer she was paid $2.57 a day—and
this not including the many months which she spent in jail for refusing
to leave the strike-district! The “bulletin” containing these figures
was published in all the newspapers, and was mailed out over the country
to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies; and when the miners
exposed the falsity of the statements, “Poison Ivy” postponed correcting
them until the strike was lost, and until he knew that the Walsh
Commission was on his trail! Thirty-two separate “bulletins” this
scoundrel sent out over the United States, and many of them were full of
just such lies as this. If you want details, you may consult two
articles by George Creel in “Harper’s Weekly,” for November 7th and
14th, 1914.
There are thousands of such press agents serving our predatory
interests, but not often are we permitted to peer into their inmost
souls, to watch them at their secret offices. The Walsh Commission was
so cruel as to put “Poison Ivy” on the stand, and also to publish his
letters to his master. An examination of these letters shows him
performing functions not usually attributed to press-agents. We see him
preparing and revising a letter for Governor Ammons to send to President
Wilson. (You remember, perhaps, in my story of Governor Ammons, my
charge that the coal operators wrote his lying telegram to the
President? Maybe you thought that was just loose talk!) We see “Poison
Ivy” arranging for the distribution of an enormous edition of a speech
on the Colorado coal-strike by the “kept” congressmen of the
coal-operators—the speech containing “Polly Pry,” with the slanders
against “Mother Jones,” sent out under government frank! We see him
following the newspapers with minute care; for example, calling Mr.
Rockefeller’s attention to the fact that the Northampton, Massachusetts,
“Herald” had used a part of his first bulletin as an editorial; also
sending to Mr. Rockefeller an editorial by Arthur Brisbane, sneering at
our “mourning pickets.” Finally, this remarkable press-agent claims that
he persuaded the Walsh Commission not to come to Colorado till the
operators had finished strangling the strike. That he actually did this,
I cannot say. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the commission
delayed to come, and “Poison Ivy” was “stringing” Mr. Rockefeller, to
make sure of that thousand dollars a month!
Would you like to be such a press-agent, and get such a salary as this?
If so, you can find full directions, set forth by “Poison Ivy” himself
in an address to the “American Railway Guild.” At this time he was prize
poisoner for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he explains that it is all a
question of psychology. “Success in dealing with crowds, that success we
have got to attain if we are to solve the railroad question, rests upon
the art of getting believed in.” And our prize poisoner goes on to give
concrete illustrations of how to get the railroads “believed in.” If you
are opposing a “full crew” law, you will get “believed in” by changing
the name of the measure to an “extra crew” law. If you are going into
bankruptcy, you will get “believed in” by calling it a “readjustment of
finances.” If you are fighting a strike, and one small group of the
strikers demands a particularly large increase in wages, you will get
“believed in” by so phrasing your statement as to make it appear that
all the miners are making the same unreasonable demand as the little
group. “Miners Ask One Hundred and Fifty Per Cent Increase in Wages,”
cites “Poison Ivy.” He sent a copy of this brilliant production to Mr.
Rockefeller, and on the strength of it got a considerable increase in
wages himself!
CHAPTER XLIX
THE ELBERT HUBBARD WORM
The Egyptians had sacred beetles, and Capitalist Journalism has sacred
insects of various unpleasant and poisonous species. There was one
sacred worm which all Capitalist Journalism venerated, and the Walsh
Commission broke into the temple where this worm was kept, and tore away
the sacred veils, and dragged the wriggling carcass out into the light
of day. This was Elbert Hubbard, alias “Fra Elbertus,” editor of the
“Philistine,” “Roycroft,” and the “Fra,” founder of the “Roycroft
Shops,” host of the “Roycroft Inn,” and patron saint of East Aurora, New
York. That the “Fra” was one of the high gods of Capitalist Journalism
you can surely not deny. He was the very personification of the thing it
calls “Success”; his books were circulated by millions, his magazines by
hundreds of thousands, and all the world of hustlers and money-makers
read and gloried in him. He is gone now, but they still keep his image
in their Pantheon, and the corporations water his grave by free
distributions of “A Message to Garcia.” We are told to say nothing but
good of the dead, but my concern in life is for the living, so I shall
tell what I know about this sacred worm.
I have mentioned in Chapter V my early experience with him. Prices were
low in these days, and I am told that Hubbard got only five hundred
dollars from the packers for his slashing of “The Jungle”: “Can it be
possible that any one is deceived by this insane rant and drivel?” You
may think that I cherish anger because of such violence to myself; you
may not believe me, but I state the fact—I cherish anger because I tried
to bring help to thirty thousand men, women and children living in hell,
and this poisonous worm came crawling over their faces and ate out their
eyes. And because again, and yet again, I saw this same thing happen!
The wage-slaves of the Copper Trust went on strike, and this poisonous
worm crawled over them and ate out their eyes. And then came the
Colorado coal-strike—and the poisonous worm crawled on its belly to the
office of the Rockefellers, looking for more eyes to eat. Thanks to
Frank Walsh, we may watch him and learn how to be a worm.
First, when an eye-eating worm approaches the great ones of the earth,
it applies what it calls the “human touch”; it establishes itself upon
terms of equality, it gives them a hearty hand-clasp, perhaps a slap on
the back—if you can imagine such actions from a worm. Listen to “Fra
Elbertus,” addressing young Rockefeller:
I had a delightful game of golf with your father on Saturday. How fine
and brown and well and strong he is.
To which “Young John” responds with graceful cordiality:
Father has spoken of your visit to Tarrytown the other day, and of the
good game of golf which you had together. He is indeed in the best of
health.
These little amenities having been attended to, we proceed to the
business in hand. Says the worm:
I have been out in Colorado and know a little about the situation
there. It seems to me that your stand is eminently right, proper and
logical. A good many of the strikers are poor, unfortunate ignorant
foreigners who imagine that there is a war on and that they are
fighting for liberty. They are men with the fighting habit, preyed
upon by social agitators.
I am writing something on the subject, a little after the general
style of my article on “The Copper Country,” in the “Fra Magazine” for
May. I mail you a copy of the “Fra” today. I believe you will be
interested in what I have to say about the situation in Northern
Michigan.
Just now it seems very necessary that someone should carry on a
campaign of education, showing this country, if possible, that we are
drifting at present in the direction of I. W. W. Socialism.
Are you interested in distributing a certain number of copies of the
“Fra” containing my article on the Colorado situation?
Also, what do you think of the enclosed booklets? I have distributed
these on my own account up to the extent of nearly a million, but I
have not the funds to distribute a million more as I would like to do.
Any suggestions from you in the line of popular education will be
greatly appreciated.
“Popular education,” you perceive! The worm is a public worm, serving
the public welfare, animated by a grand, lofty ideal, to protect “the
poor, unfortunate, ignorant foreigners,” who are “preyed upon by social
agitators”! Mr. Rockefeller, of course, appreciates this, and is
grateful for the support of so noble and disinterested a worm; he
writes:
Your letter of May 3rd is received. I thank you for your words of
approval in connection with my stand on the question of the rights of
the independent workers.
But of course, as a business man, Mr. Rockefeller has to be cautious. He
has to know what he is buying. He will pay for the silk which a worm can
make, but not until it is made.
I have looked over the number of the “Fra” which you have sent me with
interest, and shall be glad to see the article which you are proposing
to write regarding the Colorado situation.
Not too cordial; but the worm has written books on Salesmanship,
explaining how you must not give up at one rebuff, but must come back
again and again, wearing the other fellow down. He tries again:
On May 3rd I sent you a copy of the “Copper Country” number of the
“Fra” magazine. Our friends up north have distributed a large number
of these, sending the magazines out from here, duly blue-penciled.
I have upwards of a million names of members of Boards of Trade,
Chambers of Commerce, Advertising Clubs, Rotarians, Jovians, school
teachers, all judges, members of Congress, etc.
It seems to me that we could well afford to circulate a certain number
of copies of the “Fra” containing a judicious and truthful write-up of
the situation in Colorado.
“Judicious and truthful,” you note. Never would our noble worm write
anything that was not truthful; while as for being judicious, it is a
virtue desperately needed in this crisis, while agitators are parading
back and forth in front of the entrance to Mr. Rockefeller’s office
building! The judicious worm has observed our antics and their success
and he tactfully reminds Mr. Rockefeller of this:
Just here I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration for the
advertising genius displayed by those very industrious, hardworking
people Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman,
Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair. They are continually stating
their side of the controversy. I believe if we would state ours, not
of course in the same way or with the same vehemence, that we would be
benefiting the world to a very great degree.
The worm is all for benefiting the world; not for benefiting the
worm—nor even for benefiting Rockefeller! But the worm is worthy of his
hire, and would not cheapen himself and his advertising genius in the
esteem of a business man. “The price of extra copies of the ‘Fra’ is
$200 a thousand,” he writes. He proposes to charge Mr. Rockefeller
twenty-cents apiece for magazines which he can produce and mail for ten
cents apiece. In other words, he suggests that Mr. Rockefeller shall pay
him two hundred thousand dollars, from which, after paying postage and
wrapping, he will retain at least one hundred thousand!
But alas, it is notorious how the business man fails to appreciate
genius! Mr. Rockefeller consults “Poison Ivy” Lee, whose advice is that
the worm shall be allowed to go out to Colorado and see everything, but
“have it distinctly understood that he is making this study entirely on
his own initiative and at his own expense. If, after he has produced his
article and you have read it, it seems to you something worth
distributing, an arrangement for such distribution can be made with
him.”
A cold, cold world for a public educator and prophet of judiciousness!
These business men haggle, precisely as if Pegasus could be harnessed to
a garbage-wagon! Says Mr. Rockefeller, writing to the president of the
Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Denver:
I have not seen Mr. Hubbard nor given him any encouragement in this
matter, other than as set forth in the above correspondence.
To which comes the reply from Denver:
Mr. Hubbard’s price for extra copies of his publication is to my mind
high.... We can determine after he has produced his article whether or
not we should go any further than we already have in enlarging its
distribution.
There was more of this correspondence. It was printed in “Harper’s
Weekly” under the title, “Elbert Hubbard’s Price”; the substance of the
matter being summed up by “Harper’s Weekly” as follows:
Mr. Hubbard’s proposal, it will be seen, had two parts. 1. To sell his
opinion. 2. Later on to make an “investigation” in support of that
opinion.
CHAPTER L
THE PRESS AND PUBLIC WELFARE
As a result of the operation of all these forces, we have a class-owned
press, representing class-interests, protecting class-interests with
entire unscrupulousness, and having no conception of the meaning of
public welfare. These words may seem extreme, but I mean them to be
taken literally. When our press says “the public,” it means the
property-owning class, and if in a newspaper-office you should assume it
meant anything else, you would make yourself ridiculous. “We are not in
business for our health,” is the formula whereby this matter is summed
up in the “business-office” of our newspapers. It is only in the
editorial columns that any other idea is suggested.
What kind of “public welfare” will you consider? Here, for example, is
William Salisbury, working for the “Chicago Chronicle,” owned by a great
banker. Was this banker working for the public welfare? He was working
for his own welfare so diligently that later on he was sent to jail. Is
Mr. Salisbury working for the public welfare? No, Mr. Salisbury is
working for an actress, he tells us, and the actress is working for a
diamond ring. Mr. Salisbury comes upon a “tip” that will earn him the
price of the ring. A certain merchant has conceived the idea of a
co-operative department store, an enterprise which might be of great
service to the public; but if the big department-stores get wind of it,
they will kill it. Mr. Salisbury takes the problem to his city editor,
who consults owner Walsh over the telephone, and then tells Mr.
Salisbury to write the story in full.
“The people who are getting this thing up are not advertisers,” he
added. “The big department-stores are. Besides, Walsh doesn’t believe
in co-operation or municipal ownership, or anything like that, so go
ahead.”
I wrote two columns. All the other papers copied the story.
The co-operative department-store was not started. The owners of the
big emporiums in the down-town district joined forces against it. They
got an option on the only available building by greatly overbidding
the small merchants. The latter, whose combined capital was less than
the wealth of any one of their powerful rivals, gave up the fight in
despair.
Thus was nipped in the bud by the frost of publicity a project which
might have revolutionized trade—and all because an actress wanted a
bracelet, and a reporter wanted a scoop, and a newspaper wanted to
protect its advertisers.
But sometimes the “Chronicle” was merciful, as Mr. Salisbury lets us
see. All the newspapers in Chicago were pouring ridicule upon John
Alexander Dowie, a fake religious prophet.
When I returned to the office I offered to write of Dowie’s weeping
about the birds. That was the only thing that struck me as unusual.
Anything that would put Dowie in a ridiculous or unfavorable light was
generally wanted by all the papers. But I was told to write nothing.
“We’ve just got orders to let up on Dowie,” said the city editor. “Mr.
Walsh wants to increase the paper’s circulation among the Dowieites.
Our political views have cost us subscribers lately, and we want to
make up for it. If there is any good hot news about Dowie, of course
we’ll print it, but not unfavorably.”
Maybe you distrust Mr. Salisbury. A man who could fake so much
Journalism might fake one book! Very well; but here is one of the most
eminent sociologists in the country, a man whose honor is not to be
questioned—Prof. E. A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin. Writing in
the “Atlantic Monthly” for March, 1910, Prof. Ross gives several pages
of incidents of this sort. I quote:
On the desk of every editor and sub-editor of a newspaper run by a
capitalist promoter now under prison sentence lay a list of sixteen
corporations in which the owner was interested. This was to remind
them not to print anything damaging to these concerns. In the office
these corporations were jocularly referred to as “sacred cows.”
Nearly every form of privilege is found in the herd of “sacred cows”
venerated by the daily press.
The railroad company is a “sacred cow.” At a hearing before a state
railroad commission, the attorney of a shippers’ association got an
eminent magnate into the witness chair, with the intention of wringing
from him the truth regarding the political expenditures of his
railroad. At this point the commission, an abject creature of the
railroad, arbitrarily excluded the daring attorney from the case. The
memorable excoriation which that attorney gave the commission to its
face was made to appear in the papers as the _cause_ instead of the
_consequence_ of this exclusion. Subsequently, when the attorney filed
charges with the governor against the commission, one editor wrote an
editorial stating the facts and criticizing the commissioners. The
editorial was suppressed after it was in type.
The public-service company is a “sacred cow.” In a city of the
Southwest, last summer, while houses were burning from lack of water
for the fire hose, a lumber company offered to supply the firemen with
water. The water company replied that they had “sufficient.” Neither
this nor other damaging information concerning the company’s conduct
got into the columns of the local press. A yellow journal, conspicuous
in the fight for cheaper gas by its ferocious onslaughts on the “gas
trust,” suddenly ceased its attack. Soon it began to carry a full-page
“Cook with gas” advertisement. The cow had found the entrance to the
sacred fold.
Traction is a “sacred cow.” The truth about Cleveland’s fight for the
three-cent fare has been widely suppressed. For instance, while Mayor
Johnson was superintending the removal of the tracks of a defunct
street railway, he was served with a court order enjoining him from
tearing up the rails. As the injunction was not endorsed, as by law it
should be, he thought it was an ordinary communication, and put it in
his pocket to examine later. The next day he was summoned to show
reason why he should not be found in contempt of court. When the facts
came out, he was, of course, discharged. An examination of seven
leading dailies of the country shows that a dispatch was sent out from
Cleveland stating that Mayor Johnson, after acknowledging service,
pocketed the injunction, and ordered his men to proceed with their
work. In the newspaper-offices this dispatch was then embroidered. One
paper said the mayor told his men to go ahead and ignore the
injunction. Another had the mayor intimating in advance that he would
not obey an order if one were issued. A third invented a conversation
in which the mayor and his superintendent made merry over the
injunction. Not one of the seven journals reported the mayor’s
complete exoneration later.
And the same thing has been done in every city where radicals of any
sort have gained control. Says A. M. Simons, speaking at a conference of
the University of Wisconsin:
The story of the administration of Milwaukee while it was in Socialist
control was a caricature of the truth, so much so that it was found
necessary to establish a weekly bulletin or press service, scarcely an
issue of which did not contain a correction of some news agency story.
Compare the story sent out about Mayor Shank and the public market in
Indianapolis with the almost complete suppression of the fight against
the ice trust by the Socialist interests in Schenectady.
One of the most incredible instances of news suppression in the
interests of Big Business occurred early in 1914, during the hearings of
the Interstate Commerce Commission. For three years the newspapers had
carried on an elaborate campaign in favor of a five per cent increase in
freight rates. Fifty million dollars a year was at stake, and the roads
were spending millions in advertising their cause in the newspapers. The
presidents of our biggest railroads appeared before the Interstate
Commerce Commission to tell of the ruin which was threatened unless the
increase were granted. The campaign was all worked out in advance, the
“dope” for the newspapers provided; but there came an unexpected hitch
in the proceedings, caused by the appearance of a young man by the name
of Thorne, a member of the State Railway Commission of Iowa. Mr. Thorne
had the finances of all these railroads at his finger-tips, and he
proceeded to cross-question the railroad presidents and tear their
testimony to pieces. He showed that in twelve years the capitalization
of the roads had been increased ninety-two per cent, and their dividends
increased three hundred and fifty-nine per cent. In the year 1912 their
dividends had been the greatest in history. In 1910 the Pennsylvania,
the Baltimore & Ohio, and the New York Central had assured the
Interstate Commerce Commission that they could not borrow money, yet in
two years they had borrowed five hundred million dollars!
Mr. Thorne showed how in their reports just submitted they had padded
their costs. Every locomotive had cost one hundred and twelve per cent
more to maintain in 1913 than it had cost in 1912. Freight cars had
increased thirty-three per cent in cost, despite the fact that iron and
steel were cheaper. The Interstate Commerce Commission allowed Mr.
Thorne to question all the railroad presidents, and not one of them
could answer him. And what do you think the newspapers did with this
most sensational incident? I take the facts from Charles Edward Russell,
as follows: The “New York World” gave nearly a column to the testimony
of the railroad presidents, and said not a word about Mr. Thorne! The
“New York Times” gave a full column, and not a word about Thorne! The
“Philadelphia Public Ledger” did the same, and the “Baltimore Sun”; the
“Cincinnati Inquirer” gave half a column without mentioning Thorne, and
the “Chicago Herald” the same. (This clipping marked, “By the Associated
Press”!)
The hearings were continued. President Smith of the New York Central, a
Vanderbilt property, took the stand. Mr. Thorne submitted figures
showing that his road had made eleven per cent net profit, that it had
put by an eleven-million-dollar surplus, that if its dividends had been
properly figured they would have been fifty-four per cent. President
Smith was absolutely helpless, dumb. And how do you think the New York
newspapers treated that incident? The “New York World” gave it this
headline: “GOING TO THE DEVIL FAST, SAYS HEAD OF NEW YORK CENTRAL.” And
not a word about Thorne! Likewise the “New York Times” gave President
Smith’s testimony in full, and nothing about Thorne! The “Philadelphia
Public Ledger,” the “Baltimore Sun,” the “Chicago Herald” the same. (“By
the Associated Press”!)
And next day came the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He, too,
was helpless in the hands of Mr. Thorne; he admitted that he had made a
stock allotment of forty-five million dollars; but again the same papers
did not mention the matter. And next day came the vice-president of the
“Baltimore & Ohio,” and the same thing happened. All over the country
the newspapers were full of articles portraying a railroad panic, our
greatest roads “going to the devil,” according to the sworn testimony of
their officials—and never one word about State Railroad Commissioner
Thorne of Iowa!
All these are positive acts; and now for a moment consider the
negative—the good things that newspapers might do and don’t! I could
write a volume dealing with plans and social possibilities known to me,
whereby the life of mankind might be made over; but you might as well
start to fly to the moon as ask a capitalist newspaper to take these
things up. For example, the idea of a co-operative home, as tried at
Helicon Hall; or the idea set forth by Edgar Chambless in his book,
“Roadtown.” Did you ever hear of “Roadtown”? The chances are ninety-nine
out of a hundred that you never did. If you are near a library, you may
look it up in the “Independent,” May 5, 1910. I will say in brief that
it is a plan which won the approval of the best engineers, to build a
city in a way that would save seventy per cent of the necessary labor of
mankind forever after, and increase by several hundred per cent the
total of human happiness. You did not find this plan “boosted” by
capitalist newspapers—because its inventor sternly refused all
propositions to exploit it for profit, and insisted upon preserving the
idea for the free use and benefit of humanity.
CHAPTER LI
THE PRESS AND THE RADICALS
If you go into a New York club in the middle of August, you will be told
in entire good faith that “everybody” is out of town. It is this
“everybody” who is out of town in August that American Journalism knows
and serves. Those who stay in town in August are “nobody,” and have to
take their chances with the newspapers, as with everything else in
capitalist society. Imagine yourself a poor devil, caught in a set of
circumstances which cause the city editor of some newspaper, after five
minutes consideration, to make up his mind that you are guilty of a
crime! Trial by a city editor in five minutes, and execution in columns
of illustrated slander—that is our American system of jurisprudence. In
the city of Atlanta, a Jewish manufacturer of pencils was tried for rape
and murder. He was quite evidently innocent, but it happens that the
“poor whites” of the South are jealous of the commercial keenness of the
Jews; the politicians of the South want the votes of these “poor
whites,” and the “yellow” journals want their pennies; so this poor
wretch was hounded by the newspapers for several months, and finally was
hanged.
But it is for the poor devil become class-conscious, and protesting
against injustice to his class, that our Journalism reserves its
deadliest venom. It is when the Radical steps upon the scene that the
hunting-pack joins in full cry. Then every prejudice, every hatred in
the whole journalistic psychology becomes focused as by a burning-glass
upon one centre. The hatred of the staff, men who have sold their honor,
and take bold truth-telling for a personal insult; the hatred of the
owner, whose life-time gains are threatened; the hatred of the
advertiser who supports the paper, of the banker who handles its funds,
of the politician who betrays the state to it—all these various hatreds
mass themselves, they form what the foot-ball player knows as a “V,”
they “rush” this enemy and bowl him over and trample him under their
feet.
Any kind of radical, it makes no difference; anyone who advocates a
change in anything, who expresses discontent with the system of
legalized plunder and repression. Six or seven years ago Mrs. Pankhurst
came from England in the interest of militant suffrage. The American
people had read about Mrs. Pankhurst, and wanted to know what she looked
like, and what she was going to do in America. A New York paper came out
with a report to the effect that Mrs. Pankhurst, before being allowed to
land in New York, had been required by the Federal authorities to give a
pledge that she would not engage in militancy in America. This report
was cabled to London, where it was hailed with glee by Mrs. Pankhurst’s
opponents; Lloyd George made a speech about it, and this speech was
cabled to America by the Associated Press, and thus widely spread in the
American papers. Mrs. Pankhurst stated to me personally that she had
been asked for no such pledge, and had given no such pledge, and that
all her efforts to have this false report corrected by the New York
newspapers and by the Associated Press had been in vain.
Such was the treatment of a “militant” leader. You say, perhaps, “Well,
nobody cares about those militants.” If so, let us hear one of those who
vehemently opposed “militancy.” I write to Mrs. Alice Stone Blackwell,
and she replies:
For many years, the news carried by the great press agencies on the
subject of woman suffrage was habitually twisted, and the twist was
almost always unfavorable to suffrage. As editor for a long time of
the “Woman’s Journal,” and later as one of the editors of the “Woman
Citizen,” I had constant occasion to observe this, and I commented
upon it repeatedly. The thing happened so often as to make it
impossible to explain it as accident or coincidence.
As an extreme instance, take the following: Every time that the woman
suffrage bill was defeated in the British House of Commons, the fact
was promptly cabled to this country; but when the bill finally
passed—an event which both friends and opponents of suffrage were
awaiting with great interest—not one of the papers in the United
States that are served by the Associated Press gave the news!
In my suffrage work, I learned beyond question that the news coming
through the great press agencies was colored and distorted; and if
this has been done on one subject, it has doubtless been done on
others. A good many women, I think, learned a wholesome distrust of
press reports during the suffrage struggle.
And now let us hear some radicals of the male sex. Hiram Johnson of
California is a radical. In “Everybody’s Magazine” during 1908 there
appeared an interview which had been submitted to him and printed with
his corrections. Sixteen newspapers published on their front page the
report that Governor Johnson had repudiated this interview; and when he
declared that the report was false, they refused to correct it.
Charles Zueblin is a radical—a very quiet and conservative one, who
lectures on municipal ownership to ladies’ clubs. I write to ask him
what his experiences have been, and he tells me they are “too personal
to be quoted.” He gives me one illustration, which I take the liberty of
quoting:
The “Kansas City Journal” has pursued me every season I lecture there
because it is an organ of the local public utilities. At one time they
twisted some statement of mine in a report of a lecture which they
headed: “Zueblin Believes Every Woman Should Marry a Negro.” There was
no doubt this was done solely to queer other things that might be said
which had no connection with this invention.
Senator La Follette is a radical—and here is a public man who has been
almost wiped out by deliberate newspaper boycott. The story of what was
done to La Follette in the 1912 presidential campaign can hardly be made
to sound like reality; it is a plot out of an old-time Bowery melodrama.
La Follette was a candidate for the Republican nomination. He was
conducting a tremendous campaign all through the Middle West, and the
Associated Press was suppressing the news of it. At an open conference
of newspaper-men, held at the University of Wisconsin, the editor of the
“Milwaukee Journal,” a strong capitalist paper, openly stated that the
Associated Press was sending—“something, of course—but so little that it
amounted to nothing.” But when the governor of the state made an attack
upon La Follette—“Well, the Associated Press suddenly woke up, and sent
out that entire address word for word!”
Nevertheless, La Follette was winning, and stood an excellent chance to
get the nomination. He was invited to a dinner of the Periodical
Publishers’ Association in Philadelphia, and at that dinner he told a
little about the control of newspapers by the big advertising
agencies—such facts as fill Chapter XLVII of this book. After the dinner
was over the newspaper-men got together on the proposition, and decided
that they would end the career of La Follette that night. They cooked up
an elaborate story, describing how he had raged and foamed at the mouth,
and rambled on and on for hours, until the diners had got up and left
him orating to the empty seats and dinner-plates. It was evident, said
the story, sympathetically, that La Follette was suffering from overwork
and exhaustion; his mind was failing, and he would be compelled to
retire from public life. After that, by deliberate arrangement, the
Washington correspondents reported not a line of anything that La
Follette wrote or said for a couple of years!
Again, during the war, they did the same thing to him. He made a speech
before the Nonpartisan Convention in St. Paul, denouncing bitterly the
war profiteers, who were being protected by our big newspapers. The
Associated Press took this speech and doctored it, as a means of making
La Follette odious to the country. They had to make such a slight change
in it! La Follette said, “We had grievances against the German
government.” And all the Associated Press had to do was to slip in one
little word, “We had _no_ grievances against the German government!” The
whole country rose up to execrate La Follette, and the United States
Senate ordered him placed on trial. When it came to a show-down, they
discovered they had nothing against him, and dropped the case, and the
Associated Press, after many months’ delay and heavy pressure from La
Follette, finally admitted that it had misquoted him, and made a public
apology.
And then La Follette came before the people for their verdict on his
conduct. He carried the state by a vote of 110,064 to 70,813; but the
big capitalist newspapers of Milwaukee deliberately held back the
returns favorable to him, and on election night the story was
telegraphed all over the country that the La Follette ticket had been
overwhelmed. The leading Chicago newspapers reported the election of
twenty out of twenty-six anti-La Follette delegates, and the repudiation
of La Follette by “an overwhelming majority of Wisconsin voters.” Next
morning there followed editorials in all the leading Wall Street organs,
gloating over this defeat. And, as usual in newspaper practice, this
first story got all the space that the subject was worth; the later news
of La Follette’s victory was “buried.”
CHAPTER LII
THE PRESS AND THE SOCIALISTS
The particular kind of radical who is most disliked by our newspapers is
of course the Socialist. The Socialist meets the class-consciousness of
the newspapers with another class-consciousness, almost as definite and
aggressive. The Socialist is noisy; also the Socialist has a habit of
printing pamphlets and leaflets, thus trespassing on newspaper profits.
Every newspaper differs in the names it puts on its “son-of-a-bitch
list,” but every newspaper agrees in putting the most conspicuous
Socialists on its “son-of-a-bitch list.” The Hearst newspapers pose as
friends of the people; they print a great deal of radical clamor, but
there is a standing order in all Hearst offices that American Socialism
shall never be mentioned favorably. All newspapers have a rule that if
any Socialist get into trouble, it shall be exploited to the full; when
Socialists don’t get into trouble often enough to suit them, they make
Socialists out of people who _do_ get into trouble. Says Max Sherover:
When the King of Greece was shot by an insane and irresponsible man,
the “New York Times” and hundreds of other papers ran the headline:
“KING OF GREECE ASSASSINATED BY A SOCIALIST.” And although it was
proven conclusively that the assassin hadn’t even heard of Socialism,
none of these papers saw fit to retract their lie.
When the great novelist, David Graham Phillips, was shot by one
Goldsborough, every paper in New York knew that Goldsborough not only
was not a Socialist, but had often spoken against Socialism. They also
knew that the latter had a personal grievance against the author.
Notwithstanding these facts, the “New York World” and other papers
came out with headlines: “DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS SHOT BY SOCIALIST.”
None of the papers retracted that lie.
When Theodore Roosevelt was shot at in Milwaukee, the Associated Press
sent broadcast the news that a Socialist had assaulted the Colonel.
Though it was proven by the evidence of the assailant’s own statement
that he was an affiliated member of a Democratic organization in New
York, that he had always voted the Democrat ticket, the “New York
Evening Telegram” ran the headline: “ROOSEVELT SHOT BY SOCIALIST.”
This the “Telegram” never retracted.
Perhaps the most tragic illustration of this kind of thing was the
“Chicago Anarchists.” There were one or two Anarchists among them; the
rest were Socialists, perfectly innocent working-class educators, who
were railroaded to the gallows by public hysteria, deliberately incited
by the newspapers of Chicago. Finley Peter Dunne, creator of “Mr.
Dooley,” was a reporter on one of these newspapers, and ten or twelve
years ago he narrated to me some of the things he had witnessed, the
most outrageous inventions deliberately cooked up. His voice trembled as
he told about it. I asked him why he did not write the story, and his
answer was that he had often tried to write it, but was blinded by his
own tears.
The same thing was done in the Debs railway strike of 1893. Every act of
violence that was committed was hailed by the newspapers of the country
as part of a terrorist campaign by the labor-unions. Therefore the
public permitted Grover Cleveland to smash this strike. Afterwards
Cleveland’s commission of investigation put the chief of police of
Chicago on the witness-stand, and heard him testify that the Railway
Managers’ Association had hired “thugs, thieves, and ex-convicts” as
their deputies, and that these men had set fire to freight-cars, and had
cut the hose of the Chicago firemen.
It would not be too much to say that American capitalist newspapers sent
Eugene V. Debs to jail in 1893 and made him into a Socialist. And now in
1919, when he is sent to jail again, they help to keep him there! On the
day that he is sent to prison, they spread wide an interview to the
effect that he will call a general strike of labor to get himself out of
jail; and this interview is quoted by the Attorney-General as reason for
refusing amnesty to Debs. But Debs gave no such interview. He denied it
as soon as he saw it, but of course you did not see his denial, unless
you are a reader of the Socialist papers.
The “Appeal to Reason” is preparing to have a suit brought against the
Associated Press on this issue. It reprints a letter from Debs to the
general manager of the Associated Press, written in 1912, protesting
against a false story to the effect that the “Appeal” is suspending
publication. This report, obviously a great injury to the “Appeal,” the
Associated Press refused to deny. Says Debs:
Am I to infer from your letter that the Associated Press aims to deal
fairly, honestly and justly with all people, to disseminate the truth,
and taboo what is false? I happen to know differently by personal
experience. If there is in this country a strictly capitalist class
institution it is the Associated Press.
Pardon me if I give you just an instance or two of my personal
experience. During the heat of the Pullman strike, when the Pullman
cars were under boycott, the Associated Press sent out a dispatch over
all the country that I had ridden out of Chicago like a royal prince
in a Pullman Palace car while my dupes were left to walk the ties. A
hundred witnesses who were at the depot when I left testified that the
report was a lie, but I could never get the Associated Press to
correct it. This lie cost me more pain and trouble than you can well
imagine, and for it all I have to thank the Associated Press, and I
have not forgotten it.
During the last national campaign, at a time when I was away from
home, the Associated Press spread a report over the country to the
effect that scab labor had been employed to do some work at my home.
It was a lie, and so intended. I had the matter investigated by the
chief union organizer of the district, who reported that it was a lie,
but I was never able to have the correction put upon the wires. That
lie is still going to this day, and for that, and still others I could
mention, I have also to thank the capitalistically owned and
controlled Associated Press.
You might think this a pretty small lie for a big organization like the
Associated Press to bother with; but if you think that, you do not know
the Associated Press. Hardly ever do I mention this organization to a
radical that I do not hear a new story, frequently just such a petty and
spiteful story as the non-union labor in the home of Eugene Debs. In
Pasadena lives my friend Gaylord Wilshire, and I mention the Associated
Press to him, and he laughs. “Did I ever tell you my story of York,
Pennsylvania?” “What did you do in York, Pennsylvania?” “Nothing,” says
Wilshire; “that’s the story.” It appears that he was on a Socialist
lecture-tour, and the schedule was badly arranged, the trains were late,
and so he cut out York, Pennsylvania, and on the date in question was up
in Maine. But the Associated Press sent broadcast over the country a
detailed report that the editor of “Wilshire’s Magazine” had spoken in
York, Pennsylvania, had denounced the courts, had offered ten thousand
dollars for a debate with Mark Hanna, and had been mobbed by the
citizens of York!
You will say, perhaps, that this must have been a mistake. Yes, but how
comes it that the Associated Press makes all its mistakes one way? Why
is there never a mistake favorable to a Socialist? Why does not the
Associated Press report that Gene Debs has rescued a child from
drowning; or that Gaylord Wilshire has been awarded a gold medal by a
chamber of commerce; or that Upton Sinclair has been made a bishop of
the Episcopal Church for writing “The Profits of Religion”?
One of the most interesting illustrations of newspaper lying about
Socialists occurred during a May-day meeting in Union Square, New York,
a few years ago. It is interesting because we may go behind the scenes
and watch the wires being pulled. It appears that police arrangements
for this meeting were in charge of Chief Inspector Schmittberger, an
old-style Tammany clubber; but he could not handle the affair in the
usual fashion of the New York police, because the administration of
Mayor Mitchel had ordained “free speech.” Schmittberger had his clubbers
hidden in an excavation of the subway, ready to sally forth when the
meeting gave excuse. But the meeting did not give excuse, and some of
the policemen grew impatient, and sallied out without orders and started
clubbing. My friend Isaac Russell, who was reporting the day’s events
for the “New York Times,” was standing by Schmittberger’s side, and
heard him shout to these unauthorized clubbers. Says Russell:
I ran beside Schmittberger into the fracas, and he yanked and pulled
cops over backwards to break up the thing. And finally he got them
under control, and then gave them fits for acting without orders.
Russell, being an honest man, went back to the “Times” office, and wrote
a story of how the New York police had been seized by a panic, and had
broken out without orders; and that story went through. But it happened
that up in the editorial rooms of the “Times” somebody was writing the
conventional “Times” editorial, denouncing the Socialists for their
May-day violence, and praising the police for their heroism. It never
occurred to the editorial writer that the news editors could be so
careless as to pass a story like Isaac Russell’s! So next day here was
this comical discrepancy, and an organization of magazine editors, the
“Ragged Edge Club,” invited Isaac Russell to come and explain to them
the war between the news columns and the editorial columns of the
“Times”! Russell was called up before his boss and, as he says, “roasted
to a frazzle” for having written the truth. Arthur Greaves, city editor
of the “Times,” told him that he had “got off all wrong in that
situation.” But Russell’s job was saved—and how do you think? The police
commissioner of New York came out with a formal statement, denouncing
the police, and saying that they had acted contrary to his orders!
Or take the experience of A. M. Simons, reporting an International
Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, Germany, for the United Press, supposed
to be a liberal organization. Simons received a dispatch from the London
headquarters of his organization:
Wire three hundred words on probable split of Congress into Bebelists,
Herveists, and Laborites.
And Simons continues:
Now, there was not a single human being in that congress that ever
dreamed there would be a split. The particular question on which they
were supposed to split was passed by a unanimous vote. I sent a
straight news story out. At the close I put these three words: “Split
talk rot.” Judge of my surprise when I landed in New York to find that
that story of the split of the Socialist Congress had been carried
over the United Press wires to the paper I was serving!
And now, as this book is going to press, on November 11th, 1919, the
Associated Press sends from the town of Centralia, Washington, a series
of dispatches telling how I. W. W. members fired from windows of their
meeting hall upon an Armistice Day parade of returned soldier-boys. The
dispatch does not say directly that the firing was done in cold blood;
it simply tells in elaborate detail about the firing, and says not one
word about incidents occurring before the firing. It leaves it to be
assumed that the firing was done in cold blood, and the whole country
does assume that, and a perfect frenzy seizes the returned soldiers and
the government authorities; they raid I. W. W. meeting rooms in a
hundred places, and beat up the members and throw them into jail. And I
who understand the infamies of our Journalism wait patiently, knowing
that in due course the truth will begin to leak. And sure enough, three
days later comes an Associated Press dispatch from Centralia,
Washington, mentioning, quite casually and incidentally, that Dr. Frank
Bickford, _one of the marchers_, testified at the coroner’s inquest that
“_the former soldiers attacked the I. W. W. hall before any shots were
fired_.” And the Hearst service reports the same news with the comment
that “no special significance was attached to this testimony”!
Later: It appears that the soldiers were battering in the door, and the
first shots were fired through it.
CHAPTER LIII
THE PRESS AND SEX
There is a whole field of problems connected with our sex-nature which
we are only beginning to explore. Metchnikoff has told us something.
Freud and Jung have told us more; but long after we have solved our
economic problems we shall still be seeking knowledge about sex. And
meantime men and women grope blindly, and are betrayed into
entanglements and misunderstandings and cruel miseries. If they happen
to be ordinary, respectable citizens, they keep these things under
cover. If they are radicals, trying to square their preaching and their
practice, they will get into weird and awful predicaments, and then
there will be sport for predatory Journalism!
I have told you the stories of Maxim Gorky, of George D. Herron, of
Upton Sinclair. How many such stories would you care to hear? Would you
care to hear about Charlotte Perkins Gilman? About Thorstein Veblen?
About Jack London, Reginald Wright Kauffman, Clarence Darrow? About
Marion Craig Wentworth, Mary Ware Dennett, Gaylord Wilshire, Oscar
Lovell Triggs, George Sterling? This that I am giving you is not a list
of the vital spirits of our time; it is merely a list of persons of my
acquaintance who happen to have been caught upon the hook of an unhappy
marriage, gutted, skinned alive, and laid quivering on the red-hot
griddle of Capitalist Journalism.
I will tell you a story told to me only the other day. The man asks me
not to give his name; he is trying to forget. Poor fellow, as he talks
about it, I see the color creep into his forehead, I see his hands begin
to shake—all the symptoms I remember so well! I ask him: “Do you start
in your sleep, as if someone had touched a live nerve? Do you cry aloud,
and carry on long discourses through the night?”
A few years ago this man was a popular “extension” lecturer in Chicago;
anywhere in the Middle West he chose to go he could have a couple of
thousand people to listen to him. He was unhappily married; his wife was
living with another man, and desired a divorce. When this happens in
Chicago, they usually agree upon the charge of “cruelty”; their friends,
and likewise all Chicago newspaper editors, perfectly understand that
this is a conventional charge, having no necessary relation to the
facts. I have quoted the case of Mr. Booth Tarkington, returning from
Europe and saying to the newspaper reporters, with a smile, “When one’s
wife accuses one of cruelty, no gentleman would think of replying.” The
reporters all understood what that meant, and the public which read it
appreciated Mr. Tarkington’s tact. Mr. Tarkington, you see, is a
novelist whose work involves no peril to the profit system; therefore
Mr. Tarkington’s wife could charge him with “cruelty,” without Mr.
Tarkington’s reputation being destroyed and the sale of his books wiped
out. A recent item sent out by Mr. Tarkington’s publishers—Messrs.
Harper & Brothers, with the eight hundred thousand dollar mortgage
reposing in the vaults of J. P. Morgan & Company—stated that they had
sold a total of 1,324,900 copies of Mr. Tarkington’s novels.
But it was entirely different with this Chicago lecturer; this man, you
see, was a Socialist, and therefore a menace to mortgages. In a
lecture-room the question came up of a teacher who had switched a child;
the speaker remarked playfully that the cave-man had been accustomed to
inflict discipline with a club, and that boys, according to biology,
were in the cave-man stage of development. So next day the readers of a
yellow journal in Chicago read a scare headline about a “highbrow”
society lecturer who was preaching “cave-man philosophy” to his
students, and applying “cave-man treatment” to his wife, so that she was
divorcing him for cruelty! Half a dozen such yarns at this were piled in
quick succession upon the head of this Socialist lecturer, with the
result that his career was ruined.
By way of contrast, let me tell you about another man—proprietor of a
great department-store in New York. I will not name him; he is a worm,
poor in everything but money. It happened that through mutual friends I
knew about his private life; he kept numerous mistresses, and flaunted
them boldly on the “Great White Way,” starting them on showy theatrical
careers, and otherwise making himself a joke to the “Tenderloin.” This
man’s wife divorced him for his infidelities; and what do you think
happened? What did the newspapers do? Not a line about the matter in any
newspaper of New York City!
To some of the rules which I lay down in this book there are exceptions.
It is sometimes possible for a radical to be quoted honestly by a
capitalist newspaper; it is sometimes possible to get news unfavorable
to the profit-system into the most reactionary sheet. But to the
following two rules there is no exception anywhere:
Rule 1. Any proprietor of a department-store anywhere in America may
divorce, or be divorced, with entire immunity so far as concerns the
press.
Rule 2. No radical in America can divorce or be divorced without being
gutted, skinned alive, and placed on the red-hot griddle of Capitalist
Journalism.
I will tell you about another Chicago Socialist whom I have
mentioned—Oscar Lovell Triggs. Fifteen or twenty years ago Triggs was
the most popular man in the faculty of Mr. Rockefeller’s University of
Chicago; they had to get extra-sized class-rooms for his lectures, and
so there was jealousy of him—camouflaged, of course, as opposition to
Socialism. Triggs was so indiscreet as to live in a radical colony in
Chicago. He was asked to give an interview on some subject or another,
and the reporter, going down the hallway of the community building, made
note of the fact that in the next room there hung some silk stockings
and a pink kimono. So he went off and wrote a cunningly devised and
highly suggestive story about silk stockings and a pink kimono in the
room adjoining that of the Chicago college professor.
Here was a scandal, of course; and Triggs was expected to fight it. But,
as it happened, Triggs was unhappily married, his wife was living with
an artist in Paris, and desired a divorce. Any divorce lawyer will tell
you that men who are thus caught on the hook are prone to strange and
reckless rushes. Triggs, whose wife wanted a divorce, decided that this
story would serve as well as anything. A friend who lived in the
building at the time, and knew Triggs intimately, assures me that there
was not a word of truth in the insinuations, there was nothing between
Triggs and the young lady of the silk stockings and the pink kimono.
Nevertheless, this most popular professor of literature was driven out
of the university, and set to work as a common laborer on a California
chicken-ranch.
I write to ask him to verify the details of this story; I ask him to be
heroic, and let me tell the story, in the interest of the public
welfare. He gives the permission, adding the following comment:
In this statement, you speak of only one detail—the last one. But the
real story involves what amounted to a conspiracy against me in the
two years preceding my retirement from the university. This consisted
in so reporting lectures and statements that a very quiet and
reasonable scholar came to be regarded as a “freak professor.” No one
could stand up against this kind of attack and retain a position in a
conventional university. I never could get to the bottom of it. It is
a poor way to treat human material, but so be it.
Maybe you distrust the radicals; they are all “free lovers,” you say;
they deserve their marital unhappiness, they deserve exposure and
humiliation. Well, then, suppose I tell you about some respectable
person? Suppose I tell you about the President of the United States,
secure in the sanctity of the White House? Will that convince you?
You didn’t happen to know that the “Scandal Bureau” had prepared a story
on Woodrow Wilson! The “interests,” which wanted war with Germany and
Mexico, had a scandal all ready to spring on him toward the end of the
1916 campaign. They had the dynamite planted, the wires laid; all they
had to do was to press the button. At the last moment their nerve failed
them, they did not press the button. I was told why by a prominent
Republican leader, who was present in the councils of the party when the
final decision was made. This man pounded on the table and declared:
“I’d have said I’d sooner vote for the devil than for Woodrow Wilson,
but if you start a dirty story on the President of the United States,
I’ll vote for Woodrow Wilson, and one or two million Americans will do
likewise.”
Their nerve failed them; but some steps they had already taken, and you
may trace their footprints if you are curious. There were dark hints in
many newspapers, and if you saw the Washington correspondence of London
papers during the fall of 1916, you found more than hints. For example,
here is James Davenport Whelpley, a well-known journalist, writing in
the “Fortnightly Review,” one of the most dignified of English
monthlies:
Another issue has come to the fore in the American political campaign
quite unusual in American politics.... With all the freedom that is
given to the American Press, and with all the pernicious intrusion
into private affairs that finds expression in the columns of American
newspapers, it has been many years since the personality of a
candidate has played any part in the publicity work of a campaign, no
matter how great the temptation may have been to use material at hand.
In reading American newspapers today, however, much can be gleaned
from between the lines. Something seems to be struggling against
precedent and unwritten rules for clear expression, and that something
finds itself articulate in the communications of man to man.
And then Mr. Whelpley goes on to tell about “elections being won and
lost at the last moment by psychological waves which have swept across
the national mind, swamping on their way the political hopes of one or
the other candidate.” So Mr. Whelpley is unable to predict the
re-election of Woodrow Wilson!
More definite even than this, there was a story in “McClure’s Magazine,”
which had already gone to press, and could not be recalled. “McClure’s,”
now a tool of the “interests,” was conducting a raging campaign for
“preparedness,” and Wilson stood in the way. The story was called “That
Parkinson Affair,” by Sophie Kerr, and was published in the issue of
September, 1916—just when the scandal was ready to be sprung. It is
ostensibly a piece of fiction, but so transparent that no child could
fail to recognize it. It is the vilest piece of innuendo in American
political history, and remains on our library shelves as a monumental
example of the depths to which our predatory interests have been willing
to drag their “kept” magazines.
When the big magazines were bought up by the “interests,” we
were solemnly assured that the purpose was to put an end to
“scandal-mongering.” But now it appears that the purpose was not to lay
the “muck-rake” on the shelf, but merely to turn it against the friends
of human progress!
CHAPTER LIV
THE PRESS AND CRIME
You guess that this chapter will show how the press exploits crime for
its profit; and that sounds tiresome, you know all about that. You know
how the yellow journals take up murder cases and divorce cases and
sexual irregularities, and carry on campaigns of scandal, lasting for
months. You know how they send out their amateur sleuths, and work up a
case against some one, and make it a matter of journalistic prestige
that this person shall be hounded to jail.
No; this chapter does not deal with the crimes which the press exploits,
nor yet with the crimes which it invents. I could tell a hilarious
anecdote of a group of New York reporters assigned to the immigration
service, shy of news and bored to death, who cooked up a tale of an
imaginary murder by an imaginary Austrian countess, kept all New York
thrilled for a week, and “got away with it.” But all that is
comparatively nothing. The theme of this chapter is the crimes which the
press commits.
What is a crime? The definition is difficult; you have to know first who
commits it. Many things are crimes if done by workingmen, which are
virtuous public services if done by great corporations. It is a crime
when workingmen conspire to boycott; but it is no crime when newspapers
do it, when advertisers do it. It is a crime when an individual
threatens blackmail; but when a great newspaper does it, it is business
enterprise. For example, in Los Angeles there was started a municipal
newspaper, which was thriving. Gen. Harrison Gray Otis of the “Times”
sent agents to various advertisers to notify them that if they continued
to advertise in this paper they would be boycotted, blacklisted, and put
out of business. So the big advertisers deserted the municipal paper.
I have told in this book about many crimes committed by newspapers
against myself; not metaphorical crimes, but literal, legal crimes. It
was a crime when a Philadelphia reporter broke into my home and stole a
photograph. It was a crime when the “New York Evening Journal” sent
forged cablegrams to Dr. James P. Warbasse and Mrs. Jessica Finch
Cosgrave. It was a crime when the newspapers of New York bribed a
court-clerk to give them the testimony in my divorce case. Any lawyer
will tell you that these things are crimes, yet they are a recognized
part of the practice of American Journalism, and follow logically and
inevitably from the competitive sale of news.
Nietzsche says of the soul of man that it “hungers after knowledge as
the lion for his food.” Just so the yellow journals hunger after news,
and just so their proprietors hunger after profits. When profits are at
stake, they stop at nothing. I have quoted Hearst’s telegram to
Frederick Remington: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.” I
have told of Hearst’s ruffian conduct towards myself in the case of
Adelaide Branch. Do you think that a man who would commit such acts
would stop at anything? When Hearst ventured to run for governor of New
York State, his enemies brought out against him a mass of evidence,
showing that he had deliberately organized his newspapers so that the
corporations which published them owned no property, and children who
had been run down and crippled for life by Mr. Hearst’s delivery-wagons
could collect no damages from him.
Mr. Hearst poses as a friend of labor, but he keeps his newspapers on a
non-union basis, and when his employes go on strike, he treats them as
other corporations treat their strikers. And all newspaper corporations
do the same. I could name not one, but several cities in which
newspapers have hired thugs to break the strikes of newsboys; or where
they have hired strikes against their rivals. During the Colorado
coal-strike the “Denver Express” was publishing the truth about the
strike, and the other newspapers organized a boycott of the dealers who
handled the “Express.” When the “Express” hired its own newsboys,
mysterious gangs of rowdies appeared, and beat up these newsboys and
scattered their papers in the streets. And no interference from the
police, no line about these riots in any Denver newspaper—except the
“Express,” which could not get distributed!
Wherever you dig in the cellars of these great predatory institutions,
you find buried skeletons. I have dragged some of them into the light of
day; I would drag others—but the test here is not what I know to be
true, but what I can prove in a court of law. And it is so easy for a
great newspaper to buy witnesses; so easy for a great newspaper to
terrorize witnesses! I came upon one typical story that I could prove,
and prove to the hilt; I prepared to tell the story, with names and
places and dates, but while I was collecting the evidence, a friend of
the victim exclaimed: “You will ruin him! You will set the newspaper
after him again!”
This man, a former city official, an honest public servant, had been
deliberately ruined by a newspaper conspiracy, and brought to utter
despair. The thing happened six years ago, and only now is he beginning
to recover his practice as a lawyer. If now I revive this story, he will
take up his morning paper and read something like this: “The defendant
was represented by John Jones, who a few years ago was indicted—etc.”
Or: “The striking carpenters have retained John Jones, who was once city
prosecutor, and concerning whom several witnesses testified—etc., etc.”
Shall I inflict this upon a man, in spite of his wishes? I thought the
matter over from many angles, and decided to ask the reader to accept
the story on my word. Really, it is too incredible a story to be an
invention! Listen:
John Jones, city prosecutor, caused the arrest of the proprietor of a
great and powerful newspaper for printing salacious advertisements. He
forced this newspaper to make abject public apology, and to promise
reform. Later he caused the arrest of the proprietor for criminal libel;
whereupon this proprietor set out to “get” the city prosecutor. The
paper had a “literary editor,” a man who has since become well-known as
a critic and novelist, author of perhaps a dozen books. At this time his
salary was thirty dollars a week, and he was told by the proprietor of
the newspaper to go and “get” John Jones, using either wine or women.
A woman was brought on from the Middle West, a woman just one month
under twenty-one, which is the “age of consent” in the state in
question. This woman sought a city position from John Jones, came to his
office, threw her arms about his neck, and screamed. Instantly the door
was broken in, and it was made known that “sleuths” had bored a hole
through the office-wall, and were prepared to testify that they had seen
John Jones committing a crime with this woman under age.
Now, I hear you say, with a knowing smile, “That’s the story John Jones
tells!” No, reader, I assure you I am not so naïve; I did not get this
story from John Jones, I did not get it from any friend of John Jones.
It happens that I know the “literary editor” fairly well, and I know a
dozen of his friends. To one of these, an intimate friend of mine, this
“literary editor” told the entire story. Two friends of mine were
present at a club dinner, when the man was confronted by accident with
his victim, and admitted what he had done, and begged pardon for it. It
was his “job,” he said—his “job” of thirty dollars a week! And that is
how I came on the story!
I go over in my mind the newspapers concerning which I can make the
statement that I know, either from direct personal knowledge, or from
the evidence of a friend whom I trust, that the owner or manager of this
paper has committed a definite act of crime for which, if the laws were
enforced, the owner or manager would be sent to the penitentiary. I
count a total of fifteen such papers, located in leading American
cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco,
Los Angeles. Each one of these criminals sits in a seat of power and
poisons the thinking of hundreds of thousands of helpless people. I ask
myself: In what respect is the position of these people different from
that of the peasantry of mediaeval Germany, who lived and labored
subject to raids from robber knights and barons whose castles they saw
upon distant cliffs and mountain tops?
CHAPTER LV
THE PRESS AND JACK LONDON
I once had the pleasure of hearing Jack London express his opinion of
American Journalism; it was a picturesque and vivid experience, a sort
of verbal aurora borealis. Not wishing to trust to my memory of the
incidents, I write to Mrs. London, and she sends me a huge scrap-book,
the journalistic adventures of Jack London during the year 1906. I open
it, and the first thing I come upon is a clipping from the “St. Louis
Post-Dispatch,” with a picture of Mrs. London which is not Mrs. London!
Then, a couple of pages on, a clipping from the “New Haven Palladium,”
with a picture of Jack London which is not Jack London!
They just take any old picture, you understand, and slap your name under
it. I have seen Jack London’s picture serving for me, and I have seen my
own picture serving for a vaudeville actor. As I write, the “Los Angeles
Times” comes to my desk, with a scare-headline all the way across the
page: “BRITAIN DEFIES UNION LABOR THREAT OF REVOLUTION.” It appears that
the miners are preparing a general strike, and the “Los Angeles Times,”
wishing to make them odious, publishes on its front page a large
portrait, with this caption: “TRYING TO THROW BRITAIN OFF BALANCE.
Robert Smillie, Brains of the Triple Alliance of Powerful Labor Unions,
Seeking Social and Economic Revolution in the United Kingdom.” The
portrait shows a foreign-looking individual with straggly beard and
tousled hair, wearing a Russian blouse. It is Abram Krylenko,
commander-in-chief of the Russian Bolshevist armies! If you are near a
library you may find the picture in the “Outlook,” Vol. 118, p. 254; or
in the “Independent,” Vol. 93, p. 405; or in the “Metropolitan Magazine”
for October, 1919. A picture of Smillie appears in “Current Opinion” for
August, 1919—an entirely conventional-looking Englishman!
To return to Jack London: This was the year that Charmian and Jack got
married. It was in Chicago, and the Hearst paper of that city reported
it in this chaste fashion:
JACK LONDON WINS IN BATTLE FOR A BRIDE.
Messenger-boys, Telephones, Korean Valet, Political Influence,
Pleadings, Many Explanations, and a Special Dispensation Finally Won a
Marriage License on Sunday for Jack London.
And then next day the Hearst reporters discovered that this marriage was
not legal; Jack was liable to three years in jail; so, as a matter of
precaution, he was going to be married in every state in the Union! All
over the country this story was telegraphed; such trifling with a sacred
institution displeased certain women’s clubs in Iowa, which canceled
their engagements to hear Jack London lecture! Returning to his home
after these excitements, I find Jack being interviewed by the “Oakland
Herald.”
That report was all the imagination of the Chicago reporters who were
scooped on the wedding story. There was nothing in that at all.
Later on Jack took another trip to the East, and delivered his famous
address, “Revolution,” which you may find in his volume “Revolution and
Other Essays.” He is describing the feelings of a Colorado workingman
under the régime of the militia general, Sherman Bell, whose orders
were, “To hell with the Constitution.” Says London:
Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious and
constitutional to the workingman who has experienced a bull pen or
been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this
particular workingman’s hurt feelings soothed by reading in the
newspapers that both the bull pen and the deportation were
preeminently just, legal, and constitutional. “To hell, then, with the
Constitution,” says he, and another revolutionist has been made—by the
capitalist class.
And next morning here comes the “New York Times,” not quite saying that
Jack said “To hell with the Constitution,” but carefully implying it;
which dishonesty, of course, takes wings, and from one end of the
country to the other Americans read that Jack London has said, “To hell
with the Constitution.” Jack is on his way home, and cannot answer; here
am I, as vice-president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, under
whose auspices the meeting had been held, writing to the “Times” to call
attention to the injustice it has done to a great American novelist. The
“Times” puts my letter under the title:
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Jack London Puts an “If” in the Condemned Constitution.
And here is the “New York Evening Sun,” denouncing Jack; here is the
“Chicago Inter-Ocean,” in an editorial:
If Jack London speaks only for himself, he is either a cheap seeker
after notoriety or a pestilential agitator. If the latter, he is more
dangerous than the agitators whose fulminations led to the
assassination of President McKinley, and assassination is as likely to
follow his diatribes.
Our laws prevent the importation of foreign Anarchists. Are the laws
and public sentiment not strong enough to suppress the exploiter of
sensationalism who preaches treason to the flag and war on the
Government?
And here is the “Rochester Post Express,” with the headline: “A LITERARY
ANARCHIST.” Here is the “Milwaukee Sentinel”: “LONDON BELCHES MORE
FIRE.” Here is the “Chicago Inter-Ocean”: “ASSASSINATION PET JOY OF MR.
LONDON.”
And here are various public libraries, rushing to defend our imperiled
institutions by barring the books of Jack London from their shelves:
Derby, Connecticut; Des Moines, Iowa; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And here
is Jack, writing to Gaylord Wilshire: “Thanks for the enclosures. You
bet they amuse me! I leave it to you if my situation isn’t amusing!” In
a letter to me, Mrs. London explains this amusement: “Down went his
royalties!” And she adds:
Several years ago Jack learned, from one newspaper man and another,
what he had often suspected—that the standing instructions in
practically every newspaper office on the Pacific Coast were to give
Jack London the worst of it whenever possible. Of course this meant no
matter what the occasion, whether slamming his work, or wilfully
misrepresenting his personal actions. And they only subsided, as I
have said above, when they adjudged he had a bank account, and
therefore must needs be less radical.
This trick played upon Jack London is a favorite one with our
newspapers—to take some quotation, and put it in the mouth of the
quoter. What a sordid man is William Shakespeare; he said: “Put money in
thy purse!” What a vainglorious man is the apostle Matthew; he said:
“All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me!” What a violent man is James H. Maurer, president of the
Pennsylvania Federation of Labor; he said: “Down with the Stars and
Stripes!”
Mr. Maurer came to New York to tell the people about the state
constabulary, a public strike-breaking agency organized by the big
capitalists of his state. The big capitalists of New York wanted the
same thing, and the big newspapers of New York were boosting for it, and
of course ridiculing and slandering all who opposed it. At the
Washington Irving High School, on April 19, 1916, Mr. Maurer addressed a
public meeting and read a passage from his book, “The American Cossack.”
The incident he read was a funeral; a Spanish war-veteran had died
during the miners’ strike in Westmoreland County, and was being buried
by the striking miners with military honors. Members of the state
constabulary came riding up. They objected to these lousy strikers using
the American flag, and ordered that the flag be lowered. The strikers
refused, whereupon the Cossacks threatened to shoot unless the flag was
lowered and furled. Maurer quoted them: “Down with the Stars and
Stripes!” So next day the newspapers reported Maurer as saying, “Down
with the Stars and Stripes!” The “New York Times” went farther yet, and
reported him as saying, “To hell with the Stars and Stripes!” I quote
Maurer’s letter:
Mayor Mitchel of New York ordered the school-board to investigate
these charges at once and they did so. At the hearing twelve witnesses
were heard. Eleven swore that I said nothing of the kind and repeated
what I did say. One, a “New York Sun” reporter by the name of Lester
S. Walbridge, contended that I had said, “Down with the Stars and
Stripes!” but admitted that there had been much cheering at the time
and that he did not catch all that I said. Three others wrote and
telegraphed their testimony, all saying that I said nothing of the
kind. Some of the witnesses were people favorable to the State Police.
The verdict of the School-board was to the effect that I said nothing
of the kind, but had simply told my audience what the State Police had
said; that it was the State Police who said, “Down with the Stars and
Stripes,” and not Mr. Maurer. A clear vindication.
The day the story first appeared in the New York papers, charging me
with the flag slander, the story was used to stampede the New York
senators into voting for the State Police Bill then pending, and it
worked. Although I was vindicated, the story is still used; every now
and then someone editorializes about it.
In my effort to verify this story, I write to a reporter who was on the
job at this time. He answers:
As a matter of fact all the reporters were out getting a drink when
Maurer spoke, and they took their version of what he said from the
Real Estate Association’s provocateurs at the meeting.
In connection with this Maurer episode, there is a curious story which
should be told. You remember “Collier’s Weekly,” a magazine “run on a
personal basis,” and the many young writers who had been debauched by
“Collier” prosperity. One of these writers was Richard Harding Davis,
and you would have to hunt a long time to find a more perfect
incarnation of capitalist prosperity and success in literature. It
happened that Davis was at his country home when he read in the “New
York Times” that Maurer had said, “To hell with the Stars and Stripes!”
Davis flew into a rage, and drafted a telegram to the mayor of New York,
calling upon him to use the power of the government to put down these
preachers of sedition. He went to the telephone to dictate the message,
and before he was half-way through, fell dead of an apoplectic stroke!
Ten years ago I produced in California a one-act play called “The
Indignant Subscriber.” The editor of a great newspaper is found walking
on the shore of an imaginary lake. A stranger invites him for a row in a
boat—the “boat” consisting of two chairs and a board tied together, the
“oars” being brooms. The stranger rows the editor out into the middle of
the lake, and then announces himself as the Indignant Subscriber. “For
twenty-five years,” he says, “I have listened helplessly, while you set
forth your views on every subject under the sun. Now for once I mean to
tell you my views on one subject—yourself!” So he speaks his mind, and
at the end upsets the boat and swims away, leaving the editor
floundering in the water.
Now I am the Indignant Subscriber, who has been taking the “New York
Times” for twenty-five years. I propose to give the “Times” a taste of
its own medicine—by writing some headlines and letting the “Times” see
just how it feels. Here goes:
“NEW YORK TIMES” KILLS FAVORITE AUTHOR
Death of R. H. Davis Caused by Reporter Seeking High-ball
_Lie Occasions Fatal Shock_
Reads “Times” Incitement, Drops Dead in Home
Now, how’s that?
CHAPTER LVI
THE PRESS AND LABOR
I have told many stories of newspaper lies about myself, and perhaps you
thought that was just one person who was wronged, and it didn’t make
much difference; but when it comes to lying about the labor movement,
thousands and even millions of people are wronged, and that surely does
make a difference. When newspapers lie about a strike, they lie about
every one of the strikers, and every one of these strikers and their
wives and children and friends know it. When they see deliberate and
long-continued campaigns to render them odious to the public, and to
deprive them of their just rights, not merely as workers, but as
citizens, a blaze of impotent fury is kindled in their hearts. And year
by year our newspapers go on storing up these volcanic fires of
hate-against the day when labor will no longer be impotent!
Imagine, if you can, the feelings of a workingman on strike who picks up
a copy of the “Wall Street Journal” and reads:
We have a flabby public opinion which would wring its hands in anguish
if we took the labor leader by the scruff of his neck, backed him up
against a wall, and filled him with lead. Countries which consider
themselves every bit as civilized as we do not hesitate about such
matters for a moment.
Whenever it comes to a “show-down” between labor and capital, the press
is openly or secretly for capital—and this no matter how “liberal” this
press may pretend to be. Says Professor Ross:
During labor disputes the facts are usually distorted to the injury of
labor. In one case (Chicago), strikers held a meeting on a vacant lot
enclosed by a newly-erected billboard. Forthwith appeared, in a yellow
journal professing warm friendship for labor, a front-page cut of the
billboard and a lurid story of how the strikers had built a “stockade”
behind which they intended to bid defiance to the blue-coats. It is
not surprising that when the van bringing these lying sheets appeared
in their quarter of the city, the libeled men overturned it.
During the struggle of carriage-drivers for a six-day week, certain
great dailies lent themselves to a concerted effort of the liverymen
to win public sympathy by making it appear that the strikers were
interfering with funerals. One paper falsely stated that a strong
force of police was being held in reserve in case of “riots,” and that
policemen would ride beside the non-union drivers of hearses. Another,
under the misleading headline, “Two Funerals Stopped by Striking
Cabmen,” described harmless colloquies between hearse-drivers and
pickets. This was followed up by a solemn editorial, “May a Man Go to
His Long Rest in Peace?”—although, as a matter of fact, the strikers
had no intention of interfering with funerals....
That was in Chicago, ten years ago. And now, as I write, the employes of
the packing-houses, my old friends of “The Jungle,” are on strike again,
and the Chicago newspapers are at their usual game of deliberate lying:
“Violence is Expected,” “Situation is Critical,” and so on. It happens
that an honest man, Alfred W. McCann, is on the scene. He writes:
I say it isn’t true. To the shame of the press, no foundation can be
discovered for the wild stories now filling their columns, spreading
public anxiety and inciting labor to outbursts of indignation against
what is called “the deliberate misrepresentation of the press.”
The packers advertise heavily in Chicago newspapers; and so also do the
Chicago department-stores. Says Prof. Ross:
In the same city (Chicago), during a strike of the elevator men in the
large stores, the business agent of the elevator-starters’ union was
beaten to death, in an alley behind a certain emporium, by a
“strong-arm” man hired by that firm. The story, supported by
affidavits, was given by a responsible lawyer to three newspaper men,
each of whom accepted it as true and promised to print it. The account
never appeared.
Try, for a moment, to put yourself in the position of a girl-slave of
one of these big department-stores. You resist the flirtatious advances
of the floor-walker, and continue to eat your twenty-cent dinners; but
after a few years you grow desperate, and in the face of the heaviest
pressure you organize and declare a strike for better pay. How much
chance do you stand for fair play from the newspapers? Why, they won’t
even print the names of the stores against which you are striking! Says
Max Sherover:
While addressing a street meeting, held under the auspices of the
Retail Clerks’ Union, in front of Stern Brothers’ department-store,
Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested at the instigation of one of the
store-managers. Miss Dutcher is highly prominent in social and labor
circles, and the papers did not dare to be entirely silent about the
arrest. Every paper in New York, except one—and that one does not
carry department-store advertising—spoke of a meeting at the doors of
a “large retail establishment.” They also referred to an earlier
incident as a disturbance at the doors of a “Sixth Avenue Store,” not
daring to mention the name, Gimbel’s.
Or again, Prof. Ross:
In New York the salesgirls in the big shops had to sign an exceedingly
mean and oppressive contract, which, if generally known, would have
made the firms odious to the public. A prominent social worker brought
these contracts, and evidence as to the bad conditions that had become
established under them, to every newspaper in the city. Not one would
print a line on the subject.
And not only do they exclude the news; they keep watch over the general
ideas which go into their columns, to make sure there is nothing to
injure the sensibilities of department-stores, or to favor the
girl-slaves of department-stores. Would you think I was absurd if I were
to declare that there is a whole set of philosophical ideas which the
newspapers forbid you to know about, because the department-stores
ordain? Yes, even so! You must believe in free will, you must not
believe in economic determinism! You must think that prostitution is a
sexual phenomenon; you must not learn that prostitution is an economic
phenomenon. Anybody who advocates the heretical, anti-department-store
doctrine that white-slavery is caused by low wages will be suppressed,
and if necessary will be slandered as an immoral person. You remember
the “New York World,” its solemn editorial about twenty-cent dinners?
Some years ago the “World” was under contract to publish every week a
short story by O. Henry. They received the manuscript of what posterity
has come to recognize as O. Henry’s masterpiece, “The Unfinished Story”;
they refused to publish this “Unfinished Story,” because it was
injurious to department-stores!
Or consider what happened when the Illinois Vice Commission made an
investigation of the causes of prostitution, and submitted one of the
best reports on this subject ever written. The report was highly
sensational, also it was highly important; it was news in every possible
sense of the word. But it attributed prostitution to low wages, and
therefore only one Chicago newspaper gave an adequate account of this
report!
You saw the “Boston Herald” and “Journal,” and also the “Boston Post,”
forbidding you to know that President Wilson was urging you not to spend
money on luxuries. In the same way, when there is a crisis of
unemployment, the department-stores and other advertisers command that
falsehoods shall be told you. If you know that business is bad, you may
be cautious and save your money; whereas the department-stores want you
to spend your money, and the kept press wants its share of this money
for advertisements. Says Prof. Ross:
The alacrity with which many dailies serve as mouth-pieces of the
financial powers came out very clearly during the recent industrial
depression. The owner of one leading newspaper called his reporters
together and said in effect, “Boys, the first of you who turns in a
story of a lay-off or a shut-down, gets the sack.” Early in the
depression the newspapers teemed with glowing accounts of the
resumption of steel-mills and the revival of business, all baseless.
After harvest-time they began to cheep “Prosperity,” “Bumper Crops,”
“Farmers Buying Automobiles.” In cities where banks and employers
offered clearing-house certificates instead of cash, the press usually
printed fairy tales of the enthusiasm with which these makeshifts were
taken by depositors and workingmen. The numbers and sufferings of the
unemployed were ruthlessly concealed from the reading public. A mass
meeting of the men out of work was represented as “anarchistic” or
“instigated by the Socialists for political effect.” In one daily
appeared a dispatch under the heading “Five Thousand Jobs Offered;
Only Ten Apply.” It stated that the Commissioner of Public Works of
Detroit, misled by reports of dire distress, set afoot a public work
which called for five thousand men. Only ten men applied for work, and
all these expected to be bosses. Correspondence with the official
establishes the fact that the number of jobs offered was five hundred,
and that three thousand men applied for them.
That was twelve years ago, in the Middle West. Six years ago we had
another unemployment crisis, and I watched the newspapers handling it in
New York. You might have thought they would not have been able to fool
_me_; but they did! A boy out of this unemployed army, Frank Tanenbaum
by name, led a number of starving men to the Catholic Church of St.
Alphonsus to request shelter on a winter’s night. I read several
newspapers, in the hope of getting the truth from one of them; on this
occasion all the papers agreed that the unemployed men and their leader
abused and threatened the priest, and were noisy and blasphemous in
their behavior. I was heartsick about it. Oh, what a pity! If only those
poor devils had had the sense to go to the churches in a quiet and
respectful way, their position would have been impregnable. Christian
churches would not have dared to turn out starving men on a winter’s
night!
But Christian churches did! And the capitalist press backed them up! The
leader, Frank Tanenbaum, was arrested, and he called as witnesses the
very newspaper men who had written the stories of his “raid.” These men
had been willing to lie in what they wrote—that was part of the
newspaper game; but they were unwilling to lie under oath—that was _not_
part of the game! So they testified that these unemployed men had been
entirely peaceful in their conduct, that Tanenbaum had addressed the
priest with politeness and respect, and that the crowd had left the
church when told that they must do so!
Some years ago there was a strike of the hotel-workers in New York, an
I. W. W. strike—and of course there is nothing with which the newspapers
deal more freely than the I. W. W. They quoted Joe Ettor as having
advised the strikers to put poison in the soup which they served to
hotel patrons; also as having insulted the American flag. Ettor denied
vigorously having made any such statements, but of course his denial
went for nothing. Some of us who knew Ettor thought that the public
ought to get a little of the truth about conditions under which these
hotel-workers were forced to live—conditions menacing not only to
themselves, but to the public they served. Therefore the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society called a meeting in Carnegie Hall to hear the I. W. W.
leaders. A fiery little New York politician who held the office of
sheriff saw an opportunity to leap into the limelight. He would attend
that meeting with a large force of deputies, and protect the American
flag from insult! He brought some thirty deputies, to whom the county
paid three dollars each; and we provided them with seats on the
platform, and all the orators made speeches to them, and the young
ladies who passed the collection-plates took away a part of their three
dollars. And next morning the newspapers reported that the gallant
sheriff had protected the American flag and tamed the seditious fury of
the I. W. W.!
You remember, perhaps, my story of the Paterson silk-strikers, and how
the “New York Times” quoted me as telling them that they “had the police
at their mercy.” Here is another glimpse of this strike, through the
eyes of Max Sherover:
At the I. W. W. pageant held about two years ago at Madison Square
Garden, New York, for the benefit of the Paterson, N. J.
silk-strikers, the writer was an eye-witness to the following scene: A
reporter, whose identity we were unable to learn, in the basement of
the Garden hurriedly printed the following words on an improvised
banner, “No God and No Master, I. W. W.” One of the illiterate
strikers was asked to hold the banner aloft and pose while a newspaper
photographer was taking a flashlight photo.
This Paterson pageant was a result of the effort of a few literary men
and women in New York, who saw the shameless lying of the press and the
shameless violation of law by the authorities in Paterson. A group of
people, including Ernest Poole, Hutchins Hapgood, Leroy Scott, John
Reed, Thompson Buchanan, Margaret Sanger, and myself worked for weeks,
giving all our time and energy and a great deal of money, and brought
about a thousand strikers to New York City to rehearse the story of
their sufferings before an audience in Madison Square Garden. This was
so sensational that the newspapers could not suppress it; therefore what
they did was to ridicule and betray it. They always make out that
labor-movements are rolling in wealth, and that “agitators” are making
fortunes. In this case they said that we were planning to finance the
strike by this pageant. Every newspaper man knew this was absurd, for
they knew the seating capacity of the Garden and could figure the
possible gross receipts. The enterprise suffered a deficit of one or two
thousand dollars; so of course the poor, starving strikers, who had read
in the newspapers that they were to be “financed,” were bitterly
disappointed. The “New York Times” thus had a chance for a story to the
effect that the strikers were accusing us of having robbed them; and
this while we were engaged in making up the deficit out of our own
pockets!
Or take the Lawrence strike. I have told the story of how conspirators
of the great Woolen Trust planted dynamite in the homes of
strike-breakers as a “frame-up” to discredit the strikers. The man who
was convicted of this was a school commissioner and a prominent
Catholic, a close friend of the mill-owners. When this dynamite was
found, the Associated Press sent the story fully. When the plot was
exposed, it sent almost nothing. These statements were made publicly at
a conference at the University of Wisconsin by A. M. Simons, and never
challenged by the Associated Press. And at this same conference it was
stated by George French that the department-stores served notice upon
all the Boston newspapers that if they featured this strike they would
get no more Sunday advertising!
Or take the present struggle of the railroad brotherhoods for a living
wage. The “Saturday Evening Post” published a series of articles by
Edward Hungerford, full of gross falsehoods regarding the wages of
railroad workers and managers under the Federal administration. These,
mind you, were flat misstatements of facts officially recorded and
available to any one. The brotherhoods asked a certain United States
railroad administration official to prepare from official records a
statement concerning these misrepresentations. This was formally
submitted to the “Saturday Evening Post,” and was absolutely ignored.
Or take the case of Tom Mooney. The capitalist newspapers of San
Francisco tried Tom Mooney, with the help of a million dollar corruption
fund, raised by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of the city.
They found him guilty, but the prosecuting authorities didn’t have
enough evidence to make good the verdict in court, so they manufactured
the evidence. Mooney was a Socialist and a well-known labor organizer,
so the case was taken up by the Socialists and the unions of the
country, and became the great labor issue of the time—all without one
word getting into the capitalist newspapers of the East! There were two
or three million copy “protest editions” of the “Appeal to Reason”
issued—and still not a word about it in the capitalist newspapers
outside of California! Finally the Anarchists in Petrograd took up the
matter; they attacked the American embassy, and the news was cabled back
to New York that the attack was on account of a certain “Tom Muni.” The
newspapers of New York didn’t know anything about the case, and couldn’t
find out about it in time; they had to publish the name as it came over
the cables—thus laying bare their shame to the whole world! Could any
writer of farce-comedy have invented a greater satire upon New York
Journalism than the fact that it had to get its San Francisco labor-news
misspelled from Petrograd?
CHAPTER LVII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND LABOR
Great strikes are determined by public opinion, and public opinion is
always against strikers who are violent. Therefore, in great strikes,
all the efforts of the employers are devoted to making it appear that
the strikers are violent. The greatest single agency in America for
making it appear that strikers are violent is the Associated Press. How
does this agency perform its function?
In the first place, by the wholesale method of elimination. There are
some violent strikers, needless to say, and Capitalist Journalism
follows this simple and elemental rule—if strikers are violent, they get
on the wires, while if strikers are not violent, they stay off the
wires; by which simple device it is brought about that nine-tenths of
the telegraphic news you read about strikes is news of violence, and so
in your brain-channels is irrevocably graven the idea-association:
Strikes—violence! Violence—strikes!
What about the millions of patient strikers who obey the law, who wait,
day after day, month after month, starving, seeing their wives fading,
their little ones turning white and thin—and still restrain themselves,
obeying the laws of their masters? What about the strike-leaders who
plead day in and day out—I have heard them a hundred times—“No violence!
No violence!”—what about them? Why, nothing; just nothing! The
Associated Press will let a big strike continue for months and never
mention it—unless there is violence! For example, the great coal-strike
in West Virginia. It happens, through a set of circumstances to be
explained in the next chapter, that I have before me the sworn complete
file of all the dispatches which the Associated Press sent out during
the sixteen months of this strike. The strike began April 1, 1912. The
first dispatch sent by the Associated Press was on April 6; a very brief
dispatch, telling of threats of violence. The second dispatch was on
June 1; this also very brief, to the effect that “serious rioting is
imminent.” The third dispatch was on July 23; also brief, telling of
rioting, and of state troops sent in. Thus it appears that during one
hundred and thirteen days of a great strike the Associated Press
considered it necessary to send only two brief items—and these
containing not one line about the causes of the strike, not one line
about the demands of the miners, not one line about the economic
significance of a ferociously bitter labor struggle! I have before me
the affidavit of Thomas Cairns, president of the United Mine Workers’
West Virginia district, stating that during these sixteen months, which
brought West Virginia to a state of civil war, not once did the
correspondent of the Associated Press come to him for information about
the strike!
And now, in 1919, there is more trouble in this district, and I pick up
my morning paper and read that three thousand miners of Cabin Creek have
taken up arms and are marching to battle against machine-guns. The
strike has been going on for weeks, says the report; but this is the
first hint I have heard of it—I who read four Associated Press
newspapers, the “Los Angeles Times” and “Examiner,” and the “New York
Times” and “World”!
The first point to be got clear is that in cases of big strikes the
Associated Press is getting its news through its local newspaper member.
I have shown that in Los Angeles it is content to co-operate with the
unspeakable “Times.” In San Diego it works with the “Union,” personal
organ of John D. Spreckles, the “sugar-king”; and a few years ago, when
a murderous mob of bankers, lawyers and merchants was engaged in
shooting, clubbing, tarring and feathering, throwing into prison, and
there torturing, drugging, and starving the radicals of that city, the
“San Diego Union” paid editorial tribute to the fact that the Associated
Press was handling this situation to the satisfaction of the murderous
mob of bankers, lawyers and merchants. The “San Diego Union,” which had
done most of the inciting of this mob, stated editorially:
Great credit is due the Associated Press for the manner in which it
has handled the news end of this matter.
In city after city, you will find the Associated Press thus tied up with
the worst reactionary influences. In Louisville, for example, it
co-operates with the “Courier-Journal,” whose serio-comic story I have
told in detail. In St. Paul, Minnesota, we saw the Associated Press
misquoting Senator La Follette in a manner calculated to ruin him. It
sought at first to put the blame upon its “member paper,” the “St. Paul
Pioneer Press.” You recall the charges made against this paper by Walter
W. Liggett, quoted on page 268. Note that the Associated Press did not
cease taking its news through a paper which had failed to resent such
grave charges as these.
I cannot find that the “A. P.” ever did raise this issue with one of its
member-papers. An interesting light is thrown on this very important
subject by a controversy between the “Sacramento Bee” and the “San
Francisco Star.” The “Bee” printed a long defense of the Associated
Press, and the “Star” discussed it as follows:
Another damaging admission is that the Associated Press doesn’t care a
picayune what manner of pirates buy a newspaper that has an Associated
Press franchise. It mentions the case of the “San Francisco Globe,”
which bought the special privilege news service of the “Post” when it
bought the name of that paper. The franchise went with the name to a
band of industrial pirates who wanted a special privilege news service
to supplement their special privilege traction service in this city.
The “San Francisco Star” is a weekly, and so its editor does not need to
be afraid of the Associated Press. I have a letter written by this
editor, James H. Barry, to Prof. Ross of the University of Wisconsin:
You wish to know my “confidential opinion as to the honesty of the
Associated Press.” My opinion, _not_ confidential, is that it is the
damndest, meanest monopoly on the face of the earth—the wet-nurse for
all other monopolies. It lies by day, it lies by night, and it lies
for the very lust of lying. Its news-gatherers, I sincerely believe,
only obey orders.
In great labor centers, from which strike-news comes, you find this
situation: that even if the Associated Press wished to deal with a fair
newspaper, there is no fair newspaper to deal with. In Lawrence,
Massachusetts, in Paterson, New Jersey, in Trinidad, Colorado, in
Bisbee, Arizona, the newspapers are owned by the local industrial
magnates and their financial and political henchmen. In Montana the
Anaconda Mining Company, a Rockefeller concern, owns or controls
practically every newspaper in the state; so of course the Associated
Press sends no fair labor news from Montana. I asked Ex-Governor Hunt of
Arizona how the Associated Press had treated him while he was giving the
miners a square deal during the big copper strike. He answered: “They
were so unfair that I quit dealing with them at all.” I said: “What
paper in your state capital do they work with?” He answered: “There are
only two—one owned by a millionaire land-speculator, the other owned by
the ‘Ray’!” (The “Ray” is a copper company, one of the most powerful and
most corrupt.) Said Ex-Governor Hunt: “I proposed a law in Arizona
requiring that papers should carry the line: ‘This paper owned by the
“Ray,” or the “Copper Queen,” or whatever the case might be.’” No wonder
this ex-governor is an “ex”!
He comes to see me, and brings a clipping from the “Messenger,” an
independent weekly of his state capital. It appears that the wealthy
bandits of the copper companies, who two years ago seized over a
thousand miners and deported them from their homes, are now being tried
for their crime. Says the “Messenger”:
Associated Press reports from Bisbee and Douglas relative to the
preliminary trial of alleged kidnappers are enough to condemn that
service forever. It was bad enough to withhold service on July 12,
1917, the day of deportation, but the present stuff—
And then the “Messenger” goes on to explain in detail what is happening;
the reporters of the local, copper-owned dailies of Bisbee and Douglas
are acting as Associated Press correspondents, and are sending out
“doctored stuff” to the country. Three times during one week of the
trial at Douglas the “Bisbee Review” has had to apologize and correct
statements attributed to a woman witness; these errors, “telegraphed
broadcast” by the Associated Press, have been corrected “only by local
mention”!
And here is the Central Trades Council of Tucson adopting a resolution,
denouncing the “brazen one-sidedness” of the Associated Press reports of
the trial:
Resolved, That to date we have not seen a single article that did not
feature some silly remark made by some foreigner or illiterate witness
for the state, and the vital news parts omitted.
In the case of the Colorado coal-strike, I have shown you what the
Associated Press did in New York and in Denver. What was it doing
meantime in the actual strike-field? In Walsenburg the publisher was
“Jeff” Farr, whiskey-magnate, coal company sheriff and organizer of
assassination, popularly known as the “King of Huerfano County.” In
Trinidad there were two dailies owned by the chief attorney of the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, whose son took command of one of the
gunmen armies, and seized a United States mail-train to transport them.
The “A. P.” day man was the editor of the evening paper; the “A. P.”
night man was the telegraph-editor of the morning paper! Max Eastman
tells me of interviewing one of them—introducing himself as a Chautauqua
lecturer, desirous of getting the truth about the strike. The editor was
in a mood of frankness, and said:
There’s no use coming to me for the truth. A man in my position
naturally gets only one side, the operators’ side.
And, of course, he sent out that side. During the latter part of the
strike the “Rocky Mountain News” of Denver sent its own correspondent to
the field, and one of the editors told me of a conversation with the
Associated Press representative in Denver. Said the latter, “Why do you
keep a man down there?” Said the editor, “Because you people refuse to
send me the news.” And it was exactly the same during a strike in
another part of the state, the “Northern field,” where several score
labor leaders were thrown into jail, but when it came to trial were
nearly all acquitted. George Creel writes: “The Associated Press
furnished the newspapers with accounts of these cases, but lost interest
when the verdicts were returned.”
As I write, there is a great steel strike, and from the “Panhandle” of
West Virginia comes the following special dispatch to the “New York
Call”:
The capitalist press representatives have so falsely reported the
existing strike conditions that steel strike leaders here now refuse
to make any statements at all to them. Several times, after having
promised to write, without alterations, the reports which the strike
leaders had given, the Associated Press representatives deliberately
reversed the statements.
So much for steel. And now hear what Charles Edward Russell has to say
(Pearson’s for April, 1914) concerning the conduct of the Associated
Press in the Calumet copper-strike. In a letter to me he writes:
I may say that the Associated Press made a loud squeal on the story
and blacklisted me for some years afterward, so you will see that the
subject is one on which they are sensitive.
I quote from the article, “The Associated Press and Calumet”:
Some of the richest copper deposits in the world are in the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan, most of them purporting to be owned or
controlled by a great corporation called the Calumet and Hecla. This
is a mining company that is also the holding concern for seventeen
other mining companies, owns a railroad or two, some smelting works,
some other profit-making devices and an organized system of politics
the equal of any.
It is one of the richest and most profitable enterprises in the world.
Except for a few railroads like those of Mr. Hill, the Calumet and
Hecla has made more money on a smaller investment than any other
corporation that ever existed. In the sixteen years ending with 1912
the smallest annual dividend has been 80 per cent, and in other years
it has been as much as 400 per cent.
As these dividends were declared upon a capital stock less than half
of which was ever paid for, a nominal dividend of 400 per cent was an
actual dividend of 800 per cent.
On every dollar ever invested in this company more than one hundred
dollars have been paid in dividends, while millions of dollars of
other profits have been diverted to the purchase of additional
profit-making ventures. With a par value of $25.00 on which only
$12.00 was paid in, the shares have now a value of $540.00 each.
This gigantic cornucopia is owned by the Shaws, Agassizs and Higginsons,
leading families of Boston; and besides their dividends, they pay
themselves enormous salaries as officers and directors of Calumet and
Hecla, and of the seventeen subsidiary companies. Says Russell:
The Calumet and Hecla barony comprises one hundred and seventeen
miles. There is every reason to believe that it occupies and has
occupied this land without rightful title, and all the vast wealth it
has taken therefrom really belongs to the people of the United States.
There is also good reason to believe that it has consistently violated
its charter, and is now engaged in doing so every day and every hour
of every day: a fact that will not in the least astonish you when you
come to learn of some of its other activities, but that adds a rarely
piquant taste to the pious exclamations of its attorneys on the
subject of law-breaking.
And now, what of the men who worked for these copper barons? They were
ill-paid and ill-treated, badly housed, worked for long hours at peril
of life and limb; they lived in a community absolutely dominated by
their masters; there was no other industry or source of wealth, and the
politicians and the courts, the newspapers and the churches—everything
was owned by “Copper.” It is the old, sickening story of the overthrow
of American institutions, the subjection of political democracy to
industrial autocracy.
The copper miners of the “Upper Peninsula” went on strike. They stayed
on strike for many months, and during that time they were slugged and
beaten up by imported gunmen, their offices raided, their leaders shot
or jailed. During this entire affair the Associated Press sent out to
the country a string of subtle and knavish falsehoods, of which Charles
Edward Russell gives seven pages, printing them in parallel columns,
first the falsehood, and then the result of careful investigations,
backed by numerous affidavits. (I might add that the Congressional
investigation vindicated these affidavits in every detail.)
The parallel columns which Russell gives would fill about twenty pages
of this book. I give four samples, and the reader may take my word that
these samples are typical of the rest:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE FACTS
(From Washington Post.) Her name was Margaret Fazekes. She
was not the daughter of a striker,
Calumet, Mich., Sept. 1.—The copper and had no connection with the
strike situation took a serious strike. There was no clash with any
aspect today as a result of the picket. A Labor Day procession was
fatal shooting of Margaret Faxakas, being held at Kearsarge. It had
aged 15, daughter of a striker, at nothing to do with the strike. A
the North Kearsarge mine, when a band of armed guards without excuse
picket of strikers and women or occasion attacked the procession
clashed with deputy sheriffs and broke it up, firing about 100
guarding a mine. shots from their revolvers. This
girl was not in the procession. She
was walking along the sidewalk, and
a bullet from a gunman’s revolver
pierced her skull.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE AFFIDAVITS
Calumet, Mich., October 22, 1913. For instance, Victor Ozonick swears
that on July 31st he was walking
To the Associated Press, Chicago, quietly along the public road when
Ill. he was arrested, taken to Houghton
and thrust into jail. After a time
As a measure of precaution against he was taken into the sheriff’s
possible disorder, the troops have office and searched. A deputy
kept on the move bodies of strikers sheriff struck him in the face with
who collect while men are going to his clenched fist and then kicked
work in the morning, but this is him. He was then asked if he was a
not construed as interference with member of the miners’ union. When
any of the rights of the strikers. he said “yes” he was dragged back
to a cell and locked up for
twenty-four hours. After that he
was released. No warrant was issued
for his arrest, no charge was made
against him, no proceedings of any
kind were had.
There are sheafs of such affidavits relating the manner in which the
armed guards proceeded to obey the orders to “start something.” The
results of their efforts to obey their orders was a reign of terror
throughout the strike zone. Men, women and children were shot at,
beaten, ridden down by armed guards, or pursued along the highways. At
the road intersections shacks were erected, from the windows of which
the guards could command every house in a village, and the inmates
could not stir out of their dwellings except under the watchful eyes
of the gunmen and the muzzles of rifles.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE AFFIDAVITS
(From Chicago Record-Herald.) A mob composed chiefly of the
gentlemen of the Citizens’ Alliance
Calumet, Mich., Dec. 11.—Guerrilla gathered in Houghton and went by
warfare, which raged in the South special train to South Range. There
Range district of the copper the mob attacked the hall of the
miners’ strike zone, was ended South Range branch of the Western
today when a force of deputy Federation of Miners, broke down
sheriffs invaded several towns the door, smashed all the
there and made 39 arrests. The only furniture, seized all the books,
person injured was Timothy papers and records, and destroyed
Driscoll, a deputy sheriff, who was several thousand relief coupons
shot and seriously wounded when he that had been prepared for the
and other officers attempted to miners’ families. Henry Koski, the
force an entrance into a union secretary of the branch, lived over
hall. the hall. When the work of
destruction had been completed the
The trouble this morning centered mob rushed upstairs and began with
around the hall of the Western rifles to beat down the door to
Federation of Miners in the town of Koski’s rooms. He warned the
South Range. Here Driscoll was shot rioters that if they did not desist
and several of the arrests made. he would fire. They continued to
Henry Oski, a striker, was batter the door, whereupon he fired
specifically charged with wounding two shots, one of which passed
the officer, and he is said to have through the belly of one of the
implicated by his confession two rioters.
other members of the union.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS THE FACTS
(From the Washington Post.) A mob broke into the room in
Scott’s Hotel, Hancock, occupied by
Calumet, Michigan, Dec. 26.—Charles Mr. Moyer and Charles Tanner,
H. Moyer, president of the Western general auditor of the Western
Federation of Miners, was put on a Federation of Miners, seized them
train and sent out of the copper both, beat and kicked them, shot
strike district tonight. The Moyer in the back and dragged them,
deportation was the direct result both wounded, from the hotel into
of a refusal of families stricken the street.
by the Christmas Eve disaster here
to accept relief from a committee, The two prisoners were held so that
the majority of whose members they could not defend nor protect
belonged to the Citizens’ Alliance, themselves, and in this position
an organization combatting the five were dragged through the streets
months’ strike of the federation. and across the bridge to Houghton,
being incessantly kicked and
At the local federation beaten. Mr. Moyer was bleeding and
headquarters Moyer’s departure was weak from a revolver shot, and Mr.
called “a kidnapping by the Tanner was bleeding from a wound
Citizens’ Alliance.” The action was just below his right eye.
said to have caused no great
surprise, as it was said that In this condition they were placed
threats of such a possibility had upon a train and under armed guard
been received two weeks ago. taken out of the state, being
threatened with lynching if they
The relief committee, which had should return.
collected $25,000, found itself
unable to give away one cent when Nobody has been indicted nor
it started today to deliver the arrested for these assaults,
fund. although the persons that committed
them are perfectly well known in
Every bereaved household that was Hancock.
approached told the men and women
in charge of the distribution that But Mr. Moyer has been indicted for
they had been promised adequate aid conspiracy.
by the Western Federation of
Miners, and nowhere was there any
assistance wanted.
It might be worth while to summarize Russell’s narrative of the outcome
of this last matter. The leader of the mob was an eminent Bostonian,
James MacNaughton, vice-president and general manager of “Calumet and
Hecla.” When he was accused, the Associated Press took the trouble to
send out a dispatch explaining that he could not possibly have been the
man, because of an elaborate and complicated alibi—which alibi was later
proven to prove nothing. Mr. MacNaughton was never prosecuted in this
matter; nor was the Associated Press prosecuted—except by Charles Edward
Russell. We may believe the statement in Russell’s letter, that “the
Associated Press made a loud squeal on the story!” I would ask: Why did
they not prosecute Russell? Why is it that the general manager of the
Associated Press makes nothing but a “loud squeal”? Why does he content
himself with easy victories before church forums and chambers of
commerce banquets? Why does he not come into court and vindicate his
honor in an open contest before a jury?
CHAPTER LVIII
“POISONED AT THE SOURCE”
I have been privileged to examine a mass of material, some three or four
million printed and typewritten words, the evidence collected for the
defense of Max Eastman and Art Young, when they were indicted for
criminal libel in November, 1913, at the instance of the Associated
Press. These three or four million printed and typewritten words enable
us to enter the offices of the Associated Press, and to watch its work
hour by hour. They enable us to study the process whereby the public
opinion of America is “poisoned at the source.”
Three hundred miles from our national capital, in the lonely mountains
of West Virginia, exists an empire of coal, governed in all respects as
Russia was governed in the days of the Tsardom. I take up two printed
volumes of testimony given before the investigating committee of the
United States Senate, a total of 2,114 closely printed pages; I turn
these pages at random, and pick out a few heads that will give you
glimpses of how things are managed by the coal barons of West Virginia:
“Check weighmen guaranteed by law, but not allowed to the miners.” “Men
paid in scrip which they could not cash.” “Men discharged and put out of
their houses, as fast as they talked unionism.” “Mail burned by store
manager.” “Law of West Virginia relieves coal owners from liability for
injuries in the mine, no matter how they occur.” “Independent
store-keeper refused his goods at the express office which was on
company grounds.” “Men not allowed to approach postoffice on company
property.” “Provost Marshal imprisoned nine men without trial.” “No mine
guard has ever been tried for participating in any battle.”
“Machine-guns and guards turned on peaceful crowd coming from meeting.”
In “King Coal” I have portrayed the conditions in Colorado. In West
Virginia conditions were in all respects the same, and for the same
reason. When the sixteen months’ strike in West Virginia had been
smashed, the same mine guards, with the same rifles and machine-guns,
were shipped to Colorado, and under the direction of the same
Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency they smashed the fourteen months’ strike
in Colorado. And both in West Virginia and Colorado the same Associated
Press was made use of to send to the country the same misrepresentations
and suppressions of truth.
In the “Independent” for May 15, 1913, after the West Virginia strike
had lasted more than a year, there appeared an article by Mrs. Fremont
Older, describing the farcical military trial of some union officials at
Paint Creek Junction. Mrs. Older, the only impartial person who was able
to get into this court-room, made the statement: “The Provost Marshal
was not only the ruling officer of Paint Creek Junction; he was the
Associated Press correspondent. He had the divine gift for creating
darkness.” In the next issue of the “Independent” appeared a letter from
the assistant general manager of the Associated Press, declaring: “The
Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press correspondent, and never
had been.”
Nevertheless, this rumor would not down, and in the “Masses” for July,
1913, appeared a cartoon: “Poisoned at the Source,” representing the
president of the Associated Press engaged in pouring the contents of a
bottle labeled “Lies” into a reservoir labeled “Public Opinion.”
Accompanying the cartoon was an editorial, one sentence of which read:
“The representative of the Associated Press was an officer in that
military tribunal that hounded the Paint Creek miners into the
penitentiary in violation of their constitutional liberties.” The answer
of the Associated Press to this was the indictment for criminal libel of
Max Eastman and Art Young. The “Masses,” presumably by advice of
counsel, did not discuss the case, and continued to maintain silence,
even after the case was dropped. The facts are here made public for the
first time—possibly because in preparing this book I have not taken the
trouble to consult counsel. Here are certain facts which the public
should have; and if I have to hand them to the public through the bars
of a jail, it will not be the first time that has happened in history.
Was the Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia a
correspondent of the Associated Press? He was, or he was not—according
to whether you care about truth or technicality.
You are, doubtless, a loyal American. You believe in the constitution
and laws of your country, and you do not understand just what it meant
to be Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia during the coal
strike of 1912–13. If you think that it meant to be a public official,
performing a public service in the interest of the public, you are
naïve. To have had anything to do with the West Virginia State Militia
during that strike meant to be a creature of the mine operators, in the
pay of the mine operators, owned body and soul by the mine operators. It
meant that you were setting aside, not merely the laws of the state of
West Virginia, but the Constitution of the United States. It meant that
you were beating and flogging and shooting strikers, kicking their wives
and children out of their homes to freeze in the mountain snows, turning
machine-guns upon their tent-colonies, throwing their leaders into jail
without trial, and torturing them there for months on end. It meant
this, whether you were the lowest Baldwin-Felts mine-guard taken out of
a city slum and put into the militia uniform; or whether you were Capt.
Lester, an official of militia, who testified under oath before the
Senate committee that it was not his business to know if miners had a
legal right to organize or not—he was sent there to prevent their
organizing, and he did what he was sent there to do.
And now, just what was the relationship of the Associated Press to this
prostituted State Militia? Was the Provost Marshal of Militia the
Associated Press correspondent in this field? He was, or he was
not—according as you care about truth or technicality.
The Associated Press correspondent at Charleston, who covered all the
strike, and who had been officially appointed and acknowledged, was a
man named Cal Young, and he had his office in the office, or connected
with the office, of the Adjt. General of Militia. This Cal Young had an
intimate friend by the name of John C. Bond, who was Provost Marshal of
Militia, and also was correspondent for several newspapers. Cal Young
did not trouble himself to travel about in the strike field, which was
widely scattered, occupying a number of mountain valleys. Bond, however,
was compelled by his militia duties to travel to the scene of all
troubles; therefore Bond and Young had an arrangement whereby Bond
telephoned news from wherever he was, and Young sent this news, not only
over the Associated Press wire, but to the papers which Bond
represented.
The above was stated from first-hand positive knowledge by Jesse
Sullivan at the State House to an attorney for whom I can vouch. Also it
was sworn to by W. Bruce Reid, reporter for the “Charleston Gazette” and
the “Kanawha Citizen.” Reid swore that he knew Young intimately; that
Young maintained his offices in the Adjt. General’s office without
charge; that Young from this office transmitted orders for the movements
of the State Militia, and for these services was paid out of the
Governor’s contingent fund; that he acted as official reporter for the
state administration; that anyone who called at the State House for news
was referred by the Governor and the Adjt. General to Young; that Young
received news of military doings and of strike incidents from J. C.
Bond, who was a printing clerk in the Secretary of State’s office, and
also captain and paymaster of militia; that Bond was made Provost
Marshal, with absolute authority over the strike territory, and tried a
number of citizens, ninety-eight in all, by military tribunal; that Bond
had a regular arrangement with Young whereby he furnished Young with
news reports; and that Young had an understanding with the military
department whereby all news was given out through him.
Reid further testified that he was instructed by the militia authorities
to distort news, and also to write editorials for his paper, supporting
the military policy; that when he refused to do this, the editors of his
paper were called up and practically instructed to write such
editorials, and that they did this; that furthermore Reid was threatened
if he failed to distort news as directed; that all these things were
well known to Young, correspondent of the Associated Press; that Young
was “extremely bitter against the miners’ cause”; that he continually so
expressed himself before Reid; that a correspondent of the “Baltimore
Sun,” who came to Charleston, was so impressed with Young’s prejudice
that he went into the field for himself, and wrote an entirely different
account of the events. It was known that Young, while Associated Press
representative, was seeking employment from the state administration,
and he had since obtained such employment.
So much for outside evidence. And now let us hear from Young himself.
The attorney sent by the “Masses” called upon Cal Young, who told him
that after the strike he had been discharged from the Associated Press
by W. H. French, manager of the Pittsburgh division, and that French had
stated to him that the reason was that Fremont Older and others had made
complaint concerning the news that the Associated Press had furnished
from West Virginia. Young admitted practically everything as stated by
Reid: his desk in the Adjt. General’s office, his relations with the
administration, and his arrangement with Bond, whereby Bond furnished
him regularly and continually with news from the field. I note three
sentences from the investigator’s report:
Young also stated that before martial law he got most of his
information from the Sheriff or Deputy Sheriff, or from telegraph
operators who were in the employ of the railroad company or the mine
owners. He stated that although he went up the Creek a few times, he
obtained most of the information through official reports. Young
stated that through the Senatorial investigation he had to cover other
territory and that during that time Bond covered the investigation for
the A. P.
Such are the facts. I have taken the trouble to give them at length, so
that you may judge for yourself. And in the light of these facts, what
do you think of the letter published in the “Independent” over the
signature of Frederick Roy Martin, assistant General Manager of the
Associated Press? Do you think that Mr. Martin was entirely ingenuous
when he stated: “The Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press
correspondent, and never had been”?
W. H. French, manager of the Pittsburgh division of the Associated
Press, was subpoenaed by the “Masses” editors, and gave his deposition
in advance of the expected trial. It was a trial all in itself, and the
stenographic record of it lies before me. For the light it throws on Mr.
French’s sincerity, let it be noted that he swore he could remember
nothing whatever of his conversation with Cal Young when he discharged
Young from the employ of the Associated Press. The discharge had taken
place less than a year previously, and Mr. French had taken a special
trip from Pittsburgh to Charleston, West Virginia, to attend to the
matter. But he could not remember why he had discharged Young, nor what
he had said to Young. He could not remember having mentioned Fremont
Older’s complaints. He vaguely thought that he had mentioned Bond, but
he couldn’t be sure in what connection he had mentioned Bond!
Mr. French explained in detail the methods by which the Associated Press
handled its news, and the principles upon which he and his subordinates
“edited” it. He produced a bulky mass of typewritten sheets, containing
all the dispatches dealing with the West Virginia strike sent out by the
Associated Press during sixteen months. Mr. French swore that this
record was complete; and you will readily understand that in studying
the reports it is of the utmost importance whether Mr. French was
telling the truth. If the Associated Press sends out hundreds of
dispatches about a strike, and if, before such dispatches are offered in
evidence, they are carefully gone over and those which are flagrantly
untrue and damaging to the reputation of the Associated Press are
extracted and destroyed—then obviously the Associated Press has poisoned
the evidence of the trial at the source.
Can I say that the officials of the Associated Press did thus poison the
evidence by which they endeavored to send Max Eastman and Art Young to
the penitentiary? No, I cannot say that. All I can say is, that Mr.
French submitted this record under oath, as the original record, and a
correct and complete record, and testified under oath that there was no
possibility of its being incorrect or incomplete. Also I can say that an
investigation made in the bound files of two Associated Press newspapers
revealed the fact that these papers had published dispatches, marked as
sent by the Associated Press, which did not appear in the correct and
complete record offered under oath by the Associated Press. Such a
dispatch may be found in the “Los Angeles Times,” September 9, 1912,
marked “(by A. P. Night Wire to the Times).” Another such dispatch may
be found in the “Nashville American,” September 22, 1912, marked “(By
Associated Press).”
Let us take the five hundred and thirty-seven exhibits that the
Associated Press did submit. By means of them we are enabled to enter
the Associated Press’ Pittsburgh office and watch step by step the
process of poisoning the news at the source. Mr. French, it appears, was
not satisfied with the bitterly prejudiced reports which his
correspondent, Young, and Young’s partner, Bond, sent in to him. He
found it necessary to go over their dispatches, and to put in still more
poison. The dispatches, as submitted in evidence, contained numerous
pencil-marks, excisions and revisions; and all these were initialed, so
that it was possible to tell whether Mr. French or one of his assistants
had done the work.
Mr. French, under cross examination, explained exactly upon what
principles this “editing” had been done. Thus there had been cut out a
sentence: “That mine-guards have resorted to unlawful practice is
generally conceded.” Mr. French explained that this sentence was
editorial opinion; the dispatch did not say _who_ conceded it. Mr.
French declared that he used this same system of editing all through the
dispatches. But in the same dispatch his attention was called to the
sentence: “Contrary to expectations, the miners did not go to the
meeting armed with rifles.” This clearly prejudiced sentence stayed in
the dispatch—in spite of the fact that the dispatch did not reveal
_whose_ expectations were referred to! And Mr. French testified that
such cutting out of a sentence favorable to the miners and leaving in of
a sentence injurious to the miners did not in his judgment render the
dispatch unfair. Mr. French repeated the words twice: “I do not say
unfair. I do not say unfair.” So we are provided with a precise measure
of the sense of fairness of an Associated Press manager in charge of
strike-news!
In one case the story of an ambush by miners came to the Pittsburgh
office, with the qualification: “According to the story which reached
here this afternoon.” These words were cut out—the effect of the
alteration being to make a rumor into a statement of fact. Mr. French
could give no justification for this proceeding. From another dispatch
the sentence had been cut: “The workers were ready to stick to the
last.” That seemed to Mr. French a superfluous sentence! Again he had
altered a dispatch which interviewed the President of the United Mine
Workers of America. “He declared that the miners of West Virginia were
groaning under oppressive methods.” Mr. French’s office had altered it
to read that the miners _had been_ groaning; and he could see no
difference in this change of tense!
I have taken the trouble myself to study the dispatches; and how I wish
that I might have Mr. French upon the witness-stand! I would like to go
through the five hundred and thirty-seven dispatches and point out how
utterly false is his claim that hearsays and opinions were not admitted.
There are literally hundreds of hearsays and opinions! For example, the
miners are threatening trouble, and “it is thought that on account of
this situation the martial law zone may have to be extended.” Again: “In
some quarters the opinion was expressed that the miners had retired into
the mountains.” Again: “All the prisoners, it was reported, have been
removed from box-cars and were being made as comfortable as possible.”
Again: “This afternoon there was considerable shooting at Holly Grove.
It is said that men employed in the mines were accosted by strikers.”
Again: “Armed miners have taken possession of the strike territory,
according to reports.” Such hearsays and opinions as this you find in
every other dispatch. Certain testimony is introduced before a
commission of the Governor of the State, and the Pittsburgh office of
the Associated Press is so in love with hearsays and opinions that it
takes some of the evidence introduced and deliberately turns it into
hearsay and opinion! I quote one paragraph, first as it was sent in by
the correspondent in the field, and second as it was altered in the
Pittsburgh office:
The evidence introduced all tends to show that the prices at the
company stores have been much higher than at independent stores, and
that there had been no trouble until the mine-guards were brought into
the district.
_According to the miners_ the prices at the company stores have been
much higher than at independent stores. _They say_ there would have
been no trouble if the mine-guards had not been brought into the
district.
On November 20, 1912, the Charleston correspondent sent a long dispatch
about the fighting, and whole paragraphs of this dispatch were cut out
in the Pittsburgh office. I note that in these paragraphs were many
hearsays and opinions; but I note that Mr. French’s assistants were not
content to cut out the hearsays and opinions—they also cut out the news.
Here, for example, is one paragraph that never saw the light:
During the first period of military control the sympathy, it is
claimed of a majority of the West Virginians, was with the miners.
Since that time many of the union miners have left this section,
taking their families into other coal fields. Then, it is alleged, the
contention was the removal of the mine-guard system maintained by the
coal operators, which had become obnoxious to the miners.
Or these two sentences, cut from the same dispatch:
Many strike-breakers imported into the trouble zone have deserted.
Today hundreds of these men reached this city from the mining district
and walked the streets.
It is especially interesting to note that the date of the dispatch from
which the above two paragraphs were cut corresponds exactly with a date
when Mr. French, according to his own testimony, sent a special
correspondent to Charleston to report the news more fully. He sent a
special man, and when this special man sent news favorable to the
miners, Mr. French or his assistants sliced out whole chunks from his
dispatches—practically everything giving the miners’ side!
On September 25, 1912, the Associated Press correspondent in Charleston
was moved by some unaccountable impulse to tell the world the precise
mechanism of the blacklist which the companies maintained—while
insisting, of course, that they had never heard of a blacklist. Says the
dispatch:
This it was shown was accomplished through a personal description of a
miner on the back of house leases. If the miner was dismissed as
undesirable other operators were given a copy of the description.
But was this dangerous information allowed to go out to the world? It
was not!
Or again, take the dispatch of February 10, 1913, which tells how,
whenever the militiamen came after the strikers, the strikers would
dodge trouble; they would “defeat the purpose of the authorities by
quietly retiring into the mountains.” Mr. French’s office makes such a
slight change; it merely cuts out one word—the word “quietly”—thus
turning a joke into a military operation! Or take the night dispatch of
April 22, 1913, which tells how the Governor of West Virginia made a
speech to the miners’ delegates. Among other things the Governor said:
“I assure you that the laboring world has no better friend in public
office than myself.” The Pittsburgh office of the Associated Press cut
out this incendiary sentence from the Governor’s speech!
A still more illuminating method of approaching the problem is to
compare the Associated Press dispatches as they actually reached the
public with the facts as developed by sworn testimony of hundreds of
witnesses before the Senate committee. I have made many such
comparisons; I will give one.
Among the men who testified before the Senate committee was Lee Calvin,
a mine-guard of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. Calvin later made an
affidavit, in the course of which he told of his experiences on board
the “Bull Moose Special,” an armored train which was taken up and down
the railroads of these valleys, to shoot up the homes and tent-colonies
of the strikers with a machine-gun. This “Bull Moose Special” was at the
disposal, not merely of the state militia and of the mine-guards, but of
the mine-operators as well. Calvin tells how he was invited by Quinn
Morton, the largest coal-operator in the Kanawha Valley, to join a
shooting party on the night of February 7, 1913. There were two or three
dozen men with several boxes of guns; also the machine-gun. I quote from
an affidavit by Calvin:
When we got near Holly Grove the brakeman commenced turning down the
lights. When the engineer came in front of Holly Grove he gave two
short blasts from the whistle. I was leaning out of the window and
they commenced firing out of the baggage car. Flashes, lights, reports
and cracks from the machine-gun took me all at once, and the train was
a long stream of fire which commenced coming out of the Gatling gun.
In about twenty or thirty seconds there came a flash here and there
from the tents. About four came from the tents altogether, and they
were about 100 feet apart, it would seem to me. No shots had been
fired from the tents prior to the time the shots were fired from the
train.
Do not imagine that these incidents rest upon the credibility of Lee
Calvin alone. They were sworn to by numerous persons of all classes. Mr.
Quinn Morton himself admitted before the Senate committee that he had
called up the superintendent of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and
ordered the “Bull Moose Special” for that night; also that he had gone
to a hardware store and purchased thirty Springfield rifles and taken
them in a taxi-cab to the train. He objected to the train being referred
to as “his” train—explaining that by the objection he meant that he did
not own the train!
Also there was introduced the evidence of many persons who happened to
be at the muzzle-end of Mr. Morton’s thirty Springfield rifles: for
example, Mrs. Estep, wife of a miner in Holly Grove:
Senator Kenyon: “Had there been any disorder in the settlement that
night? Had you heard any shooting before that time?”
Mrs. Estep: “No, sir.”
Senator Kenyon: “Could you hear this train coming?”
Mrs. Estep: “We heard it after it commenced shooting. We had not heard
it before. We had our doors closed.”
Senator Kenyon: “Could you see the train?”
Mrs. Estep: “No, sir; I never went out the front way at all.”
Senator Kenyon: “When did you know your husband was shot?”
Mrs. Estep: “I didn’t know he was killed until after the train quit
shooting, and I heard some of them speak to him and call his name, and
I never heard him answer.”
And now, put yourself in the place of the Associated Press
correspondent, with your office in the Adjt. General’s office in the
State House. This train, you understand, starts from Charleston, and
comes back to Charleston, and militia officers are on it, and deputy
sheriffs are on it. You know Quinn Morton well; you know everybody
concerned well; you are in the midst of the gossip and excitement, you
see the warriors come back from the fray, boasting of their
achievements, laughing and “kidding” one another. You know that they
have done this thing several times before, and intend to go on doing it.
It is your duty to furnish the American people with news concerning
their doings.
The matter is a ticklish one, because Quinn Morton is the largest coal
operator in the Kanawha Valley. Of course you cannot mention his name in
such a connection; you cannot imply that any mine-operator ever had
anything to do with violence, nor must you admit that a striker was
killed during a machine-gun attack upon a village at night. You cover
the death of Mrs. Estep’s husband in one clever sentence as follows:
According to information received here late today, Robert Estep, a
miner, was killed last night during the rioting at Mucklow.
The above sentence is from an Associated Press dispatch. And here are
the three dispatches in which the news of the “Bull Moose Special” was
sent out to the world. I give them exactly as they stand, with all the
telegraph marks and technicalities. I might mention that the word
“correct,” which has been inserted, is an “A. P.” mark; I do not know
its relation to the dispatch. Also I might add that the words “passenger
train” are Associated Press euphemism for “Bull Moose Special.” You may
not recognize the events, but this is really the same “Bull Moose”
expedition that Lee Calvin and Quinn Morton and Mrs. Estep have just
told us about:
BULLETIN
Charleston, W. Va., Feb. 7.
Conditions are critical tonight in Paint and Cabin Creeks, Kanawha
County, where a coal strike has been on over a year. A Chesapeake and
Ohio passenger train was shot up late tonight; the town of Mucklow, W.
Va., was riddled with bullets and a physician, with a man dying
driving through the district, was fired upon. When the physician with
his patient arrived at the hospital, the patient was dead.
Will Be Add,
H.
A T J—12:55 A. M.
.tb
BULLETIN
Charleston, W. Va., Feb. 7.
(Add bulletin.)
The Chesapeake and Ohio passenger train ran for half a mile under
fire, but no one was injured. At Mucklow a majority of houses bear
marks from rifles, but in this place no one was injured.
Late tonight a conference was held with Governor Glasscock, during
which Sheriff Bonner Hill asked the governor that troops be sent into
the strike territory. Sheriff Hill notified the governor that the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad would have a special train ready to move
the troops at once.
Will Be Add,
H.
A 2 J—1:11 A. M.
.tb
BULLETIN
Charleston, W. Va., Feb. 7.
(Add bulletin.)
At midnight striking miners were gathering from Paint and Cabin Creeks
in the vicinity of Mucklow. There is anxiety here as to the next move
of the strikers.
The engineer and two passengers were injured when the passenger train
on the Chesapeak and Ohio was fired upon. (CORRECT.)
Deputy sheriffs waiting for such an attack as occurred tonight were
prepared. The officers directed bullets into Mucklow from rapid fire
guns and rifles. The miners’ camp was subjected to a heavy fire and
whether the shots were effective is not known.
Mucklow is surrounded by mountains and the fighting between strikers
and the authorities is difficult.
H.
A 2 J—1:22 A. M.
These are your night dispatches. Next day more details come in, and you
send a message to the effect that the sheriff and his deputies cannot
get into the miners’ camp to see if any of the campers have been killed
or injured. Then, realizing that serious trouble is coming, you wonder
whether you may not have distorted the news a little more than is
permitted, even to an Associated Press correspondent. You fear that you
have put in a fatal dose of poison, and decide to protect yourself by
sending a small quantity of antidote—such a wee, small quantity of
antidote! You write:
Shooting from the train, attacked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad
during the night, _was in the direction of the camp_, and it was
feared that if any of the women and children had been hurt the sheriff
and his men would be unable to restrain the angry men as they
outnumber the posse ten to one, and are said to be well armed.
Such is the news, and all the news which the Associated Press sent to
the public about that exploit of the “Bull Moose Special” on the night
of February 7, 1913. And now do you think, or do you not think, that the
editors of the “Masses” were justified in their cartoon alleging that
this news was “Poisoned at the Source”? I think so; also I think that
Senator John W. Kern of Indiana was justified in his statements made in
the United States Senate three months later, regarding the suppression
of other news from this coal strike:
But to me the most startling fact bearing on the subject under
discussion was this: Here was a proceeding not only unusual but almost
unheard of being carried on almost in sight of the capital of West
Virginia and within 300 miles of the National capital. One of the
best-known women in America—a woman past her eightieth year—a woman
known and loved by millions of the working people of America for the
promotion of whose welfare and for the amelioration of whose condition
she had dedicated her life—a woman so honored and beloved by these
millions that she was known to all of them in every humble home as
Mother Jones, was being tried in this unusual way before this mock
tribunal.
The fact of the trial was sensational. The subject matter of the trial
was of the deepest interest The incidents of such a trial would be of
necessity, not only sensational, but would interest the country.
And yet the great news-gathering agencies of the country, active,
alert, with a large, intelligent force searching everywhere for items
of news, were not able to furnish a line of information to their
newspaper patrons concerning this astonishing proceeding.
This fact speaks volumes as to the conditions in that terror-stricken
country. A zone had been established for these infamous proceedings
for the purpose of suppressing information concerning them.
I was informed by a representative of the greatest of all these
news-gathering agencies that the proceedings were not reported because
the conditions there were such that it was not safe for newspaper men
to enter the field to secure the facts for publication.
This same agency has had a representative in the City of Mexico
throughout the period of the recent revolutions. He was not afraid to
remain there and report faithfully the news while the streets were
being plowed and mowed by the deadly missiles from the cannons of
contending armies. But in West Virginia the situation was such that
the American reading public was kept in profound ignorance of the
startling happenings there because of a reign of terror which could
not be braved by the dauntless representatives of the American Press
associations.
This single fact alone will justify fully the most searching
investigation.
I have discussed in Chapter XLII the mystery of why the Associated Press
dropped the case against the “Masses.” I always prefer to give both
sides of a question, and it was my hope that I might be able to give the
Associated Press explanation of this mystery. My hope was roused by Mr.
Stone himself, who entered into correspondence with me, and made the
flat-footed statement: “I am glad to give anyone information respecting
this organization.” I, being a trusting person, took Mr. Stone at his
word, and wrote him a courteous letter, putting to him four questions,
as follows:
1. Was any investigation made of my wife’s complaint to you of the
false report sent out by the Associated Press that she was arrested on
April 29, 1914, in New York City? And why was no correction of this
false report ever made, in spite of my wife’s written request? Every
New York newspaper and every other press association in America sent
out a correct report of my arrest, only the Associated Press reported
that my wife was arrested.
2. What was the result of the investigation which you promised to make
concerning my article published in the “Appeal to Reason” in the
latter part of May, 1914, telling of the refusal of the Associated
Press to send out a report of a deliberate lie told by Gov. Ammons of
Colorado to President Wilson? Mr. John P. Gavit of the “New York
Evening Post” showed me your letter, promising to investigate this
matter.
3. What was the reason the Associated Press decided to drop the libel
suit against the “Masses”?
4. What action, if any, did the Associated Press take concerning the
charges published in “Pearson’s Magazine” by Charles Edward Russell,
dealing with its gross and systematic misrepresentation of the Calumet
strikers?
I put these four questions politely, and in entire good faith, and
instantly my correspondence with Mr. Stone comes to an end! I wait day
by day; I wait with sorrow and yearning, but no answer comes from Mr.
Stone. I delay sending my book to the printer for more than two months,
hoping to get a reply from Mr. Stone; but I get no reply!
I now publicly address to Mr. Stone one final communication. I implore
him, for the sake of the honor of the great institution which he
represents, for the sake of the good name of all American Journalism,
not to swallow in silence the charges published in a book called “The
Brass Check.” I implore him to have the author of that volume arrested
for criminal libel—and when the case is ready for trial, not to drop it!
My wife reads this chapter and asks me to omit the last paragraph. She
says I am “bow-wowing” at Mr. Stone.
I think it over and decide to accept the metaphor. I picture a big dog
walking down the street, a stately and dignified dog, and a very little
dog comes up behind him and says “bow-wow,” and the big dog puts his
tail between his legs and runs. However we may think about this
incident, one thing certainly has been accomplished—the big dog has been
robbed of his pose. Never again will we regard him as a stately and
dignified dog!
CHAPTER LIX
THE PRESS AND THE WAR
War came upon the world, and the writer, as a student of Journalism,
watched the great tide of public opinion. There had been newspapers in
America which had kept a careful pretense of impartiality; under the
pressure of war this pretense was forgotten. For example, the “New York
Times.” Everyone would admit that the editorial page of the “Times” is
class-propaganda, but the “Times” tries not to let you know that its
news-columns are class-propaganda. It avoids the cruder blunders, such
as false headlines. But when the threat of war came, and the “Times” was
trying to force the country into war, the “Times” forgot even that
precaution. On Thanksgiving Day, 1915, some twelve hundred clergymen in
New York preached sermons. The “Times” selected eleven of these sermons
and put them all under this headline:
PREPAREDNESS FROM MANY PULPITS
Thanksgiving Sermons Justify War for Defense of American Liberty and
Ideals
Then you read the sermons, and what did you find? Three of them
contained utterances which might be construed as urging preparedness;
the other eight contained not a word in reference to preparedness!
And the same with the magazines. There had been magazines which in the
old days would give excuses for not publishing this or that—they were
concerned with questions of dignity, of art; they could not lend their
columns to propaganda. But now these magazines became frankly organs of
propaganda. Long before America entered the war, “McClure’s” turned all
its energies to a campaign for “preparedness.” The “American,” the
“Metropolitan,” the “Outlook” did the same. “Current Opinion” abandoned
its policy of reprinting from other publications, and introduced
propaganda of its own. The “Literary Digest,” supposed to be an
impartial survey of public opinion, became a partisan organ of hate.
Says a writer in “Reedy’s Mirror”:
The standardizing of the press had already proceeded to inordinate
lengths before the war. As one sectional bookcase may differ from
another of the same pattern only in its greater or lesser number of
sections, so differs one American newspaper from another American
newspaper. However, some small opportunity for individuality, for
thought or pretense of thought, still existed, but even this has
ended. With the opening of the war the American press ceased to think.
The abstention has been so complete and prolonged that it may never be
possible to resume the habit of thinking.
Look over these newspapers as they come in from the mails. Flag-waving
of the cheapest, most brainless sort, Liberty Bonds, Thrift Stamps,
Red Cross. This is the gamut that has countless repetition from New
York to San Francisco, supplemented only by supercensored, mercilessly
standardized stuff from the fighting fronts.
The writer of this book gave his support to the war against Germany, and
has no apology to make for that course. He believed that the world would
be a safer place for radicals to work in when the Kaiser had been
overthrown; he still believes this—even though at the moment it seems
that the result of our fighting has been to set up new imperialisms in
Italy, France, England and America.
But my support of the war did not mean that I had given myself into the
hands of war-profiteers. I saw that the old-time plunderers of America
were among the war’s most ardent supporters, and they went right on with
their plundering—becoming “dollar-a-year” men in Washington, with a
great cry of patriotism, and letting themselves contracts out of which
hundreds of millions of profit were made! The Beef Trust, the Steel
Trust, the Oil Trust, the Powder Trust, multiplied many times over the
profits they were taking from the necessities of the people; also they
dictated legislation which spared their profits, and saddled the cost of
the war upon future generations. A war has to be won with materials then
existing in the world, or immediately produced; it manifestly cannot be
won with materials produced a generation later. The only question is,
shall the necessary materials be taken from the owners by means of
taxes, or shall they be borrowed, shall the labor of future generations
be pledged in exchange? This is clear and simple; but if you tried to
explain it to the people during the war you would be lynched, or sent to
jail for twenty years.
It was the grand chance for the plunderers of America to put their
enemies, the radicals, out of the way. Many of these radicals opposed
the war, but others were put out of the way merely for opposing the
profiteers, and they received sentences which, for ferocity, exceed
anything in the records of the Russian Tsardom. Some two thousand of
them are still in jail, their sentences aggregating twenty-five thousand
years.
It would have been a simple matter to persuade the Socialists to support
the war. We know today that Nicholas Lenine asked only a promise of
support from America, offering to repudiate the Brest-Litovsk treaty and
join the war on Kaiserism. As to labor at home, an intelligent army
officer showed the way in the Northwest; he gave the lumbermen an
eight-hour day, decent living conditions, and generous wages, and so
turned the I. W. W. of the spruce country into a patriotic society. But
elsewhere the army officers were less intelligent, and the profiteers
had their way; in the oil country of Kansas they threw scores of I. W.
W. organizers into jail without trial, and held them there for a couple
of years. They are holding some thirty of them still, and my mail is
full of pitiful letters from poor devils who are asked to raise ten
thousand dollars bail. All over the country this was done—in a frenzy of
public excitement, deliberately created by the capitalist press.
The story of what the newspapers did to American radicals in this crisis
would be unbelievable—if you had not read the rest of this book. Thus,
for example, the case of Bannwart, a Boston pacifist, one of a committee
which called upon Senator Lodge to protest against the declaration of
war. Senator Lodge lost his temper and struck Bannwart in the face; and
all over the country went the report that Senator Lodge had been
assaulted in his office by a pacifist! The Senator became a national
hero; the Boston newspapers printed columns and columns about the
incident, and when Bannwart called upon the Senator to admit the truth,
he not only refused to admit it, but gave out for publication many
telegrams congratulating him upon his heroism. No newspaper would
publish Bannwart’s side, and he was helpless for two years, until his
suit for damages was about to come up in court; then the Senator gave
way, and admitted in writing that he had struck the first blow. You have
been acquainted with the “Evening Transcript,” organ of Boston’s
aristocracy of wealth and culture, which publishes half-page
advertisements of “Harvard Beer 1,000 pure,” and full-page
advertisements of the arguments of gas company attorneys, and sends out
“dope” for the “New Haven” plunderers; so you will be prepared to hear
that the “Transcript” buried this apology of Senator Lodge in a remote
corner, and without comment!
Or take the experience of my friend Feigenbaum, Socialist Assemblyman of
New York State. The Socialist assemblymen had been protesting against
the custom of the machine gang to drive through bills without
consideration. They resolved to put a stop to the custom; whereupon the
machine leaders set a little trap for the Socialists. A bill was
introduced, without being read, and the speaker asked unanimous consent
to advance it to the second reading. The leader of the Socialist group
immediately objected. The bill had not been read, he declared, no one on
the floor knew what was in the bill, no one even knew the name of the
bill. The speaker cut him short: “No explanation is necessary. Your
objection is sufficient.” So the bill, under the rules, went over to the
next day. Says Feigenbaum:
The members drifted out to the cloak-rooms, or they remained at their
desks. They didn’t know what the bill was about, because nine-tenths
of them hadn’t read it, and not more than four or five were in the
secret of the day’s mysterious doings.
But next morning the Socialists found out what had happened. The bill
was to turn over certain lands in Saratoga County to the War Department,
and the Socialists had been guilty of stopping war legislation which was
desperately needed! The “New York Tribune” carried an elaborate account
of a tempestuous scene, in which the speaker had “scathingly rebuked,”
the Socialist leader. The members had swarmed around the Socialists,
shaking their fists in their faces, threatening them with physical
violence; also, the Socialist leader had refused to stand at the playing
of the national anthem. Says Feigenbaum: “The whole story was a
fabrication, pure and simple, out of whole cloth.” And he tells what
happened afterwards—
A campaign of vilification hitherto unheard of. It went so far that
Albany papers called for the raiding of the rooms we occupied, called
for a boycott of us by shop-keepers and restaurant-men in Albany, and
gave high praise to a drunken ruffian, an ex-prizefighter, member of
the Assembly, who in a drunken fit of temper called for the lynching
of the Socialists. This speech was highly praised editorially in
Albany and Troy.
During the war our industrial autocracy has learned to organize for
propaganda; it has learned the arts of hate. Today all the energies
which were directed against the Kaiser have been turned against the
radicals; also the spy-system which the government developed for the war
has been turned against the radicals. Government agents raid their
offices and seize their letters, and these letters are spread broadcast
in the capitalist press—duly doctored, of course, and supplied with
commentaries to distort their meaning.
For example, the “Lusk Committee” of the New York State Legislature
holds a secret session with the executives of the New York newspapers
(June 3, 1919, at the Murray Hill Hotel), and lays out its campaign in
detail. It then proceeds, with a carload of soldiers and detectives, to
raid the Rand School of Social Science; taking along a secret service
agent of the British government, which is shooting radicals in Ireland
and India, and wishes to find out all it can about their supporters in
America. They find a manuscript, outlining a plan for propaganda among
negroes. It was a rejected manuscript, as it happens; but the Lusk
Committee “accepts” it, and spreads it broadcast. I shiver,
contemplating the day when they raid my office, and publish all the
queer manuscripts that arrive in my day’s mail! Manuscripts of
health-cures, manuscripts of bible-prophecies, manuscripts of plans to
abolish money, to communicate with Mars, to exterminate the vermin in
the Los Angeles County Jail!
Also they find a circular of the Rand School, saying that the Socialists
“must prepare to take over the government.” They publish this in the
newspapers with horrified clamor: Sedition! Treason! Let the charter of
the Rand School be annulled! As if there were any political party or
political association in America which does not propose to take over the
government! As if there were anything else which any political party or
political association could propose!
Among the other seditious documents are some copies of “The Profits of
Religion,” which gives occasion for sarcasm from the investigators. They
propose to investigate “the profits of agitation”; so they spread
broadcast the fact that Scott Nearing was paid six hundred dollars by
the Rand School—and deny Nearing an opportunity to testify that part of
this was payment for lectures delivered outside of the school, for which
the school had collected the money on a percentage basis; and the
balance for lecturing at the school, at a rate approximating ten cents
per week for each student!
They lie about the pacifists and those whom they call Bolsheviks; they
lie equally about a man like myself, who supported the war, and is
opposing Bolshevism. In the accounts of the proceedings of the Senate
Committee investigating “Bolshevism in America,” there was submitted,
according to newspaper accounts, a long list of writings “urging the
overthrow of the United States government by violence”; among the
writers named being Upton Sinclair. I at once wrote to Solicitor Lamar
of the postoffice department, to Major Humes, and to Senator
Overman—these being the parties who had compiled the writings in
question. I explained to these gentlemen that for twenty years I had
been writing for the precise purpose of avoiding “the overthrow of the
United States government by violence,” and I requested to know what
writings of mine could have justified their charge. I have letters from
all three of these parties, stating that nothing of mine was included,
or had been included in the list; the published report of the Overman
Committee reveals that this statement is correct; yet the dispatch
including my name was sent broadcast over the country by the Associated
Press—and I am without redress!
The listing of anecdotes of this sort is merely a question of the amount
of space one is willing to give. The United States government is
deporting Hindu revolutionists to be executed by the British government
when they reach India. Prof. Richard Gottheil of Columbia University
writes to the “New York Times” denying that this is so. Robert Morse
Lovett, editor of the “Dial,” writes to the “Times,” citing case after
case, upon British official authority. And the “Times” refuses to print
Mr. Lovett’s letter! A friend of mine writes to Prof. Gottheil about it,
and he answers that he wishes the “Times” would print Mr. Lovett’s
letter, because he believes in fair play. But the “Times” does not
believe in fair play!
In the same way, the “Times” attacks “Jimmie Higgins.” In the last
chapters of this story an American soldier is represented as being
tortured in an American military prison. Says the “Times”:
Mr. Sinclair should produce the evidence upon which he based his
astounding accusations, if he has any. If he has simply written on
hearsay evidence, or, worse still, let himself be guided by his
craving to be sensational, he has laid himself open not only to
censure but to punishment.
In reply to this, I send to the “Times” a perfectly respectful letter,
citing scores of cases, and telling the “Times” where hundreds of other
cases may be found. The “Times” returns this letter without comment. A
couple of months pass, and as a result of the ceaseless, agitation of
the radicals, there is a congressional investigation, and evidence of
atrocious cruelties is forced into the newspapers. The “Times” publishes
an editorial entitled, “Prison Camp Cruelties,” the first sentence of
which reads: “The fact that American soldiers confined in prison-camps
have been treated with extreme brutality may now be regarded as
established.” So again I write a polite letter to the “Times,” pointing
out that I think they owe me an apology. And how does the “Times” treat
that? It alters my letter without my permission! It cuts out my request
for an apology, and also my quotation of its own words calling for my
punishment! The “Times,” caught in a hole, refuses to let me remind its
readers that it wanted me “punished” for telling the truth! “All the
News that’s Fit to Print!”
Or take the case of Henry Ford, who brings suit against the “Chicago
Tribune” for libel, and cites five lies in one single news item:
Lie No. 1. That guardsmen employed by Ford would lose their places.
Lie No. 2. That no provision would be made for their dependents.
Lie No. 3. That their families could get along as best they might.
Lie No. 4. That when they returned they would have to apply for their
old jobs as strangers.
Lie No. 5. That this rule applied to the Ford plants everywhere.
At the trial it was proven that all these statements were false. All the
Ford workers who were drafted to Mexico had their wages paid to their
families while they were away. On the other hand it was shown, through
the testimony of Joseph Medill Patterson, one of the editors of the
“Tribune,” and a renegade Socialist, that he had ordered the stopping of
the pay of all those “Tribune” men who were drafted to Europe! I quote
the testimony.
“How many of your employes went to the great war?”
“About two hundred and sixty-eight.”
“None of them drew salaries?”
“No.”
“But you drew your salary when you went over-seas, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And your salary is about twenty thousand dollars a year, isn’t it?”
Witness admitted that it was.
“The World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
Or take the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota. All through the war the
newspapers strove to make this appear a disloyal organization. The
League held a convention at St. Paul, at which hundreds of speeches were
made; and the Associated Press found it possible to make one of the
speakers, La Follette, appear disloyal by misquoting him. So it featured
La Follette—and reported the other speakers hardly at all. As this book
is going to press, the League bank is raided, and the farmers by
thousands come pouring into Fargo in the rain, and at two enormous
gatherings they pledge themselves to make their bank the biggest in the
state. The bank is reopened, and on the first day forty-five thousand
dollars is put in and only nine thousand taken out. And how is all this
handled by the Associated Press? Hear the “Idaho Leader”:
Several newspaper representatives from St. Paul and Minneapolis were
present to send as unfavorable reports of the great meeting to their
papers as they could, and the Associated Press, the news agency which
supplies the “Boise Statesman” with its daily fables from North
Dakota, evidently fearing that their local manager was not capable of
falsifying in the manner which big business demands, sent a special
representative out from St. Paul to report the meeting. And this “A.
P.” representative did himself proud, or rather he did the bidding of
his masters.
Among other highly colored and untrue statements which the Associated
Press representatives made was that “when the speaking was ended in
the auditorium and a recess taken before the evening meeting, the
crowds made a rush for the doors to get away so that they would not
have to subscribe for stock in the Scandinavian bank!”
The crowd _did_ make a rush but it was not for the doors. The crowd
rushed, jostled, and pushed, in the anxiety of dozens of men to reach
the front of the building, where a number of persons took
subscriptions for stock. Those handling the subscriptions were
swamped, and many men were forced to stand in line for a long time
before they were waited on.
CHAPTER LX
THE CASE OF RUSSIA
But the perfect case of journalistic knavery, the case which in the
annals of history will take precedence over all others, past or present,
is the case of Russia. You might say that all previous experience of the
capitalist press of America in perverting and distorting news was but
training for what it was to do to the Russian revolution. Say to
yourself as follows: American Journalism did thus and so to an American
author who advocated the abolition of privilege and exploitation; what
would this Journalism do to a hundred and eighty million people who rose
up and actually put an end to privilege and exploitation upon the half
of two continents?
Let me make clear at the outset my point of view, oft repeated. I am not
a Bolshevik, and have never been a Bolshevik. I understand that a
Bolshevik is one who repudiates political action, and wishes to
accomplish the social revolution by mass action of the proletariat, the
direct overthrow of our present capitalist government and the setting up
of a government by councils of the workers, something corresponding to
our present trade union councils and conventions. For my part, I agree
with the syndicalists in thinking that the best way to govern industry
is through trade unions; that is the only real industrial democracy. But
I believe that the trade unions can get this power by the ballot, backed
by the mass strike. I don’t believe that it will be necessary for the
workers to seize guns and turn the politicians out of office; I believe
that they can elect their own politicians, or force even capitalist
legislatures pass laws recognizing union control of industry.
I am well aware that this method will be slower, but I believe it will
be quicker in the long run, because it will avoid the waste incidental
to civil war, and the possibilities of failure and temporary reaction.
Anybody can see that, as a matter of business, it would pay the workers
better to continue working for the capitalists a few months or even a
few years longer, than to take a course which might result in burning
down the factories and getting the best leaders of the movement stood up
against a wall and shot.
But such a program, of course, can be effective only in a country where
political rights are recognized. Russia was not such a country. The
Russian people had been held down by an utterly ruthless and utterly
corrupt despotism, deprived of all opportunity to organize and to
educate themselves, to acquire experience in government affairs; so,
when they rose, they turned upon their oppressors the weapons they had
been taught to understand. We, who were born in a more fortunate land,
and have learned to use, if only half successfully, the ballot and
public discussion in the settlement of our affairs—what attitude were we
to take towards the Russian people, striking out blindly against their
oppressors, groping for liberty and life?
The first revolution, the Kerensky revolution, was a political one, and
that suited us fairly well; it made no threat against property, and it
proposed to support our war. Our capitalist newspapers had no difficulty
in getting the news about it, and had no objection to letting us read
this news. But then came the second revolution, the Bolshevik
revolution, and that did threaten property, and proposed to withdraw
from our war. How did we treat that?
We had been training ourselves for a generation, so as to be
instantly ready; we had been training ourselves in the office of Mr.
Hearst’s “Cosmopolitan Magazine,” where Mr. Hearst had a
twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year journalistic wizard by the name
of Edgar Sisson. When we needed a molder of opinion for Russia, we
sent this Hearst wizard across the seas, where he came upon a set of
documents proving that Lenin and Trotsky were German agents. These
documents had been examined and rejected as forgeries by Raymond
Robins, also by the British Embassy, none too favorably disposed to
the Bolsheviks; but matters like that do not trouble Hearst editors,
who have learned to think in headlines. The “Sisson documents” were
shipped to Washington, and issued under the authority of the United
States government, and published in every newspaper in America.
We know today who were the real pro-Germans in Russia. Viscount French,
in his recently published book, has told us that the Russian Court was
rotten with pro-Germanism, and that if it had not been for treason among
the Russian aristocracy, the war would have been won two years earlier.
As for Lenin and Trotsky, not only were they bitter enemies of the
German government, they were at this time offering to reject the
Brest-Litovsk treaty, if America would support them; but America was a
virtuous capitalist nation, and the entire capitalist press of America
was a unit in proclaiming that our country should have no relations with
men who refused to pay interest on the Tsar’s debts to J. P. Morgan &
Company.
All the lying power of our Journalism was turned against the Russian
Soviets; and if you have read this book without skipping, you know what
that lying power is. No tale was too grotesque to be believed and spread
broadcast. In the same week we would read that Trotsky had fled to
Spain, that he had been put in jail by Lenin, that he had been seeking a
job on the “Appeal to Reason,” Girard, Kansas! They published so many
inventions that they couldn’t keep track of them. Here are two
paragraphs from a single issue of one newspaper:
Nicolai Lenin, the Bolshevist Premier, is the only prominent
Bolshevist left who appears to lead an austere life.—“New York Times,”
February 26, 1919.
Premier Lenin, refugees say, is not affected by the food problem. His
bill for fruit and vegetables in a recent month amounted to sixty
thousand rubles.—“New York Times,” February 26, 1919.
In his book, “Russia in 1919,” Arthur Ransom tells how in Finland he
read detailed accounts of mutiny and revolt in Petrograd, the city being
bombarded by naval guns. He went into Petrograd and found the city
peaceful, and everybody laughing at his tales. Returning to England he
found that the tales had been forwarded to England, and published and
universally believed. As I write these words, I read in my paper every
other day of the fall of Petrograd. The accounts are detailed, some of
them are “official,” and they continue for weeks. But finally I read
that the anti-Bolshevik armies are in retreat from Petrograd!
Or take the “nationalization of women,” the most grotesque scarecrow
ever constructed to terrify a highly moral people. I have shown you how
the imagination of “kept” journalists runs to foul tales about sex
orgies of radicals. A comic paper in Moscow published such a “skit” on
Bolshevism, and the outcome is explained in the following from the
“Isvestija,” the official organ of the Central Soviet Government, May
18, 1918:
Moscow Soviet decision.—The Moscow newspaper, the “Evening Life,” for
printing an invented decree regarding the socialization of women, in
the issue of the 3rd of May, No. 36, shall be closed for ever and
fined 25,000 roubles.
And then again, in the city of Saratov, in central Russia, the
Anarchists were making trouble, and some wag, to discredit the
Anarchists, invented an elaborate decree, signed, “The Free Association
of Anarchists of Saratov.” This decree was discovered one morning,
posted in several parts of the city. An American official, Oliver M.
Sayler, who was in Saratov, wrote the story in the “New Republic,” March
15, 1919. He visited the Anarchist clubs, and found them boiling with
indignation—calling it a “Bolshevist plot”! Needless to say, of course,
the decree had no relation to reality; the Anarchists never had any
power to enforce any decree, whether in Saratov or anywhere else in
Russia; several hundred Anarchists had been jailed by the Bolsheviki.
But that, of course, made no difference to the editors of capitalist
newspapers in America, to whom Anarchists, Bolsheviki, and Socialists
were all the same; from one end of the country to the other this decree
took the front page. The “Los Angeles Times” published it with a solemn
assurance to its readers that the authenticity of the decree might be
accepted without question. And forthwith all our capitalist clergymen
rose up in their pulpits to denounce the Bolsheviki as monsters and
moral perverts, and a good part of the moving picture machinery of
Southern California has been set to work constructing romances around
this obscene theme.
The “New Europe,” which had first published the story, made a full
retraction and apology. Harold Williams, who had sent the story to
England, also apologized. The American State Department denied the story
officially, February 28, 1919. Jerome Davis, of the American Red Cross,
denied it from first-hand knowledge in the “Independent,” March 15,
1919. But did you read these apologies and denials in American
capitalist newspapers? You did not! It would not be too much to say that
nine people out of ten in America today firmly believe that women have
been “nationalized” in Russia, or at any rate that the Bolsheviki
attempted it. In the “World Tomorrow,” for July, 1919, I come upon a
letter signed Remington Rogers, Tulsa, Oklahoma. I find something very
quaint and pathetic about this letter. How does it strike you?
I find that like most radical papers, you assume that your reader
knows a great many things that may be trite in the discussion of
parlor Socialists, but with which the average citizen is not in the
least familiar. For example, in your May issue, page 141, I find the
assertion that the reports purporting to show how family life had been
officially demoralized in Russia are “now happily proved false.” If
this is the fact, no such proof has leaked into the newspapers or
other periodicals to which I subscribe, and in view of the fact that
we have what purport to be authentic copies of the official edicts and
decrees, I cannot believe that these reports have been proved false.
And here is a letter from Alice Stone Blackwell, which, needless to say,
could only be published in some radical paper. It appeared in the
“Public,” New York:
Catherine Breshkovsky “the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” is
getting badly misquoted. She is astonished to see how different some
of the press reports are from what she really said. She tells me she
declared the other day that she would work twenty years longer to keep
Russia from having another Tsar, and she was reported as saying that
she would work twenty years longer to get the Tsar back.
She also denied that women have been “nationalized,” or “made common
property,” or that the Government puts any compulsion upon them in
matters of sex. She said to me: “Women have more freedom in Russia now
than they ever had before.” As Madame Breshkovsky is strongly opposed
to the Bolshevist régime, her denial of this particular accusation may
be accepted as conclusive.
I have at several places in this book portrayed the degeneracy of
“McClure’s Magazine,” since it has become an organ of privilege; also I
have mentioned Newell Dwight Hillis, agent of the Clerical Camouflage,
and his knavish pamphlet against the Colorado strikers. Now we see
“McClure’s” hiring Hillis to vilify the Russian Soviets. After all these
denials have been published, and are available to all honest men, this
agent of the Clerical Camouflage contributes to “McClure’s” (June, 1919)
a long article calling for the blood of the Russian people. “McClure’s”
puts over the article a picture representing a hideous fiend with a
torch and bomb; also this editorial statement:
Dr. Hillis’s articles have brought in a flood of letters of
commendation. He writes as he preaches, fearlessly, truthfully.
I ask: Could the re-crucifixion of Christ go farther than the
application of the words “fearlessly, truthfully,” to the following
dastardly lie:
It is now conceded that the interior towns and cities of Russia have
gone over to this nationalization of women.
This agent of the Clerical Camouflage of course portrays Russia as a
chaos of murder and bloodshed; in which our whole capitalist press
agrees. We now know that most of the time Petrograd and Moscow were the
most orderly capitals in Europe; but our newspaper correspondents in
Stockholm and Copenhagen and Odessa and Omsk, meeting in the cafés with
exiled Russian noblemen, thought nothing of standing a few thousand
Russians against the wall of the Kremlin and shooting them in a news
despatch. For weeks they harrowed us with a projected “St. Bartholomew’s
Eve Massacre,” in which all the bourgeoisie in Russia were to be
destroyed. Bartholomew’s Eve came, and next morning I looked in the
papers, and saw that there had been a general amnesty for political
prisoners in Russia—something for which I am still petitioning the
President of my own country! I saw no mention of the massacre; but this
did not surprise me. I, too, have been lied about by Capitalist
Journalism on the front page, and have seen the retraction buried in
small print among the advertisements.
That there was much killing in Russia, I do not doubt; but whether there
was more killing than under the government of the Tsar—that is the real
question. Frazier Hunt tells us that in the first fourteen months of
their rule, the Bolsheviki executed four thousand, five hundred persons,
mostly for stealing and speculation; whereas, in twelve months after the
1905 revolution, Stolypin, minister of the Tsar, caused the execution of
thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three persons. That is
about the usual proportion of the White Terror to the Red, and the
proportion that would have prevailed had the Allies succeeded in their
plan of getting Kolchak to Moscow.
Our papers were giving us lurid accounts of the Bolsheviki advancing in
the Baltic provinces, burning and slaying as they went; but the
conspiracy slipped a cog, and there crept into an Associated Press
dispatch a little paragraph which gave the game away. In reading it,
understand that these provinces are a part of Russia, which the Russians
were taking back from the Germans:
Warsaw, Dec. 29.—The Bolsheviki are advancing rapidly toward Vilna,
and are favored by mild weather. Their advance guards are said to be
orderly, well clothed and well armed. _They have committed no
depredations except where they met with resistance._
And here is another from Berlin, Feb. 15, 1919, which gives us the real
reason for the world-wide dread of the Bolsheviki. Ralph Rotheit,
correspondent of the Berlin “Vossische Zeitung,” visited the Bolshevik
line at Vilna.
He pictured the situation as extremely pessimistic, although so far
the Bolsheviki have always been defeated by the Germans whenever they
ventured skirmishing. However, Rotheit writes, the Bolsheviki do not
rely so much on fighting as on corrupting opponents by never-ceasing
wireless propaganda, and by sending emissaries into the districts
still occupied by the Germans, and by Bolshevik literature with which
the latter’s positions are flooded. Rotheit says unfortunately the
effect of this propaganda at Kovno, headquarters of the German
commander, was only too evident, as in many other places on German
territory, as well as the Russian and Polish.
Here we have the real quarrel with the Soviets, the real reason why they
must not, cannot be permitted to survive. They are propagandists; day
and night they agitate, they preach and they print—and for some reason,
the more loudly we proclaim that their propaganda is false, the more
deeply we seem to dread its success! Since when have we lost our faith
in the might of truth? Since when have we decided that error must be
fought with bullet and machine-gun? Surely there must be some dark
secret here, some skeleton in our family closet!
The truth is that we have seen in Russia a gigantic strike, an I. W. W.
strike, if you please; and it has been successful. The workers have
seized the factories, and now we call for the militia to drive them out.
The very existence of capitalism depends upon their being driven out; as
the phrase is, they must “be made an example of.” And so the capitalist
press is called in, our great lying-machine is given the biggest job in
its history. The Associated Press does for Russia precisely what Charles
Edward Russell showed it doing for Calumet, what I showed it doing for
Colorado. All our newspapers, big and little, do what they are
accustomed to do whenever there is a strike in America—telling
everything evil about the strikers and nothing good about them,
clamoring for violence against them, justifying every crime committed
against them in the name of “law and order.”
Recently the Soviets, pressed by starvation, have bowed so far to the
will of world-capitalism as to agree to pay interest on the Tsar’s
debts; they have offered to pledge some of the vast natural resources of
Russia to pay for the machinery and supplies they must have. So Allied
diplomacy hesitates and falters; dare the diplomats risk the terrors of
Bolshevist propaganda, that mysterious black magic? Dare they allow the
world to see a prospering social revolution, a government of the
workers, by the workers, for the workers, which does not perish from the
earth?
They decided upon a conference with the Bolsheviki, on a remote island
in Turkish waters. Our newspapers printed the fact that the invitation
had been extended to the Bolsheviki: but they did not print the
Bolshevik acceptance. They did not print the text of the Russian foreign
minister’s appeal to the French Socialist, Longuet, as to the meaning of
the Allied proposals. They did not print the fact that the conference
was abandoned because William Allen White, American delegate and man of
honor, insisted upon full publicity.
President Wilson sent a confidential mission to Russia, composed of
William C. Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens. They came back and reported
that there was order in Russia; that the Russian people were satisfied
with the Soviet régime; that the “nationalization of women” in Russia
was an absurd yarn; that the cause of the starvation and misery in
Russia was the allied blockade; and that Lenin wanted peace, and was
willing to do almost anything to get peace. President Wilson, for
reasons presumably known to him, turned down the advice of this
commission. Steffens made a public statement as to his position, which
was reported in the “London Daily Herald,” but in no American newspaper
or magazine. Bullitt resigned from the Peace Commission, and addressed
to President Wilson a brief and dignified letter, explaining his
reasons: which letter was published in the “New York Nation,” but in no
capitalist newspaper in America, so far as I could find out.
Then Bullitt was summoned before the Senate committee, and the
Associated Press sent out a brief and inadequate report of his
testimony. Next day he submitted the confidential report about Russia
which he had delivered to President Wilson. This was the most important
information about Russia yet available to the American people; and the
“Los Angeles Times,” from which I get my first news of the world, gave
not a line of this report! More than that, in order to avoid having to
mention the report, the “Times” cut out that day every word of its news
about the struggle over the peace treaty in the Senate! Instead, it gave
two columns, of which I quote the headlines:
ROOSEVELT SCORES REDS
“Smash ’Em!” Cries Teddy, Jr., in Talks Telling of Perils in
Radicalism
That was on Sunday morning. On Monday morning again, the “Times” had not
a word about Bullitt, and not a word about the agitation over the peace
treaty in Washington, the most important news of the day; the reason
being simply that Washington was talking about the Bullitt report, and
about nothing else! But on Tuesday, the British government issued a
denial of some of Bullitt’s statements—one of those evasive denials
whereby the gigantic trading corporation tells lies without quite
telling them; so once more the “Los Angeles Times” was willing to
mention William C. Bullitt!
I call up the “Los Angeles Examiner,” to ask if the Associated Press
handled the Bullitt report. The “Los Angeles Examiner,” you understand,
gets the Associated Press service—is one of the “forty-one vote”
newspapers. Both the city editor and the telegraph editor assure me that
the Associated Press did not send the “Examiner” a word of it—the most
important news about Russia yet made available to the American people!
Says the “Nation”:
No newspaper has printed Mr. Bullitt’s testimony in full or even in
generous part; there were only three press representatives present
when he testified, and he has had the invariable experience of having
his testimony misquoted and altered, and interviews attributed to him
which he never gave.
The Social Revolution came in Hungary. It came in an orderly and
sensible way, without terror, without bloodshed; and how was it treated
by Capitalist Journalism? It was treated just as the Russian Soviets had
been treated—as an outcast and outlaw. All the power of World Capitalism
was turned against the Hungarian Communist government. Poland, Roumania,
the Ukraine, all made war upon it, with French officers and British
tanks and American money; and at the same time the great lying-machine
was put to work. The news agencies brought the report that Bela Kun had
fled to the Argentine; and two days later that he was about to be
overthrown in Budapesth! All the power of American Journalism was set to
keeping the workers from realizing that a nation of fifteen or twenty
million people had overthrown the profit system, and was making a
success of the Co-operative Commonwealth.
I have before me some letters from a correspondent in Budapesth,
representing one of the most influential and supposed-to-be-respectable
of the great New York newspapers. This correspondent explains that she
sends her articles with the instructions that they shall be published as
written or not at all—and they are not published. “One of my confrères
here had an article twisted and turned about so badly that it meant
exactly the opposite of what he knew and wrote to be true.” And there is
a group of correspondents in Budapesth, all having the same experiences,
it appears:
Their economic sentences are cut out of articles and their radical
articles are paid for but never printed. There isn’t a day passes that
we don’t have an indignation meeting. One man wrote a long article for
one of the prominent magazines two months ago alluding to the new
order. He received a fat check with the letter announcing that the
article could not be used; they wished him to write more _moderately_.
Since my trip to Hungary and my conviction that Budapesth is the only
honest place in Europe outside Russia, I am not any longer willing to
write “moderately.”
Only once before in modern history was there a crime like this—when the
kings and emperors of Europe went to war to wipe out the French
revolution, which their hired propagandists described in precisely the
same terms as we now see applied to the Bolsheviki. Then it was
political revolution, now it is social revolution; but the program is
the same—the earth is to be soaked with the blood of revolutionists,
their new ideal is to be corrupted in the military campaign necessary to
its defense, and the world is to be made safe for another Holy
Alliance—this time of the profit-system, of Industrial Exploitation. It
is for the people, who pay for all privilege and maintain all parasites,
to decide whether history shall repeat itself to the full; whether the
Holy Alliance of World Capitalism is to crush for another century the
hopes of the working masses of the world.
CHAPTER LXI
“BOLSHEVISM” IN AMERICA
And what of those American radicals who have ventured to protest against
this policy, and to expose this campaign of falsification? Here again it
is only a question of how much space one is willing to give to
anecdotes.
My friend Rose Pastor Stokes is a pacifist, under sentence of ten years
in jail for pacifist activities; again and again the New York newspapers
report her as calling for a bloody revolution in America, and refuse to
publish her protest that this is false. You may not like pacifists; I
myself admit that during the war I found some of them extremely trying
to my patience. But do you believe that the proper way to treat them is
to lie about them? Listen to the experiences of Mrs. Stokes on a lecture
trip in the Middle West. The “Kansas City Star,” a one-time “liberal”
paper, sent a special writer to interview her on the laundry-workers’
strike then in progress; but finding that this interview put her in a
good light, they suppressed it, and sent another reporter to write up
her address to the “Women’s Dining Club.” Says Mrs. Stokes:
The “Star” so garbled and twisted my speech that it was actually
unrecognizable. For example, one of the things I was quoted as having
said was that the Red Cross was a war camouflage. It so happened that
I did not mention the Red Cross during the entire speech.
Then she went to speak in Springfield, Missouri, and the “Star” had a
lurid account of how she had been arrested in Springfield, and admitted
to bail, and has stolen out of the city at day-break, forfeiting the
hundred-dollar bond of a Socialist comrade. Says Mrs. Stokes:
Except for the arrest, the story was a fabrication. I had left
Springfield at a respectable hour, wholly cleared; and no bond was
forfeited.
She came back to Kansas City, and a “Star” reporter was sent to
interview her; she asked him to deny this Springfield story, and he
turned in a denial, but not a word of it was published. As a direct
result of this newspaper misrepresentation, Mrs. Stokes was arrested by
the Federal authorities and sentenced to ten years in jail. She tells me
how this trial and sentence were reported, and points out the obvious
motive of the falsifications:
Anything to frighten people away from Socialist meetings! If you want
to see this motive running through the capitalist press of the entire
country as a single thread, come and read the hundreds of editorials
on my ten-year sentence. Every state and every important industrial
community is represented. The wording is almost as if one man, let
alone one spirit, had dictated them all.
And here is Judson King, writing to members of Congress:
For your information permit me to state that at the meeting at Poli’s
Theatre Sunday afternoon at which I presided there was no advocacy of
anarchy or violence, no attack upon the American form of government,
and no propaganda that Bolshevism be adopted in our country. The
well-nigh unanimous sentiment of audience and speakers was that
American troops be withdrawn and Russia be permitted to settle her own
fate in her own way.
The article in Monday’s “Washington Post” headed, “Urge Red America,”
is an absurd perversion of the truth and a gross violation of
journalistic ethics. Discussions in Congress regarding this meeting,
based apparently upon this article, have proceeded under a
misapprehension of facts. Whether any attempt was made to verify the
truth of the article I do not know. No inquiry was made of me.
Mr. King goes on to state that the address of Albert Rhys Williams at
this meeting was read from a typewritten text, and a carbon copy handed
by him to a reporter of the “Washington Post.” The falsification of
Williams’ remarks by the “Post” was therefore deliberate.
At this same time Max Eastman was touring the country, addressing
enormous meetings. The meeting in Los Angeles was reported by the
“Examiner” as follows:
RADICAL’S TALK BRINGS POLICE
Max Eastman Stops Address When Disgusted Auditors Leave and Officers
Arrive
Cutting his lecture short, when many of his auditors left Trinity
Auditorium in disgusted anger, probably saved Max Eastman, editor of a
radical Socialist publication, from a police intervention last night.
Before the speaker had entered far upon his subject, “Hands Off
Russia,” his remarks were deemed so unpatriotic and his unwarranted
attack upon the administration so vitriolic that scores left the
auditorium and telephoned the Federal authorities and the police,
denouncing Eastman and demanding his arrest.
Apparently scenting trouble, Eastman effected a sudden diminuendo, his
anti-climax coming when he left the rostrum to conduct a canvassing of
his audience for prospective subscribers to his magazine and
purchasers of stock in same. When the police officers appeared on the
scene, nothing of treasonable nor anarchistic nature was heard.
Eastman’s address contained many statements so preposterous that even
the most gullible refused to believe them. He demanded that Eugene
Debs, Thomas J. Mooney and all I. W. W.’s in jail should be freed and
advised his hearers to emulate the Russian Bolsheviks and rise in
revolution.
Only a scant audience heard the address.
As it happens, I do not have to ask the reader to take either my word or
Eastman’s about this meeting. Here is part of a letter written to Max
Ihmsen, managing editor of the “Los Angeles Examiner,” by Rob Wagner,
artist and author of “Film Folk.”
Mar. 2, 1919.
Dear Max Ihmsen:
The other night Mrs. Wagner, Charlie Chaplin and I, seeking light on
darkest Russia, went to hear Max Eastman’s lecture. During what we
thought was a very thoughtful and unimpassioned address, he made the
statement that the press of the country was in a deliberate conspiracy
to withhold or color all news from that country.
We all felt that he was unfair in including _all_ the papers with
those notorious offenders, such as the “Times,” from which one could
expect nothing else. But the next morning we read an account of the
lecture in the “Examiner” that was false from the headline to the
final sentence, which said: “Only a scant audience heard the address.”
The lecture was not broken up by the police; in fact if there were any
police present no one even saw them. The chairman announced that Mr.
Eastman would speak on Russia; then Mr. McBride would tell them about
their magazine; and then at the end Mr. Eastman would answer
questions. The program was finished exactly that way, without the
slightest interruption, and to the very sympathetic applause of some
twenty-five hundred auditors.
Nor did Mr. Eastman insult the President. In urging the withdrawal of
American troops from Russia—a policy vigorously urged by Hearst
papers—he simply stated that there was a striking inconsistency
between President Wilson’s words and his deeds; for when the President
addressed his memorandum on the Marmora conference he assured the
delegates that America had absolutely no interest in the internal
affairs of Russia, and would not take sides; while at that moment he
was commander-in-chief of an army that was at war with the Russians on
two fronts.
Rob Wagner went on to explain that he wrote this protest “in the
kindliest spirit”; and Mr. Ihmsen in reply expressed his regret, and
promised to investigate the matter. You remember how it was with the
express companies in the old days; they would lose your package, and
promise to “investigate”—which meant that they filed your complaint away
with five hundred thousand others of the same sort. Six months later I
am preparing the manuscript of this book, and I write to Mr. Ihmsen that
I desire to verify every charge I bring against American Journalism.
Will he inform me if he has ever published a correction of this
falsehood? Mr. Ihmsen replies that he has unfortunately overlooked the
matter, but will be glad to publish a correction now. He does—the very
next day! I wonder if this will seem as funny to the reader as it seems
to me. Mr. Ihmsen brands Max Eastman in the public mind as a coward and
a blatherskite, and for six months he lets that brand remain, though he
knows it is undeserved. But then suddenly he learns that he himself is
to be branded as a character-assassin; and so he makes a quick jump. But
even so, he cannot be really fair. He gave the original story half a
column; he gives the correction two inches of space, in a corner so
remote that I, who read the “Examiner” every morning, do not see it
until he sends me a marked copy!
A month or two after Max Eastman’s lecture came Louise Bryant, freshly
returned from Russia, and gave one of the most interesting talks I have
ever heard; and next morning not a line in any Los Angeles newspaper!
The following evening she spoke again, and I came upon the platform, and
called the attention of the audience to this case of newspaper
suppression, and asked for funds to get the truth to the people of Los
Angeles. Before I had finished speaking, money began to shower upon the
stage, and the total collection amounted to twelve hundred and forty
dollars. I interviewed the assistant managing editor of the “Los Angeles
Examiner,” and he agreed to publish a report of the meeting, and allowed
me to dictate a column to a reporter—of which he published two inches! A
committee called upon the managing editor of the “Los Angeles Times,”
and this gentleman not only refused to publish a line, but refused to
accept a paid advertisement giving the news; incidentally he flew into a
rage and insulted the ladies of the committee. The money collected at
the meeting was expended upon an edition of fifty thousand copies of a
local radical paper, the “New Justice,” containing an account of the
whole affair; and when an attempt was made to distribute these papers
among the shipyard workers in the harbor, the distributors were
arrested, and the judge declared that he wished he could get the editors
of the paper.
In connection with this meeting, there was a humorous incident which
ought to be mentioned. Among the statements made by Miss Bryant was that
the Bolsheviki had taken Odessa because the French troops had refused to
fight them; several companies had gone over to the enemy. This statement
was published in the “New Justice,” and was among those which the Los
Angeles newspapers refused to admit to their columns. Louise Bryant had
travelled all over the country making the statement, and almost
everywhere the capitalist press refused to print it. But two months
later came an Associated Press despatch from Paris; the Odessa incident
had become the subject of interpellations in the French parliament—so at
last the news was out that French troops had mutinied when ordered to
fight the Bolsheviki!
Now comest the joke of the matter. To the Associated Press despatch, the
“New York Times” added the following comment:
The account of the mutiny of the seamen on the French Black Sea Fleet,
given by M. Goude in the French Chamber, rationally explains _for the
first time_ the extraordinary events which took place at Odessa on
April 8, the day the city was evacuated by the Allies and by all the
population who could get away.
Don’t you think those words, “for the first time,” are funny? Almost as
funny as the story of “Tom Muni” from Petrograd!
And then President Wilson comes to Los Angeles, and there is held in the
largest music auditorium in the city a mass meeting of two thousand
citizens, which unanimously submits to the President a request for
amnesty for political prisoners. The “Los Angeles Times” gave this
meeting not one word. I am invited to address the City Club of Los
Angeles, and I tell them of this failure of the “Times” to report the
news. Whereupon the “Times” starts a campaign to have me put in jail! I
quote its first editorial; they have followed it up, every other day for
a couple of weeks—they are quite determined that I shall go to jail!
Get the I. W. W. Seditionists! And lock them up. Tight! Right! But why
let Upton Sinclair roam at large? He spits more poison than the cheap
skate. It is villainy to promote anarchy in these ticklish times.
Blood will be on the heads of some of the civic club managers, male
and female. It is a crime for them to invite disloyal speakers to
spout for them; just for amusement. The City Club and some of the
women’s clubs have boosted the Red cause. Bolshevism is no toy to play
with, ladies and gentlemen. An “open forum” should not be open to
mobocracy and treason.
As I have said, I know several of the men and women who help to edit the
newspaper in which the above murderous raving is published. These men
and women will read this book, and I now request the general public to
step outside for a few moments, while I address these editors privately.
I speak, not in my own voice, but in that of an old-time journalist,
venerated in his day, John Swinton, editor of the “New York Tribune.” He
is answering, at a banquet of his fellow-editors, the toast: “An
Independent Press”:
There is no such thing In America as an independent press, unless it
is in the country towns.
You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write
his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would
never appear in print.
I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest
opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid
similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so
foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets
looking for another job.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to
lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon,
and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.
You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an
“Independent Press.”
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the
jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our
possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are
intellectual prostitutes.
PART III
THE REMEDY
CHAPTER LXII
CUTTING THE TIGER’S CLAWS
Every day the chasm between the classes in America grows wider; every
day the class struggle grows more intense. Both sides become more
conscious, more determined—and so the dishonesty of American Journalism
becomes more deliberate, more systematic. And what is to be done? It
must be evident to any sensible man that the conditions portrayed in
this book are intolerable. Mankind will not consent to be lied to
indefinitely.
William Marion Reedy discussed the question ten years ago, and his
solution was pamphleteering. We must return to the custom of the
eighteenth century, printing and circulating large numbers of leaflets,
pamphlets and books. And for the past ten years we have been doing this;
the Socialist party, for example, is a machine for the circulating of
pamphlets and leaflets, and the holding of public meetings to counteract
the knaveries of the capitalist press. There are innumerable other
organizations which serve the same purpose: the “People’s Council,” the
“Civil Liberties Bureau,” the “International Workers’ Defense League,”
the I. W. W. groups, “The Rand School,” the “People’s College,” the
“Young People’s Socialist League,” the “Intercollegiate Socialist
Society.” But, obviously, this can only be a temporary solution. The
workers of the country are in the condition of a frontier settlement
besieged by savage Indians. They defend themselves with such weapons as
they find at hand; but sooner or later, it is evident, they will
organize a regular force, and invade the woods, and be done with those
Indians once for all.
Take the Moyer-Haywood case, the Mooney case, the Ludlow massacre, the
Bisbee deportations; and consider what happens. For days, for weeks,
perhaps for years, the Associated Press and its thousand newspapers
prepare a carefully constructed set of falsehoods, and twenty or thirty
million copies per day of these falsehoods are sold to the public.
Whereupon men and women of conscience all over the country are driven to
protest. They call mass-meetings, they organize a new league and raise
defense funds, print leaflets and pamphlets and devise a system of
house-to-house distribution, call big strikes and parades of protest; by
this prodigious mass of effort they succeed in conveying some small
portion of the truth to some small portions of the population. Is it not
obvious that society cannot continue indefinitely to get its news by
this wasteful method? One large section of the community organized to
circulate lies, and another large section of the community organized to
refute the lies! We might as well send a million men out into the desert
to dig holes, and then send another million to fill up the holes. To say
that William Marion Reedy, after a study of our journalistic dishonesty,
could find no better solution of the problem than pamphleteering, is
merely to say that bourgeois thought is bankrupt.
The first remedy to which every good American takes resort is the law.
We pass fifty thousand new laws in America every year, but still we
cling to the faith that the next thousand will “do the business.” Let us
have laws to punish the lying of the press!
I, as a good American, have thought of laws that I would like to see
passed. For instance, a law providing that newspapers shall not publish
an interview with anyone until they have submitted the interview and had
it O.K.’d; or unless they have obtained written permission to quote the
person without such O.K.
Also, a law providing that when any newspaper has made any false
statement concerning an individual, and has had its attention called to
the falsity of this statement, it shall publish a correction of the
statement in the next edition of the publication, and in the same spot
and with the same prominence given to the false statement.
For example, the press sends out a report that the Rev. Washington
Gladden is about to resign his pulpit. His mail is full of letters from
people all over the country, expressing regret. Says Dr. Gladden:
The trouble with such a report is that you can never get it corrected.
I have done my best to get such correction, but in this I have
signally failed. Anything which discredits a man is “good stuff,”
which most newspapers are ready to print, provided it is not
actionable; any correction which is made of such a report is not so
apt to find a place on the wires, and is pretty sure to be
blue-pencilled by the telegraph editors.
It happens, while I am preparing this book for the printer, that I visit
a friend, and mention what I am doing; he says: “There was one newspaper
story which almost caused me to despise you. I wonder how much truth
there was in it.” He explains that he was in Chicago in the early days
of the war, attending a conference of the People’s Council, and in a
Chicago newspaper he read that I had denounced Emma Goldman to the
government, and had turned over some of her private letters to the
government.
I tell my friend what happened. An insane man had threatened my life,
and I had applied to the Los Angeles police department for permission to
carry a revolver. They promised to keep secret my application, but
within half an hour there were two newspaper reporters after me. I
refused to talk about the matter; so, as usual, they made up a story. It
happened that I had given to the chief of detectives what information I
had as to the insane man’s past conduct; among other things, that he had
caused a disturbance at a meeting of Emma Goldman’s. That was the way
her name came in, and the only way. I barely know Emma Goldman, having
met her twice at public meetings; I knew nothing whatever about her
activities at this time, and had no letters from her in my possession. I
now have one, for immediately I wrote to her to say that the published
story was false, and she replied that I need not have worried; she had
known it was false.
Now, I sent a denial of that story to every newspaper in Los Angeles,
and also to the Associated Press; but my denial went into the
waste-basket. And why? At this time the capitalist press was engaged in
hounding Emma Goldman to prison; the lie was useful to the hounders, so
it stood, in spite of all my protests.
Obviously enough, here is a gross injustice. Common sense dictates a law
that any newspaper which prints a false statement shall be required to
give equal prominence to a correction. The law should provide that upon
publication of any false report, and failure to correct it immediately
upon receipt of notice, the injured party should have the right to
collect a fixed sum from the newspaper—five or ten thousand dollars at
least. At present, you understand, the sum has to be fixed by the jury,
and the damages have to be proven. If the “Los Angeles Times” calls
Upton Sinclair an “Anarchist writer,” if the “Chicago Tribune” calls
Henry Ford an “Anarchist,” it is up to the plaintiffs to prove just how
and to what extent they have been damaged. The newspaper has the right
to question their character and reputation, to examine them about every
detail of their lives and opinions. Was Upton Sinclair justified in
divorcing his wife? Does Henry Ford know how to read? If not, then it is
all right to call them “Anarchists.”
Also there is the problem of the Associated Press, the most powerful and
most sinister monopoly in America. Certainly there will be no freedom in
America, neither journalistic freedom nor political freedom nor
industrial freedom, until the monopoly of the Associated Press is
broken; until the distributing of the news to American newspapers is
declared a public utility, under public control; until anyone who wishes
to publish a newspaper in any American city or town may receive the
Associated Press service without any formality whatever, save the filing
of an application and the payment of a fee to cover the cost of the
service. Proceedings to establish this principle were begun a year ago
by Hearst before the Federal Trade Commission. Hearst had been barred
from getting the “A. P.” franchise in certain cities, and I venture to
guess that his purpose was to frighten his enemies into letting him have
what he wanted. At any rate, he found himself suddenly able to buy the
franchises, so he dropped his proceedings against the “A. P.” The
attorney in this case was Samuel Untermyer, who writes me about the
issue as follows:
If the prevailing opinion is right, the monopoly of the Associated
Press over the news of the world is complete. Unless the courts will
hold, as I think they will, when the question comes before them, that
news is a public utility; that the Associated Press is engaged in
interstate commerce, using the cables, telegraph lines and telephones
and that it is, therefore, bound to furnish its service on equal terms
to all who choose to pay for it. If that is not the law, it should be
the law, and can readily be made the law by Federal legislation. Until
this is done, the monopoly of the Associated Press will continue
intolerable.
I have fought it for years and thus far in vain, but I shall continue
to fight until it is broken. The little clique that controls the
Associated Press is in turn under the complete domination of a few of
the most narrow-minded and reactionary of the great capitalists of the
country. If our Government fails to stand the strain of these terrible
times and if revolution and bloodshed follow—which God forbid!—the
responsibility will rest at the doors of men like Gary and lawbreakers
like the U. S. Steel Company who lack all vision and sense of justice.
Also there should be a law forbidding any newspaper to fake telegraph or
cable dispatches. At present, this is a universal custom in newspaper
offices; the most respectable papers do it continually. They clip an
item from some other newspaper, rewrite it, and put it under a
“telegraphic headline.” They will take the contents of some letter that
comes to the office, and write it up under a “London date-line.” They
will write their own political propaganda, and represent it as having
come by telegraph from a special correspondent in Washington or New
York. In “Harper’s Weekly” for October 9, 1915, there was published an
article, “At the Front with Willie Hearst.” Mr. Hearst’s “Universal News
Bureau” was shown to be selling news all over the country, purporting to
come from “more than eighty correspondents, many of them of world-wide
fame.” Every day, if you read this “Universal Service,” you became
familiar with the names of Hearst correspondents in London, Paris,
Vienna, Rome, Berlin, Petrograd. All these correspondents were imaginary
persons; all this news was written in the Hearst offices in New York,
being a re-hash for American afternoon papers of the news of the London
morning papers. This is obvious fraud, and the law should bar it,
precisely as it bars misbranded maple syrup and olive oil and strawberry
jam.
Such laws would help; and I could suggest others that would help;
nevertheless, the urging of such laws is not the purpose of this book.
It is a problem of cutting the claws of a tiger. The first thing you
have to do is to catch your tiger; and when I undertake the hard and
dangerous job of invading a jungle and catching a tiger and chaining him
down, am I going to be content with cutting off the sharpest points of
the beast’s claws, and maybe pulling one or two of his teeth? I am not!
CHAPTER LXIII
THE MENTAL MUNITION-FACTORY
A solution that comes at once to mind is state-owned or municipal-owned
newspapers. This is the orthodox Socialist solution, and is also being
advocated by William Jennings Bryan. Fortunately, we do not have to take
his theories, or anyone’s theories; we have facts—the experience of Los
Angeles with its public paper, the “Municipal News,” which was an entire
success. I inquire of the editor of the paper, Frank E. Wolfe, and he
writes:
The “Municipal News”? There’s a rich story buried there. It was
established by an initiative ordinance, and had an ample
appropriation. It was launched in the stream with engines going full
steam ahead. Its success was instantaneous. Free distribution; immense
circulation; choked with high-class, high-rate advertising; well
edited, and it was clean and immensely popular.
Otis said: “Every dollar that damned socialistic thing gets is a
dollar out of the Times’ till.” Every publisher in the city re-echoed,
and the fight was on. The chief thing that rankled, however, was the
outgrowth of a clause in the ordinance which gave to each political
party polling a three per cent vote a column in each issue for
whatsoever purpose it might be used. The Socialist Labor Party nosed
out the Prohibitionists by a fluke. The Socialists had a big margin in
the preceding elections, so the Reds had two columns, and they were
quick to seize the opportunity for propaganda. The Goo-goos, who had
always stoutly denied they were a political party, came forward and
claimed space, and the merry war was on. Those two columns for
Socialist propaganda were the real cause for the daily onslaught of
the painted ladies of Broadway (newspaper district of Los Angeles).
There were three morning and three evening papers. Six times a day
they whined, barked, yelped and snapped at the heels of the “Municipal
News.” Never were more lies poured out from the mouths of these
mothers of falsehood. The little, weakly whelps of the pornographic
press took up the hue and cry, and Blanche, Sweetheart and Tray were
on the trail. Advertisers were cajoled, browbeaten and blackmailed,
until nearly all left the paper. The “News” was manned by a picked
staff of the best newspaper men on the coast. It was clean, well
edited, and gave both sides to all controversies—using the parallel
column system. It covered the news of the municipality better than any
paper had ever covered it. It was weak and ineffective editorially,
for the policy was to print a newspaper. We did not indulge in a
clothes-line quarrel—did not fight back.
The “News” died under the axe one year from its birth. They used the
initiative to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we foresaw
the end.
The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world.
Everywhere I have gone I have been asked about it, by people who never
dreamed I had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for
reaction, but its effect will not die. Some day the idea will prevail.
Then I might want to go back into the “game.”
City-owned newspapers are part of the solution, but not the whole part.
As a Socialist, I advocate public ownership of the instruments and means
of production; but I do not rely entirely upon that method where
intellectual matters are concerned. I would have the state make all the
steel and coal and oil, the shoes and matches and sugar; I would have it
do the distributing of newspapers, and perhaps even the printing; but
for the editing of the newspapers I cast about for a method of control
that allows free play to the development of initiative and the
expression of personality.
In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many groups
and associations, publishing their own papers, and if you do not like
the papers which these groups give you, you can form a group of your
own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor, you will have
plenty of money, and will be surrounded by other free and independent
individuals, also receiving the full product of their labor, and
accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas. The
difference is that today the world’s resources are in the hands of a
class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of
transferring such power to the people must be studied as the whole
social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press.
Fortunately there are parts of America in which the people have kept at
least a part of their economic independence, and have gone ahead to
solve the problem of the “kept” press in true American fashion—that is,
by organizing and starting honest newspapers for themselves. The editor
of the “Nonpartisan Leader,” Oliver S. Morris, has kindly written for me
an account of the experiences of the Nonpartisan League, which I
summarize as follows:
The League commenced organization work early in 1915 in North Dakota. By
the summer of the next year it had forty thousand members, yet no
newspaper in the state had given, even as news, a fair account of the
League’s purposes. Every daily paper in the state was filled with “gross
misinformation and absurd lies.” So the League started a little weekly
paper of its own. With this single weekly, against the entire daily
press of the state, it swept the primaries in June, 1916.
Then the League decided to have a daily paper. The “Courier-News” of
Fargo had been for sale, but the owners would not sell to the League.
The League went ahead to start a new paper, actually buying machinery
and taking subscriptions; then the “Courier-News” decided to sell, and
its circulation under League ownership now exceeds the total population
of Fargo.
The League at present has weekly papers in seven states, with a total
circulation of two hundred thousand, and another weekly, the
“Nonpartisan Leader,” published in St. Paul, with a circulation of two
hundred and fifty thousand. It is starting co-operative country weekly
papers, supervising their editorial policy and furnishing them news and
editorial service; over one hundred of these weekly papers are already
going. There is another League daily in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and
one at Nampa, Idaho. Finally, the League is going ahead on its biggest
venture, the establishment of a daily in Minneapolis. This paper is to
be capitalized at a million dollars, and the stock is being sold to
farmer and labor organizations throughout the state. Says Mr. Morris:
“Many wealthy professional and business men, disgusted with the
controlled press, have purchased stock, and are warm boosters for the
League publications.” Also he says:
One of the chief results of the establishment of a League press is a
different attitude on the part of many existing papers. With
competition in the field, many publishers who have hitherto been
biased and unfair have been forced to change their tactics. Few of
these papers have gone over to the League side of political and
economic questions, but they have been forced at least to print fair
news reports on both sides of the question in their news columns,
reserving their opposition to the movement for their editorial
columns. That, of course, is fair enough. The menace of the controlled
press in America is due to the fact that as a rule this press does not
confine its arguments and opposition to the editorial columns, but
uses the news columns for propaganda, and, failing to print the news,
printing only a part of it, distorting it or actually lying, sways
opinion through the news columns.
Such is the procedure in places where Americans are free. But what about
our crowded cities, with their slum populations, speaking forty
different languages, illiterate, unorganized, and dumb? Even in these
cities there have been efforts made to start newspapers in the interest
of the people. I know few more heroic stories than the twenty-year
struggle to establish and maintain the “New York Call.” It began as a
weekly, “The Worker.” Even that took endless campaigns of begging, and
night labor of devoted men and women who earned their livings by
day-time labor under the cruel capitalist grind. At last they managed to
raise funds to start a daily, and then for ten years it was an endless
struggle with debt and starvation. It was a lucky week when the “New
York Call” had money enough to pay its printing force; the reporters and
editors would sometimes have to wait for months. A good part of the
space in the paper had to be devoted to ingenious begging.
The same attempt was made in Chicago, and there bad management and
factional quarrels brought a disastrous failure. At the time of writing,
there are Socialist dailies in Butte, in Seattle, and in Milwaukee, also
a few foreign-language Socialist dailies. There are numerous weeklies
and monthlies; but these, of course, do not take the place of
newspapers, they are merely a way of pamphleteering. The people read
falsehoods all week or all month, and then at last they get what portion
of the truth the “Appeal to Reason” or the “Nation” or the “Liberator”
or “Pearson’s” can find room for. In the meantime the average newspaper
reader has had his whole psychology made of lies, so that he cannot
believe the truth when he sees it.
There are a few millionaires in America who have liberal tendencies.
They have been willing to finance reform campaigns, and in great
emergencies to give the facts to the people; they have been willing now
and then to back radical magazines, and even to publish them. But—I
state the fact, without trying to explain it—there has not yet appeared
in America a millionaire willing to found and maintain a fighting daily
paper for the abolition of exploitation. I have myself put the
proposition before several rich men. I have even known of cases where
promises were made, and plans drawn up. My friend Gaylord Wilshire
intended to do it with the proceeds of his gold-mine, but the gold-mine
has taken long to develop. I had hopes that Henry Ford would do it, when
I read of his purchase of the “Dearborn Independent.” I urged the matter
upon him with all the eloquence I could muster; he said he meant to do
it, but I have my fears. The trouble is his ignorance; he really does
not know about the world in which he finds himself, and so far the
intellectual value of the “Dearborn Independent” has been close to zero.
So our slum proletariat is left to feed upon the garbage of yellow
journalism. Year by year the cost of living increases, and wages, if
they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered
strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons;
it learns to know the clubs of policemen and the bayonets and
machine-guns of soldiers; it learns to know capitalist politicians and
capitalist judges; also it learns to know Capitalist Journalism!
Wherever in America the workers organize and strike for a small portion
of their rights, they come out of the experience with a bitter and
abiding hatred of the press. I have shown you what happened in Colorado;
in West Virginia; in Paterson, New Jersey; in Calumet, Michigan; in
Bisbee, Arizona; in Seattle, Washington. I could show you the same thing
happening in every industrial center in America.
The workers have come to realize the part which the newspapers play;
they have come to know the newspapers as the crux of the argument, the
key to the treasure-chamber. A modern newspaper, seen from the point of
view of the workers, is a gigantic munition-factory, in which the
propertied class manufactures mental bombs and gas-shells for the
annihilation of its enemies. And just as in war sometimes the strategy
is determined by the location of great munition-factories and depots, so
the class-struggle comes to center about newspaper offices. In every
great city of Europe where the revolution took place, the first move of
the rebels was to seize these offices, and the first move of the
reactionaries was to get them back. We saw machine-guns mounted in the
windows of newspaper-offices, sharp-shooters firing from the roofs,
soldiers in the streets replying with shrapnel. It is worth noting that
wherever the revolutionists were able to take and hold the newspapers,
they maintained their revolution; where the newspapers were retaken by
the reactionaries, the revolution failed.
In Petrograd the “Little Gazette,” organ of the “Black Hundreds,” became
the “Red Gazette,” and has remained the “Red Gazette.” The official
military organ, the “Army and Fleet,” became the “Red Army and Fleet.”
The “Will of Russia,” organ of Protopopov, last premier of the Tsar,
became the “Pravda,” which means “Truth.” In Berlin, on the other hand,
the “Kreuz-Zeitung,” organ of black magic and reaction, became for a few
days “Die Rothe Fahne,” the “Red Flag”; but, alas, it went back to the
“Kreuz-Zeitung” again!
Will it come this way in America? Shall we see mobs storming the offices
of the “New York Times” and “World,” the “Chicago Tribune,” the “Los
Angeles Times”? It depends entirely upon the extent to which these
capitalist newspapers continue to infuriate the workers, and to suppress
working-class propaganda with the help of subservient government
officials. I personally am not calling for violent revolution; I still
hope for the survival of the American system of government. But I point
out to the owners and managers of our great capitalist news-organs the
peril in which they place themselves, by their system of organized lying
about the radical movement. It is not only the fury of resentment they
awaken in the hearts of class-conscious workingmen and women; it is the
condition of unstable equilibrium which they set up in society, by the
mass of truth they suppress. Today every class-conscious workingman
carries about with him as his leading thought, that if only he and his
fellows could get possession of the means of news-distribution, could
take the printing-offices and hold them for ten days, they could end
forever the power of Capitalism, they could make safe the Co-operative
Commonwealth in America.
I say ten days, and I do not speak loosely. Just imagine if the
newspapers of America were to print the truth for ten days! The truth
about poverty, and the causes of poverty; the truth about corruption in
politics and in all branches of government, in Journalism, and
throughout the business world; the truth about profiteering and
exploitation, about the banking graft, the plundering of the railroads,
the colossal gains of the Beef Trust and the Steel Trust and the Oil
Trust and their hundreds of subsidiary organizations; the truth about
conditions in industry, the suppression of labor-revolts and the
corrupting of labor movements; above all, the truth about the
possibilities of production by modern machinery, the fact that, by
abolishing production for profit and substituting production for use, it
would be possible to provide abundance for all by two or three hours’
work a day! I say that if all this legitimate truth could be placed
before the American people for ten successive days, instead of the mess
of triviality, scandal, crime and sensation, doctored news and political
dope, prejudiced editorials and sordid and vulgar advertisements upon
which the American people are now fed—I say that the world would be
transformed, and Industrial Democracy would be safe. Most of our
newspaper proprietors know this as well as I do; so, when they read of
the seizing of newspaper offices in Europe, they experience cold chills,
and one great newspaper in Chicago has already purchased half a dozen
machine-guns and stored them away in its cellar!
For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of
industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes,
pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose
our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new industrial
order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now
I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of our money-masters driving
us straight to the precipice of revolution. What shall I do? What can I
do—save to cry out one last warning in this last fateful hour? The time
is almost here—and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of
power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history
than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of
America today.
CHAPTER LXIV
THE PROBLEM OF THE REPORTER
One important line of attack upon Capitalist Journalism occurred to me
some five years ago, after the Colorado coal-strike. I have saved this
story, because it points so clearly the method I wish to advocate. You
will find the story in “Harper’s Weekly” for July 25, 1914; “Hearst-Made
War News,” by Isaac Russell.
You remember how Hearst “made” the war with Spain. Sixteen years later,
in 1914, Hearst was busy “making” another war, this time with Mexico.
President Wilson, trying to avoid war, had arranged for arbitration of
the difficulty between Mexico and the United States by delegates from
Argentine, Brazil and Chile. This was the Niagara Conference, and to it
the “New York American” sent an honest reporter. It did this, not
through oversight, but because the usual run of Hearst reporters had
found themselves unable to get any information whatever. One Mexican
delegate had taken the card of a Hearst reporter, torn it to pieces, and
thrown the pieces into the reporter’s face. The delegates for the United
States refused to talk to the Hearst representatives, the other
newspaper-men refused to have anything to do with them. So the managing
editor of the “New York American” selected Mr. Roscoe Conklin Mitchell,
a man known to be honest.
Mr. Mitchell came to Niagara, and got the news—to the effect that all
was going well at the conference. He sent a dispatch to that effect, and
the “New York American” did not publish this dispatch. Day by day Mr.
Mitchell sent dispatches, describing how all was going well at the
conference; and the “American,” which was determined that the Conference
should fail, doctored these dispatches and wrote in false matter. Mr.
Mitchell had to explain to the delegates and to the other reporters how
he was being treated by his home office. On two occasions Mr. Mitchell
forced the “American” to send up another man to write the kind of
poisoned falsehoods it wanted; and on each occasion these men were
forced to leave, because no one would have anything to do with them,
they could get no information. Finally, in the midst of Mr. Mitchell’s
dispatches, the “New York American” inserted a grand and wonderful
“scoop”: “PRESIDENT CARRANZA’S CONFIDENTIAL MESSAGE TO THE MEDIATORS.”
Mr. Mitchell had sent no such dispatch, and upon inquiry he learned that
the document was a fake; no such “confidential message” had been
received from President Carranza. So Mr. Mitchell wired his resignation
to the “New York American.”
The managing editor of the “American” protested. “Please be good soldier
and good boy,” he telegraphed. Again he telegraphed: “Come home
comfortably, be philosophical. Good soldiers are patient, even if
superior officers make mistakes. Be resigned without resigning.” When
the news of Mitchell’s resignation reached the other reporters, they
formed an impromptu committee and rushed in automobiles to his hotel to
congratulate him. The American delegates to the convention held a
reception, during which the head of the delegation made to Mr. Mitchell
a speech of congratulation. Summing up the story, Isaac Russell puts
this question to you, the reader: Will you leave it to the men on the
firing line, the reporters, to fight out alone the question of whether
you are to receive accurate information concerning what is going on in
the world? Or will you help to find means whereby both you and your
agent, the reporter, may be less at the mercy of the unscrupulous
publisher, who finds that lying and misrepresentation serve his personal
ends?
Isaac Russell, you recall, was the reporter for the “New York Times” who
had stood by me through the struggle over the Colorado coal-strike. This
struggle was just over, and both Russell and I were sick and sore.
Russell was fighting with his editors day by day—they objected to his
having written this “Hearst-made War News,” by the way, and took the
first opportunity thereafter to get rid of him. Russell had word of an
impending break between Amos Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, and wrote
it up. Gifford Pinchot, brother of Amos, made a furious denial,
whereupon the “Times” fired Russell. But very soon afterwards Amos
Pinchot broke with Theodore Roosevelt!
Russell and I talked over the problem of the reporter and the truth.
Must a reporter be a cringing wretch, or else a man of honor in search
of a job? Might not a reporter be a member of an honored profession,
having its own standards, its sense of duty to the public? Obviously,
the first trouble is that in his economic status the reporter is a
sweated wage slave. If reporting is to become a profession, the
reporters must organize, and have power to fix, not merely their
wage-scale, but also their ethical code. I wrote an article calling for
a “reporters’ union,” and Russell began to agitate among New York
newspaper-men for this idea, which has now spread all over the country.
What would be the effect upon news-writing of a reporters’ union? What
assurance have we that reporters would be better than owners? Well, in
the first place, reporters are young men, and owners are nearly always
old men; so in the newspaper-world you have what you have in the world
of finance, of diplomacy, of politics and government—a “league of the
old men,” giving orders to the young men, holding the young men down.
The old men own most of the property, the young men own little of the
property; so control by old men is property control, while control by
young men would be control by human beings.
I have met some newspaper reporters who were drunken scoundrels. I have
met some who were as cruel and unscrupulous as the interests they
served. But the majority of newspaper reporters are decent men, who hate
the work they do, and would gladly do better if it were possible. I feel
sure that very few of the falsehoods about Helicon Hall would have been
published if the reporters who accepted our hospitality had been free to
write what they really thought about us. I know that throughout our
“Broadway demonstration” a majority of the reporters were on our side.
They took us into their confidence about what was going on in their
newspaper offices; they went out of their way to give us counsel. Again
and again they came to my wife, to plead that our mourning “stunt” was
“petering-out,” and could we not think up some way to hold the attention
of the public? Would not my wife at least rescind her request that they
omit descriptions of that white military cape? After the last assault
upon the street speakers in Tarrytown, it was a reporter who warned my
wife that the situation was getting out of hand; the authorities would
not listen to reason, there was going to be violence, and she had better
persuade me to withdraw.
I have before me a letter from C. E. S. Wood, poet and lawyer:
You doubtless know more newspaper men than I do, but I know a great
many—fine fellows personally; themselves writhing in the detestable
position of moral bandits, the disgrace of which they feel as keenly
as any, and yet economic determinism keeps them there. They are in a
trap. They are behind the bars, and as the thief said to Talleyrand,
or some minister of France, “One must live.” I know of no other
profession that deliberately trains its neophytes to lying and
dishonor, which makes it a part of the professional obligation to ruin
man or woman by deliberate lies; which never honestly confesses a
mistake, and never has the chivalry to praise an adversary.
And again, William Marion Reedy:
To one who has lived all his life in cities, to one who has spent most
of his days and nights with the men who write the great daily papers
of the cities, it is perfectly evident that ninety out of one hundred
editorial writers on the press today are men who are in intellectual
and sympathetic revolt against present-day conditions. You will find
the average editorial writer a Socialist, and as for the reporter, he
is most likely to be an Anarchist. The reason of this is plain enough.
The men who make the newspapers are behind the scenes—they see the
workings of the wires—they note the demagogy of politicians, they are
familiar with the ramifications by which the public service
corporations control the old parties down to the smallest offices, and
even at times finance reform movements, which always stop at the
election of some respectable figurehead or dummy, but never proceed to
any attack upon the fundamental evils of our social and economic
system. It is my firm belief that were it not for the capitalists at
the head of the great daily newspapers, if it were possible for the
men who write the news and the editorials of all the newspapers in the
United States, to take absolute charge of their publications and print
the news exactly as they see it, and write their views exactly as they
feel them, for a space of three days, there would be such a revolution
in the United States of America as would put that of France to shame.
The only possible reason why this might not occur is that the
editorial writers and reporters actually believe in nothing—not even
in the various remedies, rational or wild-eyed, which occasionally, in
private, they proclaim.
And here is another letter, written by Ralph Bayes, for many years city
editor of the “Los Angeles Record,” and now laid up in a sanitarium with
tuberculosis.
I wonder as you gallop gaily along the way, throwing rocks in
gypsy-like abandon at the starched and frilled little children of
privilege—I wonder whether you will give your readers just one glimpse
of the tragedies that are the lives of the men hired by the system to
do the work you condemn. It isn’t merely that we journalists must
prostitute our own minds and bodies in answer to the call of that
inexorable tyrant, our collective belly. Every man who toils and
sweats for a wage is perforce doing the same thing. The bitterness of
our portion is this precisely: that we are hired poisoners, whose lot
it is to kill the things we love most. To kill them, not as bold
buccaneers in a stand-up fight, but to slay them artfully,
insidiously, with a half-true headline or a part suppression of fact.
In my ten years of experience on various sheets as reporter, editor
and Associated Press representative, I have come to know the masses
with whom I had to deal. Their intellects were the pawns with which I
must learn to play the editorial game. I knew for instance, sitting at
my desk, just how many extra papers I could sell with a scare-line on
a police scandal. I knew to how many men on the street the filthy
details of some married woman’s shame would prove a lure to buy. And
as I watched the circulation rise or fall, day by day, like a huge
beating pulse, I became familiar, somewhat, with the mental processes
of the average human animal. It was my tragedy, as it is the tragedy
of the majority of my fellows, that this knowledge, acquired always at
a tremendous cost of our life’s energies, must be used not for the
uplift, but for the further enslavement, the drugging of the minds of
men. How many times have I sat at my desk, and in apparently heartless
fashion, cut the big truth out of the stuff that honest reporters
wrote. Sometimes there were other moments in my life, as in the lives
of the rest of my kind, when there were opportunities for sly
sabotage—when we thought by the ridiculous speciousness of our alleged
facts, to make the pseudo-truths which we pretended to propound stand
forth in their gaunt shamelessness for the things they actually were.
Do you remember Harwood, of the “Los Angeles Times”? If I were only
with you now, I could point out to you in that daily concatenation of
lies, a few truths about things, peering covertly through the mass of
corruption, and seeming almost to be holding their figurative noses in
disgust. How we used to chuckle when he would succeed in passing a sly
sentence—a word—over the sleepy night editor at the desk! Poor
intellectual Pierrots that we were! Literary Pantaloons!
But out of the tragedy of my own experience, and out of the tragedies
of the experiences of the fellows I have known, I can glimpse a great
light ahead. For I’m an optimist, you see. I was talking the other day
to the editor of one of the sheets which poison public opinion in
Phoenix, Arizona. He is a thoroughly fine, and likable chap, but I had
always known him for an ultra-conservative—a kept man entirely. The
conversation drifted to Russia, and to my utter astonishment he quite
frankly, but confidentially, told me that he didn’t believe a word of
the dispatches put forth by the Associated Press—the Associated Press
which hitherto had been Almighty God to him. I glanced at him
curiously, and then: “You’re not a radical?” I said, dubiously. “I
don’t know what I am,” he replied. “I’ve lost my perspective and I
haven’t anchored to any economic philosophy as yet, but sometimes my
thoughts are so bitter that I’m afraid of them. I’ve just seen a man
sent to jail for twenty days,” he continued. “He had been in town but
half an hour, and his only crime was that he couldn’t obtain work and
that he had run out of money. God,” he said, “some day I may be that
man. I feel his feelings now, and I must hide them or lose my job.”
Poor fellow, his wife is dying of tuberculosis, and he is almost
distracted with the burden of his financial troubles.
It was just another journalistic tragedy I had seen, but joy burst in
upon me as I listened to him talk. “Things aren’t so bad after all,” I
thought, “for the press, at least, isn’t any more rotten or venal than
the rest of the system.” In the editorial rooms of the country there
are good fellows and true, sheer tired of the daily assassination in
which they participate. Their fine delusions are spent. Their faith in
the old is waning. And when the big day comes, I think you will find
the press full ripe—riper perhaps than most of our institutions—for
the change.
On page 149 I stated that the publisher of the “New York Times” gave a
dinner to his staff, and my friend, Isaac Russell, corrected me, saying:
“WE REPORTERS PAID FOR THAT DINNER.” Now let me give you another glimpse
into a reporter’s soul:
I can understand it now. We were trying to get together in an
association, but the big bosses always got in, and Mr. Ochs always
came TO OUR DINNER, and always made the principal speech, and always
dismissed the gathering after vaudeville stunts by “old vets.” I
remember that at that dinner I PAID, but sat away at the foot of a
horseshoe table, and the BIG GUNS of the “Times” all sat around the
center of the horseshoe, and the big guns thundered and sent us
away—me boiling, that we writers had to sit mute and dumb at our own
dinner, and could never talk over our affairs—the bosses rushed so to
every gathering we planned.
I wish you could print the menu card for that dinner—the illustration
on the cover. I kept it as the most humiliating example I ever saw of
the status of the news-writer.... The illustration showed Adolph S.
Ochs as a man with his coat off wielding a big sledgehammer. He was
knocking one of those machines where you send the ball away up in the
air, and get a cigar if the bell rings at the top of the column. Well,
a little figure stood behind the redoubtable plutocratic owner of the
“Times.” This little figure was labeled “THE STAFF.”
“STAFF” WAS FLUNKEYING IT FOR OCHS—holding the great man’s hat and
coat, if you will—while he hit the circulation ball a wallop!
CHAPTER LXV
THE PRESS SET FREE
Some years ago Allan Benson told me of his troubles as an honest
journalist; I asked him to repeat them for this book, and he answered:
I doubt if my experiences as a daily newspaper editor would serve your
purpose. When I was a daily editor I edited. I printed what I pleased.
If I could not do so, I resigned. I didn’t resign with a bank account
to fall back upon—I resigned broke.
I am sorry that I struck my friend Benson in an uncommunicative mood. It
doesn’t in the least interfere with my thesis to learn that some editors
resign; it is plain enough to the dullest mind that it doesn’t help the
public when an honest man resigns, and a rogue or a lickspittle takes
his place.
I am not one of those narrow radicals who believe that the pocket-nerve
of the workers is the only nerve, or even the principal nerve, by which
they will be moved to action. I know that the conscience of newspaper
men is struggling all the time. Now and then I come on a case of
truth-telling in a capitalist newspaper, which cannot be explained by
any selfish, competitive motive. What does it mean? If you could go
inside that office, you would find some man risking the bread that goes
into his children’s mouths, the shoes that go onto their feet, in order
that the knavery of Capitalist Journalism may be a little less knavish;
going to his boss and laying down the law: “I won’t stand for that. If
that goes in, I go out.” As a rule, alas, he goes out—and this reduces
the inclination of others to fight for honesty in the news.
One purpose of this book is to advocate a union of newspaper workers, so
that they may make their demands as an organization, and not as helpless
individuals. Events move fast these days; while I write, I learn that
there is already a “News-Writers’ Union” in Boston, and one in New
Haven; there is one being formed in Omaha, one in Louisville, one in
Seattle, one in San Francisco. In Louisville the “Courier-Journal” and
“Times” served notice on their staff that joining the union would
automatically constitute resignation. In San Francisco, I am told by an
editor of that city, the movement “was carried through swiftly and
silently at the start, the evening papers being one hundred per cent
organized, the morning papers about fifty per cent.” Then the publishers
got wind of it, and held a secret meeting in the St. Francis Hotel.
“That fearless backer of organized labor and the rights of the working
classes, to wit: William Randolph Hearst, preferred to carry out his
great program of betterment without consulting his handmaidens and
bondmen.” The “Chronicle,” the paper of “Mike” De Young, took the same
stand; so—
Upon the morning after the meeting every man on both papers who had
signed the charter roll of the proposed association was told to recant
with bended knee, or to go forth and earn his bread with a pick and
shovel. Some did and some did not—all honor to the latter.... It is
certain that the publishers of the morning papers will fight to the
last ditch.
My informant goes on to tell about his own position. You remember the
immortal utterance of President Eliot of Harvard, that the true
“American hero” of our time is the “scab.” How does this true “American
hero” feel about himself? Listen:
And I? Well, old man, I somewhat shamefully admit that I am at present
guarding my bread and butter, and looking to the future with one eye
on the boss’s and my own opportunities, and in my heart damning the
conditions that make me an undoubted renegade. I am drawing a little
better than forty per, am in the best of standing, being now —— and
with the possibility of being its head shortly, and with certain
advancement coming in both pay and rating. Now what the deuce? Shall I
tell Polly to support us and get in on the big game, or shall I eat my
bitter bread?...
I do know this, that there is going to be no present big success of
the union movement, that whoever joins it too prominently is going to
fight the owners for the rest of his life, and that the union can do
me myself no good at all from any standpoint.
You will remember that in my story of the “Los Angeles Times” I
mentioned a young reporter, Bob Harwood, who had told me of the “Times”
knaveries. Harwood is now in San Francisco, where you may have another
glimpse of him.
Bob told ’em all to go to hell, and is now organizing actively. There
is an addition coming to the Harwood family shortly. Why comment
further?
And then, let us see what is happening on the other side of the
continent. In New Haven the “News-Writers’ Union” goes on strike, and
while they are on strike, they publish a paper of their own! In Boston
the “News-Writers’ Union” declares a strike, and wins all demands.
Incidentally they learn—if they do not know it already—that the
newspapers of Boston do not publish the news! They do not publish the
news about the News-Writers’ strike; when the strike is settled, on the
basis of recognition of the union, not a single Boston newspaper
publishes the terms of the settlement!
In every union there is always a little group of radicals, occupied with
pointing out to the men the social significance of their labor, the duty
they owe to the working-class, and to society as a whole. So before long
we shall see the News-Writers’ Union of Boston taking up the task of
forcing the Boston newspapers to print the truth. We shall see the
News-Writers’ Union taking up the question: Shall the “Boston Evening
Transcript” permit its news-columns to be edited by the gas company, and
by “Harvard Beer, 1,000 Pure”? We shall see the union at least bringing
these facts to public attention, so that the “Transcript” can no longer
pose as a respectable newspaper.
I quote one paragraph more from my San Francisco letter:
All three evening papers, I am told, are one hundred per cent
organized; a charter is on the way from the I. T. U. and the movement
has the full backing—or is promised the full backing—of the A. F. of
L. and the local labor organizations. Just what that is worth is yet
to be learned.
This man, you see, is groping his way. He doesn’t know what the backing
of organized labor is worth. But the newspaper-men of Boston found out;
they won because the type-setters and the pressmen stood by them. And
the New York actors won because the musicians and the stage-hands stood
by them. And this is the biggest thing about the whole movement—the fact
that workers of hand and brain are uniting and preparing to take
possession of the world. One purpose of this book is to urge a
hand-and-brain union in the newspaper field; to urge that the
news-writers shall combine with the pressmen and type-setters and the
truckmen—one organization of all men and women who write, print and
distribute news, to take control of their own labor, and see to it that
the newspapers serve public interests and not private interests.
What I ask at the very outset is a representative of the News-Writers’
Union, acting as one of the copy-readers of every newspaper. This man
will say, in the name of his organization: “That is a lie; it shall not
go in. This news-item is colored to favor the railroad interests; it
must be rewritten. Tonight there is a mass-meeting of labor to protest
against intervention in Russia. That meeting is worth a column.” Such
demands of the copy-reader will, if challenged, be brought before a
committee of the workers of the paper—the workers both of hand and
brain. If any demand is not complied with, the paper will not appear
next day. Do you think that lying about the labor movement would
continue under such conditions?
I recognize the rights of the general public in the determining of news.
I should wish to see a government representative sitting in all councils
where newspaper policy is laid down. The owner should be represented, so
long as his ownership exists; but unless I mis-read the signs of the
times, the days of the owner as owner are numbered in our industry. The
owner may best be attended to by a government price-fixing board, which
will set wages for newspaper work and prices of newspapers to the public
at a point where interest, dividends and profits are wiped out. So the
owner will become a worker like other workers; if he is competent and
honest, he will stay as managing director; if he is incompetent and
dishonest, he will go to digging ditches, under the eye of a thoroughly
efficient boss.
Little by little the workers of all industrial nations are acquiring
class-consciousness, and preparing themselves for the control of
industry. In America they seem backward, but that is because America is
a new country, and the vast majority of the workers have no idea how the
cards are stacked against them. I have just been reading an account of
the general strike in Seattle, the most significant labor revolt in our
history, and I observe how painfully chivalrous the Seattle strikers
were. Because they did not permit the capitalist papers of their city to
be published, therefore they refrained from publishing their own paper!
This was magnificent, but it was not war, and I venture to guess that
since the Seattle strikers have had the capitalist newspapers, not
merely of their city, but of all the rest of the world telling lies
about them, they will be more practical next time—as practical as those
they are opposing.
How all this works out, you may learn from the Syndicalist movement of
Italy—only, of course, Capitalist Journalism has not allowed you to know
anything about the Syndicalist movement of Italy! The glass-workers were
beaten in a terrific strike, and they realized that they had to find a
new weapon; they contributed their funds and bought a glass-factory,
which they started upon a co-operative basis. When this factory had its
product ready for sale, strikes were called on the other factories. By
applying this method again and again, the union broke its rivals, and
bought them out at a low price, and so before the war practically the
entire glass-industry of Italy was in the hands of co-operative unions,
and the glass-workers were getting the full value of their product.
The same thing was being done before the war by the agricultural workers
in Sicily. The strikers had been shot down by the soldiery, their own
brothers and sons; they bought several estates and worked them
co-operatively, and when harvest-time came there was labor for the
co-operative estates, and there were strikes against the absentee
landlords, who were spending their time in Paris and on the Riviera. So
the landlords made haste to sell out, and the agricultural unions were
rapidly taking possession of the land of Sicily.
The same methods were recently tried out in the newspaper field by
strikers in the Argentine Republic; I quote from an account in the
“Christian Science Monitor,” a Boston newspaper which gives fair
accounts of radical happenings abroad, and which may some day give fair
accounts of radical happenings in America. The “Christian Science
Monitor” is interviewing a United States embassy official, just returned
from Buenos Aires:
An incident of the latter strike shows the unique control, as Mr.
Barrett puts it, that they exercise over the newspapers. During the
seventy-three days the port was closed, the only goods handled were
shipments of newsprint. The newspapers represent the workers. If a
paper dares to send to its composing-room an item opposed to the
interest of the labor element, the compositors probably will refuse to
put it in type. If they do set it up and it appears, the paper can
expect no more newsprint from the docks.
I hear the reader says: “These strikers don’t represent the public; they
represent themselves. You are only substituting one kind of
class-interest for another.” Ah, yes—dear reader of capitalist opinion!
This at least you admit; the class represented by the strikers is vastly
larger than that represented by the owners; we are that much nearer to
democracy. But you demand one hundred per cent pure democracy—dear
reader of capitalist opinion!
Well, the workers offer you the way; they cheerfully permit all owners
to become workers—either of hand or brain—and to receive their full
share with all other workers of hand or brain; whereas, in the nature of
the case, the owners do not welcome the workers as owners, and are doing
all in their power to make sure that no one shall be owners but
themselves. This is the fundamental and all-determining fact about the
class struggle, and the reason why he who serves the interest of the
workers is serving the interest of all society, and of the Co-operative
Commonwealth which is to be. To the argument that the taking of power by
the workers is the substitution of one kind of class tyranny by another
kind of class tyranny, the answer, complete and final, is that there is
no need of the capitalist class as a class and that the world will be a
happier place for all men when the members of that class have become
workers, either of hand or brain. When that has been done, there will be
no classes, therefore no class tyranny, and no incentive to class lying.
Thus, and thus only, shall we break the power of the capitalist press—by
breaking the power of capitalism. And so it is that I, an advocate of
pure democracy, am interested in this story from the Argentine Republic,
and tempted to cry to the American dockers, the American typographers,
the American news-writers: “Help! Help against the lying, kept press!”
And as I am reading the final proofs of this book, I hear the answer to
my cry. I read the following in the “New York Times”:
Boston, Oct. 28.—Pressmen employed by the Chapple Publishing Company,
Ltd., on discovering in a cartoon in “Life” which is being printed
here during the New York strike, what they considered a reflection on
organized labor, suspended work and refused to return until the
objectionable cartoon was taken out. The cartoon was eliminated, and
the men returned to work.
The drawing depicts a room apparently meant to typify conditions
existing in a city tenement district. The artist portrays a man
beating his wife over the head with the leg of a chair. The woman is
shown lying on the floor; the man has one knee on her body and one
hand clutching her throat. A child about two years old is shown in bed
watching the scene. Its face is expressive of horror. Another child,
evidently a little older, is stretched on the floor, face downward. At
the door is standing a patrolman in full uniform. He is talking with a
captain of police, who has rushed on the scene with drawn revolver.
The patrolman with hand upraised says: “It’s all right, Captain, he’s
got a union card.”
You may think my remedy drastic; but, honestly, do you think that any
remedy could be too drastic for an infamy such as this?
Here, as everywhere, the salvation of the world rests upon you, the
workers of hand and brain. I took up half this book telling how the
capitalist press lied about one man; you said, perhaps, that I liked to
be in the “limelight”; anyhow, I was only one writer-fellow, and it
didn’t matter to you what the newspapers did to a writer-fellow. But now
I make my appeal for yourself, for your wives and your children. I have
shown you how this knavish press turns the world against you; I have
shown how it turns you against yourself—how it seduces you, poisons your
mind, breaks your heart. You go on strike, and it plays upon your fears,
it uses your hunger and want as weapons against you; it saps your
strength, it eats out your soul, it smothers your thinking under
mountain-loads of lies. You fall, and the chariot of Big Business rolls
over you.
These men who own the world in which you struggle for life—what is it
that they want? They want power, power to rule you. And what is it that
you want? You want power to rule yourself. Between those two wants there
is eternal and unending and irreconcilable war—such is the class
struggle, and whether you will or not, you take your part in it, and I
take mine. I, a writer-fellow who wants to write the truth, appeal to
you, the laboring fellows of hand and brain, who want to read the truth,
who _must_ read the truth, if civilization is not to perish. I cry to
you: “Help! Help against the lying, kept press!”
I cry to you for the integrity of your calling, for the honor and
dignity of Journalism. I cry to you that Journalism shall no longer be
the thing described by Charles A. Dana, master-cynic of the “New York
Sun,” “buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten
cents a pound.” I cry to you that Journalism shall be a public ministry,
and that you who labor in it shall be, not wage-slaves and henchmen of
privilege, but servants of the general welfare, helping your fellow-men
to understand life, and to conquer the evils in nature outside them, and
in their own hearts. Why cannot the men and women of this great
profession form a society with a common mind and a common interest and a
common conscience, based upon the fact that they are all necessary, they
have each, down to the humblest office-boy, their essential part in a
great social service?
By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been
plunged into infinite misery; but that misery has its purpose in the
scheme of nature. Something more than a century ago we saw the people
driven by just such misery to grope their way into a new order of
society; they threw off the chains of hereditary monarchy, and made
themselves citizens of free republics. And now again we face such a
crisis; only this time it is in the world of industry that we have to
abolish hereditary rule, and to build an industrial commonwealth in
which the equal rights of all men are recognized by law. Such is the
task before us; go to it with joy and certainty, playing your part in
the making of the new world, in which there shall be neither slavery nor
poverty, in which the natural sources of wealth belong to all men alike,
and no one lives in idleness upon the labor of his fellows. That world
lies just before you, and the gates to it are barred only by ignorance
and prejudice, deliberately created and maintained by prostitute
journalism.
CHAPTER LXVI
A FRAME-UP THAT FELL DOWN
In concluding this, the most important and most dangerous book I have
ever written, I have a personal word to leave with the reader. I have
here attacked the most powerful interests in America, and it seems to me
hardly conceivable that they will permit the attack to go out to the
world, to be circulated among the general public, without some attempt
at interference.
What will they do? I cannot say. There are things on every page of this
book which are libelous unless they are true. If I am brought into court
and required to prove them, I may be facing a judge who has been
appointed by the interests I have exposed, a jury which has been
selected by the interests I have exposed, a prosecuting attorney who is
looking to these interests for his campaign-funds and his publicity at
the next election. The trial will be conducted on this simple basis—that
everything favorable to me is kept from the public, and everything that
can be made to seem unfavorable to me is sent by telegraph and cable all
over the world.
I would not mind losing what little property I own in the world; I would
not mind going to jail for this book. There are only two things I would
mind—first, having the book barred from circulation, and second, being
discredited in the eyes of those I seek to influence in favor of Social
Justice. So in this, the last word I may be able to get to you on the
subject, I wish to warn you of one crucial fact, which is this:
Our police and prosecuting authorities, our political machines and Big
Business interests, are many of them practiced in the art of producing
in court whatever testimony may be required in an emergency. There are
few traction interests or other public service corporations in America
which do not regularly employ perjured witnesses in case of need; and
those which have given up the custom have done so merely because they
have got the courts and the jury system so completely in their hands
that they no longer care what evidence is introduced against them. We
have seen Tom Mooney held in jail for three years, entirely upon the
basis of perjured testimony. Even the trial judge has written that he is
satisfied that Tom Mooney is innocent—but still Tom Mooney stays in
jail!
I am doing what I can to get this book to the people. I intend to go on
doing what I can to that end. Meantime I say to you, my readers, what I
said to my wife when I went out to Colorado on behalf of the
coal-strikers: “Whatever you read about me, don’t worry. If there is any
scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in
Denver.”
That is the way Big Business fights all over America.
The above was written in August. In November I am reading the page
proofs of the book, and “Big Business” steps forward to prove me a
prophet. A plot is laid against me, so wanton and so utterly without
basis of truth that no less than an assassin could have planned it. I
escaped—but by a margin so narrow that it is unpleasant to think about
it. Literally by a minute or two of time I missed having printed on the
front page of every big newspaper in America convincing evidence that I
am a secret German conspirator, contriving underhand plots for the
undermining of my country! My wife remarks: “I have been watching the
radical movement for seven or eight years, and I have heard much about
‘frame-ups.’ I always thought it was foolish talk, cheap melodrama; but
now I know that the ‘frame-up’ is a real thing, and it has changed my
whole view of the class struggle.”
I have mentioned on page 399 how I made a speech before the City Club of
Los Angeles, exposing the dishonesty of the “Los Angeles Times,”
whereupon the “Times” opened up a furious attack upon me, demanding that
I should be put in jail. I have quoted one sample of its ravings. Every
day or so for a week it printed similar abuse, and it continues the
attack, both editorially and in its news columns. I have stated publicly
in the “Appeal to Reason” that I am collecting evidence against the
“Times,” and preparing a book exposing it; so the “Times” proclaims me
as “the trumpet of Bolshevism,” and will be satisfied with nothing short
of a life sentence for me.
There is in Los Angeles a returned soldiers’ paper, the “Dugout.” The
editor, Sydney R. Flowers, is an American citizen who was in South
Africa at the outbreak of the war, and was so anxious to fight the
Kaiser that he left his wife and baby and enlisted. Invalided to
England, he tried again to enlist, and finally enlisted in Canada, and
served for three years in Belgium and France. He was twice wounded and
once gassed, and has only one lung as a result. Returning to his home in
Los Angeles with his wife and child, he found the war veterans’
organization being courted as a strike-breaking agency by the Merchants’
and Manufacturers’ Association of the city. Flowers rebelled, and
started a rival organization, the Allied World War Veterans, and with
the support of these veterans he started the “Dugout.” I met him, and
heard him speak several times, and gave him my support to the extent of
raising some money. He told me of the efforts of the “M. and M.” to
bribe him, and of their plots against him; he knew, and I knew, that
there were spies in his office.
There came to the office a letter from a stranger who signed himself
“Paul Rightman.” The envelope bore a Chicago return address, but had
been mailed in Los Angeles. It was typewritten, and the type was bad,
the ribbon double, with traces of red showing here and there. “Paul”
suggested to Flowers that he should send sample copies of his paper to
Socialist and labor papers abroad. Flowers, who is out to prevent the
next war by the spirit of international fraternity, thought this a good
idea; his impulse was encouraged by a mysterious Austrian who happened
into his office a few minutes after the letter arrived, and suggested to
him exactly the sort of letter he should write to these foreign
editors—most of whom, by a curious coincidence, happened to be in
Silesia, where American troops are going!
Flowers wrote the letters and mailed them, and an hour or two after he
had mailed them, two men who have been seen frequently in the offices of
the “M. and M.,” called upon Flowers’ wife and terrified her by the
announcement that her husband had committed a crime which would cause
him to be sent to jail for life; his only chance was to drop the
“Dugout,” and he had one hour in which to make his decision. Flowers was
summoned by a telephone call, purporting to come from the United States
District Attorney’s office. He obeyed this call, and in the hallway of
the Federal Building was met by two mysterious persons who exhibited
shields of authority, and informed him that he had three minutes in
which to decide whether he would drop the “Dugout” or be sent to jail
for life.
He refused to decide so quickly, and telephoned me for advice. I advised
him to stand firm. I went to his office, and in my hearing he gave
orders over the telephone for the printing of the next issue of his
paper. In less than one hour after he had given that order, someone,
identity unknown, came to the United States Attorney with “definite”
information that Flowers was in relation with enemy publications abroad,
and a search warrant was issued and served. I happened to be present in
the office of the “Dugout” and witnessed the events, and can testify
that the Federal agents, in defiance of the law, refused to permit
Flowers to read the search warrant; that they held him against his will
in violation of the law; that they raided the office of the Allied World
War Veterans, which they had been given no authority to enter; and
finally that they left the place a wreck.
Next morning there appeared in the “Los Angeles Times” a front page
two-column story about the uncovering of a nest of treason. Among other
things, it was stated that Flowers had been publishing seditious
material before the armistice, and had been warned by the Federal
authorities and forced to change his tone; the fact being that at this
time Flowers was in the trenches in France, and did not start the
publication of the “Dugout” until four or five months after the
armistice!
I have said that the raid was brutally conducted. I might mention that I
protested to one of the Federal agents against the unnecessary rowdyism,
and this man remarked concerning the other man, his chief: “He’s a
rough-neck. I don’t believe in rough-house business myself, there’s no
sense at all in it.” Also I might mention that I brought two assistant
U. S. Attorneys to the scene, and they arrived five minutes after their
agents had left, and admitted to me that the proceedings were wholly
unwarranted; one of them called up Flowers’ home and very angrily
ordered the agents to desist from the search they were making of that
place. But next morning the “Los Angeles Times” reported:
VIOLENCE FAKED
The government agents disturbed no property in the office, simply
carrying away the papers they desired. After the inspectors had gone,
witnesses say that certain known followers of Flowers took possession
of the offices, tore down an American flag which was on the wall,
threw it on the floor, and generally wrecked the place. Then they sent
for a “Los Angeles Examiner” photographer to make a photograph of the
offices, with the apparent desire to have the publication of the
photograph give the impression that the Federal officers had
desecrated the flag and destroyed the office property.
Prior to this episode I had been too busy with my own writings to have
even read a copy of the “Dugout” through. But I knew the record of
Flowers in the war, and I knew his purpose since the war, and when I saw
this plot to destroy his magazine, I made up my mind to stand back of
him. I engaged a lawyer for him, and I sent long telegrams about the
case to the “Appeal to Reason” and other Socialist papers over the
country. So the masters of Los Angeles decided to get me in the same net
with Flowers.
There came to Flowers’ office a second letter signed by the mysterious
“Paul.” This letter was written on the same bad typewriter, with a
double ribbon showing traces of red. But this time the return address on
the envelope was not “Paul Rightman, Chicago, Illinois”; this time it
was “Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, California!”
Flowers called me on the ’phone, and said; “Did you mail me a letter
yesterday?” I answered, “No, I haven’t written you any letter.” “Well,”
said Flowers, “here is a letter with your name on the envelope.
Evidently somebody wants it to appear that you are writing me letters
signed with an assumed name.” “What is in the letter?” I asked, and
Flowers started to read it to me over the ’phone. It was a letter of
violent denunciation of the government, full of the most venomously
treasonable sentiments, and offering to supply Flowers with more names
of papers in Germany with which he might correspond. I waited to hear
only about half of it, then I cried: “Get that letter out of your
office!”
“But wait—” said Flowers.
“Don’t wait for anything,” I insisted. “Drop what you are doing and take
that letter to my lawyer as quickly as you can run.”
Flowers promised me he would do that, and I hung up the receiver. Two or
three minutes after he left his office with the letter in his pocket
there were two agents of the District Attorney’s office of Los Angeles
County looking for him at his office. When he returned there were four
of them on hand, and they held him up and proceeded to make another
raid. The man in charge, I might mention, was C. E. Sebastian, once
mayor of the city, prosecuted for a sexual crime, kicked out of office
by the people, and now working as a detective for the District
Attorney’s office!
The first thing this man did was to examine all Flowers’ letters—letters
on his desk, letters in the drawers of his desk, letters in his pockets.
There were some hundred and fifty letters altogether, and they went over
them all several times, studying the return addresses on the envelopes.
They spent something like an hour and a half at it, and their balked
anger was comically evident. In their whispered consultations Flowers
heard them mention my name several times, and once he heard Sebastian
say: “He’s a slick one.”
Flowers was haled before the Grand Jury, indicted under the Criminal
Syndicalism law, and thrown into jail at once. The authorities fixed the
bail at fifteen thousand dollars, which they hoped would be prohibitive,
and denied Flowers the right to see his counsel that night. They have
taken every scrap of paper belonging to the magazine. They have
frightened off one printer and raided another, and so they think they
have smashed the “Dugout.”
Come to my lawyer’s office for a minute and examine this mysterious
“Paul” letter. It is a long letter, very abusive and stupid, and I won’t
waste space on it, except to point out one more of the subtle traps that
were placed in it. One sentence denouncing the acts of the government
agents adds the phrase: “as I stated in the papers.” It so happens that
out of the half million population of Los Angeles, just one person had
been quoted in the newspapers as protesting against the raid on the
“Dugout,” and that one person was myself. So when this letter was
published, the newspapers would be able to say: Upton Sinclair is
carrying a secret correspondence with a pro-German conspirator, using
the alias “Paul.” But you see, he forgets and puts his name on the
envelope! And also he gives himself away in the text of the letter—he
identifies himself as the mysterious conspirator!
If you have any doubt that this was the plan, you have only to look at
the “Los Angeles Times” next morning; a double-column, front page story
about this second raid on the “Dugout,” giving the full text of the
first “Paul” letter as a part of Flowers’ “conspirings” with the
enemy—and without any hint that this mysterious “Paul” might be an
imaginary person! If the second “Paul” letter had been found, that too
would have been published in full, and the entire country would have
read a story to the effect that both letters had come from Upton
Sinclair, who was thus caught red-handed in a vile German conspiracy
against his country!
Maybe you are like my wife; maybe you never believed in the “frame-up.”
But study this case, and see what else you can make of it. Ask yourself:
How comes it that the raids of both the Federal agents and of the Los
Angeles County officers are so precisely timed to the arrival of letters
from a mysterious “Paul” whom nobody has ever seen? And how comes it
that this mysterious “Paul” puts the name of Upton Sinclair on his
envelope? If “Paul” is afraid to put his own name on the envelope, why
does he not mail it without return address, as millions of letters are
mailed every day? And why does he employ the words: “As I stated in the
papers”—when he hasn’t stated anything whatever in the papers, and when
Flowers must know he hasn’t stated anything? Is it not plain that some
dark agency is here working behind the scenes, plotting to ruin Upton
Sinclair, and “tipping off” both the Federal authorities and the county
authorities at the precise critical moment?
What is this agency? I do not know, and my lawyer, who takes this
conspiracy very seriously, will not permit me to guess in public. But he
admits my right to study these “Paul” letters, and to point out a
peculiar bit of internal evidence. It would seem that this dark agency
which is plotting to ruin Upton Sinclair is also interested in injuring
the “Los Angeles Examiner.” The first “Paul” letter offers to supply
Flowers with the names of more German papers, if he will insert a
request in the personal columns of the “Examiner”; and the “Times”
publishes this letter in full, calling particular attention to the
damaging mention of the “Examiner.” Day after day the “Times” is
attacking the “Examiner,” calling it a pro-German sheet; and here is a
German conspirator using this pro-German sheet as a medium for his
schemes!
The above is what is done to me before this book comes out. What will be
done after my enemies have actually read the book, I cannot imagine. All
I can do is to repeat my warning to you. Twenty years ago old “One-hoss”
Wayland told me he had made it the rule of his life never to write a
letter that he would not publish in the “Appeal to Reason.” And that is
the principle upon which I have always carried on my propaganda. I have
no secrets. What I have to say is said once a week in a full page of the
“Appeal,” and the opposition to violence and conspiracy in the class
struggle which I there write in public I advocate just as vigorously in
private, and all my friends know it. So, if at any time you read that a
carload of dynamite bombs has been found in my home, or that I have been
carrying on a cipher correspondence with some foreign assassins, or that
I have poisoned my wife and eloped with a chorus girl, or that I have
taken a job on the “Los Angeles Times”—please go back and read this
warning, and understand what is being done to both of us.
CONCLUSION
When I first talked over this book with my wife, she gave me a bit of
advice: “Give your facts first, and then call your names.” So throughout
this book I have not laid much stress on the book’s title. Perhaps you
are wondering just where the title comes in!
What is the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelope
every week—you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and
magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the
fair body of truth and sell it in the market-place, who betray the
virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business. And
down in the counting-room below sits the “madame” who profits by your
shame; unless, perchance, she is off at Palm Beach or Newport, flaunting
her jewels and her feathers.
Please do not think that I am just slinging ugly words. Off and on for
years I have thought about this book, and figured over the title, and
what it means; I assert that the Brass Check which serves in the house
of ill-fame as “the price of a woman’s shame” is, both in its moral
implications and in its social effect, precisely and identically the
same as the gold and silver coins and pieces of written paper that are
found every week in the pay-envelopes of those who write and print and
distribute capitalist publications.
The prostitution of the body is a fearful thing. The young girl,
trembling with a strange emotion of which she does not know the meaning,
innocent, confiding and tender, is torn from her home and started on a
road to ruin and despair. The lad, seeking his mate and the fulfilment
of his destiny, sees the woman of his dreams turn into a foul harpy,
bearer of pestilence and death. Nature, sumptuous, magnificent, loving
life, cries: “Give me children!” And the answer comes: “We give you
running sores and bursting glands, rotting lips and festering noses,
swollen heads and crooked joints, idiot gabblings and maniac shrieks,
pistols to blow out your brains and poisons to still your agonies.” Such
is the prostitution of the body.
But what of the mind? The mind is master of the body, and commands what
the body shall do and what it shall become; therefore, always, the
prostitution of the mind precedes and causes the prostitution of the
body. Youth cries: “Life is beautiful, joyous! Give me light, that I may
keep my path!” The answer comes: “Here is darkness, that you may
stumble, and beat your face upon the stones!” Youth cries: “Give me
Hope.” The answer comes: “Here is Cynicism.” Youth cries: “Give me
understanding, that I may live in harmony with my fellow-men.” The
answer comes: “Here are lies about your fellow-men, that you may hate
them, that you may cheat them, that you may live among them as a wolf
among wolves!” Such is the prostitution of the mind.
When I planned this book I had in mind a sub-title: “A Study of the
Whore of Journalism.” A shocking sub-title; but then, I was quoting the
Bible, and the Bible is the inspired word of God. It was surely one of
God’s prophets who wrote this invitation to the reading of “The Brass
Check”:
Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore
that sitteth upon many waters;
With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the
inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her
fornication.
For eighteen hundred years men have sought to probe the vision of that
aged seer on the lonely isle of Patmos. Listen to his strange words:
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a
woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy,
having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple
and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and
pearls, having a golden cup in her hands full of abominations and
filthiness of her fornication:
And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
Now, surely, this mystery is a mystery no longer! Now we know what the
seer of Patmos was foreseeing—Capitalist Journalism! And when I call
upon you, class-conscious workers of hand and brain, to organize and
destroy this mother of all iniquities, I do not have to depart from the
language of the ancient scriptures. I say to you in the words of the
prophet Ezekiel:
So the spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and
behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house.
And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house:
Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their kings,
far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them forever.
A PRACTICAL PROGRAM
As I am about to send this book to press, I take one last look at the
world around me. Half a million coal-miners have struck, a court
injunction has forced the leaders to call off the strike, the miners are
refusing to obey their leaders—and the newspapers of the entire United
States are concealing the facts. For a week it has been impossible for
me to learn, except from vague hints, what is happening in the
coal-strike. And at the same time, because of false newspaper stories
from Centralia, Washington, a “white terror” reigns in the entire West,
and thousands of radicals are beaten, jailed, and shot.
I have pleaded and labored long to avoid a violent revolution in
America; I intend to go on pleading and laboring to the last hour. I
know that thousands of my readers will, like myself, be desperately
anxious for something they can do. I decided to work out a plan of
action; something definite, practical, and immediate.
I propose that we shall found and endow a weekly publication of
truth-telling, to be known as “The National News.” This publication will
carry no advertisements and no editorials. It will not be a journal of
opinion, but a record of events pure and simple. It will be published on
ordinary newsprint paper, and in the cheapest possible form. It will
have one purpose and one only, to give to the American people once every
week the truth about the world’s events. It will be strictly and
absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It
will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and
truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth
into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans
are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a
circulation of a million inside of a year.
Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my
work, and it isn’t editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of
that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my
idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors,
composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who
have proven by their life-time records that they believe in fair play.
By way of illustration, I will indicate my idea of such a board: Allan
Benson, Alice Stone Blackwell, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Arthur Bullard,
William C. Bullitt, Herbert Croly, Max Eastman, William Hard, Mrs. J.
Borden Harriman, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Hamilton Holt, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, Paul Kellogg, Amos Pinchot, Charles Edward Russell,
Lincoln Steffens, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Ida Tarbell, Col. William Boyce
Thompson, Samuel Untermyer, Frank A. Vanderlip, Oswald Garrison Villard,
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.
The above list is confined to men and women who live in or near New
York, and who therefore could attend directors’ meetings, and not be
merely “dummies.” You will note that the list contains some practical
publishers and editors; it contains Socialists and anti-Socialists,
pro-Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks, radicals and liberals of all shades.
In addition I would like to provide for a number of directors to be
appointed by various organized groups in the country: one representative
each from the Nonpartisan League, The American Federation of Labor, the
National Teachers’ Federation, the Federation of Catholic Societies, the
Federation of Protestant Churches, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, etc.
The members thus named should not be sufficient in number to control the
publication, for it is obvious in common sense that control must rest
with the stockholders who have founded and made possible the paper. But
these various groups should have a voice on the board, for the purpose
of criticizing the publication and holding it rigidly to its declared
policy, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” It
should be provided that each director has the right to a column twice a
year in the publication, in which to state any criticism of its policy
which he may have; also that any five directors have the right once a
month to insert a column pointing out what they consider failure of the
paper to live up to its professed standards. There should be a
directors’ meeting in New York City once every month, and all these
meetings should be open to representatives of the press; the editorial
staff should be present, and answer all criticisms and explain their
policy. Unless I am mistaken, this would result in making “National
News” in another sense; the capitalist press would be forced to discuss
the paper, and to advertise it.
I picture a publication of sixty-four pages, size nine inches by twelve,
with three columns of ordinary newspaper type. The paper will have
special correspondents in several of the big cities, and in the
principal capitals of Europe, and will publish telegraphic news from
these correspondents. It will obtain the names of reliable men in cities
and towns throughout America, and in case of emergency it can telegraph,
say to Denver, ordering five hundred words about the Ludlow massacre, or
to Spokane, ordering the truth about the Centralia fight. The editor of
the “National News” will sit in a watch-tower with the world spread
before him; thousands of volunteers will act as his eyes, they will send
him letters or telegrams with news. He and his staff will consider it
all according to one criterion: Is the truth being hidden here? Is this
something the American people ought to know? If so, the editor will send
a trusted man to get the story, and when he has made certain of the
facts he will publish them, regardless of what is injured, the Steel
Trust or the I. W. W., the Standard Oil Company or the Socialist
Party—even the “National News” itself.
Our editor will not give much space to the news that all other papers
publish. The big story for him will be what the other papers let alone.
He will employ trained investigators, and set them to work for a week,
or maybe for several months, getting the facts about the lobby of the
Beef Trust in Washington, the control of our public schools in the
interest of militarism, the problem of who is paying the expenses of the
American railway mission in Siberia. Needless to say, the capitalist
press will provide the “National News” with a complete monopoly of this
sort of work. Also it will provide the paper with many deliberate
falsehoods to be nailed. When this is done, groups of truth-loving
people will buy these papers by the thousands, and blue-pencil and
distribute them. So the “National News” will grow, and the “kept” press
will be moved by the only force it recognizes—loss of money.
There are in America millions of people who could not be persuaded to
read a Socialist paper, or a labor paper, or a single tax paper; but
there are very few who could not be persuaded to read a paper that gives
the news and proves by continuous open discussion that it really does
believe in “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I do
not think I am too optimistic when I say that such a publication, with a
million circulation, would change the whole tone of American public
life.
What would such a paper cost? To be published without advertisements, it
would have to charge a high subscription price, two dollars a year at
least; and there are not enough who will subscribe to a paper at that
price. It would be better for the people to go without shoes than
without truth, but the people do not know this, and so continue to spend
their money for shoes. If the “National News” is to succeed, the few who
do realize the emergency must pay more than their share; in other words,
the paper must have a subsidy, and the subsidy must be large enough to
make success certain—otherwise, of course, no one ought to give
anything.
I have telegraphed to publishers of liberal sympathies in the East, and
present herewith the following estimate of the cost of launching and
maintaining the “National News”:
Weekly cost on basis of half million circulation: Editorial, overhead
and paid matter, $1,000; paper, composition and printing, $9,000;
addressing and mailing, $1,000; stencil list, $1,000; postage, $1,250;
telegraph 50; business and circulation, $500; total, $14,000 per week,
$728,000 per year.
The above is figured, as requested, on 64 page paper, size nine by
twelve. Such work has to be done in a job plant and is more expensive.
By making 32 pages, size twelve by eighteen, the cost could be cut to
$650,000 per year.
Income on basis of 500,000 circulation, three-fifths consisting of
paid subscriptions at one dollar per year, and two-fifths of
news-stand sales at five cents per copy retail, three cents wholesale:
$612,000. Deficit to be made up by subsidy, $116,000. Deficit on
larger size, $38,000.
On basis of one million circulation, cost in smaller size will be
$1,300,000; income will be $1,224,000; deficit, $76,000. On the larger
size there would be no deficit.
It is recommended that no definite policy as to advertising be fixed
in preliminary stages, but the matter left to the directing board.
There is a great deal of advertising, relating to books, liberal
organizations and political movements, which adds to the interest of a
publication; also there is some commercial advertising which would not
seek to control policy. A definite declaration contained in
advertising contracts, to the effect that the contract carries no
expectation of editorial favors, and rigid adherence to this principle
should suffice. The deficits here figured would be covered by one or
two pages of advertising per week, so it is not necessary to figure a
permanent deficit on the paper.
The income from subscriptions has been figured without agents’
commissions and premiums, on the understanding that the paper will
rely on volunteer labor for canvassing. For the same reason the sum of
one hundred thousand dollars may be set as the maximum cost of
establishing the paper.
The above represents the combined views of three different persons, all
qualified experts. As suggested, I will leave the questions of detail to
be worked out by the governing board. It appears that we may have an
honest paper if we will give one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and
will pledge, say thirty thousand dollars a year for two years to cover a
possible deficit.
Such are the figures. I believe that this amount of money can be raised,
and I purpose to set out and raise it. To every reader of this book I
say: Will you help, and if so, how much? Presumably nobody will want to
cut out a page from a book, so I will not print a stock subscription
blank. I ask that you write me a letter as follows:
UPTON SINCLAIR,
Pasadena, California:
Assuming that you are able to raise the total necessary endowment fund
and permanent annual subsidy for the “National News,” and that you
name an organization committee satisfactory to us, we, the
undersigned, agree to contribute to the project as follows:
Then give, in vertical columns, names; addresses; the number of
subscribers that each signer undertakes to obtain, on a basis of not
more than one dollar per year; the amount of money that each signer will
contribute to the endowment fund; the amount that each will contribute
each year to make up the permanent deficit.
_Please do not send money for the paper._ I will let you know when I
reach that stage, and meantime I do not want the responsibility of
keeping money. If you are enough interested in the plan to care to help
in advertising it, printing circulars and soliciting pledges from people
of means, I will be glad to receive such money and to account for it. If
I succeed in raising the necessary sum, I will name an organization
committee, and have a charter prepared, and submit the whole matter to
you for endorsement.
Sometimes people criticize my books as being “destructive.” Well, here
is a book with a constructive ending. Here is something to be done;
something definite, practical, and immediate. Here is a challenge to
every lover of truth and fair dealing in America to get busy and help
create an open forum through which our people may get the truth about
their affairs, and be able to settle their industrial problems without
bloodshed and waste. Will you do your share?
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Two years ago I finished “The Profits of Religion,” and offered it to
publishers. They said it could not be sold; no book on religion could be
sold, it was the deadest subject in the world. I believed that “The
Profits of Religion” could be sold, and I published it myself. In less
than a year I have sold forty thousand copies, and am still selling
them.
One reason, of course, is the low price. Everybody told me that a book
could not be published at that price. I would report on the figures if I
could, but I gave the book as a premium for my magazine, and never made
any attempt to separate the two ventures. All that I can report is that
since February, 1918, when I started the magazine, I have taken in for
magazines and books a total of $14,269, and I have paid out for
printing, postage, labor and advertising, a total of $20,995. This
deficit represents some two hundred thousand magazines sent out free for
propaganda purposes; the deficit was made up by donations from friends,
so it cost me nothing but my time, which I gladly gave. And I am willing
to give it again; I can’t expect either royalty as author or profit as
publisher from “The Brass Check.” The cost of book manufacturing has
increased fifty per cent in the past two years, and to make matters
worse, “The Brass Check” is exactly twice as long as “The Profits of
Religion.” If this book were published in the ordinary way, to be sold
to book-stores, it would be priced at $2.00, postage extra; or possibly
even $2.50. Sold, as it is, at $1.00, postpaid, it is an appeal to the
conscience of every reader to do his part in helping to get it widely
distributed.
“The Profits of Religion” was practically boycotted by the capitalist
press of America. Just one newspaper, the “Chicago Daily News,” reviewed
it—or rather allowed me space in which to review it myself. Just one
religious publication, the “Churchman,” took the trouble to ridicule it
at length. Half a dozen others sneered at it in brief paragraphs, and
half a dozen newspapers did the same, and that was all the publicity the
book got, except in the radical press. That this was a deliberate
boycott, and not the fault of the book, is something which I leave for
my readers to assert.
“The Brass Check,” of course, will be treated in the same way. If it
gets any publicity, it will be only because of a libel suit or something
sensational. If the great mass of the people ever hear of the book, it
will be because you, the reader, do your part. If it seems to you an
honest book, and one which the public ought to know, get busy. If you
can afford it, order a number of copies and give them to your friends.
If you can’t afford that, make up a subscription list among your
friends. If you need to earn money, turn agent, and sell the book among
your neighbors, in the shop where you work, on the road. If your
experience is the same as mine, you will find nearly everybody
distrustful of Capitalist Journalism, and willing at least to consider
the truth about it.
POSTSCRIPT TO SECOND EDITION.—A letter from E. J. Costello, managing
editor of the “Federated Press”:
“Let me say in this very first sentence that the ‘Brass Check’ is the
most remarkable book that has ever been published in America. It is
one that should, in the quickest possible manner, be placed in the
hands of every American who can read, and read to every American who
cannot read.
“I have been in this newspaper game for about twenty years, and I know
from my own experience that your story is the absolute truth. For
dozens of the incidents of ‘kept press’ rottenness I can cite
counterparts. Your story of the Associated Press is without doubt the
most concise exposé on record of the despicable methods which prevail
in that organization.”
Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he was for seven years a staff
correspondent and editor for the Associated Press. He was in charge of
its Des Moines bureau at the time I was trying to get out the truth
from the Colorado coal strike. One day there came through on the
Associated Press wire instructions from the New York office “that
henceforth Upton Sinclair must be kept out of the Denver office, and
that no relations with him might be had by any employe of the Denver
bureau. I remember that my operator copied the message and brought it
to me, and that I determined to keep it for possible future reference.
“Within fifteen minutes after the message had been sent the chief
operator at Chicago asked the Des Moines operator if he had copied it,
and on being informed affirmatively he ordered the copy sent to
Chicago. The operator asked me for the message, but I declined to let
him have it. I placed it in a locked compartment of my desk, where it
remained for several weeks, when one day it turned up missing. I have
never been able to ascertain just how it disappeared, but I am quite
positive that other keys fitted my desk, and that there was a reason
for its disappearance. It wasn’t so many months after this occurrence
that I was ordered in to the Chicago office, presumably because it was
thought I would bear watching. My radical views led finally, in 1916,
to my leaving the Associated Press service entirely.
“Perhaps you have not heard that it was because of his efforts to do
the square thing by you in the Ammons matter that Rowsey was
discharged by Superintendent Cowles upon the orders of Melville E.
Stone. Yet that was what was currently reported in inner ‘A. P.’
circles at the time.”
Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he left the Associated Press with
his mind made up as to what was to be his life’s work, “the
establishment of a press association which would represent the people
who work, as against the eight or ten millionaire publishers, who,
through the ownership of Associated Press bonds, outvote nearly 2,000
other members of the organization, and absolutely control the channels
through which the great public gets its poisoned news.”
The “Federated Press” had its inception at a convention of the Labor
Party in Chicago, November, 1919. It is a co-operative
non-profit-making organization of working class newspapers, and
maintains an admirable service of vital news from all over the world.
It publishes a weekly four-page bulletin, which it will mail to you
for five dollars a year, and which you will find worth the price many
times over. The address of the “Federated Press” is 156 West
Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_A book which has been absolutely boycotted by the literary reviews of
America._
THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
A study of Supernaturalism as a Source of Income and a Shield to
Privilege; the first examination in any language of institutionalized
religion from the economic point of view. “Has the labour as well as the
merit of breaking virgin soil,” writes Joseph McCabe. The book has had
practically no advertising and only two or three reviews in radical
publications; yet forty thousand copies have been sold in the first
year.
_From the Rev. John Haynes Holmes_: “I must confess that it has fairly
made me writhe to read these pages, not because they are untrue or
unfair, but on the contrary, because I know them to be the real facts.
I love the church as I love my home, and therefore it is no pleasant
experience to be made to face such a story as this which you have
told. It had to be done, however, and I am glad you have done it, for
my interest in the church, after all, is more or less incidental,
whereas my interest in religion is a fundamental thing.... Let me
repeat again that I feel that you have done us all a service in the
writing of this book. Our churches today, like those of ancient
Palestine, are the abode of Pharisees and scribes. It is as spiritual
and helpful a thing now as it was in Jesus’ day for that fact to be
revealed.”
_From Luther Burbank_: “No one has ever told ‘the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth’ more faithfully than Upton Sinclair
in ‘The Profits of Religion.’”
_From Louis Untermeyer_: “Let me add my quavering alto to the chorus
of applause of ‘The Profits of Religion.’ It is something more than a
book—it is a Work!”
315 pages. Single copy, paper, 50c postpaid; three copies, $1.20;
ten copies, $3.50. By freight collect, 25 copies or more at 30 cents
per copy. Single copy, cloth, $1.00 postpaid; three copies, .25; ten
copies, $7.00. By freight collect, 25 copies or more at 60 cents per
copy.
JIMMIE HIGGINS
“Jimmie Higgins” is the fellow who does the hard work in the job of
waking up the workers. Jimmie hates war—all war—and fights against it
with heart and soul. But war comes, and Jimmie is drawn into it,
whether he will or no. He has many adventures—strikes, jails,
munitions explosions, draft-boards, army-camps, submarines and
battles. “Jimmie Higgins Goes to War” at last, and when he does he
holds back the German army and wins the battle of “Chatty Terry.” But
then they send him into Russia to fight the Bolsheviki, and there
“Jimmie Higgins Votes for Democracy.”
A picture of the American working-class movement during four years of
world-war; all wings of the movement, all the various tendencies and
clashing impulses are portrayed. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid.
_From “the Candidate”_: I have just finished reading the first
installment of “Jimmie Higgins” and I am delighted with it. It is the
beginning of a great story, a story that will be translated into many
languages and be read by eager and interested millions all over the
world. I feel that your art will lend itself readily to “Jimmie
Higgins,” and that you will be at your best in placing this dear
little comrade where he belongs in the Socialist movement. The opening
chapter of your story proves that you know him intimately. So do I and
I love him with all my heart, even as you do. He has done more for me
than I shall ever be able to do for him. Almost anyone can be “The
Candidate,” and almost anyone will do for a speaker, but it takes the
rarest of qualities to produce a “Jimmie Higgins.” You are painting a
superb portrait of our “Jimmie” and I congratulate you.
EUGENE V. DEBS.
_From Mrs. Jack London_: Jimmie Higgins is immense. He is real, and so
are the other characters. I’m sure you rather fancy Comrade Dr.
Service! The beginning of the narrative is delicious with an
irresistible loving humor; and as a change comes over it and the Big
Medicine begins to work, one realizes by the light of 1918, what you
have undertaken to accomplish. The sure touch of your genius is here,
Upton Sinclair, and I wish Jack London might read and enjoy.
CHARMIAN LONDON.
_From a Socialist Artist_: Jimmie Higgins’ start is a master portrayal
of that character. I have been out so long on these lecture tours that
I can appreciate the picture. I am waiting to see how the story
develops. It starts better than “King Coal.”
RYAN WALKER.
Price, cloth, $1.00 postpaid.
=UPTON SINCLAIR—Pasadena, California=
OTHER BOOKS BY UPTON SINCLAIR
=KING COAL=: a Novel of the Colorado coal country. Cloth, $1.00.
“Clear, convincing, complete.”—Lincoln Steffens.
“I wish that every word of it could be burned deep into the heart of
every American.”—Adolph Germer.
=THE CRY FOR JUSTICE=: an Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest,
with an Introduction by Jack London, who calls it “this humanist
Holy-book.” Thirty-two illustrations, 891 pages, $1.50.
“It should rank with the very noblest works of all time. You could
scarcely have improved on its contents—it is remarkable in variety and
scope. Buoyant, but never blatant, powerful and passionate, it has the
spirit of a challenge and a battle cry.”—Louis Untermeyer.
“You have marvelously covered the whole ground. The result is a book
that radicals of every shade have long been waiting for. You have made
one that every student of the world’s thought—economic, philosophic,
artistic—has to have.”—Reginald Wright Kauffman.
=SYLVIA=: a Novel of the Far South. Price $1.00.
=SYLVIA’S MARRIAGE=: a sequel. Price $1.00.
=DAMAGED GOODS=: a Novel made from the play by Brieux. Cloth, $1.00;
paper, 50 cents.
=PLAYS OF PROTEST=: four dramas. Price $1.00.
=THE FASTING CURE=: a study of the problem of health. Price $1.00.
_The above prices postpaid._
=UPTON SINCLAIR—Pasadena, California=
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
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