CHAPTER XLITHE 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 lookover 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 ofpitiful 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 intotheirseven-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 thousanddollars 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 XLIIOWNING 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 JudgeLindsey 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. Youremember how I went to the head of the Denver office of the Associated Press, to try to get a hearing formyside—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 corporationfor and in consideration of moneys paid to itintentionally 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 didin consideration of money paid to itknowingly supply to its members information of such untruthful, biased and prejudiced nature and so distorted and incompleteas 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.