CHAPTER XXXVIIIOWNING 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, reversingitself 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 orderto 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 buyyou. 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 Floridadid 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 asa 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 XXXIXTHE 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.”
“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.”
“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 togive; 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 page209of 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 waswalking on the street, and heard newsboys shouting an extra, and saw these words, printed across the front page of the “New York Evening Journal”:
WARDECLARED!
WARDECLARED!
WAR
DECLARED!
So I parted with one of my hard-earned pennies, and read:
WARmay beDECLAREDsoon
WARmay beDECLAREDsoon
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 XLOWNING 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 invitedto 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 horsethat 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 callhimup 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. Kennedyor 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.