Chapter XXVII: The Associated Press at the Bar

Let us return to Monday evening, and to our main theme, the Associated Press. I saw here my long-awaited chance to put this organization on record. I believed, and still believe, that this was a perfect case of news-suppression. Here was the closest approach yet made to social revolution in America; here was the class-war, naked and undisguised—on the one side the lives of thirty or forty thousand wage-slaves, on the other side a hundred million dollars of invested capital, controlling the government of an entire state, and using this control to suppress every legal and constitutional right of American citizens, and to drive them to armed revolt. To this conspiracy the Associated Press had lent itself; it was being used, precisely as the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, precisely as the puppets of the State government. The directors and managers of the Associated Press were as directly responsible for the subsequent starvation of these thousands of Colorado mine-slaves as if they had taken them and strangled them with their naked fingers. If it had been such individual crimes of strangling, all society would have agreed on the need of publicity. I have made it my task in life to force the same kind of publicity for the economic crimes of predatory social classes. I considered now that the time for action had come, and as my final test of the “A. P.” I prepared a second telegram to President Wilson, as follows:

President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C:

In interview tonight, Governor Ammons brands me as prevaricator for my
statement to you that commission of mediation was not provided. He now
admits the word “mediation” does not appear, but insists that the
phrase “to assist in settling the strike” is equivalent. No such
phrase occurs. I urgently request you to get the full text of this
resolution and realize what it means that the Governor of this State
is wilfully and deliberately endeavoring to deceive you and the public
in this crisis.

Wishing to make quite certain in this vital matter, I took the trouble to write out my plan of action, and took it to a personal friend, a leading newspaper editor in Denver. He said, “Don’t do it.” I asked, “Why not?” The answer was, “It will make you so many powerful enemies that you will be unable to do anything more to send out news.” I answered that I had never been able to do anything with the Associated Press—it was always and invariably closed to what I had to say, and only mentioned me when it had something considered discreditable, such as my being sent to jail. My friend answered, “Well, if you can stand being hated and suppressed for the balance of your life, go ahead.”

I could stand that. So I took the volume of the House Journal and a copy of my telegram to President Wilson, and went down to the office of the Associated Press in the Ernest & Cranmer Building, and saw Mr. A. C. Rowsey, with whom I had talked over the phone the night before. He was very pleasant and friendly; and I wish to state that the attitude manifested by the Associated Press in this test case was in no way due to any personal difficulty or ill feeling. Mr. Rowsey showed himself a gracious host, and I never had a more pleasant interview with anyone.

I showed him the House Journal, and he read the four pages with interest. He read my telegram to the President, and then stated that they would refuse to carry it, as they had refused to carry the one they had got from the “News” on the previous day. His explanation was that it was the policy of the Associated Press “to avoid controversy.” If they once got started they would never know where to stop.

I said, “But Mr. Rowsey, this controversy is the most important item of news on the Colorado situation tonight. I have here put before you indisputable documentary evidence that Governor Ammons has lied to President Wilson; and surely the public would want to know that fact. Surely the public has at least a right to know of the charge, and to make up its own mind as to its truth or falsity.” Mr. Rowsey’s answer was, “Our wire from Colorado is very much crowded these days, and this controversy does not seem to us to be news.” I said, “Very well, Mr. Rowsey; will you now permit me to hand to you this letter, which I have drafted to serve as a record of the circumstances.”

He took the letter and read as follows:

Denver, Colo., May 18, 1914.

CORRESPONDENT ASSOCIATED PRESS,
Denver, Colorado.
_Dear Sir_:

Yesterday I sent President Wilson a telegram, which I believed and
still believe was of vital public importance. A copy of this telegram
was put into your hands last night by the “Rocky Mountain News” and
was refused by you. I now offer you a second telegram, bearing upon
this subject. At the same time I offer for your inspection a copy of
the House Journal in order that you may verify the truth of the
statements contained in my telegram to President Wilson. I shall
first, in a personal interview, politely request you to send this
telegram over your wires. If you refuse to do so, I shall—in order to
put you upon record—place this letter in your hands and request you to
sign the statement below. If you refuse to sign it, I shall understand
that you refuse to send out this telegram over your wires, and I shall
proceed to send it to the papers myself, and I shall subsequently take
steps to make these circumstances known to the public.

Respectfully,
UPTON SINCLAIR.

MR. UPTON SINCLAIR, City:

_Dear Sir_:—The undersigned, correspondent of the Associated Press in
Denver, agrees to send your telegram to President Wilson over its
wires tonight.

........................................

Mr. Rowsey read this letter and handed it back to me, with the smiling remark: “I see you are getting a good story.” I thanked him, and left. I went down-stairs to the telegraph-office and sent a copy of my telegram to President Wilson to a selection of newspapers all over the country. They were as follows: New York “Times,” “World,” “Herald,” “Sun” and “Call”; Chicago “Examiner” and “Tribune”; Philadelphia “North American” and “Press”; Baltimore “Sun”; Washington “Times”; Boston “Herald” and “Journal”; Topeka “Journal”; Kansas City “Star”; Milwaukee “Journal”; Atlanta “Georgian”; New Orleans “Times-Democrat”; Omaha “News”; Pittsburg “Post.”

Now, I submit that here is a definite test of the service of the Associated Press. Is it sending out all the material which its papers want? Is it suppressing anything which its papers would be glad to publish if they could get it? Let the reader observe that these newspapers are not merely radical and progressive ones; they include some of the staunchest stand-pat papers in the country, the New York “Times” and “Herald,” for example. They are all save two or three of them Associated Press papers. To make the test automatic I sent the telegrams “collect.” The editors had the right to read the message, and if they did not want it, to refuse to pay for it, having it sent back to me for collection. Out of the twenty papers, how many took this step? Only five! The other fifteen took the story that the Associated Press refused to send out. This is a remarkable showing, considering the fact that I sent the telegram late in the evening, and too late for most of the Eastern papers. It should be pointed out that a newspaper editor is far less disposed to print a dispatch which comes from an unauthorized person. My charge was a startling one, and an editor would naturally doubt it. He would say, “If it is true, why doesn’t the Associated Press send it?” Mr. Rowsey, in Denver, had the House Journal before him; but the city editors of newspapers all over the country did not have this advantage, and would naturally be disposed to rely upon Mr. Rowsey.

It might be worth while to add that the claims made in my two telegrams to President Wilson were fully vindicated by subsequent events. The committee of six machine legislators, appointed to collect material discreditable to the strikers and their leaders, proceeded to vindicate the Governor and redeem his reputation by going through a pretense of “mediation”; but the public paid so little attention to the farce that it petered out in two or three days. The strike lasted for another seven months, and all that time the Federal troops remained in the field—the very thing which President Wilson had declared himself determined to avoid, and which the coal-operators had been determined to force upon him!