Chapter XLI: The Owner in Politics

What counts with newspapers, as everywhere else in the business world, is not so much the bulk of the wealth as its activity. Wealth which is invested in government bonds and farm-mortgages is asleep, and will stay asleep until the profit system itself is threatened. On the other hand, one or two hundred thousand dollars which happens to be in the hands of new men, trying to break into the game, may be exercising an influence out of all proportion to its amount. Such wealth may be bidding for a new franchise. It will come to the newspaper publisher and offer him stock; or it will point out to him that if the franchise is granted, certain real estate that he holds will be increased in value; or it will offer to help nominate him for mayor; or it will point out to him that his rival newspaper is enlisted on the other side, and is looking for some unrighteous graft. The story of every newspaper is a story of such a game of power-politics incessantly going on. No newspaper can exist without taking part in it, because every newspaper wields influence, and every newspaper must cast its decision on every issue that arises. Every paper is expected to have its candidates for political office; every paper is expected to have its political policies, and inevitably in our system these candidates and these policies are a screen behind which great financial interests move to their ends.

For example, here is the “Denver Post,” as portrayed by Judge Lindsey, founder of the children’s court. Lindsey is telling in his book, “The Beast,” how one of the political machines sought to use him as a candidate for Governor:

A few days later the “Post” endorsed me editorially as a candidate for
Governor, and there was a flurry in the corporation camp. The paper
was no more than on the streets before Mr. Field (telephone
magnate) ... made a frantic effort to have the edition stopped and the
paper’s support reconsidered. But the “Post” had just lost in a fight
with Evans (gas magnate) about a public franchise deal, and the
proprietors were eager for revenge. Their newspaper rivalry with
Senator Patterson made them ambitious to defeat him as leader of the
reform Democrats, by forcing my nomination in spite of him. I found
myself in the storm-centre of a small political cyclone.

You may recall Mr. Bonfils, one of the owners of the “Denver Post,” who “jollied” me over the telephone during the time of the Colorado coal-strike. Now hear Judge Lindsey:

When this latter ticket was named I found it largely composed of Speer
corporation Democrats. Mr. Fred G. Bonfils, one of the proprietors of
the “Denver Post” (which was still supporting me), assured me that
Speer and his city organization would aid me if I would agree to lend
my name to this ticket.

In short, the corporations being sure of Adams (the opposition
candidate), now wished to make sure of me by tying me to the candidacy
of a lot of corporation tools who would never allow us to obtain a
reform law. I refused to lend my name to any such business, and I lost
thereby the support of the “Post” and the Speer Democrats.

And then, of course, Judge Lindsey was marked for destruction by the “Post.” He tells how a false news dispatch reported him as saying in a public lecture in the East that the copper king of the state ought to be hanged. The Denver Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution declaring Lindsey “an enemy of the state.” Says Lindsey: “The ‘Denver Post’ followed the resolution with a demand that I be driven from town, and stirred up all possible enmity against me as a ‘defamer’ of my state.”

Or take San Francisco. Here is Fremont Older, for twenty-five years managing editor of the “Bulletin,” telling the story of his life. I shall have more to say about Older later on; for the present, take one incident from his book. Older, leading a terrific reform campaign, is after the “man higher up,” and decides that the highest of all is Herrin, head of the law department of the Southern Pacific Railroad. “Herrin is the man behind the corruption of our whole state. Herrin is the man who has broken down the morals of thousands of our young men, debauched our cities and our towns and our villages, corrupted our legislatures and courts.” But it appears that Crothers, owner of the “Bulletin,” has been taking money from Herrin in times past.

Crothers became very nervous about it and suggested several times to
me that he didn’t want Herrin attacked. I felt then that he feared
Herrin would expose the Wells money paid the paper, but in spite of
that power which Herrin held over us, I continued to go on with the
campaign against him.

Frequently Crothers would go into the printing office and look over
the headlines himself, and if he discovered Herrin’s name, would
insist on its being lifted out of the paper, but even with this
interference I managed to keep up the fight.

Finally, he told me flatly that he wanted the attacks on Herrin
stopped, the criticism of Herrin to cease. I replied frankly that it
was impossible for me to do that, that the entire reportorial force
was under full headway in the fight, and they were writing, all of
them, from the angle of the paper’s policy as it appeared to them, and
I could not go to each man and tell him that he must not criticise
Herrin.

“I can’t do it, Mr. Crothers, because I am ashamed for you. If it’s to
be done, you’ll have to do it yourself. I can not.”

He did not have the courage to do it, and it was never done. However,
all the time our opponents were trying to reach into the office. They
succeeded in getting the business manager at that time to undertake to
break me down, but I resisted all his efforts. The fight became more
burdensome, because it extended into the very building in which I
worked.

The political campaign waxed warmer, and Crothers demanded that Older should support Herrin’s candidate; but Older refused.

He replied that he owned the “Bulletin,” and that it would support
whomever he chose. I grew very angry and excited and replied, “Yes,
what you say is perfectly true. You do own the ‘Bulletin,’ but you
don’t own me, and I won’t stand for Crocker.”

I walked out of the room, very angry, determined never to return. I
went to my wife and told her that I was through with the “Bulletin.”
She wanted to know the reason and I told her that Crothers had gone
back to his old methods. He was determined to get behind the candidate
who represented the men we had been fighting, and I could not bring
myself to continue in my position.

Or take St. Paul, Minnesota. Here is the grain country, entirely possessed by the milling interests, with their allied railroads and banks. Until the Farmer’s Nonpartisan movement arose, the politics and journalism of Minnesota were exclusively in the hands of these interests. In the “Nonpartisan Leader” for May 27, June 3 and June 10, 1918, appeared a series of articles by Walter W. Liggett, formerly exchange editor of the “St. Paul Pioneer Press” and its evening edition, the “St. Paul Dispatch.” Mr. Liggett made a great number of damaging charges against these newspapers, and in order to make sure of the facts, I address their managing editor, inquiring if he has ever published any denial of the charges, or if he cares to deny them to me. His answer is:

We never made any reply at all to them.... Nor do I care, as you
suggest, to make any denial to you personally. It seems to me the
record of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press” is the important
thing, and this is open to anybody who cares to read our files.

The letter concludes by warning me of the risk I shall run if I reprint “the assertions of a dismissed employe.” I reply to the writer, Mr. H. R. Galt, managing editor of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press,” that his letter is unsatisfactory. The strong point about Mr. Liggett’s three articles is that they are based upon precisely the thing Mr. Galt invites—a study of the files of the newspapers. Mr. Liggett states that certain things are found in these files. I offer to send Mr. Galt copies of the articles, which he says he does not possess; I again invite him to point out to me in detail which of Mr. Liggett’s charges are false. I also ask him why, if the charges are false, he did not take Mr. Liggett up at the time, and inflict upon him the legal penalties with which he threatens me. I suggest that any jury of Americans will display curiosity about that point. To which Mr. Galt replies:

I shall be content to advise you again, as I did in my previous
letter, that the articles upon which you have apparently based your
verdict are untruthful in every particular in which they reflect upon
the “Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press,” and that in republishing them or
any part of them, or in repeating any statements reflecting on these
newspapers which may be contained in them, you will not only be
publishing falsehoods, but having been advised in advance that they
are falsehoods, you will publish them maliciously.

Now pray proceed with your indictment of American Journalism as
reported by Mr. Liggett, and do not worry yourself about the curiosity
of any jury so far as we are concerned. At the proper time we shall be
abundantly able to satisfy any curiosity on this point.

Now, when a man comes at me making a face like that, I have but one impulse in my soul—that is, to jump into a pair of seven-league boots, and turn and skedaddle as hard as I know how to the other side of the world and hide in a coal-bin. I am not joking; that is really the way I feel. There is nothing in the world I dread so much as a personal wrangle, and these fierce and haughty and powerful men throw me into a tremble of terror. The things I enjoy in this world are my books and my garden, and rather than go into a jury-room, and wrangle with fierce and haughty and powerful men, I would have my eye-teeth pulled out. But then I think, as I have thought many times in my life before, of the millions of pitiful wage-slaves who are exploited by these fierce and haughty and powerful men. I think of the millions of honest and true Americans who swallow the poison that is fed to them by our capitalist newspapers; and so I clench my hands and bite my lips together and turn on the fierce and haughty and powerful men with a yell of rage. Then a strange and startling, an almost incredible thing happens—the fierce and haughty and powerful men jump into _their_ seven-league boots, and turn and skedaddle to the other side of the world and hide in a coal-bin!

Why is this? Is it because I am an especially terrifying person, with an especially terrifying face? No; it is simply because, in these contests, I have always taken one precaution at the outset—I have made certain of having the truth on my side. I have cast in my lot with the truth; whereas these fierce and haughty and powerful men with whom I enter the lists of combat have made all their success out of falsehood, and fear truth as they fear nothing else on God’s earth.

Before I go to the bat with Mr. Galt, managing editor of the “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press,” I will point out one important fact about my life, as follows:

In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man’s life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens. Several times they have come near to doing it. I was told, by a lawyer who was present at the event, that there was a conference, lasting three days and a good part of three nights, between Mr. J. Ogden Armour and his lawyers, in which Mr. Armour insisted upon having me arrested for criminal libel, and his lawyers insisted that he could not “stand the gaff.” As you have seen in this book, Mr. William E. Corey threatened to sue me for libel; I am informed that young Mr. Rockefeller desired ardently to do it, and Madame Tingley, the “Purple Mother” of Theosophy, actually sent her lawyers after me for my jests about her in “The Profits of Religion.” But, if Mr. H. R. Galt actually files a suit against me, he will be the first of our captains of privilege who has ventured that far.

Now, to return to the “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press”: I have not made a detailed study of the files of these papers, but I have made a study of the Nonpartisan League movement and its “Nonpartisan Leader,” also I have made a study of Mr. Walter W. Liggett, formerly exchange editor of the “Dispatch” and the “Pioneer Press.” Mr. Liggett assures me that every statement he makes can be abundantly proven from the files of the papers, and I believe Mr. Liggett. Accordingly I take the risk of summarizing the statements which Mr. Liggett published concerning these two papers, and which these two papers allowed to pass unchallenged. My guess is that Mr. H. R. Galt will do one of two things: either he will do what Mr. Ogden Armour did, and what Mr. Corey did, and what Mr. Rockefeller did, and what Madame Tingley did—that is, nothing. Or else he will do what the Associated Press did in the case of the “Masses”—he will file a suit, or ask for an indictment, and thus get occasion to publish in his papers a high-sounding and dignified statement of his own righteousness; he will put me to the expense of employing lawyers and making a thorough study of his files; and then, when the case comes up, he will drop it, and say not one word about it in his papers!

Now, what is it that Mr. Liggett has to say? His statements are briefly as follows:

The “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press” were financed and put on their feet by a street-car magnate, and for twenty years, from a generous and pure emotion of gratitude, have supported this street-car magnate in all his doings; hiding his tax-dodging and his franchise grafting, ridiculing and misrepresenting his employes when they go on strike. The papers could probably not be purchased for a million dollars, yet they pay taxes on less than fifty-seven thousand dollars. Until quite recently they were charging the city an illegal price for the publication of city advertisements, and only quit when an independent citizen forced an exposure. They have defended the Hill railroad interests systematically; they have suppressed news of public agitation against the packers and the millers, and have editorially defended these and other profiteers. After borrowing three hundred thousand dollars from the Capital Trust and Savings Company, they did their best to start a run on the St. Paul municipal bank, and only failed because their false statements were promptly exposed. They have lied systematically about the farmers’ movement, and have refused to publish corrections, even in the form of paid advertisements. They were ultra-patriotic, and urged all employers to continue their employes’ wages while the latter were in the army; but they themselves failed to follow this advice!

And now come, Mr. Galt, and explain to a jury of American citizens how it happened that these articles, “untruthful in every particular in which they reflect upon the ‘Dispatch’ and the ‘Pioneer Press’,” were allowed by you to be published in a paper having two hundred thousand circulation in Minnesota and adjoining states, and were left unanswered and unchallenged by you for a period of fifteen months!

The Nonpartisan League is an issue, not only in Minnesota and North Dakota, but all over the country where the interests are in terror of a farmers’ revolt. And so the whole power of the kept press is enlisted to malign it. The League is doing business through the Scandinavian-American Bank of Fargo, and the enemies of the League raid this institution, with the help of subservient public officials, and throw it into the hands of a receiver. From one end of the country to the other goes the story of crooked banking by the farmers’ party, and is featured by the capitalist press. The “New York Times” has several detailed dispatches, also solemn editorials. A week or two later the Supreme Court of the State denounces the proceedings as a conspiracy, declares the bank sound, and orders its return to the owners. The “Times” gives this—not one line! Or take the “Kansas City Star,” a most completely respectable organ, which features the smash-up of the bank, and reports the restoration in a tiny item, giving the name of the bank, but not mentioning it as the League bank—understanding perfectly well that ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will not make the connection, and will not know that the League has been vindicated!

And then, a few days later, the American Bar Association issues a denunciation of the League, declaring it is “pure Socialism,” and Socialism means the “nationalization of women.” The “Chicago Tribune” gets out a big headline:

“SOCIALISTS HOPE TO COMMUNIZE U. S. GIRLS, CLAIM.”

The “Chicago Tribune” is in politics you see; and like Richard Croker, it is working for its own pocket all the time. Let us hear William Marion Reedy, a journalist of forty years’ training:

In Chicago there is the case of two great newspapers, one of them
Republican and the other Independent, which have been found clearly
guilty of robbery of the school children of that city. Through the
connivance of a school board, one of the members of which was an
attorney for one of these newspapers, the land occupied by both these
journals, in the very heart of the business center of Chicago, was
leased to these great institutions for the moulding of public opinion,
on a basis of a site-value absolutely absurd and ridiculous, and upon
terms very much lower than those granted on similar lands to other
lease-holders in the same neighborhood. This favor exacted of a public
body, and at public expense was given solely through fear of attack
by, or desire to stand well with the publications in question. When
there came into power in the school board, under Mayor Dunne, a number
of men who could not be reached by political or other interests, and
these men attempted to set aside the outrageous lease in question,
both these papers began a crusade against the honesty and intelligence
of the school board, and developed the campaign into one for the
election of a mayor who would oust these school board members who
tried to win back the property for the school children. They rallied
to their support all the corrupt and vicious element of the Chicago
slums, likewise the forces that could be controlled by the street
railways and other public service corporations, elected the mayor, and
turned the honest members of the school board out of office. They have
since been reinstated, but not until the corporation Mayor had
appointed a sufficient number of “safe and sane” friends of the powers
that be, to block any effort that might be made by the honest members
to secure from these great publications a just compensation for the
use of the land belonging to the public schools of Illinois and
Chicago.

Reedy omits to give us the names of these two Chicago newspapers. As I am dealing with names in this book, I state that one of them is the most “respectable” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Tribune,” which carries on its front page the legend: “The World’s Greatest Newspaper.” The other is the most “liberal” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Daily News,” owned by Victor F. Lawson, who is generally cited as the one among the fifteen directors of the Associated Press who has any trace of progressive sympathy.