Chapter XLVIII: Poison Ivy

I have asked the difficult question, When is a bribe not a bribe? When it is “legitimate business”? When, for instance, the “New Haven” is discovered to have ordered 9,716 copies of the “Outlook” containing a boost of the “New Haven” system by Sylvester J. Baxter, a paid writer of the “New Haven”? You may read the details of this in “The Profits of Religion”; the president of the “Outlook” corporation wrote to me that the “New Haven” bought these copies “without any previous understanding or arrangement.” They are so naïve in the office of this religious weekly; nobody had the slightest idea that if they boosted some railroad grafters in peril of discovery, these grafters might come back with a big order! And right now, while the railroads are trying to get their properties back, and all their debts paid out of the public treasury, the spending of millions of dollars upon advertising is perfectly legitimate—it does not have the slightest effect upon newspaper editorial policy! When the miners of Colorado go on strike, and the Rockefellers proceed to fill every daily and weekly newspaper in the state of Colorado with full-page broad-sides against the miners, this of course is not a bribe; the fact that on the page opposite there will appear an editorial, reproducing completely the point of view of the advertisements—that is a pure coincidence, and the editorial is the honorable and disinterested opinion of the newspaper editor! When the United States Commission on Industrial Relations exposes the fact that these attacks on the miners contain the most outrageous lies, and that the thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers knew they were lies—it is a pure coincidence that very little about this revelation is published in the Colorado newspapers!

This last incident is so important as to deserve fuller exposition. The thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers was a gentleman by the name of Ivy L. Lee, and after the strikers had experienced his methods for a while, they referred to him as “Poison Ivy.” He took the published annual report of the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers, which showed that the national vice-president of the union in charge of the Colorado strike had received a yearly salary of $2,395.72 and a year’s expenses of $1,667.20. He put these two figures together, calling it all salary, $4,062.92; and then he added the expenses again, making a total of $5,730.12; and then he said that all this had been paid to the national vice-president for nine weeks’ work on the strike—thus showing that he was paid over ninety dollars a day, or at the rate of thirty-two thousand dollars a year!

By the same method, he showed that another official was paid sixty-six dollars a day; that John R. Lawson had received $1,773.40 in nine weeks! Old “Mother” Jones was listed at forty-two dollars a day; the actual fact being that for her work as organizer she was paid $2.57 a day—and this not including the many months which she spent in jail for refusing to leave the strike-district! The “bulletin” containing these figures was published in all the newspapers, and was mailed out over the country to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies; and when the miners exposed the falsity of the statements, “Poison Ivy” postponed correcting them until the strike was lost, and until he knew that the Walsh Commission was on his trail! Thirty-two separate “bulletins” this scoundrel sent out over the United States, and many of them were full of just such lies as this. If you want details, you may consult two articles by George Creel in “Harper’s Weekly,” for November 7th and 14th, 1914.

There are thousands of such press agents serving our predatory interests, but not often are we permitted to peer into their inmost souls, to watch them at their secret offices. The Walsh Commission was so cruel as to put “Poison Ivy” on the stand, and also to publish his letters to his master. An examination of these letters shows him performing functions not usually attributed to press-agents. We see him preparing and revising a letter for Governor Ammons to send to President Wilson. (You remember, perhaps, in my story of Governor Ammons, my charge that the coal operators wrote his lying telegram to the President? Maybe you thought that was just loose talk!) We see “Poison Ivy” arranging for the distribution of an enormous edition of a speech on the Colorado coal-strike by the “kept” congressmen of the coal-operators—the speech containing “Polly Pry,” with the slanders against “Mother Jones,” sent out under government frank! We see him following the newspapers with minute care; for example, calling Mr. Rockefeller’s attention to the fact that the Northampton, Massachusetts, “Herald” had used a part of his first bulletin as an editorial; also sending to Mr. Rockefeller an editorial by Arthur Brisbane, sneering at our “mourning pickets.” Finally, this remarkable press-agent claims that he persuaded the Walsh Commission not to come to Colorado till the operators had finished strangling the strike. That he actually did this, I cannot say. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the commission delayed to come, and “Poison Ivy” was “stringing” Mr. Rockefeller, to make sure of that thousand dollars a month!

Would you like to be such a press-agent, and get such a salary as this? If so, you can find full directions, set forth by “Poison Ivy” himself in an address to the “American Railway Guild.” At this time he was prize poisoner for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he explains that it is all a question of psychology. “Success in dealing with crowds, that success we have got to attain if we are to solve the railroad question, rests upon the art of getting believed in.” And our prize poisoner goes on to give concrete illustrations of how to get the railroads “believed in.” If you are opposing a “full crew” law, you will get “believed in” by changing the name of the measure to an “extra crew” law. If you are going into bankruptcy, you will get “believed in” by calling it a “readjustment of finances.” If you are fighting a strike, and one small group of the strikers demands a particularly large increase in wages, you will get “believed in” by so phrasing your statement as to make it appear that all the miners are making the same unreasonable demand as the little group. “Miners Ask One Hundred and Fifty Per Cent Increase in Wages,” cites “Poison Ivy.” He sent a copy of this brilliant production to Mr. Rockefeller, and on the strength of it got a considerable increase in wages himself!