Chapter LIX: The Press and the War

War came upon the world, and the writer, as a student of Journalism, watched the great tide of public opinion. There had been newspapers in America which had kept a careful pretense of impartiality; under the pressure of war this pretense was forgotten. For example, the “New York Times.” Everyone would admit that the editorial page of the “Times” is class-propaganda, but the “Times” tries not to let you know that its news-columns are class-propaganda. It avoids the cruder blunders, such as false headlines. But when the threat of war came, and the “Times” was trying to force the country into war, the “Times” forgot even that precaution. On Thanksgiving Day, 1915, some twelve hundred clergymen in New York preached sermons. The “Times” selected eleven of these sermons and put them all under this headline:

PREPAREDNESS FROM MANY PULPITS

Thanksgiving Sermons Justify War for Defense of American Liberty and
Ideals

Then you read the sermons, and what did you find? Three of them contained utterances which might be construed as urging preparedness; the other eight contained not a word in reference to preparedness!

And the same with the magazines. There had been magazines which in the old days would give excuses for not publishing this or that—they were concerned with questions of dignity, of art; they could not lend their columns to propaganda. But now these magazines became frankly organs of propaganda. Long before America entered the war, “McClure’s” turned all its energies to a campaign for “preparedness.” The “American,” the “Metropolitan,” the “Outlook” did the same. “Current Opinion” abandoned its policy of reprinting from other publications, and introduced propaganda of its own. The “Literary Digest,” supposed to be an impartial survey of public opinion, became a partisan organ of hate. Says a writer in “Reedy’s Mirror”:

The standardizing of the press had already proceeded to inordinate
lengths before the war. As one sectional bookcase may differ from
another of the same pattern only in its greater or lesser number of
sections, so differs one American newspaper from another American
newspaper. However, some small opportunity for individuality, for
thought or pretense of thought, still existed, but even this has
ended. With the opening of the war the American press ceased to think.
The abstention has been so complete and prolonged that it may never be
possible to resume the habit of thinking.

Look over these newspapers as they come in from the mails. Flag-waving
of the cheapest, most brainless sort, Liberty Bonds, Thrift Stamps,
Red Cross. This is the gamut that has countless repetition from New
York to San Francisco, supplemented only by supercensored, mercilessly
standardized stuff from the fighting fronts.

The writer of this book gave his support to the war against Germany, and has no apology to make for that course. He believed that the world would be a safer place for radicals to work in when the Kaiser had been overthrown; he still believes this—even though at the moment it seems that the result of our fighting has been to set up new imperialisms in Italy, France, England and America.

But my support of the war did not mean that I had given myself into the hands of war-profiteers. I saw that the old-time plunderers of America were among the war’s most ardent supporters, and they went right on with their plundering—becoming “dollar-a-year” men in Washington, with a great cry of patriotism, and letting themselves contracts out of which hundreds of millions of profit were made! The Beef Trust, the Steel Trust, the Oil Trust, the Powder Trust, multiplied many times over the profits they were taking from the necessities of the people; also they dictated legislation which spared their profits, and saddled the cost of the war upon future generations. A war has to be won with materials then existing in the world, or immediately produced; it manifestly cannot be won with materials produced a generation later. The only question is, shall the necessary materials be taken from the owners by means of taxes, or shall they be borrowed, shall the labor of future generations be pledged in exchange? This is clear and simple; but if you tried to explain it to the people during the war you would be lynched, or sent to jail for twenty years.

It was the grand chance for the plunderers of America to put their enemies, the radicals, out of the way. Many of these radicals opposed the war, but others were put out of the way merely for opposing the profiteers, and they received sentences which, for ferocity, exceed anything in the records of the Russian Tsardom. Some two thousand of them are still in jail, their sentences aggregating twenty-five thousand years.

It would have been a simple matter to persuade the Socialists to support the war. We know today that Nicholas Lenine asked only a promise of support from America, offering to repudiate the Brest-Litovsk treaty and join the war on Kaiserism. As to labor at home, an intelligent army officer showed the way in the Northwest; he gave the lumbermen an eight-hour day, decent living conditions, and generous wages, and so turned the I. W. W. of the spruce country into a patriotic society. But elsewhere the army officers were less intelligent, and the profiteers had their way; in the oil country of Kansas they threw scores of I. W. W. organizers into jail without trial, and held them there for a couple of years. They are holding some thirty of them still, and my mail is full of pitiful letters from poor devils who are asked to raise ten thousand dollars bail. All over the country this was done—in a frenzy of public excitement, deliberately created by the capitalist press.

The story of what the newspapers did to American radicals in this crisis would be unbelievable—if you had not read the rest of this book. Thus, for example, the case of Bannwart, a Boston pacifist, one of a committee which called upon Senator Lodge to protest against the declaration of war. Senator Lodge lost his temper and struck Bannwart in the face; and all over the country went the report that Senator Lodge had been assaulted in his office by a pacifist! The Senator became a national hero; the Boston newspapers printed columns and columns about the incident, and when Bannwart called upon the Senator to admit the truth, he not only refused to admit it, but gave out for publication many telegrams congratulating him upon his heroism. No newspaper would publish Bannwart’s side, and he was helpless for two years, until his suit for damages was about to come up in court; then the Senator gave way, and admitted in writing that he had struck the first blow. You have been acquainted with the “Evening Transcript,” organ of Boston’s aristocracy of wealth and culture, which publishes half-page advertisements of “Harvard Beer 1,000 pure,” and full-page advertisements of the arguments of gas company attorneys, and sends out “dope” for the “New Haven” plunderers; so you will be prepared to hear that the “Transcript” buried this apology of Senator Lodge in a remote corner, and without comment!

Or take the experience of my friend Feigenbaum, Socialist Assemblyman of New York State. The Socialist assemblymen had been protesting against the custom of the machine gang to drive through bills without consideration. They resolved to put a stop to the custom; whereupon the machine leaders set a little trap for the Socialists. A bill was introduced, without being read, and the speaker asked unanimous consent to advance it to the second reading. The leader of the Socialist group immediately objected. The bill had not been read, he declared, no one on the floor knew what was in the bill, no one even knew the name of the bill. The speaker cut him short: “No explanation is necessary. Your objection is sufficient.” So the bill, under the rules, went over to the next day. Says Feigenbaum:

The members drifted out to the cloak-rooms, or they remained at their
desks. They didn’t know what the bill was about, because nine-tenths
of them hadn’t read it, and not more than four or five were in the
secret of the day’s mysterious doings.

But next morning the Socialists found out what had happened. The bill was to turn over certain lands in Saratoga County to the War Department, and the Socialists had been guilty of stopping war legislation which was desperately needed! The “New York Tribune” carried an elaborate account of a tempestuous scene, in which the speaker had “scathingly rebuked,” the Socialist leader. The members had swarmed around the Socialists, shaking their fists in their faces, threatening them with physical violence; also, the Socialist leader had refused to stand at the playing of the national anthem. Says Feigenbaum: “The whole story was a fabrication, pure and simple, out of whole cloth.” And he tells what happened afterwards—

A campaign of vilification hitherto unheard of. It went so far that
Albany papers called for the raiding of the rooms we occupied, called
for a boycott of us by shop-keepers and restaurant-men in Albany, and
gave high praise to a drunken ruffian, an ex-prizefighter, member of
the Assembly, who in a drunken fit of temper called for the lynching
of the Socialists. This speech was highly praised editorially in
Albany and Troy.

During the war our industrial autocracy has learned to organize for propaganda; it has learned the arts of hate. Today all the energies which were directed against the Kaiser have been turned against the radicals; also the spy-system which the government developed for the war has been turned against the radicals. Government agents raid their offices and seize their letters, and these letters are spread broadcast in the capitalist press—duly doctored, of course, and supplied with commentaries to distort their meaning.

For example, the “Lusk Committee” of the New York State Legislature holds a secret session with the executives of the New York newspapers (June 3, 1919, at the Murray Hill Hotel), and lays out its campaign in detail. It then proceeds, with a carload of soldiers and detectives, to raid the Rand School of Social Science; taking along a secret service agent of the British government, which is shooting radicals in Ireland and India, and wishes to find out all it can about their supporters in America. They find a manuscript, outlining a plan for propaganda among negroes. It was a rejected manuscript, as it happens; but the Lusk Committee “accepts” it, and spreads it broadcast. I shiver, contemplating the day when they raid my office, and publish all the queer manuscripts that arrive in my day’s mail! Manuscripts of health-cures, manuscripts of bible-prophecies, manuscripts of plans to abolish money, to communicate with Mars, to exterminate the vermin in the Los Angeles County Jail!

Also they find a circular of the Rand School, saying that the Socialists “must prepare to take over the government.” They publish this in the newspapers with horrified clamor: Sedition! Treason! Let the charter of the Rand School be annulled! As if there were any political party or political association in America which does not propose to take over the government! As if there were anything else which any political party or political association could propose!

Among the other seditious documents are some copies of “The Profits of Religion,” which gives occasion for sarcasm from the investigators. They propose to investigate “the profits of agitation”; so they spread broadcast the fact that Scott Nearing was paid six hundred dollars by the Rand School—and deny Nearing an opportunity to testify that part of this was payment for lectures delivered outside of the school, for which the school had collected the money on a percentage basis; and the balance for lecturing at the school, at a rate approximating ten cents per week for each student!

They lie about the pacifists and those whom they call Bolsheviks; they lie equally about a man like myself, who supported the war, and is opposing Bolshevism. In the accounts of the proceedings of the Senate Committee investigating “Bolshevism in America,” there was submitted, according to newspaper accounts, a long list of writings “urging the overthrow of the United States government by violence”; among the writers named being Upton Sinclair. I at once wrote to Solicitor Lamar of the postoffice department, to Major Humes, and to Senator Overman—these being the parties who had compiled the writings in question. I explained to these gentlemen that for twenty years I had been writing for the precise purpose of avoiding “the overthrow of the United States government by violence,” and I requested to know what writings of mine could have justified their charge. I have letters from all three of these parties, stating that nothing of mine was included, or had been included in the list; the published report of the Overman Committee reveals that this statement is correct; yet the dispatch including my name was sent broadcast over the country by the Associated Press—and I am without redress!

The listing of anecdotes of this sort is merely a question of the amount of space one is willing to give. The United States government is deporting Hindu revolutionists to be executed by the British government when they reach India. Prof. Richard Gottheil of Columbia University writes to the “New York Times” denying that this is so. Robert Morse Lovett, editor of the “Dial,” writes to the “Times,” citing case after case, upon British official authority. And the “Times” refuses to print Mr. Lovett’s letter! A friend of mine writes to Prof. Gottheil about it, and he answers that he wishes the “Times” would print Mr. Lovett’s letter, because he believes in fair play. But the “Times” does not believe in fair play!

In the same way, the “Times” attacks “Jimmie Higgins.” In the last chapters of this story an American soldier is represented as being tortured in an American military prison. Says the “Times”:

Mr. Sinclair should produce the evidence upon which he based his
astounding accusations, if he has any. If he has simply written on
hearsay evidence, or, worse still, let himself be guided by his
craving to be sensational, he has laid himself open not only to
censure but to punishment.

In reply to this, I send to the “Times” a perfectly respectful letter, citing scores of cases, and telling the “Times” where hundreds of other cases may be found. The “Times” returns this letter without comment. A couple of months pass, and as a result of the ceaseless, agitation of the radicals, there is a congressional investigation, and evidence of atrocious cruelties is forced into the newspapers. The “Times” publishes an editorial entitled, “Prison Camp Cruelties,” the first sentence of which reads: “The fact that American soldiers confined in prison-camps have been treated with extreme brutality may now be regarded as established.” So again I write a polite letter to the “Times,” pointing out that I think they owe me an apology. And how does the “Times” treat that? It alters my letter without my permission! It cuts out my request for an apology, and also my quotation of its own words calling for my punishment! The “Times,” caught in a hole, refuses to let me remind its readers that it wanted me “punished” for telling the truth! “All the News that’s Fit to Print!”

Or take the case of Henry Ford, who brings suit against the “Chicago Tribune” for libel, and cites five lies in one single news item:

Lie No. 1. That guardsmen employed by Ford would lose their places.

Lie No. 2. That no provision would be made for their dependents.

Lie No. 3. That their families could get along as best they might.

Lie No. 4. That when they returned they would have to apply for their
old jobs as strangers.

Lie No. 5. That this rule applied to the Ford plants everywhere.

At the trial it was proven that all these statements were false. All the Ford workers who were drafted to Mexico had their wages paid to their families while they were away. On the other hand it was shown, through the testimony of Joseph Medill Patterson, one of the editors of the “Tribune,” and a renegade Socialist, that he had ordered the stopping of the pay of all those “Tribune” men who were drafted to Europe! I quote the testimony.

“How many of your employes went to the great war?”

“About two hundred and sixty-eight.”

“None of them drew salaries?”

“No.”

“But you drew your salary when you went over-seas, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And your salary is about twenty thousand dollars a year, isn’t it?”

Witness admitted that it was.

“The World’s Greatest Newspaper.”

Or take the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota. All through the war the newspapers strove to make this appear a disloyal organization. The League held a convention at St. Paul, at which hundreds of speeches were made; and the Associated Press found it possible to make one of the speakers, La Follette, appear disloyal by misquoting him. So it featured La Follette—and reported the other speakers hardly at all. As this book is going to press, the League bank is raided, and the farmers by thousands come pouring into Fargo in the rain, and at two enormous gatherings they pledge themselves to make their bank the biggest in the state. The bank is reopened, and on the first day forty-five thousand dollars is put in and only nine thousand taken out. And how is all this handled by the Associated Press? Hear the “Idaho Leader”:

Several newspaper representatives from St. Paul and Minneapolis were
present to send as unfavorable reports of the great meeting to their
papers as they could, and the Associated Press, the news agency which
supplies the “Boise Statesman” with its daily fables from North
Dakota, evidently fearing that their local manager was not capable of
falsifying in the manner which big business demands, sent a special
representative out from St. Paul to report the meeting. And this “A.
P.” representative did himself proud, or rather he did the bidding of
his masters.

Among other highly colored and untrue statements which the Associated
Press representatives made was that “when the speaking was ended in
the auditorium and a recess taken before the evening meeting, the
crowds made a rush for the doors to get away so that they would not
have to subscribe for stock in the Scandinavian bank!”

The crowd _did_ make a rush but it was not for the doors. The crowd
rushed, jostled, and pushed, in the anxiety of dozens of men to reach
the front of the building, where a number of persons took
subscriptions for stock. Those handling the subscriptions were
swamped, and many men were forced to stand in line for a long time
before they were waited on.