Chapter LXI: “bolshevism” in America

And what of those American radicals who have ventured to protest against this policy, and to expose this campaign of falsification? Here again it is only a question of how much space one is willing to give to anecdotes.

My friend Rose Pastor Stokes is a pacifist, under sentence of ten years in jail for pacifist activities; again and again the New York newspapers report her as calling for a bloody revolution in America, and refuse to publish her protest that this is false. You may not like pacifists; I myself admit that during the war I found some of them extremely trying to my patience. But do you believe that the proper way to treat them is to lie about them? Listen to the experiences of Mrs. Stokes on a lecture trip in the Middle West. The “Kansas City Star,” a one-time “liberal” paper, sent a special writer to interview her on the laundry-workers’ strike then in progress; but finding that this interview put her in a good light, they suppressed it, and sent another reporter to write up her address to the “Women’s Dining Club.” Says Mrs. Stokes:

The “Star” so garbled and twisted my speech that it was actually
unrecognizable. For example, one of the things I was quoted as having
said was that the Red Cross was a war camouflage. It so happened that
I did not mention the Red Cross during the entire speech.

Then she went to speak in Springfield, Missouri, and the “Star” had a lurid account of how she had been arrested in Springfield, and admitted to bail, and has stolen out of the city at day-break, forfeiting the hundred-dollar bond of a Socialist comrade. Says Mrs. Stokes:

Except for the arrest, the story was a fabrication. I had left
Springfield at a respectable hour, wholly cleared; and no bond was
forfeited.

She came back to Kansas City, and a “Star” reporter was sent to interview her; she asked him to deny this Springfield story, and he turned in a denial, but not a word of it was published. As a direct result of this newspaper misrepresentation, Mrs. Stokes was arrested by the Federal authorities and sentenced to ten years in jail. She tells me how this trial and sentence were reported, and points out the obvious motive of the falsifications:

Anything to frighten people away from Socialist meetings! If you want
to see this motive running through the capitalist press of the entire
country as a single thread, come and read the hundreds of editorials
on my ten-year sentence. Every state and every important industrial
community is represented. The wording is almost as if one man, let
alone one spirit, had dictated them all.

And here is Judson King, writing to members of Congress:

For your information permit me to state that at the meeting at Poli’s
Theatre Sunday afternoon at which I presided there was no advocacy of
anarchy or violence, no attack upon the American form of government,
and no propaganda that Bolshevism be adopted in our country. The
well-nigh unanimous sentiment of audience and speakers was that
American troops be withdrawn and Russia be permitted to settle her own
fate in her own way.

The article in Monday’s “Washington Post” headed, “Urge Red America,”
is an absurd perversion of the truth and a gross violation of
journalistic ethics. Discussions in Congress regarding this meeting,
based apparently upon this article, have proceeded under a
misapprehension of facts. Whether any attempt was made to verify the
truth of the article I do not know. No inquiry was made of me.

Mr. King goes on to state that the address of Albert Rhys Williams at this meeting was read from a typewritten text, and a carbon copy handed by him to a reporter of the “Washington Post.” The falsification of Williams’ remarks by the “Post” was therefore deliberate.

At this same time Max Eastman was touring the country, addressing enormous meetings. The meeting in Los Angeles was reported by the “Examiner” as follows:

RADICAL’S TALK BRINGS POLICE

Max Eastman Stops Address When Disgusted Auditors Leave and Officers
Arrive

Cutting his lecture short, when many of his auditors left Trinity
Auditorium in disgusted anger, probably saved Max Eastman, editor of a
radical Socialist publication, from a police intervention last night.

Before the speaker had entered far upon his subject, “Hands Off
Russia,” his remarks were deemed so unpatriotic and his unwarranted
attack upon the administration so vitriolic that scores left the
auditorium and telephoned the Federal authorities and the police,
denouncing Eastman and demanding his arrest.

Apparently scenting trouble, Eastman effected a sudden diminuendo, his
anti-climax coming when he left the rostrum to conduct a canvassing of
his audience for prospective subscribers to his magazine and
purchasers of stock in same. When the police officers appeared on the
scene, nothing of treasonable nor anarchistic nature was heard.

Eastman’s address contained many statements so preposterous that even
the most gullible refused to believe them. He demanded that Eugene
Debs, Thomas J. Mooney and all I. W. W.’s in jail should be freed and
advised his hearers to emulate the Russian Bolsheviks and rise in
revolution.

Only a scant audience heard the address.

As it happens, I do not have to ask the reader to take either my word or Eastman’s about this meeting. Here is part of a letter written to Max Ihmsen, managing editor of the “Los Angeles Examiner,” by Rob Wagner, artist and author of “Film Folk.”

Mar. 2, 1919.

Dear Max Ihmsen:

The other night Mrs. Wagner, Charlie Chaplin and I, seeking light on
darkest Russia, went to hear Max Eastman’s lecture. During what we
thought was a very thoughtful and unimpassioned address, he made the
statement that the press of the country was in a deliberate conspiracy
to withhold or color all news from that country.

We all felt that he was unfair in including _all_ the papers with
those notorious offenders, such as the “Times,” from which one could
expect nothing else. But the next morning we read an account of the
lecture in the “Examiner” that was false from the headline to the
final sentence, which said: “Only a scant audience heard the address.”

The lecture was not broken up by the police; in fact if there were any
police present no one even saw them. The chairman announced that Mr.
Eastman would speak on Russia; then Mr. McBride would tell them about
their magazine; and then at the end Mr. Eastman would answer
questions. The program was finished exactly that way, without the
slightest interruption, and to the very sympathetic applause of some
twenty-five hundred auditors.

Nor did Mr. Eastman insult the President. In urging the withdrawal of
American troops from Russia—a policy vigorously urged by Hearst
papers—he simply stated that there was a striking inconsistency
between President Wilson’s words and his deeds; for when the President
addressed his memorandum on the Marmora conference he assured the
delegates that America had absolutely no interest in the internal
affairs of Russia, and would not take sides; while at that moment he
was commander-in-chief of an army that was at war with the Russians on
two fronts.

Rob Wagner went on to explain that he wrote this protest “in the kindliest spirit”; and Mr. Ihmsen in reply expressed his regret, and promised to investigate the matter. You remember how it was with the express companies in the old days; they would lose your package, and promise to “investigate”—which meant that they filed your complaint away with five hundred thousand others of the same sort. Six months later I am preparing the manuscript of this book, and I write to Mr. Ihmsen that I desire to verify every charge I bring against American Journalism. Will he inform me if he has ever published a correction of this falsehood? Mr. Ihmsen replies that he has unfortunately overlooked the matter, but will be glad to publish a correction now. He does—the very next day! I wonder if this will seem as funny to the reader as it seems to me. Mr. Ihmsen brands Max Eastman in the public mind as a coward and a blatherskite, and for six months he lets that brand remain, though he knows it is undeserved. But then suddenly he learns that he himself is to be branded as a character-assassin; and so he makes a quick jump. But even so, he cannot be really fair. He gave the original story half a column; he gives the correction two inches of space, in a corner so remote that I, who read the “Examiner” every morning, do not see it until he sends me a marked copy!

A month or two after Max Eastman’s lecture came Louise Bryant, freshly returned from Russia, and gave one of the most interesting talks I have ever heard; and next morning not a line in any Los Angeles newspaper! The following evening she spoke again, and I came upon the platform, and called the attention of the audience to this case of newspaper suppression, and asked for funds to get the truth to the people of Los Angeles. Before I had finished speaking, money began to shower upon the stage, and the total collection amounted to twelve hundred and forty dollars. I interviewed the assistant managing editor of the “Los Angeles Examiner,” and he agreed to publish a report of the meeting, and allowed me to dictate a column to a reporter—of which he published two inches! A committee called upon the managing editor of the “Los Angeles Times,” and this gentleman not only refused to publish a line, but refused to accept a paid advertisement giving the news; incidentally he flew into a rage and insulted the ladies of the committee. The money collected at the meeting was expended upon an edition of fifty thousand copies of a local radical paper, the “New Justice,” containing an account of the whole affair; and when an attempt was made to distribute these papers among the shipyard workers in the harbor, the distributors were arrested, and the judge declared that he wished he could get the editors of the paper.

In connection with this meeting, there was a humorous incident which ought to be mentioned. Among the statements made by Miss Bryant was that the Bolsheviki had taken Odessa because the French troops had refused to fight them; several companies had gone over to the enemy. This statement was published in the “New Justice,” and was among those which the Los Angeles newspapers refused to admit to their columns. Louise Bryant had travelled all over the country making the statement, and almost everywhere the capitalist press refused to print it. But two months later came an Associated Press despatch from Paris; the Odessa incident had become the subject of interpellations in the French parliament—so at last the news was out that French troops had mutinied when ordered to fight the Bolsheviki!

Now comest the joke of the matter. To the Associated Press despatch, the “New York Times” added the following comment:

The account of the mutiny of the seamen on the French Black Sea Fleet,
given by M. Goude in the French Chamber, rationally explains _for the
first time_ the extraordinary events which took place at Odessa on
April 8, the day the city was evacuated by the Allies and by all the
population who could get away.

Don’t you think those words, “for the first time,” are funny? Almost as funny as the story of “Tom Muni” from Petrograd!

And then President Wilson comes to Los Angeles, and there is held in the largest music auditorium in the city a mass meeting of two thousand citizens, which unanimously submits to the President a request for amnesty for political prisoners. The “Los Angeles Times” gave this meeting not one word. I am invited to address the City Club of Los Angeles, and I tell them of this failure of the “Times” to report the news. Whereupon the “Times” starts a campaign to have me put in jail! I quote its first editorial; they have followed it up, every other day for a couple of weeks—they are quite determined that I shall go to jail!

Get the I. W. W. Seditionists! And lock them up. Tight! Right! But why
let Upton Sinclair roam at large? He spits more poison than the cheap
skate. It is villainy to promote anarchy in these ticklish times.
Blood will be on the heads of some of the civic club managers, male
and female. It is a crime for them to invite disloyal speakers to
spout for them; just for amusement. The City Club and some of the
women’s clubs have boosted the Red cause. Bolshevism is no toy to play
with, ladies and gentlemen. An “open forum” should not be open to
mobocracy and treason.

As I have said, I know several of the men and women who help to edit the newspaper in which the above murderous raving is published. These men and women will read this book, and I now request the general public to step outside for a few moments, while I address these editors privately. I speak, not in my own voice, but in that of an old-time journalist, venerated in his day, John Swinton, editor of the “New York Tribune.” He is answering, at a banquet of his fellow-editors, the toast: “An Independent Press”:

There is no such thing In America as an independent press, unless it
is in the country towns.

You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write
his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would
never appear in print.

I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest
opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid
similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so
foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets
looking for another job.

The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to
lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon,
and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.

You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an
“Independent Press.”

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the
jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our
possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are
intellectual prostitutes.