Chapter XII: Newspaper Ethics

The editor of one of the leading magazines recently wrote to me, asking that I write for him a series of articles on the rise and decline of journalism during the last fifty years. The proposition struck me as being so absurd that I promptly declined, explaining to the editor that I was unaware of any deterioration in our daily newspapers of to-day as compared with any period with which my memory is associated. Nor has there been.

It is my firm belief that at no time in the history of American journalism have newspapers been more enterprising, more reliable, or more influential. They are now, as they always have been and I hope always will be, the greatest of all educators of mankind, honest, truthful, and dependable. A dozen years have gone by since the great editor of the New York _World_ passed to his reward, but his paper is to-day as ably edited and as alert in gathering and presenting news as during his lifetime. I can observe no signs of degeneracy in either the news or editorial columns. This is true of its most aggressive rival, the New York _Times_, a greater newspaper to-day than at any time since it was founded. Other great newspapers are the Philadelphia _Ledger_, the Chicago _Tribune_, and scores and hundreds of lesser important ones in various cities throughout the country.

A devoted friend, evidently sharing the mistaken opinion of the magazine editor who asked me to write about the decline of American journalism, has sent me a book that was written by Upton Sinclair. It is entitled _The Brass Check_, an abusive and wholly unmerited tirade against American newspapers. If half that he writes against them were true, most of the publishers and editors deserve to be put in jail and kept there.

My friend who sent me the book writes: “You certainly ought to know the truth about a good deal of what he relates, and now that you are in a disinterested position in relation to it you will probably be ready to admit many of the iniquities of the present system of journalism.”

I read the book, a mess of maliciousness, and I am surprised that anyone so intelligent as my friend could be so prejudiced by what seems to me unconvincing mendacity.

As to my admitting “many of the iniquities of the present system of journalism,” I can do nothing of the kind, for none exist or ever have existed, as far as I ever experienced. In all of my forty years of active newspaper work, most of it in the capacity of editor, I have personally known of but two dishonorable newspaper publishers. One of these got his just deserts when he was sentenced to serve a long term of imprisonment in Joliet Penitentiary.

During the entire period of twenty-seven years that I was with the Pulitzers, I was never once asked by anyone in authority to publish an improper news item, nor was I ever asked to withhold or suppress or color a news article. Joseph Pulitzer was the last man who would have suggested such a thing, and had I done so at the suggestion of another I would have ceased to be connected with his newspaper the instant it was called to his attention.

Mr. Pulitzer was as zealous in preserving the integrity of his newspaper as he would have been in protecting the good name of any member of his family. He was a stickler for accuracy. He appreciated the difficulties his news writers encountered in getting absolutely accurate details of anything they could not personally witness, but he had no patience with careless reporting or exaggeration. I have known him to handsomely reward the enterprise of one of his reporters, and a week later order his suspension because of a gross exaggeration in estimating the number of marchers in a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

He forgave mistakes, but punished carelessness. He knew, as all experienced newspaper men know, that inaccuracies are bound to appear in the news accounts that are written by the ablest and most conscientious men of the staff, as often as in the work of the novice. The rapidity with which details of an important news happening are gathered and put into type in time to get into the next edition is partly responsible for some of the inaccuracies, but the greatest difficulty lies in getting accurate statements from those to whom a newspaper reporter must go for facts.

Let an accident, a murder, a robbery, or any of the many happenings of a great city take place, and the first reporters to arrive on the scene will frequently encounter a dozen or more eyewitnesses, all of them eager to tell what they heard and saw and no two of them ever tell the story alike. All may mean to be truthful and perhaps are sincere in describing what they believe took place, but they saw it through different lenses and the reporters are confronted with the difficulty of weeding out the facts from the mass of conflicting and confusing statements. That is why the reports in different newspapers so seldom agree. I have made repeated tests and have never yet found the statements of two persons to be alike in many of the important details.

This is also true in the testimony that one hears at every important trial. No two witnesses testify alike, although they may intend to be absolutely truthful and impartial. Reporters, I think, seldom deliberately lie or color the facts for the purpose of adding interest to their stories; “faking” is what lying is called in newspaper offices. The career of a “faker” is short lived. His offense is sure to be soon detected and it is never condoned. I don’t think there is a city editor who wouldn’t discharge a news “faker” without compunction. In my long career as a city editor I fired more men for inaccurate reporting than for all other causes.

I have mentioned how zealous Mr. Pulitzer was in preserving the integrity of his newspaper and there comes to my mind an incident that attracted the attention of every member of the staff at the time it happened. A new managing editor had come to the paper from the West, at a time when the _World_ was exposing one of the most corrupt political bosses that ever flaunted himself in Tammany Hall, and one night someone connected with the _World_ was astounded at seeing the new editor occupying a box at one of the theaters with the Tammany boss. Others in the audience were equally astounded. Mr. Pulitzer heard of it and sent for his indiscreet editor and what he said to him rang in his ears as long as he lived. Soon after that the editor was shunted into a less conspicuous position and he never regained the confidence of his employer.

Another editor, who had a personal grievance against William R. Hearst, smuggled into the editorial columns a bitter attack on the proprietor of the _Journal_ and it cost him his job, for although Mr. Pulitzer was in no way friendly to Mr. Hearst, he would not suffer his newspaper to be degraded by personal animosity on the part of one of his staff.

One often hears it said that the news columns of a newspaper are influenced by the business office and that news is frequently colored or suppressed in the interest of some important advertiser. I suppose this may be more or less true in the case of some of the small newspapers that are struggling for their daily existence, but it is positively untrue in the offices of the larger dailies. I was city editor for the _Evening World_ for more than twenty years and for a period city editor of the _Morning World_, and in all that time no one in the business office with authority ever interfered, even by suggestion, with the handling of the news. The only approach to it came from a solicitor of advertising, who had no more influence or authority in the editorial rooms than the smallest office boy. I have many times had big advertisers come to me, frequently accompanied by their lawyer or some man of supposedly great influence, but what they said or sometimes threatened was wasted effort. If I had permitted them to intimidate me into suppressing a legitimate news article and Mr. Pulitzer found it out, I would probably have been sent away to hunt for a new job.

The greatest pressure that was ever brought to bear on me in the way of suppressing news was in connection with the exposure of life insurance methods. It was I who published the first article that opened the way to exposing the greatest scandal in financial circles that New York has ever known. It came about in this way: I was living at the Hotel Majestic and had a party of friends for dinner one evening. As we were about to go down my wife answered the house telephone and reported to me that Gage Tarbell was calling and desired to talk with me on a matter of urgent importance. My wife consented to take our friends to dinner without me and I went with Tarbell into the library, where we could converse without interruption. He appeared to be greatly perturbed. Before stating his object in calling on me he opened his watch and showed me inside the case the photograph of a beautiful woman.

“That is my mother,” he said, “and before I go any further with what I have to say, I want to tell you of a pledge I made to her before I left home to make my own way in the world. I promised her that no matter what befell me I would never in all my life do a dishonorable act and I want you to believe me when I tell you that I have never broken that pledge.”

I listened to him with ill-concealed astonishment wondering what could have happened to cause him to approach me in such an intimately confidential way. I had known him in a casual way for several years, during the period that he had lived in the same hotel and we had occasionally played billiards together and had chatted socially in the foyer on a number of occasions, but that was the extent of our relations, except that we were both admirers of fine horses and frequently drove our teams side by side on the driveways of Central Park. With the brief preliminary about the promise he had made to his mother long years before, he went squarely into the subject he had come to talk with me about.

It will be recalled that Tarbell was, at the time of which I write, Vice-President of the Equitable, reputed to be the richest and most prosperous of any of the large life insurance corporations, with investments running high into the hundreds of millions. Tarbell had control of all the agencies. I knew that he must be a man of importance and that his income must be very large to sustain the extravagant style in which he had lived ever since our acquaintance began.

He began by briefly sketching his career and telling me of the magnitude of the business his company had been doing for many years. Then he plumped something at me that opened my eyes with astonishment. There had been a row that day in the office between Hyde, who controlled the stock by right of inheritance from his father, and Alexander, the President of the Equitable. In a general way Tarbell told me what the row was about and what it was certain to lead to when once it got into the courts.

I was amazed that such rascality could have gone on unchecked for so many years. In all my experience I had never heard of such crookedness among men of high financial standing and supposed integrity. Hyde I knew only from having seen him many times driving six horses to a stage coach through the park, and when he exhibited his prizes at the annual Horse Show in Madison Square Garden. Alexander I had met several times and once had been his guest at dinner at the University Club. I had thought then that he was the handsomest and the most polished gentleman I ever came in contact with. And could this man be the crook that Tarbell was picturing to my mind? It seemed unbelievable.

I arranged with Tarbell that he was to be at the old Astor House at noon the following day, prepared to present proofs of what he had told me to a newspaper man I would assign to meet him. I sent William Spear, one of the hardest headed and most persistent investigators on the staff of the _World_, and Tarbell made good his promise. Part of what he told Spear appeared in our paper the following day and it caused the greatest sensation that had been known in financial circles for many years.

Other papers took it up and the _World_ forced the Governor, in the face of many obstacles, to begin a public investigation of all the insurance companies. The history of that scandal is so recent that I shall not go further into details, for all newspaper readers know how the reputations of great business men were blasted, some of them dying of the shame of it, and they know also how the investigation brought Hughes into the limelight and carried him straight up to the Executive Mansion at Albany and later on to the Supreme Court of the United States.

I remember Tarbell saying to me that night at the Majestic: “I will furnish your paper with full particulars of the greatest business scandal this country has ever known and what I give you will tear hitherto unblemished reputations to tatters and smear many men with the mud of their own iniquity. But mark what I now tell you: When the exposure that is bound to come is sifted to the bottom, Gage Tarbell is going to come out of it with character unstained and with a clean bill of health.”

Soon after the investigation was well under way I went abroad and was with Mr. Pulitzer in London when the report of the investigating commission was made public. I read it aloud, every word of it, to my blind employer and I never knew him to be more deeply interested. I had told him of Tarbell’s visit to me and how the exposure was begun and of what Tarbell had predicted would be the outcome so far as he was personally concerned. Mr. Pulitzer seemed pleased when I read to him that the report of the commission completely exonerated Tarbell.

As I was leaving the _World_ building one afternoon, I was stopped by one of the reporters and introduced to the man he was talking with, Rosenthal, a gambler. I had never seen the fellow before but had read in the _World_ a few days previous an article he had furnished that had caused a commotion in police circles and among the gamblers of the Tenderloin. I listened for awhile to what Rosenthal was saying to the reporter about threats that were being made to put him out of the way, and then hurried away to keep an appointment I had in another part of the city.

I got to my desk early the next morning, as details of the murder of Rosenthal in front of the Metropole Hotel were being telephoned into the office by our reporters who were covering the story. The man I had talked with late the previous afternoon was lying dead in the morgue and a score of detectives and several assistant district attorneys were chasing about the Tenderloin in search of the gunmen who had lured him to the street and punctured him with bullets from their automatics. Something that Rosenthal had said to me the afternoon before prompted me to ask Max Fischel, one of our reporters who was telephoning details of the murder, if he had seen Lieutenant Becker and what he had to say about the crime.

“Becker is sitting on the steps of the West Forty-seventh Street police station, across from where I am now telephoning,” reported Fischel. “I haven’t been able to get much out of him.”

“Ask him to call me on the telephone,” I directed.

Becker called me up a few minutes later, protested that he knew nothing about the murder or who had done it, and angrily hung up the receiver when I started to question him. The next day I went up to Police Headquarters and asked Commissioner Waldo why he permitted Becker to remain on duty when everyone was connecting his name with the killing of Rosenthal.

Waldo defended Becker to me and declared that he would not arrest him when there was no evidence against him except the unsubstantiated statements of gamblers and their disreputable associates in the Tenderloin. He told me, also, that he had been down to City Hall and had talked the matter over with Mayor Gaynor and the Mayor had given positive orders that Becker was not to be arrested or even suspended from duty until sufficient evidence, not yet uncovered, should be developed to justify an arrest.

Waldo declared his belief that Becker was being “framed up” by friends of the murdered gambler and he told me that Mayor Gaynor was firmly convinced of his innocence. I do not believe that Waldo was ever convinced that Becker was responsible for the killing, even after the policeman was convicted and put to death in the electric chair. He often told me that he believed that Becker was a victim of circumstances and the lying testimony of those who perjured themselves to save their own slimy hides.

The night that Gyp the Blood and his gangster pals were captured in a Brooklyn flat, Deputy Commissioner Dougherty, who personally led the raid that resulted in their arrests, called me in my apartments at the Plaza Hotel to tell me of the capture he had made. He was telephoning from the flat in which they had been hiding and he offered to hold them there until I could run over to Brooklyn and join him. It was a tempting invitation, but I had to decline it to keep a theater engagement I was not privileged to break.

After Becker and the gunmen had been executed and were in their graves, District Attorney Whitman and his wife were dining with me one evening at the Plaza and we got to talking about the Rosenthal case. He had been elected Governor of New York only a week before our dinner party. I told him how Waldo felt about Becker, and he related, with circumstantial detail, a story about the two men that made me gasp with astonishment.

It was the story of an up-town raid, years before the Rosenthal affair, and if true, explained in a way the hold Becker had on Waldo at the time all New York was clamoring for Becker’s arrest.

I took pains to carefully investigate the next day the story told me by Whitman and I learned that Becker was not concerned in the raid Whitman told about and that at the time of the occurrence Waldo was serving as an officer in the Philippines. A week later Whitman and I and our wives went together to White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia to spend Thanksgiving week and I told him the result of my investigation.

“I told you the story exactly as it was related to me,” was his only defense.

“But you didn’t tell it to me as a bit of hearsay gossip,” I retorted. “You told it as a statement of fact, and coming from the lips of the District Attorney who prosecuted Becker and the gunmen and who is soon to be Governor of the State, I had every reason to believe it was true. I am glad I took the precaution to investigate what you told me and I suppose that you will be gratified to learn that it is untrue in every particular, so that you will not again repeat as a fact what is really only a malicious, lying scandal.”

Governor Whitman changed the subject. On that trip we had a long and earnest discussion about prohibition and, in the light of later developments, I am impressed by the far-sightedness of my companion, or it may have been only a lucky guess, when he predicted that the day was not far off when Congress would declare for nation-wide prohibition.

I couldn’t conceive of such a thing coming to pass in my lifetime and said so.

“There will come general prohibition in all of the States before my term of office as Governor has expired,” was his prophetic reply.

At luncheon, the following day, after drinking his wine, Whitman raised his empty glass and looking me squarely in the face, exclaimed with considerable feeling: “I assume that you, who never indulge in intoxicants, think that I drink more than I should. Then listen to what I am now saying: On the first day of January next I shall be Governor of the State of New York, and from that day on I become a prohibitionist in fact as well as theory.”

Governor Whitman prophesied accurately in regard to what Congress would do; but he missed fire in his prophecy about himself.

One night I was dining with Mayor Mitchel. He was smarting under the sting of what had appeared in some of the newspapers in connection with his transactions with Senator Reynolds in the purchase by the city of Dreamland at Coney Island and a tract of land at Rockaway. He was plainly upset.

“I tell you, Chapin, that the worst iniquity in this city to-day is yellow journalism,” he exclaimed, bringing his clenched fist down on the table with a thump that set the glassware to jigging.

I happened to know that there was some justification for what had appeared about the Mayor and Reynolds. It was the only smudge on his administration of city affairs, and I told him so. I told him, also, that it had become the fashion for men who didn’t like what newspapers printed about them to call the paper “yellow,” but that I could never make up my mind what “yellow,” as applied to newspapers, meant. If it meant that the newspaper printed lies and manufactured sensations that were unfounded, I knew of no such conditions that existed in any of the New York newspapers. I told him that I believed that all of them meant to be fair and truthful at all times and that no paper that was run with any different policy could hold its circulation.

Then I told him my ideas of what is meant by “yellow journalism” and went back to forty years or more of my own experience. I told him of the Chicago _Times_, which was run on the policy of “raise hell and sell newspapers,” and mentioned that headline which shocked readers of the newspaper--“Jerked to Jesus,” over the execution of a murderer who became a religious enthusiast just before the hangman broke his neck.

I told the Mayor something more about the Chicago _Times_ that appeared to interest him. It was the story of the burning of Hooley’s Theater. It thrilled Chicago one morning and then caused almost a riot when it turned out that the story was a vicious fake.

Frank Wilkie, father of a recent Chief of the United States Secret Service, was one of the most brilliant writers in Chicago. He was for many years on the staff of the _Times_. One night he went to the box-office of Hooley’s Theater and was told that the seats were all sold. He took pains to ascertain that the statement was untrue and that it was another way of denying him free tickets.

Wilkie went to his office and wrote five or six columns of the most graphic description of a fire that I have ever read. Hooley’s Theater had burned during a night performance and many had perished in the flames because there were not enough exits. A list of those who were dead or horribly burned contained the names of many of the most prominent men and women in the city. All Chicago who read the _Times_ that morning was horrified at the appalling disaster until it came to the bottom of the final column where, in very small type, was a line in a bracket:

“(This is what may happen).”

Then Chicago grew angry and threatened to tear the _Times_ office apart and mob its editor. Old Wilbur F. Storey sat in his sanctum and chuckled. He had “raised hell and sold newspapers.”

That is what I call “yellow journalism,” although the _Times_ defended the outrage by declaring that the theater was notoriously unsafe and a menace to the lives of all who patronized it. Wretched and inexcusable fake though it was, prompted by no other motive than to “get even” for not receiving free tickets of admission, the article resulted in awakening the authorities to the fact that the theater really was unsafe and “Uncle Dick” Hooley had to close and make extensive alterations.

What a pity that New York was so ungrateful to Mitchel. He was by far the best Mayor the city ever had in my time. He had high ideals and purposes and worked with untiring zeal for the betterment of New York and her people. I know of no man, either in political or civil life, who worked so hard as he did during his term of office.

I called on Mayor Mitchel in City Hall one day and asked him to appoint Magistrate Herbert to a vacancy on the bench of Special Sessions Court. There were seventeen candidates. Frank Polk, then Corporation Counsel and later Assistant Secretary of State, came into the Mayor’s private office just after I had stated the object of my visit.

“Come on in, Frank,” said the Mayor. “Chapin is asking me to promote Herbert to Judge of Special Sessions. What do you think about it?”

“Herbert is a fine man,” replied Polk, “but I have another candidate and therefore am prejudiced. However, if Chapin is boosting Herbert I imagine that my candidate and all the others will have to wait, for I don’t see how you can very well refuse.”

“I have no intention of refusing,” said the Mayor. “I have asked many favors of Chapin and this is the first he has ever asked of me. Is Herbert a Catholic?” The Mayor addressed his question to me.

“I assume that he is, but don’t know,” I replied.

“Is he a Democrat?”

“I don’t know that, either. I have never asked him what his religion or his politics are. I only know that he is decent and I think he is deserving of the promotion and will make a good judge.”

Herbert telephoned to me a few evenings later that he had been summoned to the City Hall and that he had met the Mayor for the first time and had received his appointment. He is still on the bench.

It was Herbert who introduced me to Sing Sing. Some years before any thought came to me that I should some day call it “home,” Herbert invited me to visit the famous old bastile on the banks of the Hudson. A former court officer of his, John Kennedy, was then warden of Sing Sing. Herbert sent word to him that we were coming and the warden met us at the railway station with his official carriage. It was so different when I came again that the event is rooted deep in my memory.

We had dinner in the warden’s residence and it was then that I first met Father Cashin, the prison chaplain, with whom I was destined to later in life become so intimately associated. I recall how uneasy I felt when the warden informed us that the nice looking chap who waited on table and passed the food to me so politely was a convict, serving a life sentence for murder. It gave one a creepy sensation among the nerves of his spinal column.

After dinner we looked through the prison, guided by old “P. K.” Connaughton. I recall the horror I felt when I saw the stone holes where the prisoners were confined when they were not at work. It seemed incredible that human beings could live in such dank and smelly cells and not go mad or waste away with disease. I remember saying to Judge Herbert that if all of the judges in the Criminal Courts of New York would come up and inspect the cells they would have little desire to send men here, save in extreme cases. He agreed with me.

Yet, for a year and a half I have slept every night in one of these cells and have slept as soundly as ever I did in the Plaza Hotel, which proves the old saying that “one can get used to hanging in time.”

One day I went to the French Line pier to say bon voyage to some friends who were sailing on _La Bourgoyne_, then one of the most magnificent of ocean steamships. I saw her draw away from the pier, her decks alive with happy voyagers, band playing, flags fluttering, passengers waving farewells to loved ones left behind. Aboard the ship I had picked up a printed passenger list. I thrust it into a pocket and started to return to the _World_ office.

As I was leaving the pier, I encountered Judge Dillon, one of the ablest lawyers in New York. He was for many years attorney for Jay Gould and for Russell Sage. It was in the home of the latter that I first met him. I walked with him to his carriage. He told me that he had come down to see his wife and youngest daughter off for Europe. I imagined that he appeared troubled and anxious as if he had a premonition of impending peril. That impression would probably not have lingered in my memory all these intervening years if _La Bourgoyne_ had sailed safely to the end of her voyage.

Two days later a telegram was brought to me at my desk in the _Evening World_ office. It was a brief message from our correspondent at Halifax, telling of a terrible tragedy at sea. _La Bourgoyne_ had been run into by a sailing vessel in a smother of fog and had gone down, drowning many of her crew and nearly all of her first cabin passengers.

Our correspondent had been standing on the dock at Halifax and had sighted a vessel sailing into the harbor with colors at half mast. He sprang aboard of a tug and went out to her. The flag at half mast was quickly explained. The vessel had sunk _La Bourgoyne_ and was bringing in the few survivors that had been rescued.

The correspondent didn’t wait for details, but hurried his tug back to land and ran for a telegraph office. In ten minutes his message of disaster and death was before me. I rushed it to the composing room to be put into type and telephoned the mechanical forces to get ready for an important “extra.” I wrote a headline and directed that it be set in the largest type we had. There instantly flashed through my mind the passenger list I had brought back from _La Bourgoyne_ and that was rushed up to the typesetters.

In less than fifteen minutes the “extra” was in the hands of the stereotypers and a few minutes later it was on the presses. The presses ran all day and far into the night, stopping only that additional details might be added to the greatest sensation of the year. I was the first in this country except telegraph operators to learn of the disaster. The other newspapers and the press associations got their first intimation of it when the _Evening World_ extras appeared in the streets.

As the extra went to press I thought of poor Judge Dillon and what the sinking of _La Bourgoyne_ meant to him. I got him on the telephone and broke the news as gently as I could, bidding him hope, for the list of survivors aboard the sailing vessel had not yet come and there was a chance that other ships would pick up additional survivors.

I got no response after breaking the news to him. The operator reported that his receiver was off the hook and she could get no reply. I was too busy at the time to devote further time to him, but I learned afterward that he was so overcome that he sank feebly into a chair and had to be helped to a lounge. This, I learned under rather peculiar circumstances.

More than a year had passed since the sinking of _La Bourgoyne_ and my wife and I were having Thanksgiving dinner at the Hotel Savoy. The dining-room was overcrowded and so hot that my wife swooned at the table and would have fallen from her chair had I not caught her in my arms. The incident attracted so much attention from the other diners that I motioned to two waiters to aid me in carrying her in her chair from the room. A lady at a nearby table followed and directed that my wife be taken to her apartment. I protested and urged her to return to the dining-room, but she insisted on having her way. She put my wife in her bed and applied restoratives until consciousness returned and while we waited for my wife to recover she told me that she was in mourning for her mother and sister who were lost on _La Bourgoyne_. She was a married daughter of Judge Dillon.

I related the incident of my telephoning news of the disaster to her father and she told me what happened to him when I did. She was one of the most gracious and charming of women. We chatted until long after midnight and when I thought my wife was sufficiently recovered to be removed to our home in a carriage, she wouldn’t listen to it, but insisted on keeping her the remainder of the night. She brought her home the next day and came frequently to visit us. A few years afterward she died.

Returning to the topic with which I began this chapter--the alleged degeneracy of American newspapers--I might add that the only noticeable deterioration, if any really exists, is in the writing of news by reporters. Viewed from a distance and away from a desk in the editorial room, my impression is that the standard of writing is not so high as it was before the European war.

One reason for this is that many of the best writers on the New York newspapers enlisted at the first call for volunteers. Many of them never returned. Some sleep beneath the stars that shine on the battlefields of France and Russia. Many found more profitable fields of activity. I don’t suppose that they have become secretaries to wealthy hod carriers, but I know that hundreds of clever men were lured into publicity work for great industrial concerns and that hundreds have found lucrative employment in the publicity end of motion picture production. In one of the largest of the cinema companies are more than a half dozen who were with me on the _Evening World_. The general manager was a thirty-dollar-a-week reporter and the general sales manager was a four-dollar office boy who came to me in knee pants and grew to manhood in our office. These two are now earning fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year.

Newspapers have not kept pace with other lines of business in the way of salaries and they have let many of their best writers slip away from them, recruiting the ranks with inexperienced graduates of the schools of journalism that have sprung up all over the country. In the mechanical branches, all of them unionized, publishers have been compelled to grant such large increases that printers and pressmen are now paid almost as much as editors and the editors and reporters have, in many instances, found a better market for the product of their brains and energy.

What I regret most is that publishers have found it necessary to increase the selling price of their newspapers. I believe in the one-cent newspaper that even the poorest can afford. I believe in the widest possible circulation that newspapers can attain. Papers like the _World_ and _Times_ should have a daily circulation in excess of a million copies. They cannot get and hold it unless they sell their papers for a cent. Past experience proves this.

Publishers justify the raise in price by the great increase in the cost of raw material since the war began. I think it would have been wiser to make the advertisers pay the increased cost. In times like these, when many of the smaller newspapers have been compelled to suspend publication because of the shortage of print paper, advertising rates are altogether too cheap when a candy shop in New York can afford to purchase two full pages of advertising space in all of the leading newspapers, and where a dozen or more department stores fill a page or more each every day in the week.

Make the advertiser pay! Let the poor read! The more newspapers that are read the less Bolsheviki and I. W. W.