Chapter XXXVIII: Owning the Press

The methods by which the “Empire of Business” maintains its control over Journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising subsidies; and fourth, direct bribery. By these methods there exists in America a control of news and of current comment more absolute than any monopoly in any other industry. This statement may sound extreme, but if you will think about it you will realize that in the very nature of the case it must be true. It does not destroy the steel trust if there are a few independent steel-makers, it does not destroy the money trust if there are a few independent men of wealth, but it does destroy the news trust if there is a single independent newspaper to let the cat out of the bag.

The extent to which outright ownership of newspapers and magazines has been acquired by our financial autocracy would cause astonishment if it were set forth in figures. One could take a map of America and a paint-brush, and make large smudges of color, representing journalistic ownership of whole districts, sometimes of whole states, by special interests. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan would be swept with a yellow smudge—that is copper. The whole state of Montana would be the same, and the greater part of Arizona. A black smudge for Southern Colorado, and another in the Northern part—that is coal. A gray smudge in Western Pennsylvania, and another in Illinois—that is steel. A green smudge in Wisconsin, and another in Oregon and Washington—that is lumber. A white smudge in North Dakota and Minnesota—that is the milling trust, backed by the railroads and the banks. A dirty smudge in central California, representing “Southern Pacific” and “United Railways,” now reinforced by “M. and M.”

Ten years ago there was a terrific reform campaign in San Francisco, and the reformers started a little weekly called the “Liberator.” I quote from one issue:

Many San Francisco weekly papers were bought up with cash payments,
coming principally from the offices of the “United Railroads.” But
this did not seem to satisfy the plans of the defense, and suddenly
the Calkins Syndicate developed into a concern of astonishing
magnitude. From the publisher of obscure weeklies and dailies, it
established a modern publishing plant, and took over much of the
printing of the “Sunset Magazine,” which contract alone brought the
Calkins outfit several thousand dollars a month. The “Sacramento
Union” and the “Fresno Herald” were purchased, and a bid made for the
“San Francisco Post.” The syndicate failed to get the “Post.” The “San
Francisco Globe” was started instead. Whatever money could do in the
newspaper line, Calkins for a few months did. Newspaper men knew, of
course, that the losses were enormous. The questions were, “Who is
filling the sack? How long will the sack last?”

And wherever in America there has been an honest investigation, the same conditions have been revealed. The Calkins syndicate had its exact counterpart in Montana; or rather two counterparts, for Senator Clark and Marcus Daly, copper kings, were carrying on a feud, and each purchased or established a string of newspapers to slander the other. Now the gigantic “Anaconda” has swallowed them both, and there are only two newspapers in Montana which are not owned or controlled by “copper.” One of these is owned by a politician who, I am assured, serves the “interests” without hire; and the other is the “Butte Daily Bulletin,” Socialist, whose editor goes in hourly peril of his life. In Oklahoma nearly everything is “Standard Oil”; and at the other end of the continent is the New York “Outlook,” one of whose important stockholders was discovered to be James Stillman, of the National City Bank of New York—Standard Oil!

I have given elsewhere a picture of conditions in Los Angeles. In San Diego are two papers owned by the sugar-king, and one paper of the Scripps group. In San Francisco are two Hearst papers, the “Examiner” and the “Call”; the “Chronicle,” owned by “Mike” de Young, whom I have portrayed; and the “Bulletin” whose assorted knaveries will soon be set forth in detail. Also there is a monthly, the “Sunset,” formerly owned by the Southern Pacific, and now serving the anti-union campaign of the “M. and M.”—the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association which has raised a million dollar slush fund; also a weekly, popularly known as “the Rich Man’s Door-mat,” and a number of gossip-weeklies and “kept” political sheets. The “Labor Digest” has recently gone over with startling suddenness to the cause of capital, reversing itself absolutely on the Mooney case. The publisher, a veteran labor union official, recently informed an applicant for the job of editor that he was “running the paper to make money.” The applicant said that he favored the Plumb plan; so there was “nothing doing.”

Moving on up the coast, there is the “Portland Oregonian,” owned by the estate of a huge-scale lumber operator, one of the richest men in the Northwest. An employee of this paper writes to me:

He was so public-spirited and free-handed that the appraisal of the
estate showed that he had invested to the extent of five dollars in
war savings stamps and in only five thousand dollars worth of war
bonds, and that under direct compulsion, so it was revealed, of his
fellow-citizens. The “Oregonian” is born of corporate power, conceived
for corporate purposes, and exists to do the corporate bidding,
avowedly so.

Also there is the “Portland Telegram,” owned by the two sons of a timber magnate, who obtained most of his lands by the popular “dummy entry” system. The same informant, who once worked for this paper, writes me of these owners:

Neither has ever had to do a stroke of work in his life, and the
attitude of both toward the man on the payroll is the most typically
snobbish I have ever encountered. The younger brother directs the
paper, although he could not earn fifteen dollars a week salary in any
department if he were put on his own. The paper consequently is so
wobbly in its policies and practices that it rapidly is becoming a
joke.

In this vicinity is a third paper, owned by a politician of whom friends tell me that he has in past times taken the popular side, but now is old, and has got himself a business manager. A friend who knows this young man describes him:

“Energetic, cold as steel, a typical corporation, business, money man,
who is wiping the paper clean of every trace of democracy.”

And then, moving farther North to Seattle, there is the “Times,” an enormously valuable property, built up with the financial assistance of the Hill interests and the Great Northern Railroad—which, I believe, made more money out of a small investment than any other enterprise in America. The “Times” is paying five per cent dividends on six million dollars, and so naturally believes in the profit system. Also there is the “Star,” a Scripps paper—the “Shooting Star,” which was willing to lose thirty-five thousand readers in order to smash the Seattle strike. And finally there is the “Post-Intelligencer,” which was purchased in the interest of James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad, and placed one hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of its bonds in the hands of these interests. The paper was taken over, says my informant, by “the notorious Jacob Furth interests of Seattle. Furth was head of the Seattle transportation lines and the Seattle National Bank, and was the village pawnbroker. The paper had gradually gotten more and more into debt to the banks, and its present ownership arose out of that fact.”

Such is the newspaper plight of the Pacific coast! And now come to the Atlantic coast, and take one of our great centers of culture; take the Hub of the Universe, take Boston. The newspaper plight of Boston is beyond telling. There is the “Evening Transcript,” owned by an extremely wealthy and reactionary family, serving every wealthy and reactionary interest, and incidentally taking advertising bribes, as I shall presently show. There is the “Boston American,” owned by Hearst, and the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” also owned by Hearst. The latter is the oldest newspaper in Boston, and a year ago its circulation was cut down to a thousand copies, its publication being continued merely in order that Hearst may retain its Associated Press franchise. There is the “Boston Globe,” and its evening edition, controlled, I am informed, by Standard Oil. There is the “Boston Herald,” and its evening edition, the “Traveler,” owned by the Plant and United Shoe Machinery interests, with ex-Senator Crane holding the balance of power. There is the “Post,” also heavily in debt to Crane—who is one of the leading reactionaries of New England. The owner of the “Post” is described to me by one who knows him as “a sick man, who like all men who have accumulated a great deal of wealth, is inclined to be conservative and fearful of change.”

Finally, there is the “Christian Science Monitor,” owned and run by a group of wealthy metaphysicians, who teach that Poverty is a Delusion of Mortal Mind, and that Hunger can be relieved by Thinking. I make it a practice when a public emergency arises, and I have something to say which I think is important, to send it to leading newspapers by telegraph collect. Sometimes the newspapers publish it, nearly always they accept it and pay for it—because they judge there is a possibility of their getting something important by this method. The “Christian Science Monitor” stands alone among American newspapers in that it wrote me not to send it telegrams, because there was no chance of its caring to print what I might have to say!

Or take Cincinnati, where I happen to have friends on the “inside.” There is the “Cincinnati Inquirer” and “Post,” owned by the estate of McLean, who made thirty million dollars out of street railway and gas franchises, obtained by bribery. This estate also owns the “Washington Post,” whose knaveries I shall tell about later on. And there is the “Times-Star,” owned by Charles P. Taft, brother of our ex-president. “Charlie” Taft married twenty million dollars, and bought a newspaper, and started out as a valiant reformer, and everybody in Cincinnati thought how lovely that a fine, clean, young millionaire was going in for civic reform. But at the very outset he trod on the toes of Boss Cox, and Boss Cox showed how he could injure the Taft fortune; whereupon “Charlie” made a deal with the boss, and since then his paper has been the leading champion of civic corruption.

In most big cities you find papers owned by big local “trusts,” and one or two others belonging to a “trust” of newspapers, a publishing-system like that of Calkins or Capper or Munsey or Scripps or Hearst. For the rule that the big fish swallow the little ones applies in the newspaper world as elsewhere. The publisher of a big newspaper comes upon a chance to buy a small newspaper in a neighboring city, and presently he finds himself with a chain of newspapers. Then he learns of a magazine that is “on the rocks,” and it occurs to him that a magazine can help his newspapers, or vice versa. So you find Munsey, a self-confessed stock-gambler, with three magazines and several newspapers; the Hearst machine with a dozen newspapers, also “Hearst’s Magazine,” the “Cosmopolitan,” and four other periodicals. Every month in the Hearst newspapers you read editorials which are disguised advertisements of these magazines.

Also it has been discovered that magazines can combine to their financial advantage. The agents who come to your home and pester the life out of you for subscriptions find that they can get more of your money by offering clubbing-rates for a group of magazines: a farm paper, another paper with “slush for the women,” a third paper with slush for the whole family—such as I have quoted from the “American” and “McClure’s.” So you see a vast commercial machine building itself up. There is Street and Smith, with no less than eight magazines, all of them having enormous circulations, and devoted exclusively to trash. There is the Butterick Company, with seven; “Vanity Fair” and the Crowell Company, with four each; the Curtis Company, “Munsey’s,” the “Atlantic,” the “World’s Work,” the “Smart Set,” the “Red Book”—each with three. In England we have seen great chains of publications built up in connection with the selling of cocoa and soap; in America we see them built up in connection with the selling of dress-patterns, as with the Buttericks; with the boosting of moving pictures, as formerly done by “McClure’s”; with grocery-stores and stock-manipulation, as “Munsey’s”; with the selling of subscription-books, as “Collier’s,” or dictionaries, as the “Literary Digest.” Or perhaps it will be a magazine run by a book-publisher, as a means of advertising and reviewing his own books; and if you investigate, you find that the book-publisher in turn is owned by some great financial interest, which sees that he publishes commercial stuff and rejects all new ideas. This process of centralization has continued in England until now Lord Northcliffe owns fifty or sixty magazines and newspapers of all varieties.

Northcliffe had a personal quarrel with Lloyd George, and that part of British “Big Business” which makes its profits out of the Lloyd George policies felt the need of more publicity, and went into the market and bought the “Chronicle” for several million dollars. When the masters of industry pay such sums for a newspaper, they buy not merely the building and the presses and the name; they buy what they call the “good-will”—that is, they buy _you_. And they proceed to change your whole psychology—everything that you believe about life. You might object to it, if you knew; but they do their work so subtly that you never guess what is happening to you!

By way of illustration, let me tell you the amusing story of one American newspaper which was thus bought in the open market. Some years ago there was a Standard Oil magnate, H. M. Flagler, who took a fancy to the state of Florida, and entertained himself by developing it into a leisure-class resort. He owned all the railroads, and a great chain of hotels, and also, as a matter of course, the State legislature. He had the misfortune to have an insane wife, and the laws of Florida did not permit him to divorce this wife, so he caused to be introduced and passed a bill permitting divorce on grounds of insanity. But, being a moral citizen, who believed in the sanctity of marriage for everybody but himself, Mr. Flagler allowed this law to stand only long enough for him to get his divorce. He then had his legislature repeal the law, so that no one might be corrupted by his evil example.

He married another woman, and shortly afterwards left her a widow with a hundred million dollars. Needless to say, such widows are not left very long to mourn; Mrs. Flagler espoused a certain Judge Bingham, a leading citizen of Kentucky. A pre-nuptial contract barred him from inheriting her estate; nevertheless she managed, eight months after their wedding, and six weeks before her death, to present to him a trifling matter of five million dollars. Then she died, and he, being lonely, and in possession of spare cash, looked around for something to play with. He decided to play with you—that is, with a newspaper!

There was an old newspaper in Louisville, the “Courier-Journal,” which had been made by the genius of Col. Henry Watterson, a picturesque old-style Democrat, a radical of the Jeffersonian type, who stormed with vivid and diverting ferocity at the “robber barons” of Wall Street. The paper had got into financial difficulties, owing to family quarrels of the owners, and Judge Bingham bought it, with its evening edition, the “Louisville Times,” for something over a million dollars. Col. Watterson was to stay as “Editor Emeritus”; that is, he was to be a figurehead, to blind the public to the sinister realities of modern capitalism. But modern capitalism is too greedy and too ruthless a force for the old-style gentleman of the South; Col. Watterson could not stand the editorial policy of his new owner, so he quit, and today the “Courier-Journal” challenges the “Los Angeles Times” as an organ of venomous reaction. I quote one sample of its editorials—the subject being that especially infamous variety of pervert known as the “Christian Socialist clergyman.” Behold him!—

Some person who has never worked in his life—except his tongue—and yet
talks to his “congregation” about problems of workingmen. This rogue
is sometimes an elocutionary shyster who rambles about the
downtrodden—meaning his prosperous followers and, of course,
himself—the expected revolution, the rights of the pee-pul, and so on.
What he desires to do is to heroize himself, to appear to his pee-pul
as a courageous leader against oppression; which is to say, against
the law and the Government which protect this people in the possession
of their homes, automobiles and liberties.

Col. Watterson resigned. But as a rule the professional journalist pockets his Brass Check, and delivers the goods to his master in the silence and secrecy of the journalistic brothel. A professional journalist may be defined as a man who holds himself ready at a day’s notice to adjust his opinions to the pocket-book of a new owner. I have heard Arthur Brisbane remark that the “New York Times” was sold on several occasions, and on each occasion its “editor” was sold with it. Yet when you read this “editor’s” preachments, they are all so solemn and dignified, high-sounding and moral—you would never dream but that you were reading actual opinions of a man!

Quite recently we saw the “New York Evening Post” put up on the journalistic bargain-counter. I have told how the “Evening Post” treated me at various times, so you will see that the paper was hardly to be classified as “radical.” But during the war it became treasonable to the gigantic trading corporation which calls itself the British Government; it persisted in this stubborn course, even when it knew that J. P. Morgan & Company were selling billions of British bonds, and handling all the purchases of the British Government in America. When the Bolsheviki gave out the secret treaties of the Allies, the “Evening Post” was the one non-Socialist newspaper in America which published them in full. So it was evident that something must be done, and done quickly, about the “Evening Post.”

The paper was in financial difficulties, because of the constantly increasing cost of material and wages. Its owner gave an option to his associates, with the pledge on their part that they would not take the paper to “Wall Street”; then, three weeks later, the paper was sold to Thomas W. Lamont, of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Company; the owner being kept in ignorance of the name of the purchaser. So now the “New York Evening Post” looks upon the peace treaty, and finds it “a voice from heaven.” “A voice from heaven” commanding the French to grab the Saar Valley, and the Japs to seize Shantung! “A voice from heaven” commanding the workers of Russia to pay the bad debts of the Tsar—and to pay them through the banking-house of J. P. Morgan & Company!

And if you do not care to get your opinions from the gigantic trading-corporation which calls itself the British government, you may read the “New York Evening Mail,” which was bought with the money of the German government! Or you may read the “New York Evening Sun,” which was bought by Frank A. Munsey, with part of the million dollars which he boasted of having made out of your troubles in the 1907 panic. If you do not like papers which are bought and sold, you may read the “New York Evening Telegram,” which has remained the property of the Bennett estate, and is working for the pocket-book of the Bennett estate, forty-one editions every week. In the morning, you may read the “Herald,” which is working for the same estate. If you get tired of the point of view of that estate, you may try the estate of Whitelaw Reid, capitalist, or of Joseph Pulitzer, invested in railroads and telegraphs, or of Searles, of the Sugar Trust. Or, if you prefer living men, you may give up your mind to the keeping of Adolph Ochs, of the Traction gang, or of William Rockefeller of Standard Oil, or of William Randolph Hearst of Eternal Infamy. This concludes the list of choices that are open to you in New York—unless you are willing to read a Socialist paper, the “New York Call”; and of course you cannot get the “Call” all the time, because sometimes the police bar it from the stands, and sometimes the soldier-boys raid its offices and throw the editors out of the windows, and sometimes the Postmaster-General bars it from the mails, and at all times he refuses it second class entry. So if I wish to get it out here in California, I have to pay two and one half times as much as I pay for the papers of the Searles estate and the Pulitzer estate and the Hearst estate and the Bennett estate and the Reid estate.