Chapter XXXIX: The War-Makers

What is the moral tone in the offices of these great “kept” institutions? The best description I know of the inside of such a newspaper is found in an article, “The Blue Pencil,” by Maxwell Anderson, published in the “New Republic” for December 14, 1918. It is very evident that Mr. Anderson has worked in the office of some newspaper; he doesn’t give names, but his text indicates that the city is San Francisco. The name of the imaginary owner is H. N. De Smith, and if you are familiar with San Francisco affairs, you don’t have to be a wizard to make your guess.

Mr. Anderson portrays one after another of the staff of the paper: the managing editor, the assistant managing editor, the city editor, the copy reader, the reporter, the dramatic critic, the artist, the designer, the copy boy. Every one of these persons is a slave with a chain about his neck; everyone of them clearly understands that his function in life is to subserve the glory of his owner.

They think unkindly of Hank De Smith; they speak derisively of his
park, his policies, and the amount he is supposed to drink up in a
day. But they obey him. Pasted before each man is a typed schedule of
prejudice, known technically as the son-of-a-bitch list, and
consisting of the names of men who must be given no free publicity.
Here all prominent radicals and the business men who have refused to
advertise in the paper are lumped in an eternal obloquy of silence.

“Refer to Dealer
“Any copy containing name
of: ............., ............., ............., .............,
“Names Not to Appear in
Headlines: ............., ............., ............., .............
“Use Title of ‘Mr.’
“Only in connection with H. N. De Smith.”

What smouldering envies or balked ambitions may lie behind this absurd
catalogue they do not know. But when this same De Smith buys a block
of charity stock, as a matter of course they run headlines across the
second title page to inform the city of it

“Praise Hank, from whom all blessings flow,” the tall and heavy Texan
sneers gravely.

And here is the assistant managing editor; I have interviewed such a managing editor as this, not once, but fifty times; and not only in San Francisco, but in a score of other American cities:

He is acute and politic, as you discover when first you hear him call
up Henry N. De Smith to ask for a decision. Such action is very seldom
necessary. The assistant managing editor knows the owner’s prejudices
and failings by long association. He is versed in a most essential
knowledge of what may be printed in the paper, and what it would be
dangerous for the public to know. Under his care comes the immense
problem of general policy, the direction of opinion in the city in the
paths most favorable to his master’s fame and fortune. Nothing
unpleasing to friend or advertiser must by any chance appear. It means
nothing to him that given such conditions, advertising becomes a kind
of legitimate blackmail, for his mind is not attuned to delicate moral
vibrations.

Such is San Francisco; and lest you think that is prejudice, or an anomaly, come to Chicago and have a glimpse of the insides of the “Chronicle,” given in a book of confessions, “The Career of a Journalist,” by William Salisbury:

It was no easy matter, either, to be Copy Reader on the “Chronicle.”
In addition to the average Copy Reader’s immense fund of knowledge,
one had to know almost by heart the names of the sixteen corporations
in which owner Walsh was interested, such as banks and street railways
and gas and contracting companies. He had to know, too, the names of
the prominent men Mr. Walsh liked or disliked, so as to treat them
accordingly. A mistake in such things would much more quickly bring a
telephone order from Mr. Walsh’s banking offices for changes in the
staff than any other error.

It may seem an extreme statement; but I doubt if there is a newspaper-office in America in which such things as this do not happen. There may be newspapers whose owners sternly refrain from using them as a means of personal glorification; there may be newspapers which do not give special attention to the owner’s after-dinner speeches, and to the social events that go on in the owner’s home. But is there any paper which does not show consideration for the associates and intimate friends of the owner? It happened to me once to be sitting in a hotel-room with a millionaire who was under arrest and liable to serve ten years in jail. This man’s relatives were among the rulers of the city, and I heard him go to the telephone and call up his relatives, and advise them how to approach the newspapers, and precisely what instructions to give; next morning I saw those instructions followed by the newspapers. Has any man ever held an executive position on a newspaper in America without witnessing incidents of this sort? The testimony available is not merely that of radicals and “muck-rakers.” Here is a most conservative editor, Hamilton Holt, in his book, “Commercialism and Journalism,” mentioning “a certain daily whose editor recently told me that there was on his desk a list three feet long of prominent people whose names were not to be mentioned in his paper.”

Is there any newspaper which does not show consideration for the business interests of its owners? Come to Los Angeles, which I happen to know especially well, because I live only twelve miles away from it. It calls itself the “City of the Angels”; I have taken the liberty of changing the name to the “City of the Black Angels.” This city gets its water-supply from distant mountains, and its great financial interests owned vast tracts of land between the city and the sources of supply. There were four newspapers, all in a state of most ferocious rivalry; but all of them owned some of this land, and all of them united in the campaign for an aqueduct. For years they kept the population terrified by pictures of failing water-supply; people say they had the water run out of the reservoirs, and the city parks allowed to dry up! So they got their aqueduct, and land that had cost forty dollars an acre became worth a thousand dollars. A single individual cleared a million dollars by this deal.

I have given in this book a fairly thorough account of the “Los Angeles Times,” the perfect illustration of a great newspaper conducted in the financial interest of one man. The personality of that man infected it so powerfully that the infection has persisted after the man is dead. I have never heard anybody in Los Angeles maintain that the “Times” is an honest newspaper, or a newspaper which serves the public interest; but I have heard them say that Otis was “sincere according to his lights,” that “you always knew where to find him.” I have heard this said by several different men, and it is extraordinary testimony to the extent to which newspaper knavery can be successful.

No, you didn’t “always know where to find Otis”; for many years it was a toss-up where you would find him, for Otis had two offices in Los Angeles. One was the office of the “Times,” a “Republican” newspaper, maintaining ferociously the “open-shop” policy—so ferociously that some outraged labor leaders blew it up with a dynamite-bomb. But at the same time Otis owned secretly another Los Angeles newspaper, the “Herald”; and the “Herald” was an “independent” newspaper, a “Democratic” newspaper, a “closed-shop” newspaper! So here was Otis handing out one kind of dope to the Los Angeles public with one hand, and handing out the opposite kind of dope to the Los Angeles public with the other hand—and taking in money from the Los Angeles public with both hands. When you read my statement that “Big Business stages a sham-battle every now and then, to make the people think they are controlling the government,” you smiled, no doubt—taking it for the exuberance of a radical. But what better proof could you have of a sham-battle, than to find the same man fighting furiously on both sides?

And how comes it that the public of Los Angeles is ignorant of this extraordinary situation? Why, simply that when the news came out, there was no Los Angeles newspaper that would feature it; the newspapers were in on some “deal,” and the only place the story could be exploited was in “La Follette’s,” in Wisconsin! It was told there by Frank E. Wolfe, formerly managing editor of the “Herald,” the man who took the orders of Otis and carried them out.

Some thirty years ago my friend Gaylord Wilshire started in Los Angeles a publication called the “Nationalist,” advocating the ideas of Edward Bellamy. This paper was printed at the office of the “Los Angeles Express,” and one day, walking down the street, Wilshire met General Otis.

“I see you people have got a weekly paper,” said the General.

“Yes,” said Wilshire.

“Well, now, the ‘Times’ has a new and modern printing-plant. We would like very much to do that work for you. Suppose you give us a trial.”

“Well, General, it’s all right so far as I am concerned, because I don’t mind such things; but some of my associates consider that you don’t treat our ideas fairly in the ‘Times’.”

“Oh, now, now, you don’t mind a thing like that! Surely, now, you ought to understand a joke!”

“Well, as I say, I don’t mind, but some of my associates take it seriously.”

“Well, I’ll show you about that. We’ll fix that up very easily.”

So the General went off, and next day there appeared in the “Times” an editorial speaking very cordially of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism. And thereafter for two or three weeks, the “Times” spoke pleasantly of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism, and it faithfully reported the meetings of the Nationalists. But the “Nationalist” did not change its printing-plant, and so the General got tired of waiting, and shifted back to his old method of sneering and abuse. This, you understand, for a job-printing contract worth fifty, or perhaps a hundred dollars, a week!

By methods such as these Otis grew wealthy, and later on he purchased six hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in Northern Mexico. When the Diaz régime was overthrown, Otis had trouble in getting his cattle out, so he wanted a counter-revolution in Mexico, and for years the whole policy of his paper has been directed to bringing on intervention and conquest of that country. At one time the Federal authorities indicted Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Otis, and his successor in control of the “Times,” for conspiracy to ship arms into Mexico. Mr. Chandler was acquitted. If you will turn back to page 209 of this book, you will find a statement by a prominent Los Angeles lawyer as to jury trials in the “City of the Black Angels.”

Mr. Hearst also owns enormous stretches of land in Mexico, and Mr. Hearst also understands that if Mexico were conquered and annexed by the United States, the value of his lands would be increased many times over. Therefore for fifteen years the Hearst newspapers have been used as a means of forcing war with Mexico. Mr. Hearst admits and is proud of the fact that it was he who made the Spanish-American war. He sent Frederick Remington to Cuba to make pictures of the war, and Remington was afraid there wasn’t going to be any war, and so cabled Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst answered: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.”

That was in 1897 or 1898. I was a boy just out of college, and fell victim to this modern kind of “war-making.” I was walking on the street, and heard newsboys shouting an extra, and saw these words, printed across the front page of the “New York Evening Journal”:

_WAR
DECLARED!_

So I parted with one of my hard-earned pennies, and read:

_WAR_
may be
_DECLARED_
soon

But did that bit of knavery keep me from buying the Hearst newspapers forever after? It did not. I am an American, and can no more resist sensational headlines printed in a newspaper than a donkey can resist a field of fat clover. So I still take a Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” and watch Mr. Hearst prepare my mind for the bloody process of annexing millions of Hearst acres to my country. Both the Hearst paper and the Otis paper print elaborate accounts of how the government is preparing to invade Mexico. There are details of diplomatic negotiations and of military preparations, stories elaborate, complete, and apparently entirely authentic. Once in a while the State Department issues a formal denial that it has any such intentions, or is making any such preparations; the “Times” and “Examiner” print these denials—and then go on blandly printing their stories! I am left to wonder which is lying, the American government or the American press.

You know the part which the newspapers of Europe took in the making of the late war, the “last” war, as we were told. You know that the Krupps owned and subsidized the “reptile press” of Germany, using it to foment hatred of France. You know that at the same time they subsidized some of the leading Chauvinist newspapers of France, to publish denunciations and threats against Germany, so that the new war appropriations might be forced through the Reichstag. Karl Liebknecht exposed this infamy in Germany, and the ruling caste of the country never forgave him, and in the crisis of the late rebellion they found their chance to pay him back.

Among the secret documents made public by the Bolsheviki were some letters from the Russian Minister to France, informing his home government of negotiations whereby Russia was to be allowed to seize Constantinople. He told how the French newspapers might be used, and pointed out how Italy did this while she was grabbing Tripoli:

It is of the highest importance to see to it that we have a good press
here.... As an example of how useful it is to have money to offer the
press ... I know how Tittoni has worked up the leading French papers
most thoroughly and with the most open hand. The result is now
manifest to all.

We read about such infamies in Europe, and shudder at them, and congratulate ourselves that our “sweet land of liberty” is more clean. But put yourself in the place of an educated Mexican, and see how it appears to him. American financial promoters bring their wealth to Mexico, and buy the Mexican government, and obtain ownership of the most valuable land and oil and minerals of the country. The Mexican people overthrow this corrupt government, and attempt to tax these legally stolen properties; but the foreign governments say that these properties may not be taxed, and the newspapers owned and published by these foreign interests carry on for years an elaborate campaign of slanders against Mexico, to the end that the American people may make war upon the Mexican people and exploit them. And this is done, not merely by the Otis paper and the Hearst papers, which all thinking people know to be corrupt; it is done by papers like the “New York Times” and “Tribune” and “Chicago Tribune,” which are considered to be entirely respectable. As I write, the correspondent of the “New York Tribune” in Mexico, L. J. de Bekker, resigns, and states as his reason that his dispatches were suppressed or cut in the “Tribune” office.

And of course, in a campaign of this sort they count upon the cordial help of the Associated Press. Says the “Heraldo de Mexico,” August 15, 1919: “We see that the Associated Press lies with frequency.” And you do not have to take this solely on the word of a Mexican newspaper. The Mexican minister of foreign relations gives out a letter from the vice-president of the Mexican Northwestern Railroad, whose offices are in Toronto, Canada: “I see that the Associated Press mentions with frequency, in its reports, the name of our company.” He goes on to explain that the Associated Press has stated that his company complains of the confiscation of lands, whereas these reports are wholly false; his company has had no difficulty whatever with the Mexican government. He says: “It is intolerable that our name should be used.” And also the Associated Press sends out a circumstantial story of the alleged withdrawal of the Canadian Pearson’s from business in Mexico. The vice-president of this company issues a point-blank denial that he has had any difficulty with the Mexican government. Says Mr. de Bekker, protesting to the assistant manager of the Associated Press: “It is a most marked example of the A. P.’s unfairness. And it is a fair presumption that the A. P. will not carry this denial.”

The Mexicans are a backward people, and we complain that there are bandits among them. But which is worse, the spontaneous violence of a primitive people, or the organized and systematic treachery of a highly developed people? You have a child; and suppose that, instead of loving this child, understanding and helping it, you do nothing but scold at it, menace it, and tell falsehoods about it—would you be surprised if the child now and then kicked your shins?