Chapter L: The Press and Public Welfare

As a result of the operation of all these forces, we have a class-owned press, representing class-interests, protecting class-interests with entire unscrupulousness, and having no conception of the meaning of public welfare. These words may seem extreme, but I mean them to be taken literally. When our press says “the public,” it means the property-owning class, and if in a newspaper-office you should assume it meant anything else, you would make yourself ridiculous. “We are not in business for our health,” is the formula whereby this matter is summed up in the “business-office” of our newspapers. It is only in the editorial columns that any other idea is suggested.

What kind of “public welfare” will you consider? Here, for example, is William Salisbury, working for the “Chicago Chronicle,” owned by a great banker. Was this banker working for the public welfare? He was working for his own welfare so diligently that later on he was sent to jail. Is Mr. Salisbury working for the public welfare? No, Mr. Salisbury is working for an actress, he tells us, and the actress is working for a diamond ring. Mr. Salisbury comes upon a “tip” that will earn him the price of the ring. A certain merchant has conceived the idea of a co-operative department store, an enterprise which might be of great service to the public; but if the big department-stores get wind of it, they will kill it. Mr. Salisbury takes the problem to his city editor, who consults owner Walsh over the telephone, and then tells Mr. Salisbury to write the story in full.

“The people who are getting this thing up are not advertisers,” he
added. “The big department-stores are. Besides, Walsh doesn’t believe
in co-operation or municipal ownership, or anything like that, so go
ahead.”

I wrote two columns. All the other papers copied the story.

The co-operative department-store was not started. The owners of the
big emporiums in the down-town district joined forces against it. They
got an option on the only available building by greatly overbidding
the small merchants. The latter, whose combined capital was less than
the wealth of any one of their powerful rivals, gave up the fight in
despair.

Thus was nipped in the bud by the frost of publicity a project which
might have revolutionized trade—and all because an actress wanted a
bracelet, and a reporter wanted a scoop, and a newspaper wanted to
protect its advertisers.

But sometimes the “Chronicle” was merciful, as Mr. Salisbury lets us see. All the newspapers in Chicago were pouring ridicule upon John Alexander Dowie, a fake religious prophet.

When I returned to the office I offered to write of Dowie’s weeping
about the birds. That was the only thing that struck me as unusual.
Anything that would put Dowie in a ridiculous or unfavorable light was
generally wanted by all the papers. But I was told to write nothing.

“We’ve just got orders to let up on Dowie,” said the city editor. “Mr.
Walsh wants to increase the paper’s circulation among the Dowieites.
Our political views have cost us subscribers lately, and we want to
make up for it. If there is any good hot news about Dowie, of course
we’ll print it, but not unfavorably.”

Maybe you distrust Mr. Salisbury. A man who could fake so much Journalism might fake one book! Very well; but here is one of the most eminent sociologists in the country, a man whose honor is not to be questioned—Prof. E. A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin. Writing in the “Atlantic Monthly” for March, 1910, Prof. Ross gives several pages of incidents of this sort. I quote:

On the desk of every editor and sub-editor of a newspaper run by a
capitalist promoter now under prison sentence lay a list of sixteen
corporations in which the owner was interested. This was to remind
them not to print anything damaging to these concerns. In the office
these corporations were jocularly referred to as “sacred cows.”

Nearly every form of privilege is found in the herd of “sacred cows”
venerated by the daily press.

The railroad company is a “sacred cow.” At a hearing before a state
railroad commission, the attorney of a shippers’ association got an
eminent magnate into the witness chair, with the intention of wringing
from him the truth regarding the political expenditures of his
railroad. At this point the commission, an abject creature of the
railroad, arbitrarily excluded the daring attorney from the case. The
memorable excoriation which that attorney gave the commission to its
face was made to appear in the papers as the _cause_ instead of the
_consequence_ of this exclusion. Subsequently, when the attorney filed
charges with the governor against the commission, one editor wrote an
editorial stating the facts and criticizing the commissioners. The
editorial was suppressed after it was in type.

The public-service company is a “sacred cow.” In a city of the
Southwest, last summer, while houses were burning from lack of water
for the fire hose, a lumber company offered to supply the firemen with
water. The water company replied that they had “sufficient.” Neither
this nor other damaging information concerning the company’s conduct
got into the columns of the local press. A yellow journal, conspicuous
in the fight for cheaper gas by its ferocious onslaughts on the “gas
trust,” suddenly ceased its attack. Soon it began to carry a full-page
“Cook with gas” advertisement. The cow had found the entrance to the
sacred fold.

Traction is a “sacred cow.” The truth about Cleveland’s fight for the
three-cent fare has been widely suppressed. For instance, while Mayor
Johnson was superintending the removal of the tracks of a defunct
street railway, he was served with a court order enjoining him from
tearing up the rails. As the injunction was not endorsed, as by law it
should be, he thought it was an ordinary communication, and put it in
his pocket to examine later. The next day he was summoned to show
reason why he should not be found in contempt of court. When the facts
came out, he was, of course, discharged. An examination of seven
leading dailies of the country shows that a dispatch was sent out from
Cleveland stating that Mayor Johnson, after acknowledging service,
pocketed the injunction, and ordered his men to proceed with their
work. In the newspaper-offices this dispatch was then embroidered. One
paper said the mayor told his men to go ahead and ignore the
injunction. Another had the mayor intimating in advance that he would
not obey an order if one were issued. A third invented a conversation
in which the mayor and his superintendent made merry over the
injunction. Not one of the seven journals reported the mayor’s
complete exoneration later.

And the same thing has been done in every city where radicals of any sort have gained control. Says A. M. Simons, speaking at a conference of the University of Wisconsin:

The story of the administration of Milwaukee while it was in Socialist
control was a caricature of the truth, so much so that it was found
necessary to establish a weekly bulletin or press service, scarcely an
issue of which did not contain a correction of some news agency story.
Compare the story sent out about Mayor Shank and the public market in
Indianapolis with the almost complete suppression of the fight against
the ice trust by the Socialist interests in Schenectady.

One of the most incredible instances of news suppression in the interests of Big Business occurred early in 1914, during the hearings of the Interstate Commerce Commission. For three years the newspapers had carried on an elaborate campaign in favor of a five per cent increase in freight rates. Fifty million dollars a year was at stake, and the roads were spending millions in advertising their cause in the newspapers. The presidents of our biggest railroads appeared before the Interstate Commerce Commission to tell of the ruin which was threatened unless the increase were granted. The campaign was all worked out in advance, the “dope” for the newspapers provided; but there came an unexpected hitch in the proceedings, caused by the appearance of a young man by the name of Thorne, a member of the State Railway Commission of Iowa. Mr. Thorne had the finances of all these railroads at his finger-tips, and he proceeded to cross-question the railroad presidents and tear their testimony to pieces. He showed that in twelve years the capitalization of the roads had been increased ninety-two per cent, and their dividends increased three hundred and fifty-nine per cent. In the year 1912 their dividends had been the greatest in history. In 1910 the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the New York Central had assured the Interstate Commerce Commission that they could not borrow money, yet in two years they had borrowed five hundred million dollars!

Mr. Thorne showed how in their reports just submitted they had padded their costs. Every locomotive had cost one hundred and twelve per cent more to maintain in 1913 than it had cost in 1912. Freight cars had increased thirty-three per cent in cost, despite the fact that iron and steel were cheaper. The Interstate Commerce Commission allowed Mr. Thorne to question all the railroad presidents, and not one of them could answer him. And what do you think the newspapers did with this most sensational incident? I take the facts from Charles Edward Russell, as follows: The “New York World” gave nearly a column to the testimony of the railroad presidents, and said not a word about Mr. Thorne! The “New York Times” gave a full column, and not a word about Thorne! The “Philadelphia Public Ledger” did the same, and the “Baltimore Sun”; the “Cincinnati Inquirer” gave half a column without mentioning Thorne, and the “Chicago Herald” the same. (This clipping marked, “By the Associated Press”!)

The hearings were continued. President Smith of the New York Central, a Vanderbilt property, took the stand. Mr. Thorne submitted figures showing that his road had made eleven per cent net profit, that it had put by an eleven-million-dollar surplus, that if its dividends had been properly figured they would have been fifty-four per cent. President Smith was absolutely helpless, dumb. And how do you think the New York newspapers treated that incident? The “New York World” gave it this headline: “GOING TO THE DEVIL FAST, SAYS HEAD OF NEW YORK CENTRAL.” And not a word about Thorne! Likewise the “New York Times” gave President Smith’s testimony in full, and nothing about Thorne! The “Philadelphia Public Ledger,” the “Baltimore Sun,” the “Chicago Herald” the same. (“By the Associated Press”!)

And next day came the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He, too, was helpless in the hands of Mr. Thorne; he admitted that he had made a stock allotment of forty-five million dollars; but again the same papers did not mention the matter. And next day came the vice-president of the “Baltimore & Ohio,” and the same thing happened. All over the country the newspapers were full of articles portraying a railroad panic, our greatest roads “going to the devil,” according to the sworn testimony of their officials—and never one word about State Railroad Commissioner Thorne of Iowa!

All these are positive acts; and now for a moment consider the negative—the good things that newspapers might do and don’t! I could write a volume dealing with plans and social possibilities known to me, whereby the life of mankind might be made over; but you might as well start to fly to the moon as ask a capitalist newspaper to take these things up. For example, the idea of a co-operative home, as tried at Helicon Hall; or the idea set forth by Edgar Chambless in his book, “Roadtown.” Did you ever hear of “Roadtown”? The chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that you never did. If you are near a library, you may look it up in the “Independent,” May 5, 1910. I will say in brief that it is a plan which won the approval of the best engineers, to build a city in a way that would save seventy per cent of the necessary labor of mankind forever after, and increase by several hundred per cent the total of human happiness. You did not find this plan “boosted” by capitalist newspapers—because its inventor sternly refused all propositions to exploit it for profit, and insisted upon preserving the idea for the free use and benefit of humanity.