Anyone familiar with the magazine world will understand that such
crooked work as this, continued over a long period, is not done
for nothing. Any magazine writer would know, the instant he saw
the Baxter article, that Baxter was paid by the New Haven, and
that the "Outlook" also was paid by the New Haven. Generally he
has no way of proving such facts, and has to sit in silence; but
when his board bill falls due and his landlady is persistent, he
experiences a direct and earnest hatred of the crooks of
journalism who thrive at his expense. If he is a Socialist, he
looks forward to the day when he may sit on a Publications' Graft
Commission, with access to all magazine books which have not yet
been burned!
In the case of the New Haven, we know a part of the price--thanks
to the labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Needless to
say, you will not find the facts recorded in the columns of the
Outlook; you might have read it line by line from the palmy days
of Mellen to our own, and you would have got no hint of what the
Commission revealed about magazine and newspaper graft. Nor would
you have got much more from the great metropolitan dailies, which
systematically "played down" the expose, omitting all the really
damaging details. You would have to go to the reports of the
Commission--or to the files of "Pearson's Magazine", which is out
of print and not found in libraries!
According to the New Haven's books, and by the admission of its
own officials, the road was spending more than four hundred
thousand dollars a year to influence newspapers and magazines in
favor of its policies. (President Mellen stated that this was
relatively less than any other railroad in the country was
spending). There was a professor of the Harvard Law School, going
about lecturing to boards of trade, urging in the name of
economic science the repeal of laws against railroad
monopolies--and being paid for his speeches out of railroad
funds! There was a swarm of newspaper reporters, writing on
railroad affairs for the leading papers of New England, and
getting twenty-fivedollars weekly, or two or three hundred on
special occasions. Sums had been paid directly to more than a
thousand newspapers--$3,000 to the Boston "Republic", and when
the question was asked "Why?" the answer was, "That is Mayor
Fitzgerald's paper." Even the ultra-respectable "Evening
Transcript", organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for $144
for typing, mimeographing and sending out "dope" to the country
press. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 "Prayers"; and when
asked about that President Mellen explained that it referred to a
pamphlet called "Prayers from the Hills", embodying the yearnings
of the back-country people for trolley-franchises to be issued to
the New Haven. Asked why the pamphlet was called "Prayers", Mr.
Mellen explained that "there was lots of biblical language in
it."
And now we come to the "Outlook"; after five years of waiting, we
catch our pious editors with the goods on them! There appears on
the pay-roll of the New Haven, as one of its regular
press-agents, getting sums like $500 now and then--would you
think it possible?--Sylvester Baxter! And worse yet, there
appears an item of $938.64 to the "Outlook", for a total of 9,716
copies of its issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and nine years
after Christ came to bring peace on earth and good will towards
Wall Street!
The writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when dealing with
those who have never practiced it towards him. He wrote a letter
to the editor of the "Outlook", asking what the magazine might
have to say upon this matter. The reply, signed by Lawrence F.
Abbott, President of the "Outlook" Company, was that the
"Outlook" did not know that Mr. Baxter had any salaried
connection with the New Haven, and that they had paid him for the
article at the usual rates. Against this statement must be set
one made under oath by the official of the New Haven who had the
disbursing of the corruption fund--that the various papers which
used the railroad material paid nothing for it, and "they all
knew where it came from." Mr. Lawrence Abbott states that "the
New Haven Railroad bought copies of the 'Outlook' without any
previous understanding or arrangement as anybody is entitled to
buy copies of the 'Outlook'." I might point out that this does
not really say as much as it seems to; for the President of every
magazine company in America knows without any previous
understanding or arrangement that any time he cares to print an
article such as Mr. Baxter's, dealing with the affairs of a great
corporation, he can sell ten thousand copies to that corporation.
The late unlamented Elbert Hubbard wrote a defense of the
Rockefeller slaughter of coal-miners, published it in "The Fra,"
and came down to New York and unloaded several tons at 26
Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the copper strike
in Michigan, and again in the case of "The Jungle"--and all this
without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or authority!
Mr. Abbott answers another question: "We certainly did not return
the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience
must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the
"Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen
goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and
we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the
thief is the most notorious in the city--when his picture has
been in the paper a thousand times? And when the thief swears
that the broker knew him? And when the broker's shop is full of
other suspicious goods? Why did the "Outlook" practically take
back Mr. Spahr's revelations concerning the Powder barony of
Delaware? Why did it support so vigorously the Standard Oil
ticket for the control of the Mutual Life Insurance Company--and
with James Stillman, one of the heads of Standard Oil, president
of Standard Oil's big bank in New York, secretly one of its
biggest stockholders!
Also, why does the magazine refuse to give its readers a chance
to judge its conduct? Why is it that a search of its columns
reveals no mention of the revelations concerning Mr. Baxter--not
even any mention of the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon, of
transportation virtues? I asked that question in my letter, and
the president of the "Outlook" Company for some reason failed to
notice it. I wrote a second time, courteously reminding him of
the omission; and also of another, equally significant--he had
not informed me whether any of the editors of the "Outlook", or
the officers or directors of the Company, were stockholders in
the New Haven. His final reply was that the questions seem to him
"wholly unimportant"; he does not know whether the "Outlook"
published anything about the Baxter revelations, nor does he know
whether any of the editors or officers or directors of the
"Outlook" Company are or ever have been stockholders of the New
York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. The fact "would
not in the slightest degree affect either favorably or
unfavorably our editorial treatment of that corporation."
Caesar's wife, it appears is above suspicion--even when she is
caught in a brothel!