THE BRASS CHECK
_A Study of American Journalism_
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
❦
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA.
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First Edition Paper February, 1920 23,000 Copies
Second Edition Paper February, 1920 20,500 Copies
Third Edition Cloth April, 1920 16,500 Copies
Fourth Edition Paper June, 1920 15,000 Copies
Fifth Edition Paper July, 1920 12,000 Copies
Sixth Edition Cloth August, 1920 12,500 Copies
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A LETTER FOR THE TIME
VILLENEUVE, SWITZERLAND,
Monday, Oct 6, 1919.
My Dear Confrère:
I am happy to see you always so burning with energy, but your next book
prepares for you some rude combats. It requires a bold courage to dare,
when one is alone, to attack the monster, the new Minotaur, to which the
entire world renders tribute: the Press.
I return to Paris in a few weeks. Reaction there holds the center of the
walk. It speaks already as master, and perhaps it will be master before
the end of the winter. The wave of counter-revolution, of
counter-liberty, passes over the world. It will drown more than one
among us, but it will retire, and our ideas will conquer.
Very cordially I press your hand.
ROMAIN ROLLAND.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Story of the Brass Check 13
II. The Story of a Poet 17
III. Open Sesame! 22
IV. The Real Fight 27
V. The Condemned Meat Industry 32
VI. An Adventure with Roosevelt 39
VII. Jackals and a Carcase 45
VIII. The Last Act 50
IX. Aiming at the Public’s Heart 55
X. A Voice from Russia 58
XI. A Venture in Co-operation 62
XII. The Village Horse-Doctor 68
XIII. In High Society 74
XIV. The Great Panic 80
XV. Shredded Wheat Biscuit 86
XVI. An Interview on Marriage 90
XVII. “Gaming” on the Sabbath 97
XVIII. An Essential Monogamist 102
XIX. In the Lion’s Den 110
XX. The Story of a Lynching 114
XXI. Journalism and Burglary 121
XXII. A Millionaire and an Author 125
XXIII. The “Heart-Wife” 130
XXIV. The Mourning Pickets 142
XXV. The Case of the Associated Press 150
XXVI. A Governor and His Lie 154
XXVII. The Associated Press at the Bar 165
XXVIII. The Associated Press and Its Newspapers 169
XXIX. The Scandal-Bureau 176
XXX. The Concrete Wall 184
XXXI. Making Bomb-Makers 191
XXXII. The Roof-Garden of the World 197
XXXIII. A Fountain of Poison 202
XXXIV. The Daily Cat-and-Dog Fight 213
PART II
THE EXPLANATION
XXXV. The Causes of Things 221
XXXVI. The Empire of Business 228
XXXVII. The Dregs of the Cup 237
XXXVIII. Owning the Press 241
XXXIX. The War-Makers 250
XL. Owning the Owners 258
XLI. The Owner in Politics 263
XLII. Owning the Associated Press 271
XLIII. The Owner and His Advertisers 282
XLIV. The Advertising Boycott 289
XLV. The Advertising Ecstasy 295
XLVI. The Bribe Direct 300
XLVII. The Bribe Wholesale 307
XLVIII. Poison Ivy 311
XLIX. The Elbert Hubbard Worm 314
L. The Press and Public Welfare 318
LI. The Press and the Radicals 323
LII. The Press and the Socialists 327
LIII. The Press and Sex 332
LIV. The Press and Crime 337
LV. The Press and Jack London 341
LVI. The Press and Labor 346
LVII. The Associated Press and Labor 353
LVIII. “Poisoned at the Source” 362
LIX. The Press and the War 377
LX. The Case of Russia 385
LXI. “Bolshevism” in America 395
PART III
THE REMEDY
LXII. Cutting the Tiger’s Claws 403
LXIII. The Mental Munition-Factory 408
LXIV. The Problem of the Reporter 415
LXV. The Press Set Free 421
LXVI. A Frame-up That Fell Down 429
Conclusion 436
A Practical Program 438
Publisher’s Note 443
INTRODUCTORY
The social body to which we belong is at this moment passing through one
of the greatest crises of its history, a colossal process which may best
be likened to a birth. We have each of us a share in this process, we
are to a greater or less extent responsible for its course. To make our
judgments, we must have reports from other parts of the social body; we
must know what our fellow-men, in all classes of society, in all parts
of the world, are suffering, planning, doing. There arise emergencies
which require swift decisions, under penalty of frightful waste and
suffering. What if the nerves upon which we depend for knowledge of this
social body should give us false reports of its condition?
The first half of this book tells a personal story: the story of one
man’s experiences with American Journalism. This personal feature is not
pleasant, but it is unavoidable. If I were taking the witness-chair in a
court of justice, the jury would not ask for my general sentiments and
philosophic opinions; they would not ask what other people had told me,
or what was common report; the thing they would wish to know—the only
thing they would be allowed to know—is what I had personally seen and
experienced. So now, taking the witness-stand in the case of the
American public versus Journalism, I tell what I have personally seen
and experienced. I take the oath of a witness: the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. After this pledge,
earnestly given and earnestly meant, the reader must either believe me,
or he must exclude me from the company of civilized men.
My motive in writing this book is not to defend myself. We live in a
time of such concentrated agony and peril that a man who would waste ink
and paper on a defense of his own personality would be contemptible.
What I tell you is: “Look! Here is American Journalism! Here is what it
did to one man, systematically, persistently, deliberately, for a period
of twenty years. Here are names, places, dates—such a mass of material
as you cannot doubt, you cannot evade. Here is the whole thing, inside
and out. Here are your sacred names, the very highest of your gods. When
you have read this story, you will know our Journalism; you will know
the body and soul of it, you will know it in such a way that you will
not have to be told what it is doing to the movement for industrial
freedom and self-government all over the world.”
In the second half of the book you will hear a host of other
witnesses—several score of them, the wisest and truest and best people
of our country. They are in every part of our country, in every class
and every field of public life; and when you have heard their
experiences, told for the most part in their own words, you must grant
my claim concerning this book—that it is a book of facts. There are no
mistakes in it, no guesses, no surmises; there are no lapses of memory,
no inaccuracies. There are only facts. You must understand that I have
had this book in mind for twenty years. For twelve years I have been
deliberately collecting the documents and preserving the records, and I
have these before me as I write. In a few cases of personal experiences
I have relied upon my memory; but that memory is vivid, because the
incidents were painful, they were seared into my soul, and now, as I
recall them, I see the faces of the people, I hear their very tones.
Where there is any doubt or vagueness in my recollection, or where there
is hearsay testimony, I state the fact explicitly; otherwise I wish the
reader to understand that the incidents happened as I say they happened,
and that upon the truth of every statement in this book I pledge my
honor as a man and my reputation as a writer.
One final word: In this book I have cast behind me the proprieties
usually held sacred; I have spared no one, I have narrated shameful
things. I have done this, not because I have any pleasure in scandal; I
have not such pleasure, being by nature impersonal. I do not hate one
living being. The people I have lashed in this book are to me not
individuals, but social forces; I have exposed them, not because they
lied about me, but because a new age of fraternity is trying to be born,
and they, who ought to be assisting the birth, are strangling the child
in the womb.
PART I
THE EVIDENCE
CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF THE BRASS CHECK
Once upon a time there was a little boy; a nice little boy, whom you
would have liked if you had known him—at least, so his mother says. He
had been brought up in the traditions of the old South, to which the two
most important things in the world were good cooking and good manners.
He obeyed his mother and father, and ate his peas with a fork, and never
buttered the whole slice of his bread. On Sunday mornings he carefully
shined his shoes and brushed his clothes at the window, and got into a
pair of tight kid gloves and under a tight little brown derby hat, and
walked with his parents to a church on Fifth Avenue. On week-days he
studied hard and obeyed his teachers, and in every field of thought and
activity he believed what was told him by those in authority. He learned
the catechism and thought it was the direct word of God. When he fell
sick and the doctor came, he put himself in the doctor’s hands with a
sense of perfect trust and content; the doctor knew what to do, and
would do it, and the little boy would get well.
The boy’s grandfather had been a Confederate naval officer, drowned at
sea. The boy’s father had spent his youth in Virginia during the agonies
of the Civil War, thus missing most of his education. After the war the
family was ruined, and the father had to enter into competition with
Yankee “hustle,” handicapped by a Southern gentleman’s quaint notions of
dignity, and also by a Southern gentleman’s weakness for mint-juleps. So
the last week’s board bill was generally a matter of anxiety to the
family. But always, no matter how poor the family might be, the little
boy had a clean white collar, and a copy of the “New York Sun” every
morning. This paper was beautifully printed, smooth and neat; the little
boy knew all its peculiarities of type, and he and his father and his
mother accepted every word they read in it, both the news-columns and
the editorial page, precisely as they accepted the doctor’s pills and
the clergyman’s sermons, the Bible and the multiplication table and
Marian Harland’s cook-book.
The “New York Sun” was edited by one of the bitterest cynics that ever
lived in America. He had been something of a radical in his early days,
and had turned like a fierce wolf upon his young ideals. He had one
fixed opinion, which was that everything new in the world should be
mocked at and denounced. He had a diabolical wit, and had taught a
tradition to his staff, and had infected a good part of American
Journalism with the poison of his militant cynicism. Once every
twenty-four hours the little boy absorbed this poison, he took it for
truth, and made all his ideas of it.
For example, there were women who were trying to be different from what
women had always been. There was a thing called “Sorosis.” The boy never
knew what “Sorosis” was; from the “Sun” he gathered that it was a
collection of women who wanted to have brains, and to take part in
public affairs—whereas the “Sun” acidly considered that woman’s place
was the home. And the boy found it easy to agree with this. Did not the
boy’s grandmother make the best ginger-cakes of any grandmother in the
whole city of Baltimore? Did not his mother make the best chocolate-cake
and the best “hot short-cake”—that is, whenever the family could escape
from boarding-houses and have a little kitchen of its own. The boy was
enormously fond of chocolate-cake and short-cake, and of course he
didn’t want women neglecting their duties for fool things such as
“Sorosis.”
Also there were the Populists. The little boy had never seen a Populist,
he had never been given an opportunity to read a Populist platform, but
he knew all about the Populists from the funny editorials of Charles A.
Dana. The Populists were long-haired and wild-eyed animals whose habitat
was the corn-fields of Kansas. The boy knew the names of a lot of them,
or rather the nick-names which Dana gave them; he had a whole
portrait-gallery of them in his mind. Once upon a time the “Sun” gave
some statistics from Kansas, suggesting that the Populists were going
insane; so the little boy took his pen in hand and wrote a letter to the
editor of the “Sun,” gravely rebuking him. He had never expected to read
in the columns of the “Sun” a suggestion that Populists might _go_
insane. And the “Sun” published this feeble product of its own
“smartness.”
Later on the boy discovered the “New York Evening Post,” the _beau
ideal_ of a gentleman’s newspaper, and this became for years his main
source of culture. The “Evening Post” was edited by E. L. Godkin, a
scholar and a lover of righteousness, but narrow, and with an abusive
tongue. From him the boy learned that American politics were rotten, and
he learned the cause of the rottenness: First, there was an ignorant
mob, composed mainly of foreigners; and second, there were venal
politicians who pandered to this mob. Efforts were continually being
made by gentlemen of decency and culture to take the government away
from these venal politicians, but the mob was too ignorant, and could
not be persuaded to support a clean government. Yet the fight must be
kept up, because conditions were going from bad to worse. The boy
witnessed several “reform campaigns,” conducted mainly by the “Evening
Post” and other newspapers. These campaigns consisted in the publication
of full-page exposures of civic rottenness, with denunciations of the
politicians in office. The boy believed every word of the exposures, and
it never occurred to him that the newspapers might be selling more
copies by means of them; still less did it occur to him that anybody
might be finding in these excitements a means of diverting the mind of
the public from larger and more respectable forms of “graft.”
There was a candidate for district attorney, William Travers Jerome by
name; a man with a typical “Evening Post” mind, making an ideal “Evening
Post” candidate. He conducted a “whirlwind” campaign, speaking at half a
dozen meetings every evening, and stirring his audience to frenzy by his
accounts of the corruption of the city’s police-force. Men would stand
up and shout with indignation, women would faint or weep. The boy would
sit with his finger-nails dug into the palms of his hands, while the
orator tore away the veils from subjects which were generally kept
hidden from little boys.
The orator described the system of prostitution, which was paying its
millions every year to the police of the city. He pictured a room in
which women displayed their persons, and men walked up and down and
inspected them, selecting one as they would select an animal at a fair.
The man paid his three dollars, or his five dollars, to a cashier at the
window, and received a brass check; then he went upstairs, and paid this
check to the woman upon receipt of her favors. And suddenly the orator
put his hand into his pocket and drew forth the bit of metal. “Behold!”
he cried. “The price of a woman’s shame!”
To the lad in the audience this BRASS CHECK was the symbol of the most
monstrous wickedness in the world. Night after night he would attend
these meetings, and next day he would read about them in the papers. He
was a student at college, living in a lodging-house room on four dollars
a week, which he earned himself; yet he pitched in to help this orator’s
campaign, and raised something over a hundred dollars, and took it to
the “Evening Post” candidate at his club, interrupting him at dinner,
and no doubt putting a strain on his patience. The candidate was swept
into office in a tornado of excitement, and did what all “Evening Post”
candidates did and always do—that is, nothing. For four long years the
lad waited, in bewilderment and disgust, ending in rage. So he learned
the grim lesson that there is more than one kind of parasite feeding on
human weakness, there is more than one kind of prostitution which may be
symbolized by the BRASS CHECK.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY OF A POET
The boy, now become a youth, obtained a letter of introduction from his
clergyman to the editor of his beloved “Evening Post,” and at the age of
sixteen was given a trial as reporter. He worked for a week collecting
odd scraps of news, and when the week was over he had earned the
generous sum of two dollars and sixty-seven cents. This was his first
and last experience as newspaper reporter, and it confirmed his boyish
impression of the integrity of the journalistic profession. His work had
consisted of compiling obituary notices about leading citizens who had
died. “John T. McGurk, senior partner of McGurk and Isaacson,
commission-merchants of 679 Desbrosses Street, died yesterday of
cirrhosis of the liver at his home, 4321 George Washington Avenue,
Hoboken. Mr. McGurk was 69 years of age, and leaves a widow and eleven
children. He was a member of the Elks, and president of the North
Hoboken Bowling Association.” And these facts the “Evening Post” printed
exactly as he had written them. In a book which will not have much to
say in favor of American Journalism, let this fidelity to truth, and to
the memory of the blameless McGurk, have its due meed of praise.
The youth took to writing jokes and jingles, at which he earned twice as
much as the “Evening Post” had paid him. Later on he took to writing
dime-novels, at which he made truly fabulous sums. He found it puzzling
that this cheap and silly writing should be the kind that brought the
money. The editors told him it was because the public wanted that kind;
but the youth wondered—might not at least part of the blame lie with the
editors, who never tried giving anything better? It was the old
problem—which comes first, the hen or the egg?
We have spoken jestingly of the traditions of the old South, in which
the youth was brought up; but the reader should not get a false
impression of them—in many ways they were excellent traditions. For one
thing, they taught the youth to despise a lie; also to hate injustice,
so that wherever in his life he encountered it, his whole being became a
blaze of excitement. Always he was striving in his mind to discover the
source of lies and injustice—why should there be so much of them in the
world? The newspapers revealed the existence of them, but never seemed
to know the causes of them, nor what to do about them, further than to
support a reform candidate who did nothing but get elected. This
futility in the face of the world’s misery and corruption was maddening
to the youth.
He had rich relatives who were fond of him, so that he was free to
escape from poverty into luxury; he had the opportunity to rise quickly
in the world, if he would go into business, and devote his attention
thereto. But would he find in business the ideals which he craved? He
talked with business men, also he got the flavor of business from the
advertisements in the newspapers—and he knew that this was not what he
was seeking. He cultivated the friendship of Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley,
and fell in love with the young Milton and the young Goethe; in them he
found his own craving for truth and beauty. Here, through the medium of
art, life might be ennobled, and lifted from the muck of graft and
greed.
So the youth ran away and buried himself in a hut in the wilds of
Canada, and wrote what he thought was the great American novel. It was a
painfully crude performance, but it had a new moral impulse in it, and
the youth really believed that it was to convert the world to ways of
love and justice. He took it to the publishers, and one after another
they rejected it. They admitted that it had merit, but it would not
sell. Incredible as it seemed to the youth, the test by which the
publishers judged an embryo book and its right to be born, was not
whether it had vision and beauty and a new moral impulse; they judged it
as the newspapers judged what they published—would it sell? The youth
earned some money and published the book himself, and wrote a preface to
tell the world what a wonderful book it was, and how the cruel
publishers had rejected it. This preface, together with the book, he
sent to the leading newspapers; and thus began the second stage of his
journalistic experiences!
Two newspapers paid attention to his communication—the “New York Times,”
a respectable paper, and the “New York American,” a “yellow” paper. The
“American” sent a woman reporter, an agreeable and friendly young lady,
to whom the author poured out his soul. She asked for his picture,
saying that this would enable her to get much more space for the story;
so the author gave his picture. She asked for his wife’s picture; but
here the author was obdurate. He had old-fashioned Southern notions
about “newspaper notoriety” for ladies; he did not want his wife’s
picture in the papers. There stood a little picture of his wife on the
table where the interview took place, and after the reporter had left,
it was noticed that this picture was missing. Next day the picture was
published in the “New York American,” and has been published in the “New
York American” every year or two since. The author, meantime, has
divorced his first wife and married a second wife—a fact of which the
newspapers are fully aware; yet they publish this picture of the first
wife indifferently as a picture of the first wife and of the second
wife. When one of these ladies says or does a certain thing, the other
lady may open her paper in the morning and receive a shock!
Both the “New York Times” and the “New York American” published
interviews with the young author. It had been his fond hope to interest
people in his book and to cause them to read his book, but in this he
failed; what both the interviews told about was his personality. The
editors had been amused by the naïve assumption of a young poet that he
might have something of importance to say to the world; they had made a
“human interest” story out of it, a journalistic tidbit to tickle the
appetites of the jaded and worldly-wise. They said scarcely anything
about the contents of the book, and as a result of the two interviews,
the hungry young author sold precisely two copies!
Meantime he was existing by hack-work, and exploring the world in which
ideas are bought and sold. He was having jokes and plots of stories
stolen; he was having agreements broken and promises repudiated; he was
trying to write worth-while material, and being told that it would not
sell; he was trying to become a book-reviewer, and finding that the only
way to succeed was to be a cheat. The editor of the “Independent” or the
“Literary Digest” would give him half a dozen books to read, and he
would read them, and write an honest review, saying that there was very
little merit in any of them: whereupon, the editor would decide that it
was not worth while to review the books, and the author would get
nothing for his work. If, on the other hand, he wrote an article about a
book, taking it seriously, and describing it as vital and important, the
editor would conclude that the book was worth reviewing, and would
publish the review, and pay the author three or four dollars for it.
This, you understand, was the “literary world,” in which ideas, the most
priceless possession of mankind, were made the subject of barter and
sale. In every branch of it there were such petty dishonesties, such
tricks of the trade. There were always ten times as many people trying
to get a living as the trade would support. They were clutching at
chances, elbowing each other out of the way; and their efforts were not
rewarded according to their love of truth and beauty, but according to
quite other factors. They were dressing themselves up and using the
“social game,” they were posing and pretending, the women were using the
sex-lure. And everywhere, when they pretended to care about literature
and ideas, they were really caring about money, and “success” because it
would bring money. Everywhere, above all things else, they hated and
feared the very idea of genius, which put them to shame, and threatened
with annihilation their petty gains and securities.
From these things the youth fled into the wilderness again, living in a
tent with his young wife, and writing a story in which he poured out his
contempt upon the great Metropolis of Mammon. This was “Prince Hagen,”
and he sent it to the “Atlantic Monthly,” and there came a letter from
the editor, Professor Bliss Perry, saying that it was a work of merit
and that he would publish it. So for weeks the young author walked on
the top of the clouds. But then came another letter, saying that the
other members of the “Atlantic” staff had read the story, and that
Professor Perry had been unable to persuade them to see it as he saw it.
“We have,” said he, “a very conservative, fastidious and sophisticated
constituency.”
The young author went back to his “pot-boiling.” He spent another winter
in New York, wrestling with disillusionments and humiliations, and then,
fleeing to the wilderness for a third summer, he put his experience into
“The Journal of Arthur Stirling,” the story of a young poet who is
driven to suicide by neglect and despair. The book was given to the
world as a genuine document, and relieved the tedium of a literary
season. Its genuineness was accepted almost everywhere, and the author
sat behind the scenes, feeling quite devilish. When the secret came out,
some critics were cross, and one or two of them have not yet forgiven
the writer. The “New York Evening Post” is accustomed to mention the
matter every once in a while, declaring that the person who played that
trick can never receive anyone’s confidence. I will not waste space
discussing this question, save to point out that the newspaper reviewers
had set the rules of the game—that love and beauty in art were heeded
only in connection with personalities and sensation; so, in order to
project love and beauty upon the world, the young author had provided
the personalities and sensation. As for the “Evening Post” and its
self-righteousness, before I finish this book I shall tell of things
done by that organ of Wall Street which qualify decidedly its right to
sit in judgment upon questions of honor.
CHAPTER III
OPEN SESAME!
My next effort was “Manassas,” a novel of the Civil war. I poured into
it all my dream of what America might be, and inscribed it: “That the
men of this land may know the heritage that has come down to them.” But
the men of this land were not in any way interested in the heritage that
had come down to them. The men of this land were making money. The
newspapers of this land were competing for advertisements of whiskey and
cigars and soap, and the men who wrote book-reviews for the literary
pages of these newspapers were chuckling over such works of commercial
depravity as “The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.” They had
no time to tell the public about “Manassas”; though Jack London called
it “the best Civil War book I’ve read,” and though it is my one book
which no severest critic can say has any propaganda motive. Charlotte
Perkins Gilman told me a story of how she persuaded an old Civil War
veteran to read it. The old fellow didn’t want to read any book about
the war by a youngster; he had been through it all himself, and no
youngster could tell him anything. But Mrs. Gilman persisted, and when
she met him again she found him with shining eyes and a look of wonder
on his face. “It’s the War!” he cried. “It’s the War—and he wasn’t even
born!”
It happened that at this time Lincoln Steffens was publishing his
terrible exposés of the corruption of American civic life. Steffens did
for the American people one specific service. He knocked out forever the
notion, of which E. L. Godkin and his “New York Evening Post” were the
principal exponents, that our political corruption was to be blamed upon
“the ignorant foreign element.” Steffens showed that purely American
communities, such as Rhode Island, were the most corrupt of all; and he
traced back the corruption, showing that for every man who took a bribe
there was another man who gave one, and that the giver of the bribe made
from ten to a thousand times as much as he paid. In other words,
American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and
assemblies to keep them from doing the people’s will and protecting the
people’s interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power,
it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political
democracy.
Steffens did not go so far as that in the early days. He just laid bare
the phenomena, and then stopped. You searched in vain through the
articles which he published in “McClure’s” for any answer to the
question: What is to be done about it? So I wrote what I called “An Open
Letter to Lincoln Steffens.” I cannot find it now, but I recall the
essence of it well enough.
“Mr. Steffens, you go from city to city and from state to state, and you
show us these great corporations buying public privileges and
capitalizing them for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, and
unloading the securities upon the general investing public. You show
this enormous mass of capital piling up, increasing at compound
interest, demanding its toll of dividends, which we, the people who do
the hard work of the world, who produce the real wealth of the world,
must continue forever to pay. I ask you to tell us, what are we to do
about this? Shall we go on forever paying tribute upon this mass of
bribery and fraud? _Can_ we go on paying it forever, even if we want to?
And if not, what then? What will happen when we refuse to pay?”
I sent this letter to Steffens, to see what he thought about it. He
replied that it was the best criticism of his work that he had seen, and
he tried to persuade “McClure’s” to publish it, but in vain. I forget
whether it was he or I who sent it to “Collier’s Weekly”; but anyway,
the article was read and accepted, and Robert J. Collier, the publisher,
wrote and asked me to come to see him.
Picture me at this moment, a young writer of twenty-five who has been
pleading with the American public to remember its high traditions, and
has seen his plea fall flat, because the newspapers and magazines
overlooked him; also—a painful detail, but important—who has been
supporting a wife and baby on thirty dollars a month, and has been paid
only five hundred dollars for two years work on a novel. A friend who
knows the literary world tells me that this is the chance of my life.
“Collier’s” is run “on a personal basis,” it appears; a sort of family
affair. “If Robbie likes you, your fortune is made,” says my friend.
“This is your ‘open sesame’ to the public mind.”
Well, I go to see Robbie, and it appears that Robbie likes me. I am
young and ascetic-looking; the tension under which I have worked has
given me dyspepsia, so my cheeks are hollow and my skin is white and my
eyes have a hectic shine. Robbie, no doubt, is moved to sympathy by
these phenomena; he himself is a picture of health, florid and jolly, a
polo-player, what is called a “good fellow.” He asks me, will I come to
dinner at his home and meet some of his friends and his editorial staff?
I answer that of course I will.
My worldly-wise friend insists that I shall invest my spare savings in a
dress-suit, but I do not take this advice. I go to Robbie’s palatial
home in my old clothes, and Robbie’s velvet-footed butler escorts me
upstairs to Robbie’s dressing-room, where Robbie’s valet is laying out
his things on the bed. And while Robbie is dressing, he tells me again
how much he admires my article. It is the most illuminating discussion
of present-day problems that he has ever read. He and his friends don’t
meet many Socialists, naturally, so I am to tell them about Socialism. I
am to tell them everything, and needn’t be afraid. I answer, quite
simply, that I shall not be in the least afraid.
The evening was spoiled because Robbie’s father came in. Old Peter
Collier was a well-known character in New York “society”; but as not all
my readers have been intimate in these circles, I explain that he had
begun life as a pack-peddler, had started “Collier’s Weekly” as an
advertisement sheet, and by agents offering books as premiums had built
up a tremendous circulation. Now he was rich and important; vulgar,
ignorant as a child, but kind-hearted, jovial—one of those nice,
fatherly old fellows who put their arms about you, no matter who you
are.
And here he had come in to dinner with his son, and found his son
entertaining a Socialist. “_What?_ What’s this?” he cried. It was like a
scene in a comedy. He would hear one sentence of what I had to say, and
then he would go up in the air. “Why—why—that’s perfectly outrageous!
Who ever heard of such a thing?” He would sputter for five or ten
minutes, to the vast amusement of the rest of the guests.
Presently he heard about the “Open Letter to Lincoln Steffens.” “What’s
this? You are going to publish an article like that in my magazine? _No,
sir!_ I won’t have it! It’s preposterous!” And there sat Robbie, who was
supposed to be the publisher; there sat Norman Hapgood, who was supposed
to be the editor—and listened to Old Peter lay down the law. Norman
Hapgood has since stated that he does not remember this episode, that he
never knew Peter Collier to interfere with the policy of the magazine.
Well, the reader may believe that the incident was not one that I would
forget in a hurry. Not if I should live to be as old as Methuselah will
I forget my emotions, when, after the dinner, the old gentleman got me
off in a corner and put his arm around my shoulders. “You are a nice
boy, and I can see that you’ve got brains, you know what you’re talking
about. But what you ought to do is to put these ideas of yours into a
book. Why do you try to get them into my magazine, and scare away my
half million subscribers?”
I went home that evening feeling more sick at heart than I like to
remember. And sure enough, my worst fears were justified. Week after
week passed, and my Open Letter to Lincoln Steffens did not appear in
the columns of “Collier’s Weekly.” I wrote and protested, and was met
with evasions; a long time afterwards, I forget how long, “Collier’s”
graciously condescended to give me back the article, without asking the
return of the two hundred dollars they had paid me. The article was
rejected by many other capitalist magazines, and was finally published
in some Socialist paper, I forget which.
Such is the picture of a magazine “run on a personal basis.” And see
what it means to you, the reader, who depend upon such a magazine for
the thoughts you think. Here is Lincoln Steffens, taking his place as
America’s leading authority on the subject of political graft; and here
am I, making what Steffens declares is the best criticism of his work.
It is accepted and paid for, and a date is set to give it to you, the
reader; but an ignorant and childish old pack-peddler steps in, and with
one wave of his hand sweeps it out of your sight. Sixteen years have
passed, and only now you hear about it—and most of you don’t hear about
it even now!
But here is a vital point to get clear. The old pack-peddler wiped out
my discussion of the question, but he did not wipe out the question.
Today the question is cried aloud from the throats of a hundred and
eighty million people in Russia, and the clamor of it spreads all over
Europe, a deafening roar which drowns out the eloquence of statesmen and
diplomats. It is the question of the hour in America, and America must
find the answer under penalty of civil war. Sixteen years ago the answer
was given to Robert Collier, and if he had had the courage to stand out
against his father, if Norman Hapgood had been what he pretended to be,
an editor, they would have taken up the truth which I put before them,
they would have conducted a campaign to make the American people see
it—and today we should not be trying to solve the social problem by
putting the leaders of the people’s protest into jail.
CHAPTER IV
THE REAL FIGHT
There was a strike of the wage-slaves of the Beef Trust in Chicago, and
I wrote for the “Appeal to Reason” a broadside addressed to these
strikers, trying to point out to them the truth which Peter Collier had
concealed from his precious half million subscribers. This broadside was
taken up by the Socialists of the Stockyards district, and thirty
thousand copies were distributed among the defeated strikers. The
“Appeal to Reason” offered me five hundred dollars to live on while I
wrote a novel dealing with the life of those wage-slaves of the Beef
Trust; so I went to Packingtown, and lived for seven weeks among the
workers, and came home again and wrote “The Jungle.”
Now so far the things that had been done to me by the world of American
Journalism had been of a mocking nature. I had been a sort of “guy”; a
young poet—very young—who believed that he had “genius,” and kept making
a noise about it. So I was pigeon-holed with long-haired violinists from
abroad, and painters with fancy-colored vests, and woman suffragists
with short hair, and religious prophets in purple robes. All such things
are lumped together by newspapers, which are good-naturedly tolerant of
their fellow fakers. The public likes to be amused, and “genius” is one
of the things that amuse it: such is the attitude of a world which
understands that money is the one thing in life really worth while, the
making of money the one object of grown-up and serious-minded men.
But from now on you will see that there enters into my story a new note.
The element of horse-play goes out, and something grim takes its place.
And what is the reason for this change? Was there any change in me? Did
I suddenly become dissipated, dishonest, self-seeking? No, there was no
change in me; I was the same person, living the same life. But I ceased
to oppose social wickedness with the fragile weapon of poetry, with
visions and inspirations and consecrations; instead, I took a sharp
sword of contemporary fact, and thrust it into the vitals of one of
those monstrous parasites which are sucking the life-blood of the
American people. That was the difference; and if from now on you find in
this story a note of fierce revolt, please understand that you are
listening to a man who for fourteen years had been in a battle, and has
seen his cause suffering daily wounds from a cruel and treacherous foe.
My first experience, it happened, was with “Collier’s Weekly.” But it
was not a dinner-party experience this time, there was no element of
friendliness or sociability in it.
“The Jungle” was appearing serially, and was causing a tremendous lot of
discussion; it occurred to me that it might be possible to persuade
“Collier’s” to take up the matter, so I wrote an article, telling quite
simply some of the things that were going on in the packing-houses of
Chicago. I had been there, and had seen—and not as a blundering amateur,
as the packers charged. It happened that I had met in Chicago an
Englishman, Mr. Adolph Smith, the world’s greatest authority on
packing-houses. He had studied methods of meat-packing all over Great
Britain, and all over the continent of Europe, for the “London Lancet,”
the leading medical paper of Great Britain. He had come, as authorized
representative of the “Lancet,” to investigate conditions in America. I
had his backing in what I wrote; I also had the backing of various State
and Federal authorities; I had the text of the Federal meat-inspection
law, which had been written by the packers to enable them to sell
diseased meat with impunity.
I took all these facts to Norman Hapgood and Robert Collier. I offered
them the opportunity to reap the fame and profit which I subsequently
reaped from the book-publication of “The Jungle,” and incidentally to do
a great public service. They were interested, but not convinced, and
they employed a United States army-officer, Major Louis L. Seaman, who
went out to Chicago and accepted the hospitality of the packers, and
reported that all my charges were exaggerated, and most of them entirely
false. And Collier and Hapgood accepted Major Seaman’s word against my
word and the authorities I offered.
That was all right; I had no complaint against that; they used their
editorial judgment. My complaint was of the way they handled the story.
In their preliminary announcement (April 15, 1905) they said:
Some very brilliant articles have been sent us about the unhygienic
methods of the Beef Trust. In order not to run any risk of wronging
that organization we engaged Major Seaman to go to Chicago, and his
first report will appear next week.
So, you see, they were going to give an illustration of editorial
fairness, of scrupulous regard for exact truth; and having thus prepared
their readers, on April 22, 1905, they presented their material—a long
article by Major Seaman, praising the Chicago Stockyards, and pretending
to refute all my charges. At the same time they published only three
paragraphs of my charges—the great bulk of my articles they left
unpublished! They gave their readers a few paragraphs from the “London
Lancet,” but so far as concerned me, the readers got only the answers of
Major Seaman, and an introductory editorial condemnation of me,
explaining that I had submitted my articles to the editors, and they,
“desirous of securing the unexaggerated facts,” had sent Major Seaman to
Chicago, and now gave his findings.
And this not being enough, they added a discussion of the matter on
their editorial page. This editorial they headed, “Sensationalism”; and
they subtly phrased it to give the impression that the paragraphs they
were publishing constituted all I had to say: “Mr. Sinclair’s article,
published alone, would have produced much more of a sensation than it
will produce as mitigated, by the report of Major Seaman.... Having some
doubt, however, about the real facts, we induced Major Seaman to make
the trip to Chicago. This incident will serve as an example of the
policy mapped out for the conduct of this paper.”
How dignified and impressive! And how utterly and unspeakably knavish!
And when I wrote to them and protested, they evaded. When I demanded
that they publish my entire article, they refused. When I demanded that
they publish my letter of protest, they refused that. And this was done
by Norman Hapgood, who posed as a liberal, a lover of justice; a man who
spent his editorial time balancing like a tight-rope walker on the
narrow thread of truth, occupying himself like a mediaeval schoolman
with finding the precise mathematical or metaphysical dead centre
between the contending forces of conservatism and radicalism. A friend
of mine talked with him about his treatment of me and reported him as
saying, with a smile: “We backed the wrong horse.” The truth was, he had
backed the horse of gold, the horse that came to his office loaded down
with full-page advertisements of packing-house products.
“Collier’s” calls itself “The National Weekly,” and has obtained a
reputation as a liberal organ, upon the strength of several useful
campaigns. It attacked spiritualist fakers and land-fraud grafters; also
it attacked dishonest medical advertising. It could do this, having
arrived at the stage of security where it counts upon full-page
advertisements of automobiles and packing-house products. But when it
was a question of attacking packing-house advertisements—then what a
difference!
Robert J. Collier was a gentleman and a “good fellow”; but he was a
child of his world, and his world was a rotten one, a “second
generation” of idle rich spendthrifts. The running of his magazine “on a
personal basis” amounted to this: a young writer would catch the public
fancy, and Robbie would send for him, as he sent for me; if he proved to
be a possible person—that is, if he came to dinner in a dress-suit, and
didn’t discuss the socialization of “Collier’s Weekly”—Robbie would take
him up and introduce him to his “set,” and the young writer would have a
perpetual market for his stories at a thousand dollars per story; he
would be invited to country-house parties, he would motor and play golf
and polo, and flirt with elegant young society ladies, and spend his
afternoons loafing in the Hoffman House bar. I could name not one but a
dozen young writers and illustrators to whom I have seen that happen. In
the beginning they wrote about America, in the end they wrote about the
“smart set” of Fifth Avenue and Long Island. In their personal life they
became tipplers and café celebrities; in their intellectual life they
became bitter cynics; into their writings you saw creeping year by year
the subtle poison of sexual excess—until at last they became too far
gone for “Collier’s” to tolerate any longer, and went over to the
“Cosmopolitan,” which takes them no matter how far gone they are.
And now young Collier is dead, and the magazine to which for a time he
gave his generous spirit has become an instrument of reaction pure and
simple. It opposed and ridiculed President Wilson’s peace policies; it
called the world to war against the working-class of Russia; it is now
calling for repression of all social protest in America; in short, it is
an American capitalist magazine. As I write, word comes that it has been
taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company, publishers of the “Woman’s
Home Companion,” “Farm and Fireside,” and the “American Magazine.” I
shall have something to the point to say about this group of
publications very soon.
P. S.—A well known journalist writes me that he feels I do an
injustice to Norman Hapgood in telling the above story, and in failing
to give credit to Hapgood for other fine things he has done. The
writer brings facts, and I am always ready to give place to the man
with facts. I quote his letter:
“Do you know the circumstances of Hapgood’s break with Collier?
Hapgood was the highest paid editor of any periodical in the country.
The business side was encroaching on the editorial—demanding that
advertising be not jeopardized, and with it the commissions that were
its part. Collier, as you know, for years had mixed his whiskey with
chorus girls, and needed all the property could milk to supply his
erratic needs. So the business office had his ear. And Hapgood
left—and made his leaving effective. He took Harper’s and gave the
country some of the most important exposés it had. Do you know the
story of the Powder Trust treason? I wrote it. It was drawn from
official records, and could not be contradicted, that the Powder Trust
had once made a contract with a German military powder firm—in the
days when military smokeless powder was the goal of every
government—to keep it informed as to the quantity, quality, etc., of
the smokeless powder it furnished to our government. And this was in
the days when we were in the lead in that department. The Powder Trust
jumped Hapgood hard. He could have had anything he wanted by making a
simple disavowal of me, any loophole they would have accepted—and do
you have any doubt that he could have named his own terms? He declined
point blank, and threw the challenge to the heaviest and most
important client his weekly could have had. That he guessed wrong and
‘backed the wrong horse’ in the ‘Jungle’ may be true. But isn’t it
fair to assume, in the light of his final challenge to the Collier
advertising autocracy, that he was meeting problems inside as best he
could—and that he could not tell you at the time of all the factors
involved in the Collier handling of the stockyards story?”
CHAPTER V
THE CONDEMNED MEAT INDUSTRY
“The Jungle” had been accepted in advance by the Macmillan Company. Mr.
Brett, president of the company, read the manuscript, and asked me to
cut out some of the more shocking and bloody details, assuring me that
he could sell ten times as many copies of the book if I would do this.
So here again I had to choose between my financial interest and my duty.
I took the proposition to Lincoln Steffens, who said: “The things you
tell are unbelievable. I have a rule in my own work—I don’t tell things
that are unbelievable, even when they are true.”
Nevertheless, I was unwilling to make the changes. I offered the book to
four other publishers, whose names I do not now remember; then I began
preparations to publish it myself. I wrote to Jack London, who came to
my help with his usual impetuous generosity, writing a resounding call
to the Socialists of the country, which was published in the “Appeal to
Reason.” The result was that in a couple of months I took in four
thousand dollars. The Socialists had been reading the story in the
“Appeal,” and were thoroughly aroused.
I had the book set up and the plates made, when some one suggested
Doubleday, Page and Company, so I showed the work to them. Walter H.
Page sent for me. He was a dear old man, the best among business-men I
have met. There were several hustling young money-makers in his firm,
who saw a fortune in “The Jungle,” and desperately wanted to publish it.
But Page was anxious; he must be sure that every word was true. We had a
luncheon conference, and I was cross-questioned on every point. A week
or two passed, and I was summoned again, and Herbert S. Houston of the
firm explained that he had a friend, James Keeley, editor of the
“Chicago Tribune,” to whom he had taken the liberty of submitting my
book. Here was a letter from Keeley—I read the letter—saying that he had
sent his best reporter, a trusted man, to make a thorough report upon
“The Jungle.” And here was the report, thirty-two typewritten pages,
taking up every statement about conditions in the yards, and denying one
after another.
I read the report, and recall one amusing detail. On page one hundred
and sixteen of “The Jungle” is a description of the old packing-houses,
their walls covered with grease and soaked with warm moist steam. “In
these rooms the germs of tuberculosis might live for two years.” The
comment upon this statement was: “Unproven theory.” So it was necessary
for me to consult the text-books on bacteriology, and demonstrate to
Doubleday, Page and Company that unicellular parasitic organisms are
sometimes endowed with immortality!
I said: “This is not an honest report. The thing you have to do, if you
really wish to know, is to send an investigator of your own, somebody in
whom you have confidence.” They decided this must be done, and picked a
young lawyer, McKee by name, and sent him to Chicago. He spent some time
there, and when he came back his verdict was that I had told the truth.
I went to dinner at McKee’s home and spent the evening hearing his
story—incidentally getting one of the shocks of my life.
McKee had done what I had urged him not to do: he had gone first to the
packers, to see what they had officially to show him. They had placed
him in charge of a man—I do not recall the name, but we will say
Jones—their publicity agent, a former newspaper man, who served as host
and entertainer to inquiring visitors. He had taken McKee in charge and
shown him around, and in the course of their conversation McKee
mentioned that he was looking into the charges made in a novel called
“The Jungle.” “Oh, yes!” said Jones. “I know that book. I read it from
beginning to end. I prepared a thirty-two page report on it for Keeley
of the ‘Tribune’.”
So here was a little glimpse behind the curtain of the newspaper world
of Chicago! James Keeley was, and still is the _beau ideal_ of American
newspaper men; I have never met him, but I have read articles about him,
the kind of “write-ups” which the capitalist system gives to its heroes.
He had begun life as a poor boy and risen from the ranks by sheer
ability and force of character—you know the “dope.” Now he was one of
the high gods of newspaperdom; and when it was a question of protecting
the great predatory interest which subsidizes all the newspapers of
Chicago and holds the government of the city in the hollow of its hand,
this high god sent to Armour and Company and had a report prepared by
their publicity-agent, and sent this report to a friend in New York as
the result of a confidential investigation by a trusted reporter of the
“Chicago Tribune” staff!
And maybe you think this must be an unusual incident; you think that
capitalist Journalism would not often dare to play a trick like that! I
happen to be reading “Socialism versus the State,” by Emile Vandervelde,
Belgian Minister of State, and come upon this paragraph:
It will be remembered, for example, that the “London Times” published,
a few years ago, a series of unsigned articles, emanating, it was said
from an impartial observer, against the municipal lighting systems in
England. These articles made the tour of Europe. They furnish, even
today, arguments for the opponents of municipalization. Now, a short
time after their publication, it was learned that the “impartial
observer” was the general manager of one of the big electric light and
power companies of London.
Doubleday, Page and Company published “The Jungle,” and it became the
best-selling book, not only in America, but also in Great Britain and
its colonies, and was translated into seventeen languages. It became
also the subject of a terrific political controversy.
The packers, fighting for their profits, brought all their batteries to
bear. To begin with, there appeared in the “Saturday Evening Post” a
series of articles signed by J. Ogden Armour, but written, I was
informed, by Forrest Crissey, one of the staff of the “Post.” The editor
of this paper, George Horace Lorimer, was for nine years an employee of
the Armours; he is author of “The Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His
Son,” a text-book of American business depravity. From first to last his
paper was at the service of the packers, as it has always been at the
service of every great financial interest.
Some of the statements made under Armour’s signature made me boil, and I
sat down to write an answer, “The Condemned Meat Industry.” I had the
facts at my fingers ends, and wrote the article in a few hours, and
jumped on the train and came up to New York with it. I took it to the
office of “Everybody’s Magazine” and asked to see E. J. Ridgway, the
publisher. I was wise enough by this time to understand that it is the
publisher, not the editor, you need to see. I read the article to
Ridgway, and he stopped the presses on which “Everybody’s Magazine” was
being printed, and took out a short story and shoved in “The Condemned
Meat Industry.”
“Everybody’s Magazine” at this time was on the crest of a wave of
popularity. It had finished Tom Lawson’s exposé of Wall Street, upon the
strength of which it had built up a circulation of half a million. Its
publishers, Ridgway and Thayer, were advertising men who had bought a
broken-down magazine from John Wanamaker, and had made the discovery
that there was a fortune to be made by the simple process of letting the
people have the truth. They wanted to go on making fortunes, and so they
welcomed my article. It gave the affidavits of men whom the Armours had
employed to take condemned meat out of the destructors and sell it in
Chicago. It told the story of how the Armours had bribed these men to
retract their confessions. It gave the reports of State health
authorities, who showed how the Armours had pleaded guilty to
adulterating foods. It was a mass of such facts fused in a white heat of
indignation. United States Senator Beveridge told me that he considered
the article the greatest piece of controversial writing he had ever
read.
You may find it in the library, “Everybody’s” for May, 1906. Whatever
you think of its literary style, you will see that it is definite and
specific, and revealed a most frightful condition in the country’s meat
supply, an unquestionable danger to the public health. It was therefore
a challenge to every public service agency in the country; above all, it
was a challenge to the newspapers, through which the social body is
supposed to learn of its dangers and its needs.
It was my first complete test of American Journalism. Hitherto I had
tried the newspapers as a young poet, clamoring for recognition; they
had called me a self-seeker, and although I felt that the charge was
untrue, I was powerless to disprove it to others. But now I tried them
in a matter that was obviously in the public interest—too obviously so
for dispute. I was still naïve enough to be shocked by the result. I had
expected that every newspaper which boasted of public spirit would take
up these charges, and at least report them; but instead of that, there
was silence—silence almost complete! I employed two clipping-bureaus on
this story, and received a few brief items from scattered papers here
and there. Of all the newspapers in America, not one in two hundred went
so far as to mention “The Condemned Meat Industry.”
Meantime “The Jungle” had been published in book form. I will say of
“The Jungle” just what I said of the magazine article—whatever you may
think of it as literature, you must admit that it was packed with facts
which constituted an appeal to the American conscience. The book was
sent to all American newspapers; also it was widely advertised, it was
boosted by one of the most efficient publicity men in the country. And
what were the results? I will give a few illustrations.
The most widely read newspaper editor in America is Arthur Brisbane.
Brisbane poses as a liberal, sometimes even as a radical; he told me
that he drank in Socialism with his mother’s milk. And Brisbane now took
me up, just as Robbie Collier had done; he invited me to his home, and
wrote one of his famous two-column editorials about “The Jungle”—a rare
compliment to a young author. This editorial treated me personally with
kindness; I was a sensitive young poet who had visited the stockyards
for the first time, and had been horrified by the discovery that animals
had blood inside them. With a fatherly pat on the shoulder, Brisbane
informed me that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house, or words to
that effect.
I remember talking about this editorial with Adolph Smith,
representative of the “London Lancet.” He remarked with dry sarcasm that
in a court of justice Brisbane would be entirely safe; his statement
that a slaughter-house is not an opera-house was strictly and literally
accurate. But if you took what the statement was meant to convey to the
reader—that a slaughter-house is necessarily filthy, then the statement
was false. “If you go to the municipal slaughter-houses of Germany, you
find them as free from odor as an opera-house,” said Adolph Smith; and
five or six years later, when I visited Germany, I took the opportunity
to verify this statement. But because of the kindness of American
editorial writers to the interests which contribute full-page
advertisements to newspapers, the American people still have their meat
prepared in filth.
Or take the “Outlook.” The “Outlook” poses as a liberal publication; its
editor preaches what he calls “Industrial Democracy,” a very funny joke.
I have dealt with this organ of the “Clerical Camouflage” in five
sections of “The Profits of Religion”; I will not repeat here, except to
quote how the pious “Outlook” dealt with “The Jungle.” The “Outlook” had
no doubt that there were genuine evils in the packing-plants; the
conditions of the workers ought of course to be improved, BUT—
To disgust the reader by dragging him through every conceivable
horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and with
offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel—all this is to
overreach the object.... Even things actually terrible may become
distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational way and in a
high pitched key.... More convincing if it were less hysterical.
Also Elbert Hubbard rushed to the rescue of his best advertising
clients. Later in this book you will find a chapter dealing especially
with the seer of East Aurora; for the present I will merely quote his
comments on my packing-house revelations. His attack upon “The Jungle”
was reprinted by the Chicago packers, and mailed out to the extent of a
million copies; every clergyman and every physician in the country
received one. I have a copy of his article, as it was sent out by a
newspaper syndicate in the form of “plate-matter.” It occupies four
newspaper columns, with these headlines:
ELBERT HUBBARD LASHES THE MUCK-RAKER CROWD.
Says “The Jungle” Book is a Libel and an Insult to Intelligence, and
that This Country is Making Headway as Fast as Stupidity of Reformers
Will Admit.
After which it will suffice to quote one paragraph, as follows:
Can it be possible that any one is deceived by this insane rant and
drivel?
And also the friend of my boyhood, my beloved “New York Evening Post”!
This organ of arm-chair respectability—I have reference to the large
leather receptacles which you find in the Fifth Avenue clubs—had
upbraided me for a harmless prank, “The Journal of Arthur Stirling.” Now
comes “The Jungle”; and the “Evening Post” devotes a column to the book.
It is “lurid, overdrawn.... If the author had been a man who cared more
for exact truth,” etc. Whereupon I sit myself down and write a polite
letter to the editor of the “Evening Post,” asking will he please tell
me upon what he bases this injurious charge. I have made patient
investigations in the stockyards, and the publishers of “The Jungle”
have done the same. Will the “Evening Post” state what investigations
_it_ has made? Or does it make this injurious charge against my book
without investigation, trusting that its readers will accept its word,
and that it will never be brought to book?
This is a fair question, is it not? The organs of arm-chair
respectability ought not to make loose charges against radicals, they
ought not condemn without knowledge. So I appeal to my beloved “Evening
Post,” which I have read six times per week for ten or twelve years; and
the answer comes: “It is not our custom to permit authors to reply to
book-reviews, and we see no reason for departing from our practice in
order to permit you to advertise your book and to insult us.” And so the
matter rests, until a couple of months later, the President of the
United States makes an investigation, and his commission issues a report
which vindicates every charge I have made. And now what? Does the
“Evening Post” apologize to me? Does it do anything to make clear to its
readers that it has erred in its sneers at “The Jungle”? The “Evening
Post” says not one word; but it still continues to tell the public that
I am unworthy of confidence, because I once played a harmless joke with
“The Journal of Arthur Stirling”!
CHAPTER VI
AN ADVENTURE WITH ROOSEVELT
I was determined to get something done about the Condemned Meat
Industry. I was determined to get something done about the atrocious
conditions under which men, women and children were working in the
Chicago stockyards. In my efforts to get something done, I was like an
animal in a cage. The bars of this cage were newspapers, which stood
between me and the public; and inside the cage I roamed up and down,
testing one bar after another, and finding them impossible to break. I
wrote letters to newspaper editors; I appealed to public men, I engaged
an extra secretary and ran a regular publicity bureau in my home.
It happened that I had occasion to consult the record of the
congressional investigations held after the Spanish-American War, into
the quality of canned meat furnished by the Chicago packers. Here was
Theodore Roosevelt on the witness-stand, declaring: “I would as soon
have eaten my old hat.” And now Theodore Roosevelt was president of the
United States, with power to help me if he would! In a moment of
inspiration I decided to appeal to him.
He had already heard about “The Jungle,” as I learned later; his
secretary, Loeb, told me that he had been receiving a hundred letters a
day about the book. Roosevelt now wrote, saying that he had requested
the Department of Agriculture to make an investigation. I replied that
nothing could be expected from such an investigation, because the
Department of Agriculture was itself involved in my charges. If he
wanted to get the truth, he must do what Doubleday, Page and Company had
done, get an independent report. He wrote me to come to Washington, and
I had several conferences with him, and he appointed two of his trusted
friends to go out to Chicago and make a “secret” investigation. Three
days after this decision was made I forwarded a letter to Roosevelt from
a workingman in the Chicago stockyards, saying that it was known all
over the yards that an investigation was to be made by the government,
and that a mad campaign of cleaning up was in progress.
Roosevelt asked me to go with his commission. I was too busy to do this,
but I sent Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, a Socialist lecturer, and her husband
as my representatives, paying the cost out of my own pocket. I knew that
they would be trusted by the workers who had trusted me, and thought
they might be able to get at least a few of the facts to Roosevelt’s
commission. As a matter of fact, they were not able to do very much,
because they were shadowed during the entire time by detectives of the
packers, and every workingman knew that it would cost him his job to be
seen near the commission’s rooms. I found the Socialists of Chicago
bitterly distrustful of the commission, and disposed to ridicule me for
trying to work with it.
The news of what was going on soon leaked into the newspapers of
Chicago. They had already published vicious attacks upon “The Jungle”;
and upon me. One paper—I forget the name—had remarked that it was quite
evident that I knew more about the inside of the brothels of Chicago
than I knew about the stockyards. This, you understand, in a
book-review! I replied to this that possibly the editor might be
interested to know the exact facts in the case: I had spent seven weeks
patiently investigating every corner of the stockyards, and I have never
been inside a brothel in my life.
Now there began to be dispatches from Washington, so phrased as to turn
the investigation against me instead of against the packers. Finally
there appeared in the “Tribune” a column or two from Washington, signed
by Raymond Patterson, editor of the paper. This dispatch stated in
specific and precise detail that President Roosevelt was conducting a
confidential investigation into the truth of “The Jungle,” intending to
issue a denunciation and annihilate a muck-raking author. On the day
when this story appeared in the “Chicago Tribune,” I received seventeen
telegrams from friends in Chicago!
One of the telegrams—from A. M. Simons—declared that the author of the
“Tribune” dispatch was Roosevelt’s personal friend. So, of course, I was
considerably disturbed, and spent the day trying to get Roosevelt on the
telephone from Princeton, not an easy achievement. First he was at a
cabinet session, then he was at luncheon, then he had gone horseback
riding; but finally, after spending my day in the telephone-office in
Princeton, I heard his voice, and this is what he said: “Mr. Sinclair, I
have been in public life longer than you, and I will give you this bit
of advice; if you pay any attention to what the newspapers say about
you, you will have an unhappy time.” So I went home to bed. The next
time I saw Roosevelt he told me that he had not seen Raymond Patterson,
nor had he said anything about his intentions to anyone. “I don’t see
how Patterson could have done such a thing,” was Roosevelt’s comment.
The commissioners came back to Washington, and I went down to see them.
They were amazingly frank; they told me everything they had seen, and
everything that was in their report to the President, nor did they place
any seal of confidence upon me. I realized that I was dealing with
people who desired publicity, and I had sufficient worldly tact to know
that it would be better not to mention this point, but simply to go
ahead and do what all parties concerned wanted done.
The report was known to be in the President’s hands, and he had summoned
the chairmen of the agricultural committees of the House and Senate, and
was holding the report as a threat over their heads to force them to
amend the Federal meat inspection law. The newspaper reporters all knew
what was going on, and were crazy for news. I returned to my little farm
at Princeton, and packed up a suit-case full of documents, letters,
affidavits and official reports, and came to New York and called up the
offices of the Associated Press.
Here was a sensation, not only nation-wide, but international; here was
the whole world clamoring for news about one particular matter of
supreme public importance. There had been an investigation by the
President of the United States of one of America’s greatest industries,
and I had been tacitly commissioned to make the results known to the
public, for the benefit of the public, whose physical health was at
stake. I came to the great press association, an organization
representing at that time some seven hundred newspapers, with scores of
millions of readers, hungry for news. The Associated Press was the
established channel through which the news was supposed to flow; and in
this crisis the channel proved to be a concrete wall.
I was about to describe the thickness of the wall, but I stop myself,
remembering my pledge to tell the exact facts. I do not know the
thickness of this wall, because I have never been able to dig through
it. I only know that it is as thick as all the millions of dollars of
all the vested interests of America can build it. I first telephoned,
and then sent a letter by special messenger to the proper officials of
the Associated Press, but they would have absolutely nothing to do with
me or my news. Not only on that day, but throughout my entire campaign
against the Beef Trust, they never sent out a single line injurious to
the interests of the packers, save for a few lines dealing with the
Congressional hearings, which they could not entirely suppress.
It is the thesis of this book that American newspapers as a whole
represent private interests and not public interests. But there will be
occasions upon which exception to this rule is made; for in order to be
of any use at all, the newspapers must have circulation, and to get
circulation they must pretend to care about the public. There is keen
competition among them, and once in a while it will happen that a
“scoop” is too valuable to be thrown away. Newspapermen are human, and
cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the
temptation to publish the news. So I had found it with “Everybody’s
Magazine,” and so now I found it when I went with my suit-case full of
documents to the office of the “New York Times.”
I arrived about ten o’clock at night, having wasted the day waiting upon
the Associated Press. I was received by C. V. Van Anda, managing editor
of the “Times”—and never before or since have I met such a welcome in a
newspaper office. I told them I had the entire substance of the
confidential report of Roosevelt’s investigating committee, and they
gave me a private room and two expert stenographers, and I talked for a
few minutes to one stenographer, and then for a few minutes to the other
stenographer, and so the story was dashed off in about an hour. Knowing
the “Times” as I have since come to know it, I have often wondered if
they would have published this story if they had had twenty-four hours
to think, and to be interviewed by representatives of the packers. But
they didn’t have twenty-four hours, they only had two hours. They were
caught in a whirlwind of excitement, and at one o’clock in the morning
my story was on the press, occupying a part of the front page and
practically all of the second page.
The question had been raised as to how the story should be
authenticated. The “Times” met the problem by putting the story under a
Washington “date-line”—that is, they told their readers that one of
their clever correspondents in the capital had achieved this “scoop.”
Being new to the newspaper game, I was surprised at this, but I have
since observed that it is a regular trick of newspapers. When the
Socialist revolution took place in Germany, I happened to be in
Pasadena, and the “Los Angeles Examiner” called me up to ask what I knew
about the personalities in the new government. So next morning the
“Examiner” had a full description of Ebert and a detailed dispatch from
Copenhagen!
The “New York Times,” having put its hand to the plough, went a long way
down the furrow. For several days they published my material. I gave
them the address of the Bloors, and they sent a reporter to Delaware to
interview them, and get the inside story of the commission’s experiences
in Chicago; this also went on the front page. All these stories the
“Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers
which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the
Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The
“Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid
me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a
dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system
even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have
done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I
read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business
of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New
York Times”!
Also I had another experience which threw light on the attitude of the
great metropolitan newspapers to the subject of money. It is the custom
of publishers to sell to newspaper syndicates what are called the
“post-publication serial rights” of a book. “The Jungle” having become
an international sensation, there was keen bidding for these serial
rights, and they were finally sold to the “New York American” for two
thousand dollars, of which the author received half. Forthwith the
editorial writers of both the Hearst papers in New York, the “American”
and the “Evening Journal,” began to sing the praises of “The Jungle.”
You will recall the patronizing tone in which Arthur Brisbane had spoken
of my charges against the Chicago packers. But now suddenly Brisbane
lost all his distrust of my competence as an authority on stockyards. In
the “Evening Journal” for May 29, 1906, there appeared a double-column
editorial, running over into another double column, celebrating “The
Jungle” and myself in emphatic capitals, and urging the American people
to read my all-important revelations of the infamies of the Beef Trust:
In his book—which ought to be read by at least a million Americans—Mr.
Sinclair traces the career of one family. It is a book that does for
modern INDUSTRIAL slavery what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for black
slavery. But the work is done far better and more accurately in “The
Jungle” than in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Mr. Sinclair lived in the stockyards. He saw how the men that work
there are treated, how the people that buy dreadful, diseased products
are treated. HE TOLD THE TRUTH SIMPLY AND CONVINCINGLY. He went there
to study life, not merely to tell a story.
As a result of the writing of this book, of the horror and the shame
it has aroused, there is a good prospect that the Beef Trust devilries
will be CHECKED at least, and one hideous phase of modern life at
least modified....
Meanwhile, the public should be thankful to Mr. Sinclair for the
public service he is rendering, and his book “The Jungle” should sell
as no book has sold in America since “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
And then on May 31st, two days later, appeared another editorial of the
same character, conveying to the readers of the “Evening Journal” the
fact that they might read this wonderful novel in the Hearst newspapers;
the first chapter would be published in both the “Evening Journal” and
the “American,” and after that the complete story would run in the
“American.” The ordinary capitals used by Mr. Brisbane in his editorials
were not sufficient in this crisis; he used a couple of sizes
larger—almost an advertising poster. I quote the closing paragraphs from
his editorial:
It will please our readers to know that for the right to publish Mr.
Sinclair’s book serially in our newspapers—which includes no interest
whatever in its publication in book form—we pay to him an amount of
money exceeding all that he has been able to earn in six years of hard
literary work.
This newspaper, which has opposed the Beef Trust and its iniquities
for years, and which first published the facts and the affidavits that
form part of Mr. Sinclair’s indictment, rejoices that this young man
should have had the will, the courage and the ability to write a work
that HAS FORCED NATIONAL ATTENTION, including the attention of the
President of the United States....
We urge that you read the first installment of Mr. Sinclair’s book in
this newspaper today, and that you continue reading it daily as the
various installments appear in THE AMERICAN.
CHAPTER VII
JACKALS AND A CARCASE
Roosevelt had hoped to get the new inspection bill through Congress
without giving out the report of his commission. But the packers and
their employes in Congress blocked his bill, and so finally the report
was given out, and caused a perfect whirlwind of public indignation. The
packers, fighting for their profits, made their stand in the
Agricultural Committees of the House, which apparently they owned
completely. Courteous hearings were granted to every kind of retainer of
the Beef Trust, while the two representatives of the President were
badgered on the witness-stand as if they had been criminals on trial. I
sent a telegram to Congressman Wadsworth of New York, chairman of the
committee, asking for a hearing, and my request was refused. I then
wrote a letter to Congressman Wadsworth, in which I told him what I
thought of him and his committee—which letter was taken up later by his
democratic opponents in his district, and resulted in his permanent
removal from public life.
But meantime, Wadsworth was king. In the fight against him, I moved my
publicity bureau up to New York, and put three stenographers at work. I
worked twenty hours a day myself—nor was I always able to sleep the
other four hours. I had broken out of the cage for a few weeks, and I
made the most of my opportunity. I wrote articles, and sent telegrams,
and twice every day, morning and evening, a roomful of reporters came to
see me. Some of these men became my friends, and would tell me what the
packers were doing in the New York newspaper-offices, and also with
their lobby in Washington. I recall one amusing experience, which gave
me a glimpse behind the scenes of two rival yellow journals, the “New
York Evening World” and the “New York Evening Journal.”
The “Evening Journal” sent a reporter to see me. Would I write an
article every day, telling what I knew about conditions among working
girls in New York? I signed a contract with the “Journal” for a month or
two, and that same evening all the wagons which delivered papers for the
“Journal” were out with huge signs over them: “Upton Sinclair will
write, etc., etc.” Then next day came my friend William Dinwiddie,
representing the “Evening World.” Would I write a series of articles for
the “Evening World”? Certainly I would, I said, and signed a contract
for a number of articles at five cents a word; so all the wagons of the
“World” appeared with the announcement that I would tell in the “World”
what I knew about conditions in the packing-houses of New York. And the
editorial writers of the “Evening World,” who had hitherto ignored my
existence, now suddenly discovered that I was a great man. They put my
picture at the top of their editorial page, celebrating me in this
fashion:
A BOOK THAT MADE HISTORY
Not since Byron awoke one morning to find himself famous has there
been such an example of world-wide celebrity won in a day by a book as
has come to Upton Sinclair.
Yesterday unknown, the author of “The Jungle” is today a familiar name
on two continents. Paris, London and Berlin know him only less well
than New York and Boston. They know about him even in far-off
Australia.
Forthwith came the man from the “Journal,” all but tearing his hair with
excitement. What unspeakable treachery was this I had committed? Was it
true that I had promised to write for the “World,” as well as for the
“Journal”? I answered that it was, of course. “But,” said this man, “you
gave me an exclusive contract.” “I gave you nothing of the sort,” I
said, and pulled out the contract to prove it. “But,” said he, “you
promised me personally that it would be an exclusive contract.” “I
promised you nothing of the sort,” I said. “I never thought of such a
thing.” But he argued and insisted—I must have known, my common-sense
must have told me that my stories for them were of no value, if at the
same time I was writing for their deadly rival. I was rather shocked at
that statement. Were they entirely interested in a “scoop,” and not at
all in the working girls of New York? “To hell with the working girls of
New York!” said the Hearst reporter; whereat, of course, I was still
more shocked.
For three days this man from the “Journal” and other men from the
“Journal” kept bombarding and besieging me; and I, poor devil, suffered
agonies of embarrassment and distress, being sensitive, and not able to
realize that this was an every-day matter to them—they were a pack of
jackals trying to tear a carcase away from another pack of jackals. But
when I stood by my contract with the “Evening World,” the “Journal”
dropped its contract, and lost its interest, not merely in the working
girls of New York, but also in the sins of the Chicago packers.
The lobbyists of the packers had their way in Washington; the meat
inspection bill was deprived of all its sharpest teeth, and in that form
Roosevelt accepted it and prepared to let the subject drop. I was
bitterly disappointed, the more so because he had made no move about the
matter which lay nearest my heart. I had made a remark about “The
Jungle” which was found amusing—that “I aimed at the public’s heart and
by accident I hit it in the stomach.” It is a fact that I had not been
nearly so interested in the “condemned meat industry” as in something
else. To me the diseased meat graft had been only one of a hundred
varieties of graft which I saw in that inferno of exploitation. My main
concern had been for the fate of the workers, and I realized with
bitterness that I had been made into a “celebrity,” not because the
public cared anything about the sufferings of these workers, but simply
because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef.
I had objected to Roosevelt that he was giving all his attention to the
subject of meat-inspection, and none to the subject of labor-inspection.
His answer was that he had power to remedy the former evils, but no
power to remedy the latter. I tried to persuade him to agitate the
question and obtain the power; but I tried in vain. “The Jungle” caused
the whitewashing of some packing-house walls, and it furnished jobs for
a dozen or two lady-manicurists, but it left the wage-slaves in those
huge brick packing-boxes exactly where they were before. Ten years later
the war broke out, and as these wage-slaves became restive, an
investigation was made. Here are a few paragraphs describing the
adventures of the Federal investigators:
The first four homes brought expressions of horror from the women of
the party, dark, insanitary, pest-ridden rooms and foodless kitchens.
Mrs. Belbine Skupin. Working in the yards. The six Skupin children in
their home at 4819 Laflin Street, hugging the stove and waiting for
“mother to return.” “I didn’t think such things existed outside the
books,” said one indignant young lady visitor, Miss Walsh.
In one home, seven children found. Youngest, a baby of fourteen
months; oldest, a boy of eight years. Baby “mothered” by girl of four.
Father and mother work in stockyards. Children had no shoes or
stockings and flimsy underwear. No food in house except pot of weak
coffee, loaf of rye bread and kettle containing mess of cabbage. But
in the basement was a ‘conservation’ card, bearing the motto “Don’t
waste food.”
I look back upon this campaign, to which I gave three years of brain and
soul-sweat, and ask what I really accomplished. Old Nelson Morris died
of a broken conscience. I took a few millions away from him, and from
the Armours and the Swifts—giving them to the Junkers of East Prussia,
and to Paris bankers who were backing enterprises to pack meat in the
Argentine. I added a hundred thousand readers to “Everybody’s Magazine,”
and a considerable number to the “New York Times.” I made a fortune and
a reputation for Doubleday, Page and Company, which immediately became
one of the most conservative publishing-houses in America—using “The
Jungle” money to promote the educational works of Andrew Carnegie, and
the autobiography of John D. Rockefeller, and the obscene ravings of the
Reverend Thomas Dixon, and the sociological bunkum of Gerald Stanley
Lee. I took my next novel to Doubleday, Page and Company, and old Walter
Page was enthusiastic for it and wanted to publish it; but the shrewd
young business-men saw that “The Metropolis” was not going to be popular
with the big trust companies and insurance companies which fill up the
advertising pages of the “World’s Work.” They told me that “The
Metropolis” was not a novel, but a piece of propaganda; it was not
“art.” I looked them in the eye and said: “You are announcing a new
novel by Thomas Dixon. Is _that_ ‘art’?”
Quite recently I tried them again with “King Coal,” and they did not
deny that “King Coal” was “art.” But they said: “We think you had better
find some publisher who is animated by a great faith.” It is a phrase
which I shall remember as long as I live; a perfect phrase, which any
comment would spoil. I bought up the plates of “The Jungle,” which
Doubleday, Page and Company had allowed to go out of print—not being
“animated by a great faith.” I hope some time to issue the book in a
cheap edition, and to keep it in circulation until the wage-slaves of
the Beef Trust have risen and achieved their freedom. Meantime, it is
still being read—and still being lied about. I have before me a clipping
from a Seattle paper. Some one has written to ask if “The Jungle” is a
true book. The editor replies, ex cathedra, that President Roosevelt
made an investigation of the charges of “The Jungle,” and thoroughly
disproved them all!
And again, here is my friend Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the
“Independent,” a man who has sense enough to know better than he does.
He reviews “The Profits of Religion” in this brief fashion:
The author of “The Jungle” has taken to muck-raking the churches—with
similar success at unearthing malodorous features and similar failure
to portray a truthful picture.
I write to Slosson, just as I wrote to the “New York Evening Post,” to
ask what investigation he has made, and what evidence he can produce to
back up his charge that “The Jungle” is not a “truthful picture”; and
there comes the surprising reply that it had never occurred to Slosson
that I myself meant “The Jungle” for a truthful picture. I had not
portrayed the marvelous business efficiency of the Stockyards, their
wonderful economies, etc.; and no picture that failed to do that could
claim to be truthful! That explanation apparently satisfied my friend
Slosson, but it did not satisfy the readers of the “Independent”—for the
reason that Slosson did not give them an opportunity to read it! He did
not publish or mention my protest, and he left his readers to assume, as
they naturally would, that the “Independent” considered that I had
exaggerated the misery of the Stockyards workers.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LAST ACT
I am telling this story chronologically, but in dealing with a subject
like “The Jungle” it seems better to skip ahead and close the matter up.
There was a last act of this Packingtown drama, about which the public
has never heard. The limelight had been turned out, the audience had
gone home, and this act was played in darkness and silence.
A year had passed and I was living at Point Pleasant, New Jersey, when
W. W. Harris, editor of the Sunday magazine section of the “New York
Herald,” came to call on me, and explained a wonderful idea. He wanted
me to go to Chicago secretly, as I had gone before, and make another
investigation in the Stockyards, and write for the “New York Herald” an
article entitled “Packingtown a Year Later.”
He was a young editor, full of enthusiasm. He said: “Mr. Sinclair, I
know enough about the business-game to feel quite sure that all the
reforms we read about are fakes. What do you think?”
I answered, “I know they are fakes, because not a week passes that I
don’t get a letter from some of the men in Packingtown, telling me that
things are as bad as ever.” And I showed him a letter, one sentence of
which I recall: “The new coat of whitewash has worn off the filthy old
walls, and the only thing left is the row of girls who manicure the
nails of those who pack the sliced dried beef in front of the eyes of
the visitors!”
“Exactly!” said the editor. “It will make the biggest newspaper story
the ‘Herald’ has ever published.”
“Possibly,” said I. “But are you sure the ‘Herald’ will publish it?”
“No worry about that,” said he. “I am the man who has the say.”
“But where is Bennett?”
“Bennett is in Bermuda.”
“Well,” said I, “do you imagine you could sign a contract with me, and
put such a job through, and get such a story on the ‘Herald’ presses
without Bennett’s getting word of it?”
“Bennett will be crazy for the story,” said the editor. “Bennett is a
newspaper man.”
“Well, you have to show me.”
I explained that I was writing another novel, and was not willing to
stop, but my friend Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, who had represented me with
Roosevelt’s investigating committee, would do the work. Let the “Herald”
send Mrs. Bloor and one of its own reporters, to make sure that Mrs.
Bloor played the game straight; and when the investigation was made, I
would write an introductory statement, which would lend my name to the
articles, and make them as effective as if I had gone to Packingtown
myself. But first, before I would trouble Mrs. Bloor, or do anything at
all about the matter, the editor must put it before Bennett and show me
his written consent to the undertaking. “I am busy,” I said. “I don’t
care to waste my time upon a wild goose chase.” The editor agreed that
that was reasonable, and took his departure.
James Gordon Bennett, the younger, was the son of the man who had
founded the “New York Herald,” establishing the sensational, so-called
“popular” journalism which Pulitzer and Hearst afterwards took up and
carried to extremes. Bennett, the elder, had been a real newspaper man;
his son had been a debauch and spendthrift in his youth, and was now in
his old age an embittered and cynical invalid, travelling in his yacht
from Bermuda to the Riviera, and occasionally resorting to the capitals
of Europe for fresh dissipations. He had made his paper the organ of
just such men as himself; that is to say, of cosmopolitan café loungers,
with one eye on the stock-ticker and the other on their “scotch and
soda.” And this was the publisher who was to take up a new crusade
against the Beef Trust!
But to my surprise, the editor came back with a cablegram from Bennett,
bidding him go ahead with the story. So I put the matter before Mrs.
Bloor, and she and the “Herald” reporter went out to the Stockyards and
spent about two months. Mrs. Bloor disguised herself as a Polish woman,
and both she and the reporter obtained jobs in half a dozen different
places in the yards. They came back, reporting that conditions were
worse than ever; they wrote their story, enough to fill an eight-page
Sunday supplement, with numerous photographs of the scenes described.
There was a conference of the editorial staff of the “Herald,” which
agreed that the story was the greatest the paper had ever had in its
history. It must be read by Mr. Bennett, the staff decided. So it was
mailed to Bermuda—which was the last ever seen or heard of it!
Week after week I waited for the story to appear. When I learned that it
was not to appear I was, of course, somewhat irritated. I threatened to
sue the “Herald” for payment for the time I had spent writing the
introduction, but I found myself confronting this dilemma: the
enthusiastic young editor was a Socialist, and if I made trouble, he was
the one who would be hurt. So I decided to forego my money-claim on the
“Herald.” But I would not give up the story—that was a public matter.
The public had been fooled into believing that there had been reforms in
Packingtown; the public was continuing to eat tubercular beef-steaks,
and I was bound that somehow or other the public should get the facts. I
wrote up the story and submitted it to other newspapers in New York. Not
one would touch it. I submitted it to President Roosevelt, and he
replied that he was sorry, but was too busy to take the matter up.
“Teddy” was a shrewd politician, and knew how hard it is to warm up dead
ashes, how little flavor there is in re-cooked food.
I knew, of course, that I could publish the story in the Socialist
papers. That has always been my last recourse. But I wanted this story
to reach the general public; I was blindly determined about it. There
was a big Socialist meeting at the Hippodrome in New York, and I went up
to the city and asked for fifteen minutes at this meeting. I told the
story to an audience of five or six thousand people, and with reporters
from every New York paper in front of me. Not a single New York paper,
except the Socialist paper, mentioned the matter next morning.
But still I would not give up. I said: “This is a Chicago story. If I
tell it in Chicago, public excitement may force it into the press.” So I
telegraphed some of my friends in Chicago. I planned the most dramatic
thing I could think of—I asked them to get me a meeting in the
Stockyards district, and they answered that they would.
Mind you, a little over a year before I had put Packingtown on the map
of the world; I had made Packingtown and its methods the subject of
discussion at the dinner-tables of many countries; and now I was coming
back to Packingtown for the first time since that event. There was a big
hall, jammed to the very doors with Stockyards workers. You will pardon
me if I say that they made it clear that they were glad to have me come
there. And to this uproarious audience I told the story of the “New York
Herald” investigation, and what had been discovered. I stood, looking
into the faces of these workingmen and women, and said: “You are the
people who know about these matters. Are they true?” There was a roar of
assent that rocked the building. I said: “_I_ know they are true, and
_you_ know they are true. Now tell me this, ought they be made known to
the American people? Would you like them to be made known to the
American people?” And again there was a roar of assent.
Then I looked over the edge of the platform to a row of tables, where
sat the reporters looking up, and I talked to them for a while. I said:
“You are newspaper men; you know a story when you see it. Tell me
now—tell me straight—is not this a story?” The newspaper men nodded and
grinned. They knew it was a “story” all right. “The public would like to
read this—the public of Chicago and the public of all the rest of
America—would they not?” And again the newspaper men nodded and grinned.
“Now,” said I, “play fair with me; give me a square deal, so far as you
are concerned. Write this story just as I have told it tonight. Write it
and turn it in and see what happens. Will you do that?” And they pledged
themselves, the audience saw them pledge themselves. And so the test was
made, as perfect a test as anyone could conceive. And next morning there
was just one newspaper in Chicago which mentioned my speech in the
Stockyards district—the “Chicago Socialist.” Not one line in any other
newspaper, morning or evening, in Chicago!
A little later I happened to be on the Pacific coast, and made the test
once more. I was putting on some plays, and it happened that a newspaper
had played me a dirty trick that morning. So in my curtain-speech I said
what I thought of American newspapers, and told this Chicago story. Just
one newspaper in San Francisco published a line about the matter, and
that was the “Bulletin,” edited by Fremont Older, who happened to be a
personal friend, and one of the few independent newspaper editors in
America. Excepting for Socialist papers, the “Bulletin” has the
distinction of being the only American newspaper which has ever printed
that story.
I say the only American newspaper; I might say the only newspaper in the
world. Some time afterwards there was a scandal about American meat in
England, and the “London Daily Telegraph” requested me to cable them
“without limit” any information I had as to present conditions in
Packingtown. I sent them a couple of thousand words of this “New York
Herald” story, but they did not publish a line of it. They had, of
course, the fear that they might be sued for libel by the “Herald.” It
is no protection to you in England that you are publishing the truth,
for the maxim of the law of England is: “The greater the truth the
greater the libel.” Also, no doubt, they were influenced by newspaper
solidarity—a new kind of honor among thieves.
CHAPTER IX
AIMING AT THE PUBLIC’S HEART
The publication of “The Jungle” had brought me pitiful letters from
workingmen and women in others of our great American slave-pens, and I
went to Ridgway of “Everybody’s” with the proposition to write a series
of articles dealing with the glass industry, the steel industry, the
coal-mines, the cotton-mills, the lumber-camps. I offered to do all the
work of investigating myself; my proposition was accepted and I set to
work.
I went first to the glass-works of South Jersey, where I saw little
children working all night in eleven-hour shifts, carrying heavy trays
of red-hot glass bottles. Other children worked at the same tasks in the
blazing heat of summer, and sometimes they fainted and had their eyes
burned out by hot glass. When the State child-labor inspector came, he
was courteous enough to notify the superintendent of the glass-works in
advance, and so the under-age children were collected in the passageway
through which fresh air was blown to the furnaces. I told the story of
one little Italian boy who had to walk several miles on the
railroad-track to his home after his all-night labors. He fell asleep
from exhaustion on the way and the train ran over him. I submitted this
article to “Everybody’s,” who sent one of their editors to check up my
facts. I recall one remark in his report, which was that he could not
see that the little boys in the glass-factories were any worse off than
those who sold newspapers on the streets of New York. My answer was that
this was not a reason for altering the glass-article; it was a reason
for adding an article about the newsboys!
Meantime I was investigating the steel-mills of Alleghany County. I
spent a long time at this task, tracing out some of the ramifications of
graft in the politics and journalism of Pittsburgh. The hordes of
foreign labor recruited abroad and crowded into these mills were
working, some of them twelve hours a day for seven days in the week, and
were victims of every kind of oppression and extortion. An elaborate
system of spying crushed out all attempt at organization. I talked with
the widow of one man, a Hungarian, who had had the misfortune to be
caught with both legs under the wheels of one of the gigantic travelling
cranes. In order to save his legs it would have been necessary to take
the crane to pieces, which would have cost several thousand dollars; so
they ran over his legs and cut them off and paid him two hundred dollars
damages.
This article also I brought to “Everybody’s,” and watched the process of
the chilling of their editorial feet. What influences were brought to
bear to cause their final break with me, I do not know; but this I have
observed in twenty years of watching—there are few magazines that dare
to attack the Steel Trust, and there are no politicians who dare it. Our
little fellows among the corporations, our ten and hundred million
dollar trusts, are now and then fair game for some muck-raker or
demagogue; but our billion dollar corporation is sacred, and if any one
does not know it, he is taught it quickly.
While I am on the subject of “Everybody’s,” I might as well close my
account with them. They had gained the purpose of their “muck-raking”
campaign—that is, half a million readers at two dollars per year each,
and one or two hundred pages of advertising each month at five hundred
dollars a page. So year by year one observed their youthful fervors
dying. They found it possible to discover good things in American
politics and industry. They no longer appreciate my style of
muck-raking; they do not stop their presses to put on my articles. Again
and again I have been to them, and they are always friendly and polite,
but they always turn me down. Three or four years ago, I remember, they
published an editorial, telling what wonderful people they were; they
had been over their files, and gave a long list of the campaigns which
they had undertaken for the benefit of the American people. Whereupon I
wrote them a letter, asking them to take up this list and test it by the
one real test that counted. From the point of view of a magazine, of
course, it suffices if the public is told it is being robbed. That
brings readers to the magazine; but what good does it do the public, if
the robbery continues, and if the magazine drops the subject, and makes
no move to get back the stolen money, or even to stop the future
stealings? Let “Everybody’s” apply the one test that had any meaning—let
them point out one instance where their exposures had resulted in
changing the ownership of a dollar from the hands of predatory
exploiters to the hands of their victims!
I was in position to bear witness in one of the cases cited by
“Everybody’s Magazine.” I knew that the condemned meat industry was
still flourishing, I knew that the wage-slaves of Packingtown were still
being sweated and bled. I knew also that the campaign of Tom Lawson had
brought no result. “Everybody’s” had clamored for laws to prevent
stock-gambling and manipulation, but no such laws had been passed, and
“Everybody’s” had dropped the subject. What had the magazine to say
about the matter? Needless to add, the magazine had nothing to say about
it; they did not answer my letter, they did not publish my letter. They
have been taken over by the Butterick Publishing Company, and are an
adjunct of the dress-pattern trade, not an organ of public welfare. For
years I continued to look over the magazine month by month, lured by
vain hopes; it has been several years since I have found an article with
any trace of social conscience. They have just finished a series of
articles on After-the-War Reconstruction, which for futility were
unexampled; after glancing over these articles, I removed “Everybody’s”
from that small list of magazines whose contents repay the labor of
turning over the pages.
CHAPTER X
A VOICE FROM RUSSIA
For the sake of consecutiveness in this narrative, I have put off
mention of a newspaper sensation which occurred during my “Jungle”
campaign, and which I happened to observe from the inside. I am glad to
tell this story, because it gives the reader a chance to hear about the
troubles of another man than Upton Sinclair.
First, picture to yourself the plight of the Russian people in the
spring of 1906: one or two hundred million people held down by the most
brutal tyranny of modern times, all knowledge withheld from them, their
leaders, their best brains and consciences systematically exiled,
slaughtered, tortured to death in dungeons. The people had been led into
an imperialist war with Japan, and after a humiliating defeat were
making an effort at freedom. This effort was being crushed with
constantly increasing ferocity, and the cry of despair of the Russian
people now echoed throughout the whole of civilization.
Among these enslaved masses was one man who by titanic genius had raised
himself to world fame. Nor had fame spoiled or seduced him; he stood a
heroic figure, championing the rights of his people before the world. He
came to America to plead for them, and to raise funds for their cause.
Never since the days of Kossuth had there been an appeal which should
have roused the American people to greater enthusiasm than this visit of
Maxim Gorky.
A group of American Socialists went out on the revenue-cutter “Hudson”
to meet Gorky’s steamer in the harbor; among them I remember Gaylord
Wilshire, Abraham Cahan, Leroy Scott. There were also reporters from all
the newspapers, and on the way down the bay a reporter for the “World”
came to Wilshire and asked if he had heard a report to the effect that
the lady who was coming as Gorky’s wife, Madame Andreieva, was not
legally his wife. Wilshire answered by explaining to the reporter the
situation existing in Russia: that marriage and divorce there were a
graft of the orthodox church. It cost a good deal to get married, and it
cost still more to get a divorce; the money you paid went to the support
of fat and sensual priests, who were occupied in conducting pogroms, and
keeping the peasantry of the country in superstition and slavery.
Naturally, all Russian revolutionists repudiated this church, and paid
it no money, for marriage or divorce or any other purpose. The
revolutionists had their own marriage code which they recognized. Gorky
had complied with this code, and regarded Madame Andreieva as his wife,
and everybody who knew him regarded her as his wife, and had no idea
that she was not his wife. The reporters of other papers had gathered
about, listening to this explanation, and they all agreed that the
American public had no concern with the marriage customs of Russia, and
that this story had nothing to do with Gorky’s present mission.
Gorky went to the Hotel Belleclaire, as Wilshire’s guest. From the
moment of his arrival he was the object of several different intrigues.
In the first place there was the embassy of the Tsar, who was hanging
and shooting Gorky’s partisans in Russia, and naturally spared no labor
or treasure to destroy him in America. A spy of the embassy afterwards
confessed that it was he who took the story about Gorky’s unorthodox
marriage to the New York newspapers, and who later on succeeded in
persuading the “World” to make use of it.
Then there were representatives of the various newspaper syndicates and
magazines and publishing-houses, which wanted Gorky’s writings, and were
besieging his friends. And then there were two different groups of
radicals, competing for his favor—the “Friends of Russian Freedom,”
settlement-workers and folks of that sort, many of whom have since
become Socialists, but who in those days were carefully bourgeois and
painfully respectable, confining their revolutionary aims strictly to
Russia; and the American Socialists, who knew that Gorky was an
internationalist like themselves, and wished to use his prestige for the
benefit of the American movement, as well as for the Russian movement.
It happened that at this time Moyer and Haywood were being tried for
their lives, and this case was the test upon which the right and left
wings were dividing. Gaylord Wilshire, who was then publishing a
Socialist magazine in New York, drafted a telegram of sympathy to Moyer
and Haywood, and submitted it to Madame Andreieva, proposing that Gorky
should sign it. Which, of course, threw the “Friends of Russian Freedom”
into a panic. If Gorky supported Moyer and Haywood, he would get no
money from the liberal millionaires of New York, the Schiffs and the
Strausses and the Guggenheims and the rest, who might be persuaded to
subsidize the Russian revolution, but who had no interest in industrial
freedom for America! The matter was explained to Gorky, and he gave his
decision: he was an international Socialist, and he would protest
against the railroading of two radical labor leaders to the gallows. He
signed the telegram, and it was sent, and next morning, of course, the
New York newspapers were horrified, and the Russian Embassy got busy,
and President Roosevelt cancelled a reception for Gorky at the White
House!
But the worst mistake that Gorky made was in his contracts for his
writings. He fell into the very same trap that I have told about in
Chapter VII—he signed a contract with the “New York Journal,” and
thereby incurred the furious enmity of the “New York World”! So then the
editors of the “World” remembered that story which they had got from the
Russian Embassy; or maybe the Embassy reminded them of it again. By this
story they could destroy entirely the news-value of Gorky’s writings;
they could render worthless the contract with their hated rival! That
incidentally they would help to hold one or two hundred million people
in slavery and torment for an indefinite number of years—that weighed
with the staff of the “World” not a feather-weight.
Next morning the “World” came out with a scare-story on the front page,
to the effect that Maxim Gorky had insulted the American people by
coming to visit them and introducing his mistress as his wife. And
instantly, of course, the news-channels were opened wide—the Russian
Embassy saw to that. (Do you recollect the fact that the general manager
of the Associated Press went to Russia and received a decoration from
the Tsar?)
From Maine to California, American provincialism quivered with
indignation and horror. That night Gorky and his “mistress” were invited
to leave the Hotel Belleclaire. They went to another hotel, and were
refused admittance there. They went to an apartment-house and were
refused admittance there. They spent a good part of the small hours of
the morning wandering about the streets of New York, until friends
picked them up and whisked them away to a place which has never been
revealed. And next morning all this shameful and humiliating story was
flaunted on the front page of the newspapers—especially, of course, the
“New York World.”
A perfect flood of abuse was poured over the head of poor, bewildered
Gorky; the clergy began to preach sermons about him, and our great,
wise, virtuous statesmen, who were maintaining a “House of Mirth” in
Albany, and high-class houses of prostitution in every State capital and
in the National capital, joined in denunciations of this display of
“foreign licentiousness.” So Gorky’s mission fell absolutely flat. His
writings were scorned, and all he had to send to his heroic friends in
Russia was the few dollars he himself was able to earn. I saw him
several times during the year or two he stayed in America, first on
Staten Island and then in the Adirondacks: a melancholy and pitiful
figure, this Russian giant who had come to make his appeal to the heart
of a great and liberal people, and had been knocked down and torn to
pieces by the obscene vultures of commercial journalism. Even now the
story is raked up, to serve the slave-drivers of the world. Gorky is
defending his revolution against allied world-capitalism; the United
States Senate is officially collecting scandal concerning the
Bolsheviki; and Senator Knute Nelson, aged servant of privilege from
Minnesota, puts these words on the Associated Press wires: “That
horrible creature Maxim Gorky—he is about as immoral as a man can be.”
CHAPTER XI
A VENTURE IN CO-OPERATION
The next experience with which I have to deal is the Helicon Home
Colony. I will begin by telling very briefly what this was: an attempt
to solve the problem of the small family of moderate means, who have one
or two children and are not satisfied with the sort of care these
children get from ignorant servant-maids, nor with the amount of
play-space they can find in a city apartment. I wrote an article in the
“Independent,” pointing out that the amount of money which these people
spent in maintaining separate kitchens and separate nurseries would, if
expended in co-operation, enable them to have expert managers, and a
kindergartner instead of a servant-girl to take care of their children.
I proposed that a group of forward-looking people should get together
and establish what might be called a home-club, or a hotel owned and run
by its guests. There was nothing so very radical about this idea, for up
in the Adirondacks are a number of clubs whose members rent cottages in
the summertime and eat their meals in a club dining-room. Why might
there not be in the same community a school, owned and run by the
parents of the children?
The economic importance of the idea, if it could be made to work, would
be beyond exaggerating. There are twenty million families in America,
maintaining twenty million separate kitchens, with twenty million stoves
and twenty million fires, twenty million sets of dishes to be washed,
twenty million separate trips to market to be made. The waste involved
in this is beyond calculation; I believe that when our system of
universal dog-eat-dog has been abolished, and the souls of men and women
have risen upon the wings of love and fellowship, they will look back on
us in our twenty million separate kitchens as we look upon the Eskimos
in their filthy snow-huts lighted with walrus-blubber.
Here was a man who had made thirty thousand dollars from a book, risking
the whole of it, and giving all his time to an effort to demonstrate
that fifty or sixty intelligent people might solve this problem, might
learn to co-operate in their housekeeping, and save a part of their time
for study and play. Here were the newspaper-editors of New York City,
who were supposed to report the experiment, and who behaved like a band
of Brazilian Indians, hiding in the woods about Helicon Hall and
shooting the inmates full of poisoned arrows. Upton Sinclair and his
little group of co-workers became a public spectacle, a free
farce-comedy for the great Metropolis of Mammon. The cynical newspaper
editors, whose first maxim in life is that nothing can ever be changed,
picked out their cleverest young wits and sent them to spy in our
nursery, and eavesdrop in our pantry, and report all the absurdities
they could see or hear or invent.
The procedure was so dishonest that even the reporters themselves
sickened of it. There was one young man who used to come every Sunday,
to write us up in Monday’s “New York Sun”; for, you see, on Mondays
there is generally a scarcity of news, and we served as comic relief to
the sermons of the Fifth Avenue clergy. The “Sun,” of course, treated us
according to its tradition—as in the old days it had treated “Sorosis”
and the “Populists.” “Mr. Sinclair,” said this young reporter, “you’ve
got an awfully interesting place here, and I like the people, and feel
like a cur to have to write as I do; but you know what the ‘Sun’ is.” I
answered that I knew. “Well,” said the reporter, “can’t you think of
something amusing that I can write about, that won’t do any harm?” So I
thought. I had brought a collie dog from my farm at Princeton, and three
times this dog had strayed or been stolen. “You might write about the
dog instead of about the people,” I said. So next morning there were two
or three columns in the “New York Sun,” making merry over this latest
evidence of the failure of co-operative housekeeping! Upton Sinclair’s
dog refused to stay at Helicon Hall!
And then there was the famous adventure with Sadakichi Hartmann. One day
there arrived a post-card, reading: “Sadakichi Hartmann will call.” The
announcement had a sort of royal sound, and I made inquiry and
ascertained that I ought to have known who Sadakichi Hartmann was. Just
about dinner-time there appeared two men and a girl, all three clad in
soiled sweaters. One of the men was the Japanese-German art-critic, and
the other was Jo Davidson, the sculptor, a lovable fellow, who made
sketches of us and kept us entertained. But Hartmann had evidently been
drinking, and when he told us that he had come to spend the night, we
assured him quite truthfully that we had no room and could not
accommodate him. There happened to be a meeting of the executive
committee that night, with important problems to be settled; and when I
came out from the committee-room at eleven o’clock, I found the
art-critic making preparations to spend the night on one of the couches
in our living-room. He was told politely that he must leave, whereupon
there was a scene. He spent a couple of hours arguing and denouncing,
and next day he wrote a letter to all the newspapers, telling how he and
his companions had been turned out of Helicon Hall at one o’clock in the
morning, and had spent the night wandering about on the Palisades.
And then there was a gentleman from Boston via Montmartre, Alvan F.
Sanborn by name. He had written a book about the revolutionists of
Paris, looking at them through a microscope as if they had been so many
queer kinds of bugs; and now he came to turn his microscope on us. He
proved to be a gentleman with a flowing soft necktie and a sharp
suspicious nose. He accepted our hospitality, and then went away and
criticized the cooking of our beans. His article appeared in the
“Evening Transcript” of Boston, a city which is especially sensitive on
the subject of beans. Mr. Sanborn found our atmosphere that of a
bourgeois boarding-house. I have no doubt it was a different atmosphere
from that of the Quartier Latin, where Mr. Sanborn’s standards of taste
had been formed.
Also there were the two Yale boys who ran away from college and came to
tend our furnaces, and then ran back to college and wrote us up in the
“New York Sun.” They were Allan Updegraff and Sinclair Lewis, both of
whom have grown up to be novelists. What they wrote about us was
playful, and I would have shared in the fun, but for the fact that some
of our members had their livings to think about. For example, there was
a professor of philosophy at Columbia. Once or twice a week he had to
give lectures to the young ladies at Barnard, and the Dean of Barnard
was a lady of stern and unbending dignity, and after those articles had
appeared our professor would quiver every time he saw her. We were
trying in Helicon Hall not to have servants, in the sense of a separate
class of inferior animals whom we put off by themselves in the basement
of the building. We tried to treat our workers as human beings. Once a
week we had a dance, and everybody took part, and the professor of
philosophy danced with the two pretty Irish girls who waited on the
table. The fact that his wife was present ought to have made a
difference, even to a Dean, but the stories in the “Sun” did not mention
the wife.
So before long we began to notice dark hints in the newspapers; such
esoteric phrases as “Sinclair’s love-nest.” I have since talked with
newspaper men and learned that it was generally taken for granted by the
newspaper-world that Helicon Hall was a place which I had formed for the
purpose of having many beautiful women about me. Either that, or else a
diseased craving for notoriety! I remember Ridgway of “Everybody’s”
asking the question: “Couldn’t you find some less troublesome way of
advertising yourself?”
Now, I was still naïve about many things in the world, but I assure the
reader that I had by this time learned enough to have kept myself
securely on the front pages of the newspapers, if that had been my aim
in life. A group of capitalists had come to me with a proposition to
found a model meat-packing establishment; they had offered me three
hundred thousand dollars worth of stock for the use of my name, and if I
had accepted that offer and become the head of one of the city’s
commercial show-places, lavishing full-page advertisements upon the
newspapers, I might have had the choicest and most dignified kind of
publicity, I might have been another Nicholas Murray Butler or George
Harvey; I might have been invited to be the chief orator at banquets of
the Chamber of Commerce and the National Civic Federation, and my
eloquence would have been printed to the extent of columns; I might have
joined the Union League Club and the Century Club, and my name would
have gone upon the list of people about whom no uncomplimentary news may
be published under any circumstances. At the same time I might have kept
one or more apartments on Riverside Drive, with just as many beautiful
women in them as I wished, and no one would have criticized me, no
newspaper would have dropped hints about “love-nests.” I have known many
men, prominent capitalists and even prominent publishers and editors,
who have done this, and you have never known about it—you would not know
about it in ten thousand life-times, under our present system of
predatory Journalism.
But what I did was to attack the profit-system—even the profit in news.
I refused to go after money, and when money came to me, I spent it
forthwith on propaganda. So it comes about that you think of me—at best
as a sort of scarecrow, at worst as a free-lover and preacher of sexual
riot.
So far as Helicon Hall was concerned, we were a gathering of decent
literary folk, a number of us not Socialists or cranks of any sort,
several of the ladies coming from the South, where standards of ladyhood
are rigid. There were Professor William Noyes of Teachers’ College and
his wife; Prof. W. P. Montague of Columbia, and his wife; Edwin
Björkman, the critic, editor of the Modern Drama Series, and during the
war director of the government’s propaganda in Scandinavian countries;
his wife, Frances Maule Björkman, a well-known suffrage worker; Mrs.
Grace MacGowan Cooke, the novelist, and her sister Alice MacGowan; Edwin
S. Potter, now assistant editor of the “Searchlight on Congress,” and
his wife; Michael Williams and his wife. Williams has since turned into
a Roman Catholic, and has written an autobiography, “The High Romance,”
in which he pokes fun at our Socialist colony, but he is honest enough
to omit hints about “free love.”
What our people did was to work hard at their typewriters, and spend
their spare time in helping with our community problems. We had many,
and we didn’t solve them all, by any means; it was not easy to find
competent managers, and we were all novices ourselves. We had only six
months to work in, and that was not time enough. But we certainly did
solve the “servant-problem”; from first to last those who did the
monotonous household work of our colony conducted themselves with
dignity and sympathy. Also we solved the problem of the children; we
showed that the parents of our fourteen children could co-operate. Our
children had a little world of their own, and did their own work and
lived their own community life, and were happier than any fourteen
children I have seen before or since. Also we had a social life, which
no one who took part in will forget. Such men as William James and John
Dewey came to see us frequently, and around our big four-sided fireplace
you heard discussions by authorities on almost every topic of
present-day importance. But nobody read about these discussions in the
newspapers; the publishers of newspapers were not selling that sort of
news.
I look back on Helicon Hall today, and this is the way I feel about it.
I have lived in the future; I have known those wider freedoms and
opportunities that the future will grant to all men and women. Now by
harsh fate I have been seized and dragged back into a lower order of
existence, and commanded to spend the balance of my days therein. I know
that the command is irrevocable, and I make the best of my fate—I manage
to keep cheerful; and to do my appointed task; but nothing can alter the
fact in my own mind—I have lived in the future, and all things about me
seem drab and sordid in comparison. I feel as you would feel if you were
suddenly taken back to the days when there was no plumbing and when
people used perfume instead of soap.
CHAPTER XII
THE VILLAGE HORSE-DOCTOR
At three o’clock one morning in March there came a fire and wiped out
the Helicon Home Colony. Everybody there lost everything, but that did
not save us from dark hints in the newspapers, to the effect that some
of our members had started the fire. The colony had just purchased ropes
to be used as fire-escapes from some remote rooms on the third floor of
the building. It was not mentioned by the newspapers that the managing
committee had been discussing the need of those ropes for three or four
months. For my part I escaped from my room in the tower of the building
with my night-clothing burned, and part of my hair singed off, and my
feet full of broken glass and burning brands, which laid me up for two
or three weeks.
The “American Magazine” printed an editorial based on the rumor that the
fire had been caused by leaking gas. The fact that we had defective
gas-pipes and not enough fire-escapes proved to the “American Magazine”
that industrial co-operation was an impossibility! They gave me space to
answer that there was absolutely no evidence that the fire had been
caused by gas-leaks, and that for years the authorities of the town had
allowed Helicon Hall to be conducted under the profit-system as a
boarding-school for boys, with no provision for fire-escapes whatever.
They did not allow me to state that at the time the mysterious fire took
place I had in the building the data of many months of secret
investigation into the armor plate frauds, whereby the Carnegie Steel
Company had robbed the United States government of a sum which the
government admitted to be seven hundred thousand dollars, but which I
could have proven to be many millions. I had, for example, the precise
designation of a certain plate (A.619) in the conning-tower of the
battleship “Oregon,” which was full of plugged up blowholes, and would
have splintered like glass if struck by a shell. I had the originals of
the shop-records of many such plates, which had been doctored in the
hand-writings of certain gentlemen now high in the counsels of the Steel
Trust. I had enough evidence to have sent these prominent gentlemen to
the penitentiary for life, and I myself came very near being burned
along with it. I put a brief account of these matters into “The
Money-changers,” and some of the heads of the Steel Trust announced that
they were going to sue me for libel, but thought better of it. I shall
give some details about the matter later on, in telling the story of
“The Money-changers” and its adventures.
There was a coroner’s inquest over the body of one man who lost his life
in the Helicon Hall fire. This inquest I attended on crutches, and was
cross-questioned for a couple of hours by the village horse-doctor. Two
or three members of the jury were hostile, and I couldn’t understand it,
until near the end of the session it came out. We had had two
organizations at Helicon Hall; the company, which owned the property,
and the colony, a membership corporation or club, which leased the
property from the company. We had made this arrangement, because under
the law it was the only way we could keep the right to decide who should
have admittance to the colony. If we had had one corporation, anybody
who bought our stock would have had the right to come and live with us.
But now it appeared that the village horse-doctor and the village barber
and the village grocer suspected the colony of a dire plot to keep from
paying its just debts in the locality! I made haste to assure these
gentlemen that my own credit was behind the bills, and that everything
would be paid—except the account of one painter who had contracted to do
a job for three hundred dollars and had rendered a bill for seven
hundred.
Also they questioned us closely about moral conditions in the colony,
and brought out some sinister facts, which were spread on the front
pages of the “New York Evening World” and the “New York Evening
Journal.” It appeared that we had not had enough bed-rooms at Helicon
Hall, and on the third floor there was a huge studio which had served
for the drawing-classes of the boys’ school. It was proposed to convert
this studio into bed-rooms, but first it would be necessary to raise the
roof, and this would cost more money than we had to spare. Our architect
had advised us that the same lumber which would be needed for this work
might serve temporarily to partition off compartments in the studio,
which would serve for sleeping-quarters with curtains in front. So here
at last the newspapers had what they wanted! Here was something
“suggestive,” and a coroner’s jury thrusting into it a remorseless
probe!
As it happened, in those curtained-off compartments there had slept an
elderly widow who had begged to be allowed to work for us in order to
educate her sixteen-year-old son—who slept in the compartment next to
her. Also there was an old Scotchman, an engineer who had come all the
way across the continent to take charge of our heating-plant; also a
young carpenter who was working on the place, and one or two others
whose names I forget, but all quite decent and honest working-people
whom we had come to know and respect. It is perfectly obvious that if
people wish to be decent, curtains are sufficient; whereas, if they wish
to be indecent, the heaviest doors will not prevent it: just as a woman
can behave herself in a scanty bathing-suit, or can misbehave herself
though clad in elaborate court-costume. These considerations, however,
were not presented to the readers of the “New York Evening World” and
the “New York Evening Journal.” What they got were the obscene hints of
a village horse-doctor, confirming their impression that Socialists are
moral lepers.
There were forty adults at Helicon Hall, and they did not live together
six months without some gossip and some unpleasantness. There was a
young workingman who spouted crude ideas on sex, to the indignation of
our two pretty Irish girls, and he was asked to shut up or to leave.
There was a certain doctor, not a Socialist, but an entirely
conventional capitalist gentleman, who left of his own accord after
asking one of the pretty Irish girls to visit his office. Also there was
a man who fell in love with another man’s wife. You cannot run a
hotel—not even a co-operative hotel—without such things happening. Every
hotel-manager knows it, and counts himself lucky indeed if nothing worse
happens. I was told by one of those in charge of the Waldorf-Astoria in
New York that there sits on every floor a woman-clerk whose duty it is
to see who goes into whose room. Quite recently I had dinner in a
certain gorgeous and expensive leisure-class hotel in Southern
California, and heard some young men of the world, guests of the hotel,
discussing what was going on there: the elderly ladies of fashion who
were putting paint on their cheeks and cutting their dresses half-way
down their backs, and making open efforts to seduce these young men; the
young matrons of the hotel, who disappeared for trips into the mountain
canyons near by; the married lady of great wealth, who had been in
several scandals, who caroused all night with half a dozen soldiers and
sailors, supplying them with all the liquor they wanted in spite of the
law, and who finally was asked to leave the hotel—not because of this
carousing, but because she failed to pay her liquor bills.
All this goes on in our fashionable resorts, from California to Florida
via Lake Michigan and Newport. It goes on, and everybody in the hotels
knows that it is going on, including the management of the hotels; but
do you read anything about it in the newspapers? Only when it gets into
the law-courts; and then you get only the personal details—never the
philosophy of it. Never are such facts used to prove that the capitalist
system is a source of debauchery, prostitution, drunkenness and disease;
that it breaks up the home, and makes true religion and virtue
impossible!
For the most part what you read about these leisure-class hotels in the
newspapers is elaborate advertisements of the hotels and their
attractions, together with fatuous and servile accounts of the social
doings of the guests: columns and columns of stuff about them, what they
eat and what they drink and what they wear, what games they play and
what trophies they win, how much money they have, and what important
positions they fill in the world, and their opinions on every subject
from politics to ping-pong. They are “society”; they are the people who
own the world, and for whom the world exists, and in every
newspaper-office there is a definite understanding that so long as these
people keep out of the law-courts, there shall be published no
uncomplimentary news concerning them.
I will finish with the subject of Helicon Hall while I am on it. Seven
years later I found myself involved in the Colorado coal-strike,
fighting to break down the boycott of the capitalist newspapers. A group
of young radicals endeavored to tell the story of the Ludlow massacre at
a street meeting in Tarrytown, New York, the home of the Rockefellers.
They were arrested and thrown into jail, and I started a campaign in
Tarrytown to set them free. Under these circumstances I became the
object of venomous attacks by the local paper, the “Tarrytown News”; in
one of its editorials the “News” declared that my home in Englewood, New
Jersey, had been raided by the police on account of “free-love”
practices; and this statement was reprinted by other papers. I was
pretty cross at the time, because of a series of outrages which I had
witnessed, so I caused the arrest of the editors of the “Tarrytown News”
for criminal libel. By a curious coincidence I found myself involved
once more with a village horse-doctor—not the horse-doctor of Englewood,
New Jersey, but the horse-doctor of Tarrytown, New York. Readers of
“King Coal” will find him portrayed as the justice of the peace with
whom the hero has an interview.
This judicial horse-doctor issued warrants, and appointed the day of the
trial, and a number of my Helicon Hall friends agreed to come. But one
was ill and another was called away, and my lawyer arranged with the
lawyers of the other side for a week’s postponement. Such agreements
between lawyers are always considered matters of honor with the
profession, but in this case, when we appeared before the judicial
horse-doctor to have the postponement arranged, the lawyers of the other
side repudiated their agreement. So we found ourselves in a trap—ordered
to proceed to trial without a single witness. Of course we refused to
proceed, and the defendants were discharged.
However, I still had the right of civil action, and of this right I
prepared to avail myself. The attorneys for the “News”—as they
afterwards told me themselves—made a thorough search of my life, and
found nothing to help them. So they were willing to publish a retraction
and an apology. There was no doubt that I could have made the “News” pay
a very pretty price; but I had not brought the suit for money, and I
agreed to let them off. The retraction was published on the front page
of the “News,” but of course it was not published anywhere else, and
there are probably not a dozen people today who know about it. Mark
Twain, I believe, is author of the saying that a lie can run all the way
round the earth while the truth is putting on its shoes.
I find that wherever people still remember Helicon Hall, it is some of
these old newspaper falsehoods they remember, and never our earnest
effort to show the economies of domestic co-operation. Even the genial
O. Henry—who, being an American, got his ideas about life from the
newspapers. “Say, do I look like I’d climbed down one of them missing
fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?” inquires the sarcastic James Turner,
cleaner of hats, in the story, “What you Want.”
On my desk there lies a copy of the “Moving Picture World” for April 19,
1919. Somebody has produced a moving picture film out of a book by the
Irreverend Thomas Dixon, and the magazine tells the managers of moving
picture theaters how to work up interest and make a “clean-up” on this
film. “Put up red flags about the town and hire soldiers to tear them
down, if necessary,” advises the “Moving Picture World.” This picture,
“Bolshevism on Trial,” has a sublime patriotic motive. “Columbia’s sword
is unsheathed to keep Bolshevism from the Land of the Free,” proclaims
the article. And it furthermore informs us that the picture “promises to
be one of the clean-up pictures of the season.” The “Moving Picture
World” thinks that it “might profitably be given Government support, for
it is a powerful argument in controverting the dream-talk of the
Socialists.” It advises you to “get local patriotic societies to help.”
“Work all of the crowd stunts,” it urges; and in giving elaborate
details of a press campaign, it says:
Work gradually to the contention that Socialism will not be possible
in this or the succeeding generation because people are not yet
prepared for liberty such as Socialism aims at. Later work in allusion
to the feature of the limited experiment made by Upton Sinclair some
years ago at Halycon Hall, where the community idea fell because all
wanted to live without working. All of this should be worked under a
pseudonym.
The above, you must understand, is not an advertisement, but is reading
matter in the country’s leading motion picture journal. It gives you a
fair idea of the intellectual attainments and moral standards of the men
who supply the material by which our children’s imaginations are
stimulated and developed.
CHAPTER XIII
IN HIGH SOCIETY
I had written a book showing what was going on at one end of the social
scale. It now occurred to me to write a book showing what was going on
at the other end. Who spent the money wrung from the wage-slaves of the
Stockyards, and what did they spend it for? So came “The Metropolis,”
whose adventures I have next to tell.
The dramatization of “The Jungle” had brought me into touch with a
play-broker, Arch Selwyn, who has since become a well-known producer of
plays. We were having lunch at some hotel on Broadway, talking about our
play-business, when I happened to mention the new novel I was writing.
“Say! That’s the real thing!” said Arch. “What you want to do is to get
on the inside of that society game. Get a job in one of those Long
Island country homes, and treat them to a real muck-raking!” We spent
some time “joshing” one another over this idea. I was to get a job as
steward on Howard Gould’s yacht! Arch, who had a tendency toward
stoutness, was to assist me by butlering in one of the Vanderbilt
palaces!
Arch was chummy with a man named Rennold Wolf, who wrote gossip for the
“Morning Telegraph,” organ of the “Tenderloin” and the sporting world of
New York. To my consternation, there appeared in the “Telegraph” next
morning a news-item with these headlines:
UPTON SINCLAIR PUTS ON LIVERY
Other Servants at “The Breakers,” the Vanderbilt Home in Newport,
Catch Him Taking Notes
“JUNGLE’S” AUTHOR EJECTED
And in the detailed story which followed it was set forth that I had
also been employed as a steward on Howard Gould’s yacht. The concluding
sentence read:
He says that he was ready to leave, inasmuch as he already had
absorbed the salient features of Newport culture.
Now there are three or four main press-agencies whereby news from New
York goes out to the rest of the world. I have shown how in the case of
the “condemned meat industry” these news-channels became a concrete
wall. Here suddenly this concrete wall collapsed and became a channel.
In Vancouver and Buenos Aires, in Johannesburg and Shanghai and
Auckland, people read next morning that the author of “The Jungle” had
been listening at the keyhole on board the private yacht of an American
millionaire. I wrote an indignant letter to the “Morning Telegraph,”
denouncing the story and demanding that they should publish a
retraction. They published it—in an obscure corner. I took the trouble
myself to forward this letter to all the press agencies which had sent
out the story; but the news channels had again become concrete walls.
To show what our press has done to my literary work, let me say that in
small countries such as Norway and Denmark and New Zealand I have more
readers than in the whole of the United States. A single book of mine,
“Sylvia’s Marriage,” which in America sold two thousand copies in five
years, sold in Great Britain forty-three thousand copies in two years.
And sometimes I wonder what all these people abroad must think about me,
after fifteen years’ operation of the news channel and concrete wall!
I wonder—and then there comes to me the memory of an incident which
happened in Holland. I had rented the home of a peasant-family in the
country, and was much troubled by fleas, due to a custom of the
Hollanders of keeping their cattle and goats in the rear portions of
their homes during the winter. I tried insect powders and sulphur fumes
in vain, and finally decided upon a desperate remedy. I went to an
apothecary and told him that I wanted five pounds of cyanide of
potassium and a couple of quarts of sulphuric acid. I remember well his
look of dismay. “My dear sir! What—what—” I told him that I was aware of
the danger, and would seal up the house for several days, and take all
due precautions. They are a polite people, these Hollanders, the most
considerate I have ever met, and the apothecary’s comment was a
beautiful combination of terseness and tact. “Here in Holland,” said he,
“we should say that was a characteristically American procedure.”—And so
I suppose it must be with my readers abroad. They would not expect a
European author to go prying at key-holes on board a private yacht; but
when they read it in a dispatch from New York, they say what the Dutch
chemist said about cyanogen gas as a remedy for fleas.
The charge has been made so many times that “The Metropolis” is a book
of servants’ gossip that it might be well to state that there is no
detail in the book which was derived in any such way. The newspapers
which labored so desperately to discredit the book pointed out that
while it was possible for anyone to go into the Stockyards and see what
was going on, it was not possible for anyone to go into “society.” They
saw fit to overlook the fact that I myself had been brought up in what
is called “society”—or at least on the edge of it, with the right to
enter whenever I chose. My earliest boyhood recollections have to do
with young ladies being prepared for début parties or for weddings,
discussing the material for costumes, and the worldly possessions of
various “eligible” young men, and whether so and so’s grandfather was a
grocer. I cannot remember the time that I was too young to abhor
“society,” its crass materialism, its blindness to everything serious
and truly sacred in life.
Also, contrary to the general impression, it is not in the least
difficult to meet the New York “smart set,” if you happen to be a
celebrity. As the late John L. Sullivan remarked about Grover Cleveland:
“A big man is a big man. It don’t matter if he is a prize-fighter or a
president.” I remember once asking Arthur Brisbane how he managed to
hobnob with the Long Island “smart set,” when he was attacking their
financial interests so frequently. He answered that they esteemed
success, and cared very little how it had been gained.
You must understand that the members of this “smart set” are bored most
of the time. They go hunting wild animals all over the world; they fly
in airplanes, and break their necks chasing imitation foxes; they
collect porcelains and postage stamps, Egyptian scarabs and Japanese
prints; they invite prize-fighters and vaudeville artists and European
noblemen—anything in the world to escape boredom. Do you suppose they
would resist the temptation of a novelist whose bloody horrors had sent
shudders along their spines?
You have read how hunters on the plains are accustomed to draw antelope
to them. They stand on their heads and kick their heels in the air, and
the timid, curious creatures peer wonderingly, and come nearer and
nearer to gaze at the startling spectacle. And precisely so it was with
me; after “The Jungle” came out, and even after it was known that I was
writing “The Metropolis,” I used to see the sharp ears and soft brown
eyes of timid and curious society antelopes peering at me through the
curtained windows of Fifth Avenue mansions and Long Island
country-places. All I had to do was to go on kicking my heels in the
air, and they would come out of their hiding-places and draw nearer and
nearer—until at last I might leap to my feet and seize my rifle and
shoot them.
I can say truly that I did not break any game-laws in “The Metropolis.”
The ladies whom I drew from real life—for example, “Mrs. Vivie Patton”
and “Mrs. Billy Alden”—were ladies who let me understand that they were
“game”; they lived to be conspicuous, and they would not be distressed
to have it rumored that they figured in my novel.
Some extracts from “The Metropolis” were published serially by the
“American Magazine.” The editors of the magazine opened negotiations
with the “New York Times,” offering to give them the exclusive story of
this sensational serial. Van Anda, managing editor of the “Times,” is a
newspaper man, and made preparations for another big scoop, as in the
case of the “condemned meat industry.” But this time, alas, he reckoned
without his owner! Mr. Adolph Ochs happened in at one o’clock in the
morning, and discovered a three or four column story about “The
Metropolis” on the front page of the “Times.” It was not so bad for
Upton Sinclair to attack a great industry of Chicago, but when it came
to the sacred divinities of New York, that was another matter. The story
was “killed”; and incidentally, Upton Sinclair was forbidden ever again
to be featured by the “New York Times.” The law laid down that night has
been enforced for twelve years!
The editors of the “American Magazine” had expected to create a
sensation, but they were not prepared for the storm of abuse which fell
upon “The Metropolis,” and upon them for publishing it. I was surprised
myself by the way in which those who posed as men of letters dropped
their literary camouflage, their pretenses of academic aloofness, and
flung themselves into the class-struggle. It is a fact with which every
union workingman is familiar, that his most bitter despisers are the
petty underlings of the business world, the poor office-clerks, who are
often the worst exploited of proletarians, but who, because they are
allowed to wear a white collar and to work in the office with the boss,
regard themselves as members of the capitalist class. In exactly the
same way I now discovered that every penny-a-liner and hack-writer in
newspaperdom regarded himself or herself as a member of “society,” and
made haste to prove it by pouring ridicule upon “The Metropolis.” Mrs.
Corra Harris, a Southern authoress of rigid propriety, wrote an article
about me in “The Independent,” in which she hailed me as the “buzzard
novelist,” and went on to say that I had listened at the keyhole on
Howard Gould’s yacht. “The Independent” printed my answer, which was
that I had been following my career as “buzzard novelist” for many
years, and had yet to be accused of a falsehood, but that Mrs. Harris,
at the very opening of her career as buzzard critic, had repeated a
grotesque falsehood which I had denied again and again.
I am not proud of “The Metropolis” as a work of art; I was ill and
desperately harassed when I wrote it, and I would not defend it as
literature. But as a picture of the manners and morals of the “smart
set” of New York, I am prepared to defend it as a mild statement of the
truth. I have been charged with exaggeration in the prices I quoted, the
cost of the orgies of the “smart set.” These prices I had verified, not
from the columns of the yellow journals, but by the inspection of bills.
I was accused of crudeness in mentioning prices, because in “society” it
is not good form to mention them. I would answer that this is one of the
shams which “society” seeks to impose upon the wondering multitude. I
have never anywhere heard such crude talk about the prices of things and
the worldly possessions of people as I have heard among the idle rich in
New York. And even if “society” were as austere and free from vulgarity
as it wishes the penny-a-liners and hack-writers to believe, that would
make no difference to me; for if people are squandering the blood and
tears of the poor in luxury and wantonness, it does not seem to me such
a great virtue that they avoid referring to the fact.
Also the critics were cross with the hero of the novel; they said he was
a prig; he ought to have been really tempted by the charms of the lovely
“Mrs. Winnie Duval.” Well, I don’t know. I planned the book as the first
of a trilogy, meaning to show the real temptations to which men are
exposed in the Metropolis of Mammon. It happened to me, not once, but
several times, to meet with an experience such as I have portrayed in
the “Mrs. Winnie” scene, and I never found it any particular temptation.
The real temptation of the great Metropolis is not the exquisite ladies
with unsatisfied emotions; it is that if you refuse to bow the knee to
the Mammon of its Unrighteousness you become an outcast in the public
mind. You are excluded from all influence and power, you are denied all
opportunity to express yourself, to exercise your talents, to bring your
gifts to fruition. One of the reasons “The Metropolis” had a
comparatively small sale was because I had refused to do the
conventional thing—to show a noble young hero struggling in the net of
an elegant siren. The temptation I showed was that of the man’s world,
not of the woman’s; the temptation of Wall Street offices, not of Fifth
Avenue boudoirs. It was a kind of temptation of which the critics were
ignorant, and in which the public, alas, was uninterested.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GREAT PANIC
My investigations for “The Metropolis” had brought me several permanent
friendships; for there are true and gracious people in New York
“society,” as everywhere else. One of them was Edmond Kelly, who was not
only a thinker and writer of distinction, but an international lawyer,
known in all the capitals of Europe, and up to the time of his death the
only American who had received the cross of the Legion of Honor in
France. Kelly had been counsel for Anna Gould in her famous divorce
suit, and told me the incredible story of Count Boni de Castellane. “The
Metropolis” was being published in Paris, and causing a sensation there;
as I read the eulogies of the French critics, I used to smile to myself,
wondering what they would have said if I had made a book about the
manners and morals of French “society,” as seen through the eyes of
Edmond Kelly!
It happened that I was in New York in the fall of 1907, and was in
Kelly’s study late one evening. I had to wait an hour or two for him,
and he came in, deeply moved, and told me that he had just left the home
of an old friend, Charles T. Barney, President of the Knickerbocker
Trust Company, who was in dire distress. I had been reading in the
papers for a couple of days wild rumors of trouble in this institution,
which had built itself a miniature Greek temple at the corner of
Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Now I got the inside story of
what was going on. It appeared that the masters of high finance in New
York, of whom the late J. P. Morgan was king, had determined to break
these new institutions, the independent trust companies which were
creeping in upon their preserves. Morgan had deliberately led Barney
into entanglements, and had given him definite promise of support. That
night, when called upon by Barney, he had repudiated his pledge; so the
Knickerbocker Trust Company was doomed, several other trust companies
would go with it, and the whole financial structure of New York would be
shaken to the foundations. Kelly had promised even that late at night to
make appeals in Barney’s behalf, so I left him. Next morning I read in
the paper that an hour or two after Kelly had parted from him, the
President of the Knickerbocker Trust Company had shot himself through
the body.
So came the panic of 1907. Pierpont Morgan, having deliberately brought
it on to tighten his hold upon the credit of the country, discovered
that it was getting beyond his control, and by desperate efforts stopped
it—for which action he became the hero of Capitalist Journalism in
America. It happened that from two other independent sources I got the
story, every part of which dove-tailed together. So I went about the
streets of New York, knowing that this mighty master of finance, who was
being crowned as a deliverer, was in fact a greedy old ruffian who had
deliberately brought ruin to thousands of small business-men, and misery
and want to millions of workers.
I had Kelly’s permission to tell the story in the form of a thinly
veiled allegory, the meaning of which no one could possibly miss. I took
the proposition to the “American Magazine,” which signed a contract with
me to publish the story as a serial. I set to work to write it, but
meantime the “American Magazine” must have begun to hear from Wall
Street. It was not very long before John S. Phillips, editor of the
magazine, was sending for me and pleading with me as a personal favor to
let him off from this contract. I did so, and so ends the chapter of my
dealings with another of our great organs of publicity.
I know no more pitiful story in the history of our Journalism than that
of the “American Magazine.” It was founded because Lincoln Steffens, Ida
Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker and Finley Peter Dunne found they were no
longer permitted to tell the truth in “McClure’s.” They purchased the
“American,” assuming a debt of four hundred thousand dollars. Soon
afterwards one of the assistant editors told me that they were having
trouble in meeting their interest payments; and then came a crisis,
plainly revealed in their columns. The magazine had begun the
publication of a sensational series of articles, “Barbarous Mexico,” by
John Kenneth Turner. These articles, since published in book form, and a
second time suppressed, gave an intimate, first-hand account of the
ferocities of the Diaz régime, under which American “dollar diplomats”
were coining enormous fortunes. The “American” began the publication
with a grand hurrah; it published two or three of the articles, and then
suddenly it quit, with a feeble and obviously dishonest excuse—and poor
Turner had to take his articles to that refuge of suppressed
muck-rakers, the “Appeal to Reason.”
There must have been some crisis in the office of the magazine. Somebody
had evidently had a “show-down,” the editors had been “taught their
place.” Ever since then they have been a theme for tears. Ida Tarbell,
who had torn the wrappings off the infamies of Standard Oil, has
forgotten the subject, while Standard Oil, after a sham reorganization,
has almost doubled the value of its stock, and more than doubled its
plundering of the public. Ray Stannard Baker, who exposed the financial
knaveries of the Beef Trust, shed his muck-raker skin and metamorphosed
himself into “David Grayson,” a back-to-the-land sentimentalist—and this
while the Beef Trust has multiplied four times over the profits it takes
out of the necessities of a war-torn world! Finley Peter Dunne, who
contributed the satires of Mr. Dooley and that withering ridicule of the
idle rich under the name of “Mr. Worldly-Wise Man,” has apparently
fallen silent from shame. Lincoln Steffens, the one man who stood by his
convictions, quit the magazine, and now cannot get his real opinions
published anywhere. The “American Magazine,” which started out to
reclaim the industrial and political life of our country, is now
publishing articles about how a little boy raises potatoes in a
cigar-box, and how a man can become a millionaire by cobbling his own
shoes.
I write these words in anger; but then I remember my pledge—the exact
facts! So I go to the library and take down the first bound volume my
hand touches. Here are the titles of a few “special articles” and
“feature stories” from the “American Magazine” for January, 1918: “How
We Decide When to Raise a Man’s Salary.” “What to Do with a Bad Habit.”
“Are You Going Somewhere—or Only Wandering Around?” “The Comic Side of
Trouble.” “Do You Laugh at the Misfortunes of Others?” “The
Business-Woman and the Powder Puff: The personal story of one who has
made a success and thinks she knows the reason why.” “What I Have Seen
Booze Do.” “Interesting People: A Wonderful Young Private Secretary.” “A
Barber Who Uses His Head.” “The Star in a ‘One-Girl Show’.” “From
Prize-Fighter to Parson.”
Now I ask you: could any muck-raker in a rage make up a list of titles
more completely expressive of vulgarity, commercialism and general
“bunk” than the above real ones?
I was at this time planning the sequel to “The Metropolis,” called “The
Money-changers.” The story of the 1907 panic fitted perfectly into my
purposes, and so I made it the basis of this novel. Needless to say, I
couldn’t get the “American Magazine” or any other magazine to publish it
serially, nor could I get any respectable publishing-house to take up
the book. I was forced to go to a fifth-rate concern, which afterwards
went into bankruptcy. By the literary reviewers I was now practically
boycotted; I had written a book of scandal, I had declassed myself as a
man-of-letters. The fact that every word I had written was the truth,
and that the men I pilloried were the plunderers of a great nation, made
no difference whatever to the austere guardians of our literary
traditions.
Since the year 1908, when “The Money-changers” was published, it has
been the rule of American literary authorities that in discussions of
American novelists my name is not mentioned. In 1914 Georg Brandes, the
greatest of living critics, visited America, and to reporters at the
steamer he made the statement that there were three American novelists
whom he found worth reading, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Upton
Sinclair. Every New York newspaper except one quoted Dr. Brandes as
saying that there were _two_ American novelists he found worth reading,
Frank Norris and Jack London. Dr. Brandes was puzzled by this incident,
and asked me the reason; when I told him, he consented to write a
preface to my next novel, “King Coal.” He spoke so highly of the book
that I refrain from quoting him. But did his praise make any difference
to American critics? It did not.
All the publicity “The Money-changers” got was from our “yellow”
journals. The reader will understand that I despise these “yellows”;
they are utterly without honor, they are vulgar and cruel; and yet, in
spite of all their vices, I count them less dangerous to society than
the so-called “respectable” papers, which pretend to all the virtues,
and set the smug and pious tone for good society—papers like the “New
York Tribune” and the “Boston Evening Transcript” and the “Baltimore
Sun,” which are read by rich old gentlemen and maiden aunts, and can
hardly ever be forced to admit to their columns any new or vital event
or opinion. These are “kept” papers, in the strictest sense of the term,
and do not have to hustle on the street for money. They serve the
pocketbooks of the whole propertied class—which is the meaning of the
term “respectability” in the bourgeois world. On the other hand the
“yellow” journals, serving their own pocketbooks exclusively, will often
print attacks on vested wealth, provided the attacks are startling and
sensational, and provided the vested wealth in question is not a heavy
advertiser. An illustration of what I mean is the following, which
appeared in the “New York American” for September 6, 1908:
U. S. NAVY ADMITS ROTTEN ARMOR
Carnegie Co.’s Profit, $700,000
ADMIRAL MASON SAYS OREGON NOW CARRIES 400 TONS
Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Others Also Have Defective Plates
FACTS HIDDEN 15 YEARS
Revelations in Upton Sinclair’s New Novel Are Fully Verified
Washington, Sept. 5—Rear-Admiral W. P. Mason, Chief of the Bureau of
Ordnance, in an interview today admitted that the battleship Oregon,
once the pride of the United States Navy, has carried since the day
she was built 400 tons of defective armor plate.
In addition the naval authorities reluctantly told that the conning
tower of the Oregon, which by expert testimony nearly fifteen years
ago was shown to be full of blowholes, is still on this vessel, which
may any day be called in defending the country against an enemy.
It is also known that the armor manufactured by the Carnegie Steel
Company, Limited, up to the latter part of 1893, which Hilary A.
Herbert, then Secretary of the Navy, recommended be stripped from the
Indiana, New York, Massachusetts and several other smaller vessels has
never been removed.
The investigation made by the “American” was prompted by the assertion
in Upton Sinclair’s new book “The Money-changers,” that “there are
ships in our navy covered with rotten armor plate that was sold to the
Government for four or five times what it cost.”
Referring to the investigation in 1893–94, which resulted in the
celebrated armor plate scandal, the author says: “Nothing much was
ever done about it. The Government could not afford to let the real
facts get out. But, of course, the insiders in the navy knew about it,
and the memory will last as long as the ships last.”
This part of the book is a bitter attack on several well-known men who
have been connected for years with the steel industry, and whose
identity it is easy to trace. It charges that at the time of the armor
plate scandal they bought out the Democratic party and secured the
support of a President of the United States.
And here is part of a second dispatch, which appeared in the “New York
World” the following day. It is amusing to note how these two rivals,
the “World” and the “American,” follow each other up!
Lake Placid, N. Y., Sept. 6—In an interview given by him today, after
he had been informed by his publishers and a representative of the
“World” of a report from Pittsburgh that William E. Corey, President
of the U. S. Steel Corporation, is to proceed against him for libel,
basing his action on charges contained in his new novel, Upton
Sinclair, who is spending the summer at Lake Placid, defied the “Steel
Crowd,” as he designated Mr. Corey and his associates, to do their
worst.
Mr. Sinclair declared he would welcome legal action on the part of Mr.
Corey, because it would give him an opportunity to place on record
evidence which he declares is in his possession concerning alleged
fraudulent acts of the steel men.
“I have not as many documents as I once had,” said Mr. Sinclair; “I
have not been able to replace some that were burned at Helicon Hall;
but I have more than Mr. Corey would care to see in print, I fancy.”
Mr. Sinclair said that among other documents in his possession before
the destruction of Helicon Hall by fire, were affidavits and other
papers pertaining to alleged fraudulent practices in connection with
the manufacture of steel rails.
“I took the trouble,” said he “to go out to Pittsburgh. I spent a
couple of weeks investigating. I had affidavits to prove that these
practices prevailed in the case of steel rails, a year or two before
E. H. Harriman gave out his statement as to the wretched quality of
rails which the Steel Trust was selling his railroads. I can tell Mr.
Harriman, too, that his own purchasing officials were not ignorant
about it.”
All this, of course, had little to do with literature. But it had
something to do with Journalism, had it not? It had to do with matters
of vital importance to the American people—battleships that could not
fight, and steel rails that cracked and caused train-wrecks. How came it
that all our organs of “respectability” kept silence, and left these
grave matters to the despised “yellow” press?
CHAPTER XV
SHREDDED WHEAT BISCUIT
I had all but ruined my health by overwork, and I now went to California
for a winter’s rest. I rested a couple of months, and then wrote three
one act plays. Having received a couple of thousand dollars from “The
Money-changers,” I decided to try out a plan which had haunted me for
many years, that of establishing a Socialist theatrical enterprise.
There were fifteen hundred Socialist locals throughout the United
States, some of them large organizations. Would not they welcome a
little travelling company, voicing the ideas which were barred from the
commercial stage? I began to organize and rehearse such a company in San
Francisco. And so came new adventures with the newspapers.
First, the famous Adventure of the Shredded Wheat Biscuit. It must be
explained that I was trying queer ideas in diet; I have always been of
an experimental temperament, and was willing to try anything in the hope
of solving the health problem, which I have since realized is
insoluble—there being no diet or system of any sort which will permit a
man to overwork with impunity. In California I was living on raw food,
and had written some articles about it in “Physical Culture.” When I had
to eat in San Francisco hotels I could not get raw food, of course, but
at least I wanted whole wheat bread, or failing that, Shredded Wheat
Biscuit. All of which, needless to say, was highly amusing to hotel
proprietors and newspaper reporters.
I was staying at the St. Francis, and I ordered a meal in the
restaurant, from a menu which specified “One Shredded Wheat Biscuit with
cream, 25c; Two Shredded Wheat Biscuit with cream, 40c.” I ordered One
Shredded Wheat Biscuit, and after I had eaten it I wanted another, so I
told the waiter to make it two. When I received the bill it showed fifty
cents, and I pointed out to the waiter that this was an error, it should
have been forty cents; I had had only one portion of cream. The waiter
consulted and returned with the information that inasmuch as the order
had been placed in the form of two orders, the bill was twenty-five
cents each. I paid the bill without further comment, but going out into
the lobby I reflected that it was rather preposterous to charge
twenty-five cents for a Shredded Wheat Biscuit, when you could go around
the corner to a grocery-store and buy a dozen in a box for ten or
fifteen cents. My abnormal sense of equity vented itself in a brief note
to the management, stating that I had been charged fifty cents for two
Shredded Wheat Biscuit, when the price on the menu was forty cents, and
I would appreciate having my extra ten cents returned to me. This note I
handed to the clerk, and there my knowledge of the matter ends. I am not
in position to say that the management of the Hotel St. Francis turned
over my note to the “San Francisco Examiner.” I can only say that I did
not mention the matter to anyone, and that all I did was to write the
note, seal it in an envelope, and hand it to the clerk at the desk.
I understand, of course, that hotels have to have publicity. People are
arriving in the city by thousands every day, and the problem of what
hotels they go to depends upon what hotels they hear about. If a great
soap-magnate or lard-king is visiting the St. Francis, the management
makes haste to notify the reporters, and there is published a dignified
interview with the soap-magnate or lard-king, giving his opinion of the
market-prospects for soap or lard, and the need of a higher tariff on
such commodities. If a notorious Socialist muck-raker is visiting the
St. Francis, and it is discovered that he orders Waldorf salads and
Shredded Wheat Biscuit and suchlike foods for monkeys and squirrels—why,
then the management perceives an opportunity for publicity of a gay and
cheerful nature. San Francisco, you understand, prides itself upon being
a place of Bohemianism, of bonhomie; San Francisco had more saloons in
proportion to its population than any other city in America, and more
venereal disease than Paris—so I was told by a Stanford professor. San
Francisco must have its little jokes.
Next morning there appeared in the “San Francisco Examiner” a “feature
story” to the effect that Upton Sinclair had ordered two Shredded Wheat
Biscuit in the dining-room of the Hotel St. Francis, and when rendered a
bill for twenty-five cents had refused to pay it and had raised a
disturbance in the dining-room. Immediately, of course, the great
concrete wall turned into a news-channel once again, and people in
Vancouver and Buenos Aires, in Johannesburg and Shanghai and Auckland,
who had last heard of Upton Sinclair as working as a steward on Howard
Gould’s yacht, now heard of him as raising a disturbance over Shredded
Wheat Biscuit in a hotel dining-room. “Upton Sinclair Rages,” runs the
headline in the “Los Angeles Examiner.” An actress by the name of Rose
Stahl was playing up in Seattle, and her publicity man must have seen an
opportunity to “get in on the game.” In the afternoon paper there
appeared a story to the effect that Rose Stahl had telegraphed me
twenty-five cents with which to pay for my Shredded Wheat Biscuit. Rose
Stahl did not actually send me the twenty-five cents; at any rate I
never received it; she merely gave out the story that she was sending
it, and the concrete wall remained a news-channel long enough to convey
this report.
I stop and wonder: will my readers find it possible to believe these
tales? So many, many things happening to one man! There is something
suspicious about it—where there is so much smoke, surely there must have
been at least one tiny spark of fire! Did I not really raise a
disturbance, just the tiniest little bit of a disturbance—such as would
have caused the people at the next table to desist from their
conversation and look at me?
All that I can do is to remind the reader of the pledge I gave at the
beginning of this book: I am telling the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. Not only did I not raise a disturbance in the
dining-room of the Hotel St. Francis, I never in my life raised a
disturbance in a public dining-room, nor in any other public place so
far as I can recollect. The one act that might be called a “disturbance”
was that which I performed in front of the office of John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., during the Colorado coal-strike; it consisted of
walking up and down in absolute silence with a band of crepe around my
arm. On several other occasions I have made Socialist speeches, and the
newspapers have seen fit to write these up as if they were disturbances;
but I have never in my life engaged in any sort of altercation or
controversy in a public place. I am by instinct shy, and I don’t go into
public at all, except I am carried by some conviction. As a little boy I
got into one or two fights, and got a bloody nose each time, but since
the age of eleven or twelve I have never struck a human being, and can
only remember threatening to do so on one occasion—in a public park,
when I saw an old bootblack beating a very small boy. As for raising a
disturbance with a waiter, I can only say that when a poor wage-slave in
a leisure-class hotel brings me an improper bill, my impulse is to give
him, not a scolding, but an I. W. W. tract. My anger is reserved for the
management of the hotel which is robbing me, and I give vent to this
anger in a polite letter, which causes the management to rob me still
further. As Shakespeare says:
Who steals my purse steals trash;
But he that filches from me my good Name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And leaves me poor indeed.
My wife reads this story, and laughs; she says the world will find me
comical, defending myself so very solemnly against a comical charge.
Well, I am not without a sense of humor; I look back in retrospect, and
have not a little fun over my “monkey diet” days. But I am serious in
this book, and if you will bear with me to the end, you will see why;
you will see this same predatory Journalism, which made a “monkey” out
of me, engaged in blasting the best hopes of mankind, and perpetuating
slavery and torment for hundreds of millions of people.
CHAPTER XVI
AN INTERVIEW ON MARRIAGE
Two or three days after the Shredded Wheat episode, there called on me a
pleasant lady who introduced herself as a friend of an old friend of
mine. She wanted to ask me some questions; and as I was just going in to
lunch and had an engagement immediately afterwards, I asked this lady to
lunch with me. It appeared that a man and woman in the city had
announced the completion of a five or ten years’ “trial marriage.” Would
I say what I thought about this couple, and about “trial marriages” in
general? I have always been willing to say what I thought about any
subject, so I explained that while I was not an advocate of “trial
marriages,” it was apparent that this couple were sincere, and one must
respect people who stood by their convictions in the face of prejudice
and ridicule.
I went on to talk to this lady on the subject of modern marriages. I
cannot, of course, state word for word what I said, but I know my views,
which have not changed in any way, so I can practically duplicate the
interview.
In any competitive society, woman is necessarily condemned to a position
of inferiority by the burdens of maternity; so, either she has to
suppress her love-nature and her desire for children, or she must find
some man who will take care of her. In a society whose standards are
pecuniary, that is to say, whose members are esteemed in proportion to
the amount of their worldly possessions, the average woman is forced
into a mercenary attitude toward love and marriage. In weighing the
various men who offer themselves, she will generally have to balance
money against love; and the more corrupt the society becomes—that is to
say, the greater the economic inequality—the more mercenary will become
the attitude of women, the more they will weigh money in the balance,
and the less they will weigh love. This is particularly true of the
older women, who know the world and the ways of the world, and who seek
to control the marriages made by their young.
In the course of this abstract discourse I gave some instances. I told
of a couple of mothers I had watched, marrying off their daughters to
what they called “eligible” men—that is to say, men who could support
the daughters in luxury. I said: “Those girls were practically sold.” I
told of a young girl being married to a hard and dull old business man.
I told of another young girl being married to a rich man who had
syphilis. I told of another young girl, who happened to be intimately
known to myself and my wife, who had been in the plight of a
school-teacher—that is to say, facing a life-time of drudgery, and the
ultimate breakdown of her health—and who had married a middle-aged
corrupt politician. We had watched the progress of this marriage. We
knew that the husband was unfaithful to his wife, and we knew that the
wife knew it, and we knew that for the sake of a home and fashionable
clothes she was parting with the finer qualities of her nature. Said I:
“We have seen this woman’s character deteriorating stage by stage; and
when we see things like that, it almost makes us feel ashamed of being
married.”
Now, of course, this was a foolish remark; but it was no worse than
foolish, was it? It wasn’t precisely criminal. But see what was done
with it!
I parted from the lady who had been my guest at lunch, and next morning,
January 30, 1909, a member of my little theatrical company called me up
in excitement and distress of mind, to ask had I seen that morning’s
“Examiner.” I obtained a copy, and on the front page I saw a picture of
myself and a picture of my wife—that stolen picture about which I have
previously told. The story had a scare headline reading:
UPTON SINCLAIR SORRY HE WED. SAYS CEREMONY IS FARCE
Underneath the pictures was the caption:
Upton Sinclair and the wife he declared yesterday he is sorry that he
married.
I will quote a few paragraphs from the article; you will appreciate the
jolly tone of it:
Upton Sinclair says he’s sorry he’s married.
He said it right out in a calm, matter-of-fact tone of voice, and the
waiter almost dropped the butter-plate, well trained as the particular
waiter who happened to be leaning over the back of Mr. Sinclair’s
chair with this particular butter-plate happened to be.
As Mr. Sinclair talked he threw a handful of California raisins into
his dish of Waldorf salad and watched with evident pleasure the
contrast of the dull purple of the raisins with the pale silver of the
celery and the gold of the aspic mayonnaise.
“Why am I so prejudiced against marriage? Why shouldn’t I be
prejudiced against it? You might as well ask me why I am so prejudiced
against slavery—or against thievery—or if it comes to that against
murder either. Marriage in this day is nothing but legalized—slavery;
that’s the most polite word to call it, I fancy. The average married
woman is bought and sold just exactly as much as any horse or any dog
is bought. Marriage—ough! It really isn’t a subject to be discussed at
the table!”
Needless to say, here was another occasion where the concrete wall
became a news-channel. This story was telegraphed to all the Hearst
newspapers, and published with the same photographs in New York, Boston,
Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The substance of it was telegraphed
abroad and laid before the readers of my books, not merely in England
and France and Germany and Norway and Sweden, but in South Africa and
Australia, in Yokohama and Hong Kong and Bombay. Please do not think
that I am just giving you a geography lesson; I made a memorandum at the
time concerning this particular story, which hurt me more than anything
that had ever happened to me.
It chanced that my three one-act plays were to have their opening
performance in San Francisco that evening. So when I was called on the
stage to make a speech, I spread out a copy of the “Examiner” and told
what had happened. Next morning the “Examiner” took up the cudgels, and
published an article by “Annie Laurie,” the interviewing lady,
upbraiding me for “playing the cry-baby” and refusing to stand by the
words that I had spoken. Thinking the matter over, I realized that quite
possibly “Annie Laurie” was partly sincere; she may have thought that
the interview she wrote represented me! She was so vulgar that she saw
no difference between the phrases I had used and the twist she had given
to them.
This misquotation by ignorant and vulgar reporters happens not merely to
muck-rakers and Socialist agitators; it happens to the most respectable
persons. For example, here is Professor J. Laurence Laughlin, of Chicago
University; he hides himself in the shade of his classic elms, and does
his best to preserve his dignity, but in vain. In an address to a
graduating class he urged the class “to seek a sense of form—in dress,
manners, speech and intellectual habits. In antithesis it was pointed
out that we had lived too long in a kingdom of slouch.” The New York
papers got it by telegraph in this fashion:
The wiggling, swaying movements of American women on the streets and
the stage have made them the ridicule of all Europe. They have a glide
and a wiggle that makes them both undignified and ungraceful.
Whereupon the horrified professor writes to the “New York Nation”:
Of course, I never said any such thing, but papers in all parts of the
country could not know that the report was stupid fiction, and that
the quotation marks were absolutely false. Yet in this form the above
vulgar paragraphs have gone the length and breath of the country as my
utterances.
To understand such incidents you must know the economics of reporting.
The person who misquoted Professor Laughlin was probably a student,
scratching for his next week’s board-bill, and knowing that he would get
two or three dollars for a startling story, and nothing at all for a
true story—it would be judged “dull,” and would be “ditched.” In my own
case, the person to blame was a “star writer”; she was working on a
fancy salary, earned by her ability to cook up sensations, to keep her
name and her picture on the front page. If this “star” had gone back to
her city editor and said, “Upton Sinclair is a good fellow; he gave me
an interesting talk about the corruption of modern marriages,” the
editor would have scented some preachment and said, “Well, give him two
sticks.” But instead she came into the office exclaiming, “Gee, I’ve got
a hot one! That fool muck-raker tore up his marriage certificate before
my eyes! He says that married women are sold like horses and he’s sorry
he’s married to his wife!” So the city editor exclaimed, “Holy
Smoke!”—seeing a story he could telegraph to the main offices in New
York and Chicago, thus attracting to himself the attention of the heads
of the Hearst machine.
For you must understand that while the city editor of the “San Francisco
Examiner” will be getting three or four thousand dollars a year, above
him are big positions of responsibility and power—Arthur Brisbane,
getting ninety or a hundred thousand, Ihmsen, Carvalho, von Hamm and the
rest, getting fifteen or twenty thousand. If you are to be lifted into
those higher regions, you must show one thing and one thing only; it is
called “a nose for news,” and it means a nose for the millions of
pennies which come pouring into the Hearst coffers every day. From top
to bottom every human being in the vast Hearst machine, man, woman and
office-boy, has every nerve and sinew stretched to the task of bringing
in that flood of pennies; each is fighting for a tiny bit of prestige, a
tiny addition to his personal share of the flood. And always, of course,
from top to bottom the thing to be considered is the million-headed
public—what will tickle its fancies, what particular words printed in
large red and black letters will cause it to pay out each day the
greatest possible number of pennies.
In conflict with such motives, considerations of honor, truth and
justice count for absolutely nothing. The men and women who turn out the
Hearst newspapers were willing, not merely to destroy my reputation,
they have been willing again and again to drive perfectly innocent men
and women to ruin and suicide, in order that the copper flood may
continue to pour in. They have been willing by deliberate and shameful
lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them
to murderous war. Mr. Hearst’s newspaper machine telegraphed that vile
misrepresentation of me all the way round the world; it telegraphed my
repudiation of it nowhere, and I was helpless in the matter. Millions of
people were caused to think of me as a vulgar and fatuous person—and
some of them were permitted to denounce me in Mr. Hearst’s own papers!
The following contribution by the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, a
sensational clergyman of New York, was featured in the “New York Evening
Journal” with large headlines and a portrait of the reverend
physiognomy:
Upton Sinclair seems to be a person so profusely developed on the
animal side that marriage is not able to be conceived of by him as
being other than a mere matter of commerce between two parties of
opposite sexes, and sex simply a principle that starts and stops at
the level of the physical without ever mounting up into the region of
intellect and spirit.
A pig will contemplate even a garden of flowers with a pig’s eye, and
instead of arranging those flowers into a bouquet will bore into them
with his snout.
Mr. Sinclair’s doctrine is that of free love, and matrimony a physical
luxury and an evanescent convenience.
This comes dangerously near to companioning him with the cattle and
makes the marriage relation an elegant reproduction of the nuptials of
the pasture.
Also I quote a few scattered sentences from a long editorial in the
“Commercial-Appeal” of Memphis, Tennessee, an extremely conservative
family newspaper, widely-read throughout the South:
A few years ago a young man by the name of Upton Sinclair wrote a
novel about Packingtown. We do not recall the name of the book; but it
should have been entitled “The Slaughterhouse.” It was just about the
most nauseating novel that has ever been written by an American. It
was a compound of blood and filth and slaughter, commingled with vice
and shame. It was the kind of a book to be handled with a pair of
tongs.... But recently Mr. Sinclair has aired his views upon
matrimony, and what he has to say is simply shocking to decency.... It
is hard for any decent person to understand such an attitude. If there
is any one thing that distinguishes man from cats and dogs and other
animals it is matrimony.... If Upton Sinclair’s offensive philosophy
should be embraced, it would mean the absolute destruction of family
life.... The Sinclair philosophy is the philosophy of lust and
animalism and it could only emanate from a diseased and perverted
mind.
I have quoted the above because there is a “human interest” story
connected with it, which will perhaps bring home to you the harm which
dishonest journalism does. For something like thirty years the “Memphis
Commercial-Appeal” has been read by the honorable and high-minded old
Southern gentleman who is now my father-in-law. Like all good Americans,
this gentleman believes what he reads in his morning paper; like most
busy Americans, he gets the greater part of his ideas about the world
outside from his morning paper. He read this editorial, and got a
certain impression of Upton Sinclair; and so you may imagine his
feelings when, two or three years later, he learned that his favorite
daughter intended to marry the possessor of this “diseased and perverted
mind.” He took the beautiful oil painting of his favorite daughter which
hangs in his drawing-room, and turned it to the wall. And that may bring
a smile to you, but it brought no smile to the parties concerned; for in
the South, you must understand, it is the custom for daughters to be
devotedly attached to their fathers, and also to be devotedly obedient
to their fathers. If you had seen the tears I saw, you would know that
this old gentleman’s daughter was not an exception to the rule.
And since we have started the subject, perhaps I might complete the
“human interest” story by stating that after all the tears had been shed
and the marriage was a couple of years in the past, I went down to visit
this old Southern gentleman. It was a queer introduction; because the
old gentleman was horribly embarrassed, and I, being impersonal and used
to being called bad names, had no idea of it. After we had chatted for
an hour or two I retired, and the daughter said: “Well, Papa, what do
you think of him?”
The old gentleman is quaintly shy and reticent, and had probably never
made an apology in his life before. He did it all in one sentence: “I
see I overspoke myself.”
CHAPTER XVII
“GAMING” ON THE SABBATH
I moved myself and family to the little single-tax colony at Arden,
Delaware, and spent a winter living in tents. The newspapers of
Philadelphia and Wilmington used Arden as the newspapers of New York had
used Helicon Hall—for purposes of comic relief. For the most part it was
not especially harmful publicity; it had to do with pageants and
mediaeval costumes and tennis tournaments and singing festivals. But
always there was ridicule, even though mild; and this was not a just
light in which to place a group of people who had a serious and useful
message to convey. I noticed that in their Arden stories the newspapers
carefully refrained from giving any hint of what the single tax meant,
or of why single taxers went to live in a colony. What got publicity was
the fact that one of the Arden boys built himself a screened
sleeping-place up in the branches of a big tree. “Arden Residents Roost
in Tree-Tops”! ran the headlines. I wasn’t roosting in tree-tops myself,
but the newspapers wanted pictures for this full-page story, and my
picture happened to be on hand, so in it went.
I was writing a book, and trying to keep well, and doing my honest best
to keep out of the “limelight”; but the fates were in a mood of special
waggery, it appeared, and came and dragged me out of my hiding-place.
Close upon the edge of Arden there dwelt an Anarchist philosopher, a
shoemaker hermit, whose greatest pleasure in life was to rise in public
meetings and in the presence of young girls explain his ideas on the
physiology of sex. The little Economic Club of Arden invited him to shut
up, and when he claimed the privileges of “free speech,” the club
excluded him from its meetings, and when he persisted in coming, had him
arrested. It happened that the members of this Economic Club were also
members of the baseball team, and they played a game on Sunday morning;
so the Anarchist shoemaker repaired to Wilmington and swore out
warrants, on the ground of their having violated an ancient statute,
dating back to 1793, forbidding “gaming” on the Sabbath. It happened
that I did not belong to the Economic Club, and had had nothing to do
with the trouble; but I had played tennis that Sabbath morning, so the
Anarchist shoemaker included me in his warrants. He told me afterwards
that he knew I would add publicity and “spice” to the adventure.
So behold us, eleven young men summoned to the office of a Wilmington
Justice of the Peace one evening, and finding the street packed solid
for a block, and people even climbing up telegraph poles and lamp-posts
to look in at the window and watch the proceedings. I am accused of
seeking notoriety, but on this occasion at least I may be acquitted of
the charge. A constable had appeared at my home and interrupted my
literary labors, with a notice to appear in this public spectacle, under
penalty of dire displeasure of the law!
The members of the Arden Athletic Association appointed me their
spokesman, and for an hour or two I labored to persuade the local
magistrate that “gaming” meant gambling and not playing tennis and
baseball. But the magistrate insisted that there was another statute
against gambling, and he had no option but to find us guilty, and to
fine us the sum of four dollars and costs, which amounted to a total of
one hundred and thirty-two dollars. A large part of this would go to the
magistrate and the constable, and we suspected that this was the basis
of his decision; therefore we declined to pay our fines, and accepted
the alternative of a jail-sentence. The limit under the law was
twenty-four hours. We received eighteen, it being mercifully provided
that our sentences should begin forthwith—at nine o’clock in the
evening. We invited the constable to an ice-cream parlor, and served
part of our sentence there, and another part of it taking a trolley-ride
to the Newcastle County Workhouse. We sang songs on the way, and the
motorman remarked that we were the happiest bunch of convicts he had
ever taken to the institution.
This is a book on Journalism, and not on prison-reform, so I will be
brief. We spent the night in cells which were swarming with vermin and
had filthy, stinking toilets; we were served food which was unfit for
animals, and we spent seven or eight hours working on a rock-pile under
the charge of men, some of whom were brutal and dishonest. This was the
state prison of Delaware, as well as the county workhouse, and it held
three or four hundred men, white and black, some twenty of them serving
life-sentences, working in a clothing-factory under a sweatshop
contractor. The prison had been recently built, and was advertised as a
model one, yet there was no exercise-court or spot where men serving
life-sentences could get a glimpse of the sunlight or a breath of fresh
air!
When we came out from the jail we were met by twenty-two newspaper
reporters and three camera-men, and everything we had to say took the
front page, top of column. Incidentally, I got a curious revelation. For
years I had written poetry, and had never been able to get it published;
but now I found that by the simple device of writing it in jail, I could
get it on the front page of every newspaper in Philadelphia and New
York! The poem was “The Menagerie,” which you may find in “The Cry for
Justice,” if you are interested. I had lain on the floor of my cell all
night, listening to the sounds which echoed through the long steel
corridors. I quote two lines:
And then in sudden stillness mark the sound—
Some beast that rasps his vermin-haunted hide.
When my cell-mate, Berkeley Tobey, read those lines, he remarked:
“That’s me!” To which I answered: “Tobey, that’s you!”
What we told about conditions in that jail made an uproar in Delaware.
There was still more uproar because the Anarchist shoemaker was
threatening to have us arrested every Sunday, if the Economic Club
continued to exclude him from its meetings; and we made investigation
and discovered that members of the Wilmington Country Club, including
the Attorney General of the State and the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, were accustomed to play golf on Sunday. We served notice that we
would employ detectives and have them all arrested and sent to the
Newcastle County Workhouse every Monday, so that they might discover
what it meant to be confined in a place with no exercise-court and no
chance for a glimpse of sunlight or breath of fresh air. The magistrates
of Wilmington held a private conference and decided that they would
issue no more warrants upon the charge of “gaming on the Sabbath.” Also
the prison commissioners of Newcastle County held a meeting and decided
that they had been intending all along to add an exercise-court to the
prison.
Here was a case where I got publicity from the newspapers; yet the
reader will note, I do not show much gratitude. This story took the
front page, not because the newspapers cared anything about conditions
in the Newcastle County Workhouse, but solely because the story was
funny. Van Valkenburg, publisher of the “Philadelphia North American,”
told a friend of mine that it was the funniest newspaper story he
remembered in his entire experience. And of course the facts about the
jail conditions were an inseparable part of the fun. What “made” the
story was precisely this—that eleven clean and well-educated and refined
young idealists were taken and shut up all night in steel cells, were
put in prison clothes and set to work on a stone-pile. The fact that the
cells were alive with lice could not be omitted, if you were to
appreciate the joke on a well-known charity-worker of Philadelphia, now
advertising manager of the “New Republic,” who figured in a poem as
“some beast that rasps his vermin-haunted hide.” The fact that the food
served in the jail was vile was necessary to set off the joke that the
author of “The Jungle” had made a bolt for an ice-cream parlor as soon
as he was released. And so on.
I look back upon my life of nearly twenty years of muck-raking, and am
able to put my finger on exactly one concrete benefit that I have
brought to mankind. Twenty or more men who are serving life-sentences in
the Newcastle County Workhouse owe it to me that they get every now and
then a glimpse of the sunlight and a breath of fresh air! These men know
that they owe it to me, and I have the thought of their gratitude to
warm my heart when I am tempted by “the blues.” One of our eleven
Sabbath “gamesters,” Donald Stephens, became in war-time a conscientious
objector, and was sentenced to the Newcastle County Workhouse in real
earnest. He was recently released, and wrote me about his experiences; I
quote:
You will be pleased to learn that the short visit we Ardenites paid
that institution some years back and the publicity you gave to
conditions then led to social improvements—chief of which was the
building of an outside recreation yard. Some of the old-timers
expressed heartfelt appreciation for the good work you did.
In view of this can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how
much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and
disinterested press? Also, can you blame me if I stored away in my mind
for future reference the fact that when it is necessary to get some
important news into the papers, I can manage it by getting myself sent
to jail? This is a discovery which is made, sooner or later, by all
social reformers; and so going to jail becomes a popular diversion and
an honorable public service.
CHAPTER XVIII
AN ESSENTIAL MONOGAMIST
The adventure of Sabbath “gaming” served as a curtain raiser to the
great tragedy of my life. I pause on the brink of this tragedy,
hesitating to take the plunge, even in memory; hesitating for the
reader’s sake as much as for my own. I ask myself, “Will anybody endure
to read a detailed statement of the grievances of one man, at a time
when so many millions of men are suffering?” Again, reader, let me beg
you to believe that I am not writing this book to defend myself. Amid
the terrific events that are going on in the world at this hour, I would
not take ten minutes of my time for such a purpose.
I am telling this story in defense of a cause. It was not I, but the
cause, that was maimed and tortured through these years, and any other
man in my place would have met my experience. The matter at issue in
this book is not the character of Upton Sinclair, but the character of
the machinery upon which you rely every day of your life for news of the
world about you. If that machinery can be used deliberately and
systematically to lie about Upton Sinclair, it can be used to
disorganize the people’s movement throughout the world, and to set back
the coming of Social Justice.
I grope in my mind for a simile to make clear how I feel about this
book, how I would have you feel. Say to yourself that Upton Sinclair is
a guinea-pig—surely a sufficiently unpretentious creature! It would be
entirely preposterous of a guinea-pig to expect that a book should be
written about him, or that a research-laboratory should devote its
attention to him. But the scientist reaches into a pen full of
guinea-pigs, and catches up one by the neck, and makes him the subject
of an experiment—removes his thyroid gland, let us say, or gives him an
injection of a serum. So suddenly it becomes of the utmost consequence
what happens to this guinea-pig. Trained experts take his temperature
every ten minutes; they keep a chart of his pulse, they watch his
respiration, they analyze his excretions; and nobody thinks this
preposterous—on the contrary, every man of science understands that the
condition of this guinea-pig may be of greater moment to mankind than
the fall of an empire.
So it is that I am giving this story; giving everything—because that is
what science requires. In the case of the great tragedy of my life, my
divorce scandal, I confront the ordeal with as much shrinking as ever
any guinea-pig exhibited. During all the time of this affair, I refused
again and again, in spite of great provocation, to say a public word in
my own defense; nor have I ever told the story, except to a few intimate
friends. The prospect of having to bring it up again was the cause of my
putting off writing this book for several years.
Obviously, the story must be told. It is generally believed that there
was something in the affair discreditable to me, and if now I pass it
over, my critics will say: “Ah, yes! He is quite willing to play the
game of frankness, so long as the cards run his way; but when his luck
changes, then suddenly he gets ‘cold feet,’ and retires from the game!”
Anyone can see that will not do; I must either tell this story, or I
must leave the book unwritten. Having decided that it is my duty to
write the book, I proceed to the story. I shall tell just as little as I
have to tell, in order to make clear the part played by the newspapers.
More especially, I shall do my best to spare the feelings of my former
wife and her family. My former wife has remarried, and neither her
maiden name nor her present name is anybody’s concern in this book.
In Ellen Key’s “Love and Marriage” occurs a passage explaining that
while monogamy is probably the best marital arrangement for the majority
of people, there are some individuals so constituted that monogamy is
unsatisfactory to them; they find that the fulfillment of their nature
requires that they should have more than one love at one time. When my
former wife came upon that passage, she brought it to me in triumph.
Here was the thesis upon which she had been arguing for many years, and
here was a woman, recognized as a great teacher, who believed as she
did. I do no unkindness to my former wife in making this statement,
because she was accustomed to quote the passage to every one she met,
and she defended it in published writings.
Now, I have a respect for Ellen Key’s personality, and for many of her
ideas. I admit that she may know more about the nature of woman than I
do, and may be correct in her statements as to the love-needs and the
love-rights of some women. All I could say was that I found the idea
offensive, and I would part company with anyone who acted upon it. What
men and women might agree to do in some far-off blissful future I did
not attempt to say, but for the present we lived in a world in which
venereal disease was an unforgettable menace, and on this account if no
other, one had the right to demand marital fidelity. I argued this
question through long years, and my former wife found my arguments
tiresome and oppressive. To the newspapers she described me as “an
essential monogamist,” a phrase which gave great glee to the
“Tenderloin” loungers and the newspaper wits who serve them. Just how
these wits reconciled the phrase with the charge that I was a
“free-lover,” I can not explain, nor have the wits explained it.
Now ordinarily, when Americans find that they are hopelessly disagreed
upon such a question, they proceed to establish a residence in Reno or
Texas. Etiquette requires that the man should pay all the expenses, and
also that he should bear the odium involved. In one of Bernard Shaw’s
plays he explains that the English law requires not merely infidelity,
but cruelty in the presence of witnesses, and therefore the convention
has come to be that the man and woman shall repair to the garden, and
there in the presence of the gardener the husband shall knock his wife
into a flower-bed. I remember some years ago Mr. Booth Tarkington
stepped off a steamer from Europe and was informed by reporters that his
wife was suing him for divorce, alleging cruelty; he was asked for a
comment, and replied, graciously: “When one’s wife accuses one of
cruelty, no gentleman would think of making a reply.”
I was prepared to play my part as a gentleman according to this
standard, and several times I made the necessary practical arrangements;
but each time the other party changed her mind. She pleaded that the
world attached a certain stigma to “a divorced woman”; therefore, it was
cruel and unkind for a man to insist upon having a divorce. I might at
least allow her the protection of my name. To this argument I was weak
enough to yield.
I had endured for some eight years this kind of domestic precariousness;
a maelstrom in which a man’s physical, mental, and moral integrity are
subtly and bewilderingly tossed and buffeted and maimed. But finally I
came upon certain facts which decided me to put an end to it. It
happened in midsummer, when my lawyer was in the country, and in my
haste to consult him I made the greatest blunder of my life. I sent a
telegram inquiring whether a letter of admission from the other party
was evidence in a divorce-suit in New York State; and to this telegram I
signed my name.
I have since been told that it is a regular custom of the “yellow”
journals, in places where the “smart set” or other people of prominence
gather, to maintain relations with telegraph-clerks. When telegrams
containing news or hints of news are filed, the clerk furnishes a copy
to the newspaper, and is paid according to the importance of the “tip.”
Three or four hours after I filed that telegram, I was called to the
telephone by the “New York American,” which told me they had information
that I was bringing suit for divorce. I was astounded, for I had not
mentioned the matter to a soul. At first I denied the fact, but they
said their information was positive, and they would publish the story.
So it was a choice between having a false story or a true story made
known, and I replied, “I will prepare a statement and send it to you
some time this evening.” I prepared the briefest possible statement, to
the effect that my wife had left me with another man, and had written to
that effect, and that I was preparing to bring suit. The last paragraph
read:
I make this statement because I have just learned that word of my
intention has reached one newspaper, and I would rather the real facts
were printed than anybody’s conjectures. I have nothing to add to this
statement and I respectfully ask to be spared requests for interviews.
I sent this statement, and next morning the “American” published it on
the front page, with my picture, and a picture of my former wife, and a
picture of a boy which was not our boy, but a “fake.” I quote a few
lines:
SINCLAIR ACCUSES HIS WIFE
Upton Sinclair, the author and social colonizer, in a surprising
statement last night announced his intention to bring suit for
divorce....
The action of Mr. Sinclair in giving out such a statement, or bringing
suit for divorce from his wife, will be a great surprise to his
friends and co-workers....
You will note the phrasing of this, so carefully calculated to make me
odious—a man who rushed to the newspapers with an attack upon his wife!
And then followed several paragraphs from that old and false San
Francisco interview on marriage, to the effect that women are bought in
marriage as dogs and horses are bought. How singular that a man who held
such ideas should object to marital infidelity!
I am not going into detail concerning the horrors of the next few weeks.
Suffice it to say that the herd had me down and proceeded to trample on
my face. My personality, my affairs, my opinions and my every-day
actions became the subject of discourse and speculation upon the front
pages of the New York papers. My mother’s apartment, where I was living,
was besieged by reporters, and when I refused to see them, it made no
difference—they went away and wrote what they thought I might have said.
The other party to the case was interviewed to the extent of pages—I
mean literally pages. Gelett Burgess, who passes for a man of letters,
and was one of the founders of the Author’s League of America, wrote a
full-page burlesque of the tragedy, which was published with
illustrations in the “New York American.” Mr. Burgess told a friend of
mine some time afterwards that he had done it because he needed the
money, but he was ashamed of having done it. It is not my wish to spare
him any of this shame; therefore I reproduce the headlines of his
elegant composition:
Why Hungry Mrs. Upton Sinclair Went Home to Mamma.
Gelett Burgess Discusses the Failure of Poetry à la carte as an
Appetite Satisfier, and the Triumph of a Meal Ticket over Free but
Famished Love.
Also I ought not to fail to mention one of the editors of “Life,” who
went to see my former wife in company with a fat little pig of a
publisher, his pockets stuffed with bills, which were offered the lady
to write a scandal-story of her life with me!
The opinions of the newspaper commentators on the scandal varied from
day to day. The generally accepted explanation was that I had married an
innocent young girl and taught her “free love” doctrines, and then, when
she practised these doctrines, I kicked her out of my home. But some of
the newspapers found the matter worse than that. The “Chicago Evening
Post” gave an elaborate analysis of my character and motives. It said it
would be possible to forgive me if what I had done was “the jealous rage
of a male brute infuriated past reason”; but the awful truth was plain—I
had done this deed as “publicity work” for the second volume of “Love’s
Pilgrimage”!
The idea that there lived on earth a human being who could have enjoyed
the experience I was then undergoing was one which would not have
occurred to me; however, the fact that this newspaper writer could
conceive it indicated that there was at least one such person living. I
have since heard that certain actors and actresses have increased their
fame and incomes by being many times divorced and remarried. But with
authors it does not work out that way. Mitchell Kennerley, publisher of
“Love’s Pilgrimage,” had been selling a thousand copies a week of this
book, and after the divorce-scandal he did not sell a hundred copies in
six months!
I felt in those terrible days precisely like a hunted animal which seeks
refuge in a hole, and is tormented with sharp sticks and smoke and
boiling water. Under the law it had been necessary for me to obtain
certain evidence. I had taken steps to obtain it, and this became a
source of mystery as thrilling as a detective-story. For days men
followed me every step I took; my mail was tampered with continually,
and likewise the mail of my friends. I ran away into the country to
hide, I even changed my name for a while, but that did no good—I was
found out. Up to this time I had never had a grey hair in my head, but I
found many after these months, and have them still.
Among the mass of newspaper items I note one that seems trifling, yet is
curiously significant. There appeared in the “New York Times” a
telegraphic dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, to the effect that I was
being sued by a store-keeper in New Jersey for thirty-eight dollars
worth of fertilizer. Stop and think a minute how many men in America are
sued every day for bills which they refuse to pay, and how seldom does
the “New York Times” hunt out such news by telegraph! Often I have tried
to get radical news into the “Times,” and heard the editors plead space
limitations; yet they found room for a dispatch about my being sued for
thirty-eight dollars!
Five years before this I had owned a little farm, and had left it in
charge of a man who contracted bills in my name. I had paid all the
bills which were properly rendered; but after four years had passed, and
I had sold the farm and wiped the matter off my books, I received for
the first time a bill for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer.
Naturally I refused to pay this bill; so I was sued—and the “New York
Times,” having me down and desiring to trample further on my face,
obtained the news and published it in connection with my
divorce-scandal.
Nor was that all. The day after this item was published, there appeared
in the “New York World” a column of humor about me, one part of which I
quote. Please take the trouble to read it carefully, because it
illustrates a significant point.
The following statement, with several long-hand corrections, was
received by the “World” yesterday:
“With regard to the report that I am being sued for thirty-eight
dollars worth of fertilizer I might mention that I am being sued for
something I never purchased or received. The dealer has admitted in
writing that he did not send me the bill until four years after the
alleged purchase. I like to get my bills a little sooner than that.
Upton Sinclair.
“Please put the above in the form of an interview.”
Now this was funny, was it not? It was a complete exposition of an ass;
reading it, you would be perfectly sure you were dealing with an
ass—unless possibly with a crook. The “Chicago Evening Post” took the
latter view. It quoted the tell-tale sentence with the comment: “Other
papers fell for ‘Interviews,’ but it was evidently one of the ‘World’s’
busy days, when not even a cub-reporter could be spared for rewrite.” On
the basis of this, the “Post” went on to expose me as a cold and
calculating notoriety-hunter.
Now what is the truth about the statement in the “New York World”? Here
it is:
Three times in the course of that day the “World” had sent a reporter to
seek me out. Would I not say something about the report of my intention
to file my suit in Delaware instead of in New York? Would I not say
something about the fact that a man had called up the “New York World”
on the telephone, and announced himself as the co-respondent in my
divorce case, on his way to have a fist-fight with me? Finally, the
third time, would I not at least say something about this suit for
thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer?
I saw no reason why I should not state the facts in this last matter, so
I said to the reporter: “I will not give an interview, because I have
been misquoted so many times, and am sick of it. But I will write out
what I have to say, and you can make an interview of that, provided you
do not change it. I have to look up the dates of the fertilizer bill,
and I’ll send what I have to say by a messenger.” This was agreed to,
and I wrote out the statement. Having been previously made to appear as
seeking publicity, I wanted to be particularly careful in this case, so
to remind the reporter of his promise, I added: “Put the above in the
form of an interview.”
I have often written those words in sending copy to newspapers. For
example, they wire asking for an expression of opinion, and in replying,
I remind them that they made the first move, not I. They perfectly
understand the meaning of the request, “Put the above in the form of an
interview,” and do not commit a breach of confidence except for a
definite purpose, to make some person odious. In this particular case it
was no oversight, no lack of a “cub-reporter”; it was the deliberate act
of malice of the “World” reporter, abetted by the editors who passed the
copy. I know that my statement reached the right reporter, because the
rest of the article contained things which he had said to me in the
course of his calls. I have gone into such minute detail about this
episode, because it shows so perfectly how these corrupt and greedy
newspapers have you at their mercy. They do whatever they please to you,
and you are helpless. If for any reason, good or bad, you make them
angry, they trample you like a vicious stallion. Or perhaps you seem
funny to them, and then they amuse themselves with you, about as a
wanton child who picks a butterfly to pieces.
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE LION’S DEN
To understand the rest of this episode, you must know something about
the divorce laws of New York, and about divorce procedure. The code of
the State, which was framed by a combination of Puritan bigotry with
Roman Catholic obscurantism, requires infidelity legally proven. The
defendant cannot confess, and neither party to the suit can testify
against the other; moreover, if it appears that both have desired the
divorce or consented to the divorce, there is “collusion” and the
divorce is not granted. These laws are administered by judges who are
almost invariably corrupt, many of them in addition being under the
spell of Catholic superstition, considering that they have decreased the
period of their sojourn in purgatory when they succeed in twisting the
law or the evidence so as to balk some person’s desire to be free from
marital disharmony.
Into this jungle of ravening beasts and poisonous serpents I now walked,
unarmed and unprotected—having made the mistake of employing a lawyer
who was a sensitive and honorable gentleman. The Court appointed a
referee to hear the case, and before this referee I appeared with my
counsel and my witnesses; also there appeared the counsel for the other
party, as required by law, and a solemn farce was played. The referee
had got the case as a morsel of graft from the infamous Tammany machine;
whether he was malicious or merely ignorant, I do not know, but he was
evidently possessed with curiosity concerning the notorious scandal, and
questioned me concerning my attitude toward the matters in evidence—how
I had regarded them and what I had done about them. My attorney objected
that under the law I was not permitted to testify concerning my wife’s
conduct, but the referee insisted that I should answer his questions,
and for fear of angering him, and possibly exciting his suspicions, I
answered.
Under the law it was provided that all this testimony should be secret,
the property of the Court. My attorney and the attorney for the other
party demanded of the referee and of the clerk of the Court that the law
should be obeyed. But when the referee’s report was handed in, a full
account of it and of the testimony was published in every newspaper in
New York. When inquiry was made by my attorney, it developed that
twenty-six different clerks had had access to those papers, and it was
not possible to determine which one of the twenty-six had accepted a
bribe from the newspapers. Suffice it to say that the whole obscene
story was spread before the world. I say “obscene”—it was that of
necessity, you understand; the New York State divorce law requires it to
be that, literally. The law requires that the witnesses must have seen
something tending to prove a physical act of infidelity; and if they
shrink from going into detail, the referee compels them to go into
detail—and then the details are served as delicious tidbits by the
“yellow” journals.
I waited a month or two in suspense and shame, until at last the august
judge handed down his decision. The referee had erred in questioning me
as to the other party’s actions and my attitude thereto; therefore the
referee’s recommendations were not accepted, and another referee must be
appointed and the solemn farce must be gone through with a second time.
I observed with bewildered interest that the erring referee was not
compelled to return to me the money which the law had compelled me to
turn over to him as his share of the “swag.” I must pay another referee
and a new set of court costs, and must wait several months longer for my
peace of soul and self-respect to be restored to me.
The second referee was appointed and the farce was played again. This
time the referee would make no mistake, he would ask me no questions; he
was a business-like gentleman, and put the job through in short order.
He turned in his report, with the recommendation that my petition should
be granted; and again the newspapers got the story—only now, of course,
it was a stale story, the public was sick of the very name of me.
Again I waited in an agony of suspense, until a Roman Catholic judge
handed down his august decision. It appeared that the evidence in the
case was defective. The other party had been identified by means of
photographs, and this was not admissible. Both attorneys in the case and
the referee declared that there were innumerable precedents for
photographs having been admitted, but the Roman Catholic judge said no.
Also he said that there was some indication of “collusion”; I had
behaved too humanely towards the other party in the domestic conflict.
Apparently it was my legal duty to behave like Othello, or to do what
the relatives of Héloïse did to Abélard.
I understood, of course, what the decision meant; the Roman Catholic
judge had got his opportunity to step upon the nose of a notorious
Socialist, and he had taken it. My lawyer urged me to appeal the case,
but I remembered a talk I had had with James B. Dill three or four years
previously. Dill was the highest paid corporation-lawyer in America,
having been paid a million dollars for organizing the Steel Trust.
Before he died, he was judge of the highest court of New Jersey, and I
had spent long evenings at his home listening to his anecdotes. I
recalled one remark: “There are twenty-two judges of the Appellate Court
in New York State, and only three of them are honest. To each of the
other nineteen I can say, I know whose man you are; I know who paid you
and just how he paid you. And not one of them would be able to deny my
statements.” Reflecting on this, I decided that I would not spend any
more of my hard-earned money in appealing—more especially as by so doing
I stood to lose what little privacy the law had preserved to me; the law
required that in the event of an appeal I must pay to have the evidence
in the case printed, and made public property forever! I had received a
letter from my friend Dr. Frederik van Eeden, the Dutch poet and
novelist, assuring me that he lived in a civilized country, where
divorce was granted upon admission of infidelity, without evidence being
given. So I set out for Holland; and in establishing my residence I did
not have to resort to any technicalities. I really intended to spend the
rest of my life in Europe; it seemed to me that I could not bear the
sight of America again.
My earning power had, of course, been entirely destroyed; no one would
read my books, no one would publish what I wrote. As Mitchell Kennerley
said to me: “If people can read about you for one cent, they are not
going to pay a dollar and a half to do it.” Also, my health seemed
permanently undermined; I did not think I was going to live, and I did
not very much care. But I established my residence in Holland and
obtained my divorce, quietly, and without scandal. I wish to pay tribute
to the kindest and most friendly people I have ever met—the Dutch. When
I came to them, sick with grief, they did not probe into my shame; they
invited me to their drawing-rooms for discussions of literature and art,
and with tact and sweetness they let me warm my shivering heart at their
firesides. Their newspapers treated me as a man of letters—an entirely
new experience to me. They sent men of culture and understanding to ask
my opinions, and they published these opinions correctly and with
dignity. When I filed my divorce-suit they published nothing. When the
decree was granted, they published three or four lines about it in the
columns given to court proceedings, a bare statement of the names and
dates, as required by law. And even when I proposed to rid my home of
fleas by means of cyanogen gas, they did not spread the fact on the
front pages of their newspapers, making it a “comic relief” story for
the vacuous-minded crowd.
There were many men in Holland, as in England and Germany and Italy and
France, who hated and feared my Socialist ideas. I made no secret of my
ideas; I spoke on public platforms abroad, as I had spoken at home. When
reporters for the great Tory newspapers of England came to interview me,
I told them of the war that was coming with Germany, and how bitterly
England would repent her lack of education and modern efficiency, and
her failure to feed and house her workers as human beings. These
opinions were hateful to the British Tories, and they attacked me; but
they did not attack the author of the opinions, by making him into a
public scarecrow and publishing scandals about his private life. This,
as my Dutch chemist would have said, is “a characteristically American
procedure”!
CHAPTER XX
THE STORY OF A LYNCHING
The first American I visited in Europe was George D. Herron, then living
in Florence, the home of his favorite poet, Dante. Dante had been exiled
from Florence by the oligarchy which ruled that city, and in exactly the
same way Herron had been exiled from America by America’s oligarchy, the
capitalist press. I had known him for ten years, and had witnessed his
martyrdom at first hand. The story is told in full in some pages of
“Love’s Pilgrimage,” but I must sketch it here, where I am dealing with
the subject of marriage and divorce, and the attitude of our Journalism
thereto. As it happens, the story is timely, for Herron has again been
brought into the public eye, and the capitalist press has dragged out
the old skeleton and rattled its dry bones before the world.
George D. Herron had been a clergyman, a professor of Christian morals
in a Middle Western college. He had been married as a boy and was
wretchedly unhappy. I am not free to discuss that early marriage;
suffice it to say that when he told me the story, the tears came into
his eyes. He had become a Socialist, and had set out to preach the cause
of the poor and oppressed from one end of America to the other. Among
his converts was an elderly rich woman, Mrs. Rand, whose fortune came
from railroad and lumber interests in the Middle West. And now Herron
came to love the daughter of Mrs. Rand. Being a clergyman, he had no
idea of divorcing his wife, and the discovery that he loved another
woman only added to his misery. His health gave way under the strain,
but he held out—until finally his wife brought suit for divorce,
alleging desertion.
Herron had founded a Christian Socialist organization, and was one of
the most popular radical orators in the country. He was a dangerous man
to the “interests,” and here was the chance to destroy him. A perfect
storm of obloquy and abuse overwhelmed him. He was a “free lover,” they
declared, a proof of the claim that all Socialists believed and
practised “free love.” The Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis refused to shake
hands with him, turning his back upon him on a public platform: Newell
Dwight Hillis, whose greed for money led him into a series of disgusting
scandals, and forced him finally to bow his head with shame and confess
his financial sins before his congregation! The Rev. Thomas Dixon wrote
a novel, “The One Woman,” in which he portrayed Herron as a sort of
human gorilla: Dixon, dealer in pulpit-slang, who has since turned to
the movies as a means of glorifying race-hatred and militarism, and
pouring out his venom upon all that is humane and generous in life.
I have many friends who were present at the marriage of George D. Herron
and Carrie Rand. They were married by a Congregational clergyman,
William Thurston Brown, and I have seen the marriage certificate. Yet
all over this country, and in fact all over the world, the newspapers
portrayed the ceremony as a “free love wedding,” no real marriage, but
just a say-so to be terminated at pleasure. The most horrible tales were
told, the most horrible pictures were published—of Herron, and of his
first wife, and of his “soul mate” and his “soul mate’s” mother.
I saw that the strain of the thing was killing Herron, and persuaded him
to go abroad to live and do his writing. Three or four years later old
Mrs. Rand died, leaving a part of her money to found the Rand School;
Herron and his wife came home to bury her, and again the storm broke
out. He had purchased a farm at Metuchen, New Jersey, intending to live
there; a reporter came, representing that the “Cosmopolitan Magazine”
wished to publish a series of articles about the wives of distinguished
American writers. On this pretext the reporter obtained a photograph of
a painting which Herron had had made of his wife and baby, and a week
later there appeared in the magazine section of the “New York Sunday
American” a horrible scare story about the “free love colony” which
Herron was founding in the midst of an exclusive residential suburb of
New Jersey. There was a picture of the free love wife and the free love
baby, and of Herron standing upon a ladder, tacking upon a wall his
repudiation of the institution of marriage. The headlines ran:
ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS TO PROMOTE THIS DOCTRINE
How the Vast Fortune of the Late Mrs. Rand, Who Gave Prof. Herron’s
Deserted Wife $60,000 to Divorce Him, is Being Used in an Amazing
Warfare on Marriage and Religion Under the Leadership of Herron and
Mrs. Rand’s Daughter.
This story went all over the country, and recently when Herron was named
by President Wilson as one of the delegates to confer with the Russian
Soviets, the story was rehashed in our newspapers, and made the subject
of indignant protest by religious bodies. Having visited this Metuchen
home and seen the whole story in the making, I am in a position to state
that the Metuchen “free love colony” was entirely a product of the
obscene minds of the editors of the “Sunday Yellows.” What is the moral
character of these “yellow” editors you may judge from the fact that,
soon after this, one of the editors of the “Sunday World” was arrested
by Anthony Comstock and sent to jail for a year or two, for having in
his possession several thousand obscene photographs which he used in the
corrupting of boys. In such minds the Metuchen story was born; and
seventeen years later its foul carcass is exhumed by the “Churchman,”
organ of “the Church of Good Society” in New York, and made the basis of
a vicious sneer at President Wilson. I quote:
In dealing with Russian liberals, it may be necessary to select as
mediators men who share their political ideas. It is not necessary to
choose men who share their moral practices. We read that the
Presbyterian Union of Newark has adopted resolutions protesting
against the appointment of George D. Herron as a representative of the
United States to confer with the Bolsheviks. The resolution condemns
Herron as a man who has flagrantly violated the laws of God and man,
and they call upon President Wilson to revoke his appointment. They go
into past history and assert that Mr. Herron endeavored at one time to
establish a free love colony at Metuchen, New Jersey.
Time wasted! We warn the Newark protestants. Mr. Herron’s appointment
will not be revoked. What is the marriage vow among the makers of
millenniums?
And lest you think this is merely _odium theologicum_, I give an example
of the comment of the laity, from “Harvey’s Weekly”:
Why not make Herron the Turkish Mandatory? Herron’s matrimonial views
are broad and comprehensive. His poultry-yard standard of morals might
possibly be a little looser than the Turkish, but he would doubtless
conform himself in theory and practice to the narrower Turkish
matrimonial prejudices.
I wonder which is the more disagreeable phenomenon, sexual license or
venal hypocrisy. It is a question I face when I read denunciations of
the morals of radicals in capitalist newspapers. I have known men and
women in a score of different worlds; I have talked with them and
compared their sexual ethics, and I know that the newspaper people
cannot afford to throw stones at the rest.
There are causes for this, of course. Their work is irregular and
exhausting; they squeeze out the juices from their nerve-centers, they
work under high pressure, in furious competition. Such men are apt to
make immoderate use of tobacco and alcohol, and to take their pleasure
where they find it. But this applies only to the rank and file in the
newspaper world, to reporters and penny-a-liners; it does not apply to
the big men at the top. These men have ease and security, and surely we
might expect them to conform to the moral laws which they lay down for
the rest of mankind!
I have in mind a certain editor. In this book where I am sparing no one,
I should perhaps give his name; but I yield to human weakness, having
been a guest at his home. Suffice it to say that this editor is one of
America’s very greatest, one to whom the masses of Americans look every
day for enlightenment. This man wrote and published a most atrocious
editorial concerning Herron’s sexual morals. And what was his own sexual
life at the time?
When the “Jungle” was published, this editor wrote to me that he had a
friend who wished very much to meet me. I accepted, and went to dinner
in a beautiful apartment in New York, luxuriously furnished, where I met
a charming and cultured lady whom I will call Mrs. Smith. There were two
lovely children, and there was Mr. Smith, a quiet, rather insignificant
gentleman. I spent an enjoyable evening, and went away with no suspicion
of anything unusual in the Smith family. But afterwards, when I
mentioned the matter to others who knew this editor, I learned that the
editor was the father of the children, and that Mr. Smith was maintained
in luxury as a blind to cover the situation. I could hardly believe my
ears; but I found that everybody who knew this editor intimately knew
all about it, and that the editor made no secret of it among his
friends. Later on, I came to know a certain brilliant and beautiful
young suffrage leader, since deceased, who told me how she had exercised
the privilege of the modern emancipated young woman, and had asked this
editor to marry her. His answer was that he was very sorry, but he was
not free, Mrs. Smith having given him to understand that if ever he left
her, she would kill herself.
Here again we face the New York State law, forced upon the public by the
Roman Catholic Church, making the grounds of divorce infidelity plus a
scandal. Driven by the terror of scandal, men have been led by thousands
and tens of thousands to make arrangements such as I have here
described. Believing as I do that this divorce-law is an abomination, a
product of vicious priest-craft, I hesitate before I blame these men;
but no one need hesitate to blame them when, knowing what the law is,
and what they themselves have been driven to, they publicly spit upon
and trample the face of a modern prophet like George D. Herron.
And lest you think this case exceptional, I will give you another. There
is a newspaper in New York, a pillar of capitalist respectability, the
very corner-stone of the temple of bourgeois authority. This paper, of
course, denounced Herron in unmeasured terms; recently it took up the
attack again, in its solemn and ponderous manner rebuking the President
for his lack of understanding of the moral sentiments of the American
people. This great newspaper is owned and published by a Hebrew
gentleman, intimately connected with the great financial interests of
New York. He is one of the most respectable Hebrew gentlemen imaginable.
And what are his sexual habits?
I know a lady, one of America’s popular novelists. She is a charming
lady, but without a trace of that appearance and manner which in the
world is called “fast”; on the contrary, she is one of the women you
know to be straightforward and self-respecting, the kind you would
choose for your sister. She came to New York, young and inexperienced,
desirous of earning a living. Naturally, she thought first of this great
publisher, whom she had known socially in her home city. She went to him
and told him that she had made something of a success at writing, and
she wanted to write for the great metropolitan paper. He answered that
he would be delighted, and arrangements were made. They were alone in
the office, and she stood by his desk to shake hands with him in
parting, and he pulled her over and took her on his knee; whereupon she
boxed his ears and walked out of the office, and never did any writing
for the great metropolitan paper.
The above anecdote is, of course, hearsay so far as I am concerned. I
was not in the publisher’s office, and I did not see him take the
lady-novelist on his knee; but my wife and I knew this lady-novelist
well, and she had no possible motive for telling us a falsehood. The
story came up casually in the course of conversation, and was told
spontaneously, and with humor; for the lady takes life cheerfully, and
had got over being angry with the publisher—satisfied, I suppose, with
having boxed his ears so thoroughly. I wrote to her, to make sure I had
got matters straight, and in reply she asked me not to use the story,
even without her name. I quote:
You know, of course, that I should be glad to do, at once and freely,
anything I could to be helpful in your affairs. I have thought it over
and it stands about like this in my mind. I am living a life that has
its own aims—a thing apart from public attack and defense. If I had
determined to make public—after all these years—any offense —— was
guilty of toward me, my own feeling is clear that I should do it
myself, openly and for reasons that seemed to me compelling.... So
leave me out of this matter, my dear Upton.
And so I confront a problem of conscience, or at any rate of etiquette.
Have I the right to tell this story, even without giving names? I owe a
certain loyalty to this friend; but then, I think of the great
publisher, and the manifold falsehoods I have known him to feed to the
public. I think of the prestige of such men, their solemn hypocrisy,
their ponderous respectability. After weighing the matter, I am risking
a friendship and telling the story. I hope that in the course of time
the lady will realize my point of view, and forgive me.
A different kind of problem confronts me with another story, which I
heard three or four years ago, just after it happened. I had this book
in mind at the time, and I said to myself: “I’ll name that man, and take
the consequences.” But meantime, alas, the man has died; and now I ask
myself: “Can I tell this story about a dead man, a man who cannot face
me and compel me to take the consequences?” I think of the man’s
life-long prostitution of truth, his infinite betrayal of the public
interest, and I harden my heart, and write the story, naming him. But
then I weaken, and ask advice. I ask women, and they say: “Name him!” I
ask men, and they say: “You cannot tell such a story about a dead man!”
Which is right?
Everything that the profit-system could do for one of its darlings had
been done for this man. Millions of books, millions of magazinelets went
out bearing his name; wealth, power, prominence, applause—all these
things he had; his life was one long triumph—and one long treason to
public welfare. And what was the man’s private life? What use did he
make of his fame, and more especially of his wealth?
The story was told to me by a woman-writer—not the one I have just
referred to, but as different from her as one woman can be from another:
a vivid and dashing creature, especially constructed both in body and
mind for the confounding of the male. This lady was standing on a corner
of Fifth Avenue, waiting for the stage, when a man stepped up beside
her, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ll give you five
dollars if you come with me.” The lady made no response, and again the
voice said, “I’ll give you ten dollars if you come with me.” Again there
was no response, and the voice said, “I’ll give you twenty-five dollars
if you come with me.” The stage arrived, and the auction was
interrupted. But it happened that evening that the lady was invited to a
dinner-party, to meet a great literary celebrity, a darling of the
profit-system—and behold, it was the man who had bid for her on the
street! “Mr. —— and I have met before,” said the lady, icily; and, as
she writes me, “this paralyzed him.”
I ask this lady if I may tell the story. She answers: “Go the limit!” So
here, at least, my conscience is at ease!
CHAPTER XXI
JOURNALISM AND BURGLARY
I was obliged to return to America to give testimony concerning an
automobile accident of which I had been a witness. I had been sitting in
the rear seat of a friend’s car, which was proceeding at a very moderate
rate of speed along a down-town street, when a fruit-peddler leaped out
from behind an ice-wagon. He had a bunch of bananas in his hand and was
looking up toward a woman in a window; he was not two feet ahead of the
car when he sprang in front of it, and was struck before those in the
car could move a finger. The account in the news column of the “New York
Times” made clear that I had been merely a passenger, in another man’s
car, yet the “Times” found space on its editorial page for a letter from
some correspondent, sneering at me as a Socialist who rode down poor men
in automobiles!
During my return to America I remarried. The ceremony took place in
Virginia, at the home of relatives of my wife’s family, and I was
interested to observe that the “Times,” which had pursued me so
continually, printed a perfectly respectful account of the wedding, with
no editorial sneers. I was not puzzled by this, for I observed that the
“Times” had taken the trouble to telegraph to Mississippi, to make
inquiries concerning the lady I was marrying, and the report from their
correspondent stated that the bride’s father was “one of the wealthiest
men in this section, and controls large banking interests.” How many,
many times I have observed the great organ of American plutocracy thus
awed into decency by wealth! When Frank Walsh, as chairman of the United
States Commission on Industrial Relations, made a radical speech in New
York, the “Times” telegraphed to Kansas City and learned that Walsh was
a lawyer earning an income of fifty thousand dollars a year. It was
comical to observe the struggle between its desire to lambast a man who
had made a radical speech, and its cringing before a man who was earning
fifty thousand dollars a year!
In the same way, I have observed the attitude of the New York newspapers
toward my friend, J. G. Phelps Stokes, a Socialist who is reputed to be
a millionaire, and who belongs to one of the oldest families in New York
“society.” So it makes no difference what he says or does, you never see
a disrespectful word about him in a New York newspaper. On one occasion,
I remember, he and his wife made Socialist speeches from a fire-escape
in the tenement-district of New York—and even that was treated
respectfully! Upton Sinclair, who is not reputed to be a millionaire,
gave a perfectly decorous lecture on Socialism, at the request of his
fellow passengers on an ocean-liner—and when he landed in New York he
read in the “Evening World” that he had delivered a “tirade.” I might
add that the above remarks are not to be taken as in any manner
derogatory to Stokes, who is in no possible way to blame for the fact
that the newspapers spare him the treatment they give to other American
Socialists, including Mrs. Stokes.
At this time ten or twenty thousand silk-workers in Paterson, New
Jersey, went on strike, affording the usual spectacle—a horde of
ill-paid, half-starved wage slaves being bludgeoned into submission by
policemen’s clubs, backed by propaganda of lying newspapers. The
silk-mill owners of Paterson of course owned the city government, and
were using the police-force to prevent meetings of the strikers; but it
happened that the nearby village of Haledon had a Socialist mayor, and
there was no way to keep the strikers from walking there for open air
mass-meetings. There was clamor for the State troops to prevent such
gatherings, and the newspapers were called on to make them into
near-riots. My wife and I would go out to the place and attend a
perfectly orderly gathering, addressed by such men as Ernest Poole and
Hutchins Hapgood, and then we would come back to New York and buy a copy
of the “Evening Telegram” and read all across the front page
scare-headlines about riots, dynamite and assassination. I have before
me a clipping from the “New York World,” of Monday, May 19, 1913.
“_Paterson’s Fiercest Fight Feared Today_,” runs the headline.
On this same date my old friend the “New York Times” achieved a little
masterpiece of subtle knavery. I quote:
UPTON SINCLAIR IS HEARD
After Mohl came another newcomer so far as Paterson is concerned—Upton
Sinclair.
“I just simply could not stand it any longer,” said Sinclair, “and I
let my books go and came here to congratulate you. Yours is the finest
exhibition of solidarity ever seen in the Eastern States.”
Sinclair stated that the strikers had the police at their mercy, but
added that perhaps they did not realize it.
This, please understand, was part of a campaign to make the general
public regard the Paterson silk-workers as anarchists and desperadoes.
“The strikers have the police at their mercy,” says Sinclair; and what
conclusion does the reader draw from these words? Obviously, Sinclair is
advising the strikers to grab up clubs and brick-bats and overwhelm the
police. You would have drawn that conclusion, would you not? Perhaps
maybe you are one of the readers of the “Times,” and _did_ draw that
conclusion! As it happens, when I read that item, I took the trouble to
jot down what I actually did say, and to preserve the record along with
the clipping. I quote:
You fellows go out on the picket-line and the police fall upon you
with clubs, they ride you down with their horses, they raid your
offices, and suppress your papers and throw your leaders into jail,
and you think you are helpless. You don’t realize that you have the
police at your mercy. All those policemen are appointed by the city
government; they get their orders from the city government and every
year or two you go to the ballot-box and say whether you like what
they have been doing. In other words, you vote for Republican or
Democratic politicians, instead of electing Socialists to office, and
having a city government that will give you your lawful rights.
To get the full significance of the above, you must realize that this
was an I. W. W. strike; I went out to a meeting conducted by Bill
Haywood and Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and was permitted
to preach a doctrine of political action which these leaders despised.
I, who have all my life urged upon the workers of America the futility
of the strike alone, and the necessity of political action, went out and
said my say in the midst of a campaign of “direct action”; and see how
much understanding I got from the great metropolitan newspapers for my
defense of political methods! One year later, after the Colorado
coal-strike, the little urchins in the village of Croton-on-Hudson where
I lived used to follow me on the street and shout: “I won’t work!” I
used to reflect that our great organs of publicity, the “New York Times”
and “World” and “Herald” and “Tribune” and “Sun,” stood upon precisely
the same level of intelligence as these little village urchins.
At this time the newspapers were trying to obtain from me a photograph
of the lady who went with me to strike-meetings, in spite of the fact
that her father was “one of the wealthiest men in this section, and
controls large banking interests.” They didn’t get the photograph, so
they were in desperate straits. A reporter for a Philadelphia
newspaper—I have the clipping, but unfortunately not the name of the
paper—went to Arden to look me up, and was told by my friend Donald
Stephens that I was not there. The homes in Arden are scattered about
through the woods, and life is informal; I had locked the doors of my
house, but the windows were not fastened. I am not in a position to
prove that the reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper burglarized my
house and stole a picture of my wife. I cannot state positively that a
course in house-breaking is a part of the training of newspaper
reporters in the City of Brotherly Love. All I can state is the
following set of facts:
1. In my desk in the house there lay a kodak-picture of my wife and
myself and my wife’s younger sister.
2. This copy was the only one in existence, having been taken by my
sister-in-law in an out-of-the-way place, and developed by a
photographer who knew nothing about us.
3. Upon my return to Arden, this picture was discovered to be missing
from my desk.
4. This missing picture was published in a Philadelphia newspaper.
CHAPTER XXII
A MILLIONAIRE AND AN AUTHOR
The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public
interests, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but
property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise,
or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth.
And suppose that you wished to make a test of this thesis, a test of the
most rigid scientific character—what would you do? You would put up two
men, one representing property, the other representing humanity. You
would endeavor rigidly to exclude all other factors; you would find one
man who represented property to the exclusion of humanity, and you would
find another man who represented humanity to the exclusion of property.
You would put these two men before the public, having them do the same
thing, so far as humanly possible, and then you would keep a record of
the newspaper results. These results would give you mathematically, in
column-inches, the relative importance to each newspaper of the man of
property and the man of humanity. Such an exact, scientific test I have
now to record.
I introduce the two persons. First, the man of humanity: At the time the
test was made, in December, 1913, he was thirty-five years of age; he
was known everywhere throughout the United States, and was, with the
possible exception of Jack London, the most widely known of living
American writers throughout the world. At the time of the test he did
not own more than a couple of hundred dollars.
Second, the man of property. He was at this time twenty-two years of
age, and had done four things which had been widely heralded: First, he
was born. Second, he decided to conduct some experiments in farming.
Third, he decided to marry a young lady of his acquaintance. Fourth, he
inherited sixty-five million dollars. Three of these things are not at
all unusual; many a farmer’s boy has done them, and has not had the
distinction of seeing the newspapers devote columns of space to them.
But the other thing is quite unique; since the beginning of American
history, no other person has ever inherited sixty-five million dollars.
So it may be asserted beyond dispute that this young man’s reputation
depended upon property, and nothing but property; he was the perfect
specimen which the sociological scientist would require for his test—the
man of property pur sang.
And now for the action of the two men. It appears that the “New York
Times,” a great organ of world-capitalism, in its efforts to camouflage
its true functions, had resorted to the ancient device of charity, used
by the Christian Church ever since it sold out to the Emperor
Constantine. Early in December of each year the “Times” publishes a list
which it calls “One Hundred Neediest Cases,” and collects money for
these hundred families in distress. The “Times” never goes into the
question of the social system which produces these harrowing cases, nor
does it allow anyone else to go into this question; what it does is to
present the hundred victims of the system with enough money to preserve
them until the following December, so that they may again enter into
competition for mention in the list, and have their miseries exploited
by the “Times.”
In addition to this, the “Times” publishes every Sunday an illustrated
supplement of pictures to entertain its variety of readers; and it
happened that on the Sunday when it published the “Hundred Neediest
Cases” it published also a photograph of a “recreation building” which
young Mr. Vincent Astor was erecting on his country estate at a cost of
one million dollars. This building was for the use of Astor and his
friends; it had no place for the public. It was devoted to tennis and
swimming and gymnastics; it had no place for literature, music, art,
science, or religion—it was a typical product of the private property
régime. So the man who represented humanity sat himself down and wrote a
“Christmas letter” to the millionaire, in substance asking him how he
could enjoy his Christmas, how he could be content to play in a
million-dollar “recreation building,” when he had before him such
positive evidence that millions of his fellow-beings were starving. This
letter was picturesque, interesting and well-written; as news it was in
every way “live.”
So came the first test. This “Christmas letter” to Vincent Astor was
offered to every newspaper in New York City on the same date, addressed
“City Editor,” special delivery. It was sent to both morning and
afternoon papers. And how many published it? Just one—the New York
“Call”—the Socialist paper. No other paper in New York, morning or
afternoon, printed a line of it, or referred to it in any way. It was
offered to every big news agency in the country. And how many handled
it? Not one. Outside of New York it was published in the “Appeal to
Reason,” and in one Chicago paper which happened to be edited by a
personal friend of the author’s. So here you have the first verdict of
the capitalist journalism of New York City; a letter written by a man of
humanity represents a total news-value of precisely 0.
There the matter might have rested, the test might never have been
completed, but for the fact that the millionaire disagreed with the
judgment of his newspaper editors; he thought the letter of the author
was important, and he answered it.
How this came to happen I have no idea. Maybe the millionaire’s
conscience was touched; maybe he had ambition to be something else than
a man of property pur sang. Maybe he himself wrote the answer; maybe
some shrewd family lawyer wrote it; maybe his secretary or some other
employe wrote it—all I know is that two or three weeks later the
millionaire wrote to the author, and at the same time gave his letter to
the newspapers.
The author’s letter had been, of course, an attack upon capitalism. The
millionaire’s was a defense of it. And so came the second test. Every
New York newspaper was offered an opportunity to publish the
millionaire’s letter to the author. And how many availed themselves of
the opportunity? Every one, absolutely every one! Every one published
the letter, and published it _entire_! Most of them put it on the front
page, with the millionaire’s picture; some of them added columns of
interviews about it, and editorials discussing it. The New York
newspapers’ idea of the news-value of a man of property was precisely
one hundred per cent!
The above would have been sufficient for any sociological scientist;
but, as it happened, the test was carried one stage farther yet. The
author was not entirely overwhelmed by the evidence of his unimportance
as compared with a millionaire; he was a Socialist, and Socialists are
notoriously hard to squelch. He wrote a second letter to the
millionaire, answering the millionaire’s arguments; and again he offered
it to every paper and to every news agency in New York—the same ones
that had spread out the millionaire’s arguments in full. And how many
printed it? How many printed the whole of it? Just one—the “Call,” the
Socialist paper. How many printed parts of it? And how large were these
parts? Let us see.
The author’s first letter measured in newspaper columns sixty-three
inches; the millionaire’s reply measured nineteen, and the author’s
reply to that measured sixty-one. If it be objected that the author was
claiming more than his fair share, it should be pointed out that the
author was attacking an established institution, something one cannot do
in a few sentences. On the other hand, the most foolish person can
reply, “I don’t agree with you”—and claim the virtue of brevity. Also,
be it noted that the question here is not what the author _claimed_, but
what he _got_. Here is a table showing what he got, in column inches,
from the leading morning papers of New York:
Author Millionaire Author
Times 0 19 0
Herald 0 19 0
Press 0 19 0
Tribune 0 19 0
American 0 19 2
World 0 19 2¼
Sun 0 19 4½
Call 63 19 61
Let it be noted that the above takes no account of headlines, which were
all big for the millionaire and small for the author; it does not
include editorials, interviews and photographs, nor does it reckon the
advantage of first-page position.
In order to make the significance of the figures quite clear, let them
be reduced to percentages. Each paper had 124 author-inches offered to
it, and 19 millionaire-inches. To begin with the “Times”: this paper
printed all the millionaire inches—also a few extra which it hunted up
for itself; it printed none at all of the author-inches. Hence we see
that, to put it mathematically, the “Times” considers an author
absolutely _nothing_ in comparison with a millionaire. Exactly the same
is true of the “Herald,” the “Press,” and the “Tribune.” The “World”
printed 100 per cent of possible millionaire-inches and less than 2 per
cent of possible author-inches, thus giving the millionaire more than
fifty times the advantage. Similarly, the “American” favored him sixty
to one. The “Call” placed the two on a par—that is to say, the “Call”
printed the _news_.
I conclude the account of this little episode by quoting a passage from
the published “Memoirs” of a wise old Chinese gentleman, Li-Hung-Chang,
who happened to be a man of humanity as well as of property:
A poor man is ever at a disadvantage in matters of public concern.
When he rises to speak, or writes a letter to his superiors, they ask:
“Who is this fellow that offers advice?” And when it is known that he
is without coin they spit their hands at him, and use his letters in
the cooks’ fires. But if it be a man of wealth who would speak, or
write, or denounce, even though he have the brain of a yearling
dromedary, or a spine as crooked and unseemly, the whole city listens
to his words and declares them wise.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE “HEART WIFE”
The next story has to do with the phenomenon known as “Hearst
Journalism.” It is a most extraordinary story; in its sensational
elements it discounts the most lurid detective yarn, it discounts
anything which is published in the Hearst newspapers themselves. At
first the reader may find it beyond belief; if so, let him bear in mind
that the story was published in full in the “New York Call” for August
9, 1914, and that no one of the parties named brought a libel suit, nor
made so much as a peep concerning the charges. I may fairly assert that
this story of “Hearst Journalism” is one which Mr. Hearst and his
editors themselves admit to be true.
William Randolph Hearst has been at various times a candidate for high
office in America, and has been able to exert much influence on the
course of the Democratic party—in New York, in Illinois, and even
throughout the nation. What are the Hearst newspapers? How are they
made? And what is the character of the men who make them? These
questions seem to me of sufficient importance to be worth answering in
detail.
In order to make matters clear from the outset, let me point out to the
reader that, for once, I am not dealing with a grievance of my own.
Throughout this whole affair my purpose was to get some money from a
Hearst newspaper, but I was not trying to get this money for myself; I
was trying to get it for a destitute and distracted woman. All parties
concerned knew that and knew it beyond dispute. The wrong was done, not
to me, but to a destitute and distracted woman, and so I can present to
the reader a case in which he can not possibly attribute an ulterior
motive to me.
The story began at Christmas, 1913. In the New York papers there
appeared one day an account of the death of a lawyer named Couch, in the
little town of Monticello, N. Y. This man was nearly 60 years old, a
cripple and eccentric, who lived most of the time in his little office
in the village, going once a week to the home upon the hill where lived
his wife and family. The news of his death in the middle of the night
was brought to a physician by a strange, terrified woman, who was
afterwards missing, but next day was discovered by Mr. Couch’s widow and
daughter, cowering in an inner portion of his office, which had been
partitioned off to make a separate room.
Investigation was made, and an extraordinary set of circumstances
disclosed. The man and woman had been lovers for fifteen years, and for
the last three years the woman had spent her entire time in this
walled-off room, never going outside, never even daring to go near the
window in the day-time. This sacrifice she had made for the sake of the
old man, because she had been necessary to his life, and there was no
other way of keeping secret a situation which would have ruined him.
The story seemed to make a deep impression upon the public, at least if
one could judge from the newspapers. There were long accounts from
Monticello day by day. The woman was described as grief-stricken,
terrified by her sudden confrontation with the world. She was taken to
the county jail and kept there until after the dead man’s funeral. No
charges were brought against her, but she remained in jail because she
had nowhere else to go, and because her condition was so pitiful that
the authorities delayed to turn her out. She was helpless, friendless,
with but one idea, a longing for death. She was besieged by newspaper
reporters, vaudeville impresarios and moving picture makers, to all of
whom she denied herself, refusing to make capital of her grief. She was
described as a person of refinement and education, and everything she
said bore out this view of her character. She was, apparently, a woman
of mature mind, who had deliberately sacrificed everything else in life
in order to care for an unhappy old man whom she loved, and whom she
could not marry because of the rigid New York divorce law.
One morning the papers stated that the relatives of this “hidden woman”
refused to offer a home to her. My wife wrote to her, offering to help
her, provided this could be done without any publicity; but time passed
without a reply. My wife was only three or four weeks out of the
hospital after an operation for an injury to the spine. We had made
plans to spend the winter in Bermuda, to give her an opportunity to
recuperate, and our steamer was to sail at midnight on Monday. On Sunday
morning, while I was away from home, my wife was called on the phone by
Miss Branch, who announced that she had left the Sullivan County jail,
and was at the ferry in New York, with no idea what to do—except to leap
off into the river. My wife told her to take a cab and come to our home,
and sent word to me what she had done.
Not to drag out the story too much, I will say briefly that Miss Branch
proved to be a woman of refinement, and also of remarkable mind. She has
read widely and thought for herself, and I have in my possession a
number of her earlier manuscripts which show, not merely that she can
write, but that she has worked out for herself a point of view and an
attitude to life. She was one of the most pitiful and tragic figures it
has ever been our fate to encounter, and the twenty-four hours which we
spent in trying to give her comfort and the strength to face life again
will not soon be forgotten by either of us.
We interested some friends, Dr. and Mrs. James P. Warbasse, in the case,
and they very generously offered to place Miss Branch in a sanitarium.
Before she left she implored me to make a correction of certain
misstatements about her which had appeared in the papers. She was deeply
grieved because of the shame she had brought upon her brother and his
family, and she thought their sufferings might be partly relieved if
they and others read the truth about her character and motives.
At this time, it should be understood, Miss Branch was the newspaper
mystery of the hour. She had vanished from Monticello, and on Monday
morning the newspapers had nothing on the case but their own inventions.
I sought the advice of a friend, J. O’Hara Cosgrave, a well known
editor, who suggested that the story ought to be worth money. “As you
say that Miss Branch is penniless, why not let one of the papers buy it
and pay the money to her? The ‘Evening Journal’ has been playing the
story up on the front page every day. Sell it to them.”
I said, “You can’t sell a newspaper a tip without first telling them
what the story is—and can you trust them?”
He answered, “I personally know Van Hamm, managing editor of the
‘Evening Journal,’ and if you will make it a personal matter with him,
you can trust him.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
I talked the matter over with my wife, who was much opposed to the
suggestion, refusing to believe that any Hearst man could be trusted.
They would betray me, and use my name, and we should be in for
disagreeable publicity. Moreover, Miss Branch would never get the money,
unless I got a contract in writing. I answered that there was no time to
get it in writing. It was then about one o’clock in the afternoon, and
the matter would have to be arranged over the phone at once, if it were
to be of any use to an evening paper. So finally my wife consented to
the attempt being made, upon the definite understanding that she was to
stand beside me at the telephone and hear what I said, and that I was to
repeat every word the party at the other end of the wire said, in such a
way that both he and she would hear the repetition. In this way she
would be a witness to the conversation.
And now, as everything depends upon the question of what was said, let
me state in advance that this conversation was written down from the
memory of both of us a few hours afterward, and that we are prepared, if
necessary, to make affidavit that every word of it was spoken, not once,
but several times; that the various points covered in it were repeated
so frequently and explicitly that the party at the other end of the wire
once or twice showed himself annoyed at the delays. The conversation was
as follows:
“Is this Mr. Van Hamm, managing editor of the ‘Evening Journal’? Mr. Van
Hamm, I have called you up because Jack Cosgrave has told me that you
are a man who can be trusted. I wish to ask you if you will give me your
word of honor to deal fairly with me in a certain matter. I have some
information to offer you which will make a big story. I am offering to
sell it for a price, and I wish it to be distinctly understood, in
advance, beyond any possible question, that you may have this story if
you are willing to pay the price. If you don’t want to pay the price, I
have your word of honor that you will not in any manner whatever use any
syllable of what I tell you.”
This was repeated and agreed to, and then I told him what I had. “I am
not at liberty to tell you where Miss Branch is at present,” I said. “I
am offering you a story, and a statement which she desires me to give
out for her. The price for it is three hundred dollars for Miss Branch.
I don’t want the money myself—I won’t even handle it. Is the price
agreeable to you?”
The answer was, “Yes, I will send a man up at once.”
I said, “It is distinctly understood that you are to publish nothing
whatever about this matter unless the sum of three hundred dollars is
paid to Miss Branch?”
“Yes. Where is she, so that I can pay the money to her?”
“I will give you the name of a man who knows where she is. This man will
take the money and will bring you her receipt. I wish to give you the
name of this man in confidence, for he does not wish his name brought
into the case in any way.”
The answer was: “Put the name of the man in a sealed envelope and give
it to the reporter, who will give it to me. I will personally see that
the money is sent to him, and then will forget his name.”
“Very well,” I replied, and added, “I have written a thousand-word
article discussing the case. I will give you this article along with the
rest of the information. But you must not print either this article or a
single word about this matter unless you pay three hundred dollars to
Miss Branch. You understand that distinctly?”
He replied, “I understand. A man will be up to see you in half an hour.”
Fifteen minutes after the conversation there came a telephone-call; a
voice, sharp and determined, at the other end of the wire, “Is Miss
Branch there?” My wife was answering the phone and she beckoned to me.
We stared at each other, uncertain what to answer or what to think.
“Miss Branch?” said my wife. “No! Certainly Miss Branch is not here.”
“Then where is she?” came the next question, imperative and urgent.
“I do not know,” said my wife. “Who are you?”
“I have been sent by Sheriff Kinnie, of Sullivan County Jail, who has an
important message to be delivered to Miss Branch at once.”
Said I (taking the phone): “Have you credentials from Sheriff Kinnie?”
“No,” was the reply, “I have not.”
“Then,” I said, “you cannot see Miss Branch.”
“But,” said the voice, “I must see her at once. It is really very
important.”
“Come here and see me,” I said.
“No,” was the answer, “I cannot. Please tell me where Miss Branch is. It
is a matter of the utmost urgency to Miss Branch herself.”
This went on for several minutes, and, finally, having made sure he
could get nothing further, the man at the other end of the wire made an
appointment to see me at 5:30 P. M.
As soon as I hung up the receiver my wife said: “That is a newspaper
reporter. Some other paper knows about her.”
But how could this be? Miss Branch had assured us that she had not
mentioned our names to any one, nor shown the letter we had written to
her; that no one in Monticello had the remotest idea where she was
going, not even the kind sheriff; that no one had boarded the train at
her station. She had been most careful, because my wife in her letter
had laid such stress upon her distaste for publicity.
Of course, if other papers had the story of her having come to us, then
Miss Branch would not get the money from Mr. Van Hamm. I had sold an
exclusive story, and it would be said that I had not delivered the
goods. I at once telephoned to Mr. Van Hamm to tell him of this
incident, but I was told that he was out, and I left word for him to
call me up the minute he returned.
His reporter arrived, Mr. Thorpe by name. I will say for Mr. Thorpe that
I think he tried to be decent all through this ugly matter. I detected
in him before it was over the manner of a man who has been sent to do a
job he does not like. I explained to him that I had just had a call from
a man I suspected to be a reporter, and therefore I would not give him
the story until I had had another talk with Mr. Van Hamm and explained
the circumstances to him. So Mr. Thorpe sat for awhile in conversation
with me. My wife came out and talked to him—much to my surprise, for she
has a dread of reporters. Soon, however, I discovered that it was my
wife who was doing the interviewing. She called me out of the room and
said: “That telephone call was from the ‘Journal’ office.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“From everything this young man says, and from his manner. I’ve tried to
make him answer me, whether Mr. Van Hamm could have been responsible for
that telephone call, and he evaded the question.”
“But,” I said, “what object could they have?”
“They may have been trying to probe you. They have believed that Miss
Branch is still with us. This man is trying to find out right now, for
he cranes his neck and peers every time I open a door.”
I did not think this could be, but I was more than ever determined to
have another talk with Mr. Van Hamm. However, this gentleman continued
to be mysteriously absent. I will sum up this aspect of the matter by
saying that he continued to be “expected every few minutes” at his
office and at his home until 12 o’clock that night. I made not less than
twenty efforts to get him, but he would not even let me hear his voice.
As I still refused to give up my story, Mr. Thorpe was suddenly seized
with a desire for cigarettes, and went out to purchase some. I am not in
a position to say that he called up the office, and turned in what
information he had been able to get in the course of our conversation. I
will only say that such information appeared an hour or two later in the
columns of the “Evening Journal.”
Mr. Thorpe returned, and still Mr. Van Hamm was mysteriously missing. At
last I got tired of waiting, and I gave Mr. Thorpe the interview and the
article, and also a letter addressed to Mr. Van Hamm, in which I
explicitly repeated the specifications of my telephone conversation with
him. I read it to Mr. Thorpe and my wife.
It was then time for the mysterious stranger to appear, but needless to
say, he did not keep his appointment. I will conclude this aspect of the
story by quoting the following letter from Sheriff Frank Kinnie, of
Sullivan County, N. Y.
Your favor relative to Miss Branch received this morning and wish to
state that the statement is a falsehood absolutely, as I had no idea
whatever as to Miss Branch’s whereabouts, and if you meet Miss Branch
she will tell you that no one here in her confidence knew where she
was going. I trust a kind Providence will protect and care for her.
To continue: I had that evening to attend a reception given to the
delegates of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, at the home of a
friend of mine who conducts a boarding school for young ladies. Little
dreaming what an avalanche I was to bring down upon the head of this
unfortunate friend, I left word at the office that Mr. Van Hamm was to
call me at this school at 8 o’clock that evening.
My wife and I then proceeded to pack our belongings for the steamer—the
first opportunity we had had in all this excitement. The superintendent
of the apartment-house came to us to ask if we could leave an hour
earlier than we had intended, as there were two gentlemen who had rented
it and wanted to move in immediately. My wife said: “Surely no one can
move into an apartment in the state of disorder in which we are leaving
this!”
“It seems strange,” was the reply, “but that is what they want to do.
They do not want to wait to have it put in order. They are waiting, and
they want to come in the minute you leave.”
If I had been dealing with Hearst newspapers for a sufficiently long
time, I would have understood in advance the significance of this
phenomenon. As it was, I simply pitied the two unfortunate young men,
who would have to spend the night in the midst of the chaotic mass of
torn manuscripts and scraps of letters and envelopes which littered the
floor. Later on I was glad that I had married a lawyer’s daughter—when
my wife informed me she had gone over this trash and burned every scrap
of paper relating to Miss Branch and her affairs!
I went to the reception, and at about 8 o’clock in the evening the
“Journal” called me up—“Mr. Williams” on the wire—to say that Mr. Van
Hamm had considered my article and regretted to say that he could not
use it. The information that I had offered him was not considered worth
the sum of three hundred dollars. I asked what it was worth, and was
told twenty-five dollars. I said, “That won’t do. I will offer it
somewhere else.” I demanded the right to speak to Mr. Van Hamm himself
on the subject, but was told that he was “out.” I was obliged to content
myself with impressing upon “Mr. Williams” the fact that not a syllable
that I had confided to Mr. Van Hamm was to be used by the “Journal.”
“Mr. Williams” solemnly assured me that my demand would be complied
with—and this in face of the fact that the last edition of the “Evening
Journal,” containing the whole story, was then in the “Journal” wagons,
being distributed over the city! I called up a friend of mine on the
“World” to offer him the story, and the reader will need a vivid
imagination to get an idea of my emotions when this friend exclaimed,
“Why, that story has already been used by the ‘Journal’!”
“That is impossible!” I exclaimed.
He answered, “I have a copy of it upon my desk.”
It was not until I was going on board the steamer that I got a copy of
the “final extra” of the “New York Evening Journal,” the issue of
Monday, December 29, 1913. At the top of the front page, in red letters
more than one-half inch high, appeared the caption:
“JOURNAL FINDS MISS BRANCH HERE”
with two index hands to point out this wonderful news to the reader. A
good portion of the remainder of the front page was occupied by an
article with these headings:
HEART-WIFE IS IN NEW YORK
Found Here by Journal.
Miss Branch Traced to Well-Known Writer’s Home After Secret Flight.
Adelaide M. Branch, for three years the heart-wife of Melvin H. Couch,
former District Attorney of Sullivan County, is today in New York
City. She is secluded at the home of a well-known sociologist and
writer who has interested himself in her case and has offered her a
home, at least until she can make definite plans for the future.
Miss Branch was traced to her hiding place in this city by the
“Evening Journal.” The former “love slave” of Couch told the
sociologist that she wished to be absolutely quiet and undisturbed. So
for the present it is not possible to give her address.
And so continued a long article, which contained practically everything
of what I gave to Mr. Thorpe, sometimes even using the very phrases
which I had used in the presence of my wife.
I will not trouble the reader with a description of the state of mind we
were in when our steamer set out for Bermuda. I will simply give a brief
summary of what else occurred in this incredible affair:
First, someone got, or pretended to get, from the hall-boy at the
apartment where I had been staying, an elaborate and entirely fictitious
account of how Miss Branch had arrived, and how she had swooned and my
wife had caught her in her arms, and how some other people had come and
carried her away in an automobile. This account was published in full.
Then the records of my telephone-calls were consulted, and every person
whom I had called up in my last two days in the apartment was hounded.
My poor mother was driven nearly to desperation. In our telephone-call
list was found the name of Dr. Warbasse, who had taken Miss Branch away,
and Dr. Warbasse later received a wireless message from Bermuda, as
follows:
“Give Branch story to papers.”
Shortly afterward the doctor was called up by the “Evening Journal,” and
was told that the “Journal” had received a wireless message from me,
instructing them to call on him for information concerning Miss Branch.
I quote from Dr. Warbasse’s letter to me:
I believed the only way they could have learned of my connection with
the case was from you, and accordingly gave them a short statement of
the facts, but withheld the location of Miss Branch. They published
very distorted versions of what little I gave them. They were
particularly solicitous for her whereabouts. A few days later I had
another wireless from you, asking me to send you Branch’s address. By
this time I had grown suspicious, and sent you my address instead. I
am now wondering whether the wireless messages were from you or were
newspaper fakery. If the latter is the case, it was well done, believe
me, and does great credit to the unscrupulousness of the press.
Needless to say, I had sent no such message. What is more significant, I
did not receive the message which Dr. Warbasse sent to me, giving me his
address! Is the “Evening Journal” able to intercept cablegrams? I don’t
know; but soon after my arrival in Bermuda I received a letter from my
friend who conducts the school for young ladies, scolding me for the
terrible trouble into which I had got her. The “Journal,” she said, had
become convinced that Miss Branch was hidden in the school, and it was
only by desperate efforts that she had kept this highly sensational
rumor from going out to the world. I thought, of course, that I was to
blame for my thoughtlessness in having given her telephone number to the
“Evening Journal” on the eve of my departure from New York, and I wrote
abjectly apologizing for this. What was my consternation to receive a
letter assuring me that this was not what had angered her, but the fact
that I had been so foolish as to send her a wireless message,
instructing her to give the story of Miss Branch to the paper, and had
wired the “Journal” to call upon her for the information!
Mr. Arthur Brisbane is the man whom I had always understood to be the
editor in charge of the “Evening Journal.” I wrote him asking him to
investigate this affair; and I sent a registered copy of the letter to
Mr. Hearst, who, I assumed, would be jealous for the journalistic honor
of his papers. I pointed out the fact that on the Monday afternoon in
question every newspaper in New York had had the story that Miss Branch
was going West to see a brother of hers. In all editions of the “Evening
Journal,” except the final edition, the following statement had
appeared:
Heart-wife flees to asylum. Miss Branch is in hiding in a sanitarium
within ten miles of Monticello. As soon as she recovers her strength
she will probably join her brother.
I said that I wished to know what Mr. Van Hamm had to say, as to how the
“Journal” had got the information it published in its final edition. If
it was an independent tip, who gave that tip? And if the telephone-call
alleged to be from the Sheriff had come from any other paper than the
“Journal,” why had not that paper used the story?
Mr. Brisbane replied that he was now in Chicago, and had no longer
anything to do with the “New York Evening Journal,” but that the matter
would undoubtedly be investigated by Mr. Hearst.
A friend of mine, an old newspaper man, wrote me à propos of this:
“Don’t imagine for one minute that anything will be done about it; don’t
imagine but that Van Hamm is Hearst. Hearst knows exactly what Van Hamm
does, and if Van Hamm failed to do it, he would lose his job.” This
sounded somewhat cynical, but it seemed to be borne out by Mr. Hearst’s
course. He chose to veil himself in Olympian silence. I wrote him a
second courteous letter, to the effect that unless I heard from him and
received some explanation, I would be compelled to assume that he
intended to make the actions of his subordinates his own. He has not
replied to that letter, so I presume that I am justified in the
assumption. And this man wishes to be United States Senator from New
York!
Several years ago he desired to be Governor, and there resulted such a
tempest of public wrath, such a chorus of exposure and denunciation,
that he was overwhelmed; if he had not had a very tough skin he would
have fled from political life forever. Unquestionably a deal of this
denunciation came from vested interests which he had frightened by his
radicalism; but, on the other hand, it betrayed a note of personal
loathing that was unmistakable. I marvelled at it at the time; but now I
think I understand it.
The story of Miss Branch is forgotten, but other stories are filling the
Hearst papers day by day. Are they all got with the same disregard for
every consideration of decency, for all the rules which control the
dealings of civilized men with one another? Get clear the meaning of
this story of mine—the reason for all this lying, sneaking, forging of
cablegrams, bribing of hall-boys, violation of honor and good faith. Was
it to get a story? No—the “Journal” had the story offered to it on a
silver tray! The reason for all the knavery was to avoid the payment of
three hundred dollars to a destitute and distracted woman—that, and that
alone! And if such be Hearst’s attitude to his pocket-book, if such be
the methods of his newspaper-machine where his pocket-book is concerned,
there must be thousands and tens of thousands of people in New
York—politicians, journalists, authors, business-men—who have run into
that machine as I did, and been knocked bruised and bloody into the
ditch. When Mr. Hearst runs for office, all these men jump into the
arena and get their revenge!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MOURNING PICKETS
I had a book to write that winter, and my wife’s health to think about.
We had got as far from the newspapers as we knew how—a little cottage in
one of the remotest parts of the Bermuda Islands, with sand-dunes and
coral-crags all about us, and a sweep of the Southern ocean in front.
There we lived for several months, and thought we were safe. I never
went anywhere, except to play tennis—so surely I ought to have been
safe! But I wasn’t.
All at once my clipping-bureau began sending me articles from newspapers
all over the United States. I was starting a ranch for the training of
incorrigible boys in Nevada! First, I was in Chicago for an assortment
of boys; I wanted the very wildest and most blood-thirsty that could be
found; I had picked out several young criminals who had been given up by
reformatories. Then, a little later, I was out in Nevada, starting this
“Last Chance Ranch,” with a score or two of boys. And then one of the
boys ran away; he complained that I fed him on vegetarian food, and he
couldn’t stand it. As it happened, I had not been a vegetarian for a
long time; also, as it happened, I was in Bermuda instead of Nevada; but
what did that matter to the newspapers? Before long I found myself
riding on horseback across the desert, chasing this runaway boy, John
Fargo. I had been riding for three days and had nothing in my
saddle-bags but peanuts and canned beans.
And there I was left. To this day I don’t know what happened to me;
whether I caught “John Fargo,” or what became of my “Last Chance Ranch.”
Is there a phantom Upton Sinclair, still chasing “John Fargo” over the
Nevada desert, and living on peanuts and canned beans?
It may have been, of course, that there was some one impersonating me. A
friend of mine, a school-teacher, told me the other day that one of her
pupils had assured her quite solemnly that he knew me well; I was a
cripple, and went about in a wheel-chair. Also, I was told by a waiter
in a Los Angeles hotel that a bald-headed man had reserved a table in my
name, and given an elaborate dinner, and that the hotel staff had
thought they were dining me. I am wondering what would have happened in
the newspapers if that bald-headed man had drunk too much champagne, and
had thrown a bottle through one of the dining-room mirrors?
I came back to America, and made an investigation of the Colorado
coal-strike, and so began one of the most sensational episodes of my
life. It is a long story, but I shall tell it in full, because it is not
a personal story, but a story of eleven thousand miners with their wives
and children, living in slavery in lonely mountain fortresses, making a
desperate fight for the rights of human beings, and crushed back into
their slave-pens by all the agencies of capitalist repression.
I had been to Colorado, and knew intimately the conditions. Now the
strike was on, and the miners and their families living in tent-colonies
had been raided, beaten, shot up by gunmen. Finally a couple of
machine-guns had been turned loose on them, their tent-colony at Ludlow
had been burned, and three women and fourteen children had been
suffocated to death. I sat in Carnegie Hall, New York City, amid an
audience of three thousand people, and listened to an account of these
conditions by eye-witnesses; next morning I opened the newspapers, and
found an account in the “New York Call,” a Socialist paper, and two
inches in the “New York World”—and not a line in any other New York
paper!
I talked over the problem with my wife, and we agreed that something
must be done to break this conspiracy of silence. I had trustworthy
information to the effect that young Rockefeller was in charge of what
was going on in Colorado, though he was vigorously denying it at this
time, and continued to deny it until the Walsh commission published his
letters and telegrams to his representatives in Denver. Evidently,
therefore, Mr. Rockefeller was the shining mark at which we must aim. It
happened that one of the speakers at the Carnegie Hall meeting had been
Mrs. Laura G. Cannon, whose husband was an organizer for the United Mine
Workers, and had been thrown into jail by the militia and kept there
without warrant or charge for a considerable time. So we called on Mrs.
Cannon to go with us to the offices of Mr. Rockefeller.
We were received by a polite secretary, to whom we delivered a carefully
phrased letter, asking Mr. Rockefeller to meet Mrs. Cannon, and hear at
first hand what she had personally witnessed of the strike. We were
invited to come back an hour later for our reply, and we came, and were
informed that Mr. Rockefeller would not see us. So we presented a second
letter, prepared in advance, to the effect that if he persisted in his
refusal to see us, we should consider ourselves obligated to indict him
for murder before the bar of public opinion. To this letter the polite
secretary informed us, not quite so politely, there was “no answer.”
What was to be done now? I had learned by experience that it would be
necessary to do something sensational. An indignation meeting in
Carnegie Hall, attended by three thousand people, was not enough. At
first I thought that I would go to young Mr. Rockefeller’s office and
watch for him in the hall, and give him a horse-whipping. But this would
have been hard on me, because I am constitutionally opposed to violence,
and I did not think Mr. Rockefeller worth such a sacrifice of my
feelings. What I wanted was something that would be picturesque and
dramatic, but would not involve violence; and finally I hit on the idea
of inviting a group of people to put bands of crepe around their arms,
and to walk up and down in front of 26 Broadway in dead silence, to
symbolize our grief for the dead women and children of Ludlow. I called
a group of radicals to discuss the project; also I called the newspaper
reporters.
Picketing, except in labor strikes, was a new thing at that time, though
the suffragists have since made it familiar. The novelty of the thing,
plus the fact that it was being done by a group of well-known people,
furnished that element of sensation which is necessary if radical news
is to be forced into the papers. A dozen reporters attended our meeting
at the Liberal Club, and next morning the newspapers reported the
proceedings in full.
So at ten o’clock, when I repaired to 26 Broadway, I found a great crowd
of curious people who had read of the matter; also, a number of
reporters and camera-men. The reporters swarmed about me and besought me
for interviews, but according to agreement I refused to speak a word,
and began simply to walk up and down on the sidewalk. I was joined by
three ladies who had been present at the meeting of the night before,
one of them Elizabeth Freeman, a well-known suffragette. A number of
others had promised to come, but apparently had thought better of it in
the cold light of the morning after. However, the deficit was made up by
a lady, a stranger to us all, who had read about the matter that
morning, and had hastily made herself a white flag with a bleeding
heart, and now stood on the steps of 26 Broadway, shrieking my name at
the top of her voice. It had been agreed that the “mourning pickets”
were all to preserve silence, and to make no demonstration except the
band of crepe agreed upon. But alas, we had no control over the actions
of this strange lady!
Of course there were a number of policemen on hand, and very soon they
informed me that I must stop walking up and down. I explained politely
that I had made inquiry and ascertained that I was breaking no law in
walking on the sidewalk in silence; therefore I didn’t intend to stop.
So I was placed under arrest, and likewise the four ladies. We were
taken to the station-house, where I found myself confronting the
sergeant at the desk, and surrounded by a dozen reporters with
note-books. The sergeant was considerate, and let me tell the entire
story of the Colorado coal-strike, and what I thought about it; the
pencils of the reporters flew, and a couple of hours later, when the
first edition of the afternoon newspapers made their appearance on the
street, every one of them had three or four columns of what I had said.
Such a little thing, you see! You just have to get yourself arrested,
and instantly the concrete-walls turn into news-channels!
There is one detail to be recorded about this particular action of the
news-channels. The United Press, which is a liberal organization, sent
out a perfectly truthful account of what had happened. The Associated
Press, which is a reactionary organization, sent out a false account,
stating that my wife had been arrested. My wife, knowing how this report
would shock her family and friends in the South, sent a special delivery
letter to the Associated Press calling their attention to the error, but
the Associated Press did not correct the error, nor did it reply to this
letter. My wife’s mother, an old-fashioned Southern lady, took the first
train out of Mississippi, to rescue her child from jail and from
disgrace; but by the time the good lady reached New York, she was so ill
with grief and shame that if her child had really been in jail she could
have rendered but little assistance. All she could do was to inform her
that even though she was not in jail, her father had disinherited her
after reading his morning paper. My wife was informed by lawyers that
she was in position to collect large damages from the Associated Press,
and from every newspaper which had printed the false report. Some thirty
suits were filed, but my wife’s health did not permit her to go on with
them.
We were taken to the Tombs prison, where the ladies sang the
Marseillaise, and I wrote a poem entitled “The Marseillaise in the
Tombs,” and again found it possible to have my poetry published in the
New York newspapers! The magistrate who tried us was an agreeable little
gentleman, who allowed us to talk without limit—the talk all being taken
down by the reporters. The charge against us read “using threatening,
abusive and insulting behavior.” The witnesses were the policemen, who
testified that my conduct had been “that of a perfect gentleman.”
Nevertheless we were found guilty, and fined three dollars, and refused
to pay the fine, and went back to the Tombs.
The newspapers tore me to pieces for my “clownish conduct,” but I
managed to keep cheerful, because I saw that they were publishing the
news about the Colorado coal-strike, which before they had banned from
their columns. The “New York World,” for example, published a sneering
editorial entitled, “Pink-tea Martyrdom.” “No genuine desire to effect a
reform actuates them, but only morbid craving for notoriety.” But at the
same time the “World” sent a special correspondent to the coal-fields,
and during the entire time of our demonstration and for a couple of
weeks thereafter they published every day from half a column to a column
of news about the strike.
I spent two days and part of a third in the Tombs. Every day the
reporters came to see me, and I gave interviews and wrote special
articles—all the news about Colorado I could get hold of. And every day
there was a crowd of ten thousand people in front of Twenty-six
Broadway, and young Rockefeller fled to his home in the country, and
“Standard Oil,” for the first time in its history, issued public
statements in defense of its crimes.
My wife had taken up the demonstration after my arrest, and I was amused
to observe that the police did not arrest her, nor did the newspapers
ridicule her. Was it because she was a woman? No, for I have seen the
police beat and club women doing picket-duty—working-women, you
understand. I have seen the newspapers lie about working-women on
picket-duty; in the course of this Colorado campaign I saw them print
the vilest and most cowardly slanders about the wives of some strikers
who went to Washington to make appeal to President Wilson. No, it was
not because my wife was a woman; it was because she was a “lady.” It was
because in the files of the New York newspapers there reposed a clipping
recording the fact that her father was “one of the wealthiest men in
this section and controls large banking interests.”
Please pardon these personalities, for they are essential to the thesis
of this book—that American Journalism is a class institution, serving
the rich and spurning the poor. It happens that M. C. S. is
conspicuously and inescapably what is called a “lady”; she not merely
looks the part, she acts it and speaks it in those subtle details that
count most. All her young ladyhood she spent as what is known in the
South as a “belle”; incidentally, of course, as an ungodly little snob.
She has got over that; but in case of an emergency like our Broadway
affair, she naturally used every weapon she had. Against the New York
reporters and the New York police department she used the weapon of
snobbery—and it worked.
In the South, you see, a “lady” takes for granted the slave-psychology
in those she regards as her “social inferiors.” Not merely does she
expect immediate obedience from all members of the colored race; she
feels the same way about policemen in uniform—it would never occur to
her to think of a policeman as anything but a servant, prepared to
behave as such. I assured her that she might not find this the case with
the husky sons of St. Patrick who lord it over the New York crowds. But
M. C. S. answered that she would see.
Far be it from me to know to what extent she did these things
deliberately; my advice in such matters is not sought, and I am allowed
to see the results only. What I saw in this case—or rather learned about
later—was that M. C. S. arrived in front of 26 Broadway an hour late,
clad in supple and exquisite white broadcloth, military cape and all;
and that on sight of this costume the New York City police department
collapsed.
For two weeks the “lady” from the far South marshalled the
demonstration, walking side by side with eminent poets from California,
and half-starved Russian Jews from the East side slums, and gigantic
lumber-jacks from the Oregon forests. If those Russian Jews and Oregon
lumber-jacks had tried such a stunt on Broadway by themselves, they
would have had their scalps split open in the first five minutes. But
the lady in the white military cape was there—never speaking, but
looking firmly ahead; and so for two weeks the New York police
department devoted itself to keeping everybody else off the sidewalks in
front of 26 Broadway, so that our “free silence” advocates might have
room to walk up and down undisturbed. They even had mounted policemen to
clear lanes in the street, so that the cars might get through; and when
some one hired thugs to try to pick quarrels with us and cause a
disturbance, the police actually drove the thugs away. I feel quite
certain that this was the first time in New York City’s history that
thugs employed by a great corporation to terrorize strike-pickets had
met with opposition from the police.
And lest you think that M. C. S. is still a snob, and got a sense of
triumph from all this, I ought to add the humiliating truth—that each
day after going through with her ordeal, she would come home at night
and cry! She would talk quietly and firmly to the reporters who came to
our apartment; but after they had gone, she would be in a nervous fever
of rage, because we had had to do such a “stunt,” in order to get the
truth into the rotten newspapers.
Ladies in the South are, of course, not accustomed to having their
husbands in jail; so on the third day M. C. S. collected all our most
respectable-looking “mourners,” Leonard Abbott, George Sterling, Frank
Shay and Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Walker, and put them on duty. Then she betook
herself to the Criminal Courts Building, where she caused much
embarrassment to several gentlemen in high station. The
District-Attorney told her what to do, and helped her to make out the
necessary papers; then she set out to find the judge. But the Criminal
Courts Building is confusing to strangers; there is a central balcony,
and all four sides of it look exactly alike, and M. C. S. got lost. She
stopped a gentleman coming out of a court-room, and asked where she
could find Justice So-and-so. “He is in room seventeen,” was the answer.
“But I can’t find room seventeen,” said M. C. S. “Please show me.” “What
do you wish with Justice So-and-so?” inquired the gentleman, politely.
“Why,” said M. C. S., “some imbecile of a judge has sent my husband to
jail.” “Madam,” said the gentleman—still politely, “I am the judge.”
She found Justice So-and-so. His court was in session and he could not
be interrupted. But in the South, you understand, anything from a court
to a fire-engine will stop to pick up a lady’s handkerchief. And
moreover, the father of M. C. S. is a judge, so she knows about them.
She walked down the aisle and addressed his honor with her quietest
smile, and—the court proceedings halted while the necessary papers were
signed, and a Socialist muck-raker was released from jail.
The reason for this step was our desire to test in the higher courts the
question whether a man whose conduct had been “that of a perfect
gentleman” could properly be found guilty of “using threatening, abusive
and insulting behavior.” In order to appeal the case it was necessary to
pay the fine under protest, so I paid one dollar, and came out on the
last day—to behold the crowd of ten thousand people, and the mounted
policemen, and the moving-picture operators in the windows of nearby
office-buildings. And so, day after day, we were enabled to give
information about the Colorado coal-strike to a group of reporters for
the New York papers!
Several of these reporters were men of conscience. One, Isaac Russell of
the “Times,” became our friend, and day after day he would tell us of
his struggles in the “Times” office, and how nearly every word favorable
to myself or to the strikers was blue-penciled from his story. So during
this Broadway demonstration, and the affair in Tarrytown which followed
it, we lived, as it were, on the inside of the “Times” office, and
watched the process of strangling the news. We have seen the tears come
into Russell’s eyes as he told about what was done. And on top of it
all, Mr. Adolph Ochs gave a banquet to the “Times” staff, to celebrate
some anniversary of the paper, and got up and made a speech to them—a
speech to Isaac Russell!—telling what a wonderful institution he had
made out of the “Times,” and how it stood consecrated to the public
welfare and the service of the truth!
P. S.—Isaac Russell reads the above, and corrects one serious error. He
writes in emphatic capitals:
“WE REPORTERS PAID FOR THAT DINNER!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE CASE OF THE “A. P.”
It must be understood that at this time the Colorado coal-strike had
been going on for six or seven months. Most of the tent-colonies had
been broken up, and the miners were being slowly starved into
submission. To one who comes into close touch with such a situation and
realizes its human meanings, it becomes an intolerable nightmare, a slow
murder committed in a buried dungeon. My mail was full of letters from
the miners and their leaders, and I went out to Colorado to see what
else could be done to reach the consciences of the American people. I
arrived in Denver at a time when the first public fury over the Ludlow
massacre had spent itself, and silence had once more been clamped down
upon the newspapers. I spoke at a mass meeting in the State capitol,
attended by one or two thousand people, and when I called on the
audience to pledge itself never to permit the prostituted State militia
to go back into the coal districts, I think every person in the
legislative chamber raised his hand and took the pledge. Yet not a line
about my speech was published in any Denver newspaper next morning, and
needless to say, not a line was sent out by the Associated Press.
The Associated Press was playing here precisely the same part it had
played with the “condemned meat industry;” that is, it was a concrete
wall. I have now to tell about a thorough test of this leading agency of
capitalist repression. I consider the incident the most important which
this book contains, and therefore I shall tell it in detail. By far the
greater part of the news which the American people absorb about the
outside world comes through the Associated Press, and the news they get
is, of course, the raw material of their thought. If the news is colored
or doctored, then public opinion is betrayed and the national life is
corrupted at its source. There is no more important question to be
considered by the American people than the question, Is the Associated
Press fair? Does it transmit the news?
Some time previous to the Colorado coal-strike I had attended a dinner
of the Socialist Press Club, at which the question of dishonest
newspapers was debated, and one of the speakers was Mr. Fabian Franklin,
then editor of the “Evening Post,” an amiable old gentleman who quite
naïvely referred to the Associated Press as he would have referred to
the Holy Trinity. He told of some radical friend of his who had pointed
out that the Associated Press had circulated the news of a defeat of the
Initiative and Referendum in Oregon, and subsequently, when the
Initiative and Referendum had been victorious, had failed to report the
victory. “Just think of it!” said this amiable old gentleman. “My
radical friend actually believed that the Associated Press would have
some motive in suppressing news about the success of the Initiative and
Referendum in Oregon!”
I was called upon to answer this argument. I quote from an account of
the discussion in the “New York Call”:
Sinclair was saying that when the fusion of capitalism beat Seidel
(Socialist) in Milwaukee, the wires were full of it, but when Duncan
(Socialist) beat a fusion in Butte, the press was as silent as the
tomb. Franklin said that it was merely that Butte had no news value,
while Milwaukee, “Schlitz beer—everybody wants to know about
Milwaukee.”
Incidentally I might mention in passing that this amiable old gentleman,
Mr. Fabian Franklin, who thinks that the Associated Press would be
incapable of suppressing news about a triumph of the Initiative and
Referendum, and that it would naturally send out political news about
Milwaukee because Schlitz beer is made in Milwaukee, has just recently
been selected by a group of reactionaries to conduct a weekly organ of
safety and sanity, “The Review.” The reader will be able from the above
anecdote to form an idea of the intellectual status of Mr. Franklin, and
the likelihood of his having anything worth while to say to the American
people in this greatest crisis of history!
Shortly afterwards came the case of the “Masses,” which published a
cartoon representing the president of the Associated Press as pouring a
bottle labeled “Poison” into a reservoir entitled “Public Opinion.” The
Associated Press caused the arrest of Max Eastman and Art Young on a
charge of criminal libel. They knew that by starting such a proceeding
they would gain an opportunity of propaganda, and of this they hastened
to make use. They issued an elaborate statement attacking the “Masses”
and defending their own attitude toward the news, which statement was
published in practically every paper in New York. I remember
particularly that our organ of civic virtue, the “New York Evening
Post,” published it in full. It included this sort of “dope”:
If these young men had investigated before they spoke, they would
never have said what they did; for if there is a clean thing in the
United States it is the Associated Press. The personnel of the service
is made up as a whole of newspaper men of the finest type; throughout
the profession employment in its service is regarded as an evidence of
character and reliability. No general policy of suppression or
distortion could be carried on without the knowledge and indeed the
active connivance of these men, stationed at strategic points all over
the world. Aside from that, the Associated Press has the active
competition of several other aggressive press associations and
thousands of special correspondents, and any laxity or deliberate
failure on its part would be exposed instantly to its members, who
would be quick to resent and punish any such procedure. These members,
some nine hundred in number, represent every shade of political and
economic opinion, and it is absurd to suppose that a general policy of
distortion or suppression could be carried on without immediate
exposure.
The editors of the “Masses,” of course, proceeded to collect evidence,
and the Associated Press must have realized very quickly that they were
in for serious trouble. They caused a subservient district attorney to
bring another indictment, charging libel against the individual who had
been portrayed in the cartoon: the purpose of the change being that they
hoped to exclude from the trial all evidence against the Associated
Press as an organization, and to force the “Masses” to prove that this
one individual had had personal knowledge of each instance of news
suppression and perversion.
Gilbert E. Roe, who was preparing the case for the “Masses,” asked me to
tell him of my experiences with the Associated Press, and in talking the
matter over he explained what would be required to constitute legal
evidence of the suppression of news. I had no such legal evidence in the
case of the “condemned meat industry,” because I had not kept copies of
my letters to the Associated Press, and I had not kept the clippings of
what they actually did send out on the story. I promised Mr. Roe that
the next time I went to the bat with the “A. P.,” I would take pains to
get proper evidence; and now in Denver I came suddenly upon my
opportunity. I got real legal evidence, and the Associated Press knows
that I got it, and I have been told that because of this they will never
again dare to bring radicals into court, or to defend the thesis that
they handle the news impartially. In my challenge I deliberately
repeated the words for use of which the “Masses” editors were indicted,
as follows:
I now, over my own signature and as a deliberate challenge, charge
that the Associated Press has poisoned the news of the Colorado
situation at its source. Will the owners and managers of the
Associated Press take up this challenge and make an attempt to send me
to prison? I am waiting, gentlemen, for your answer.
This was published May 30, 1914, and I am still waiting. I made every
effort, both public and private, to get this answer. I besieged the
Associated Press and also the Associated Press newspapers, but no answer
could be had, so I think I may fairly say that the Associated Press
admitted its guilt in this case. The story, first published in the
“Appeal to Reason,” was written within a few hours of the events
narrated, and gave all the documents. With the addition of a few
explanations, made necessary by the lapse of time, the story is given
unchanged in the next two chapters. It is a long story, but it will
repay study, for there are few narratives of recent events which take
you quite so far into the “inside,” or reveal quite so clearly how
Politics, Journalism, and Big Business work hand in hand for the
hoodwinking of the public and the plundering of labor. I urge the reader
to follow the narrative carefully, for every detail is necessary to the
proper comprehension of the plot.
CHAPTER XXVI
A GOVERNOR AND HIS LIE
The crux of the struggle in Denver during these critical months was the
State militia. This militia had been called out and sent to the
strike-field because of violence deliberately and systematically
committed by the armed thugs of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency.
There were one or two thousand of these thugs in the field, and they had
beaten up the strikers and their wives, and turned machine-guns upon
their tent-colonies. The militia had come, supposedly to restore law and
order, but the militia authorities had proceeded to recruit new
companies from among these detectives and thugs. This was systematically
denied by the newspapers, not merely in Colorado, but all over the
country; later on, however, the State legislature forced the production
of the roster of the militia, and it appeared that of one single
company, newly recruited, one hundred and nineteen members out of one
hundred and twenty-two had been employes of the strike-breaking
agencies, and had continued on the pay-rolls of the coal-companies while
serving in the State militia! They had been armed by the State, clothed
in the uniform of the State, covered by the flag of the State—and turned
loose to commit the very crimes they were supposed to be preventing! The
culmination of this perversion of government had been the Ludlow
Massacre, which drove the miners to frenzy. There had been a miniature
revolution in Colorado; armed workingmen had taken possession of the
coal-country, and the helpless State government had appealed to the
Federal authorities to send in Federal troops.
The Federal troops had come, and the miners had loyally obeyed them.
From the hour that the first regulars appeared, no shot was fired in the
whole region. The Federal authorities preserved law and order, and
meantime the State legislature was called to deal with the situation.
This State legislature was composed of hand-picked machine politicians,
and all its orders were given from the offices of the Colorado Fuel &
Iron Company. Senator Van Tilborg, machine-leader, personally declared
to me his opinion that all the State needed was “three hundred men who
could shoot straight and quick.” The State authorities meant to find
these three hundred men; they passed a bill appropriating a million
dollars for military purposes, and another bill providing for the
disarming of all people in the State who were not in the service of the
corporations.
The strike at this time had continued for seven months, and the strikers
were in their tent-colonies, sullenly awaiting developments. The program
of the corporations was to strengthen the State militia, then have it
take charge and maintain itself by machine-guns. The attitude of the
general public to this proposition may be gathered from the mass-meeting
in the State capitol, where one or two thousand people raised their
hands and pledged themselves that they would never permit the
prostituted militia to go back to the mines.
So stood the situation on Saturday, May 16, 1914, the day the State
legislature was scheduled to adjourn. President Wilson, who had sent in
the Federal troops reluctantly, was waiting in Washington to see what
measures the State authorities would take to put an end to the
prevailing civil war. By Saturday morning he had come to realize that no
adequate measures were being taken, and he sent from Washington a
telegram to Governor Ammons of Colorado:
Am disturbed to hear of the probability of the adjournment of your
legislature, and feel bound to remind you that my constitutional
obligations with regard to the maintenance of order in Colorado are
not to be indefinitely continued by the inaction of the State
legislature. The Federal forces are there only until the State of
Colorado has time and opportunity to resume complete sovereignty and
control in the matter. I cannot conceive that the State is willing to
forego her sovereignty, or to throw herself entirely upon the
government of the United States, and I am quite clear that she has no
constitutional right to do so when it is within the power of her
legislature to take effective action.
And now begins a story of political crookedness, the like of which had
never come under my personal observation. I had been in Denver four
days, and had opportunity to meet a score of people who knew the
situation intimately, and who were able to put me on the “inside.” So I
can invite you into the Governor’s private office at eleven o’clock on
Saturday morning, when the above telegram from President Wilson arrived.
First, let me describe this Governor, as I wrote about him in the
“Denver Express”:
I went yesterday afternoon to see your Governor. I wish to be very
careful what I say of him. He is apparently a kindly man; in
intellectual caliber fitted for the duties of a Sunday-School
superintendent in a small village. He is one of the most pitiful
figures it has ever been my fate to encounter. He pleaded with me that
he was a ranchman, a workingman, that he was ignorant about such
matters as mines. When I pointed out to him that, according to
government figures, there were twelve times as many miners killed and
injured by accidents in the southern Colorado fields as elsewhere, his
only answer was that he had heard some vague statement to the effect
that conditions were different in other places. He pleaded tearfully
that he had brought upon himself the hatred of everyone, he admitted
that he was utterly bewildered, and had no idea what to do in this
crisis. His every word made evident his utter ignorance of the
economic forces which have produced this frightful situation. He cried
out for some solution; yet, every time that I sought to suggest a
solution, and to pin him down to a “yes” or a “no” upon a certain
course of action, he lost control of himself and cried out that I was
trying to make him “express an opinion.” He, the Governor of the
State, had no business to have opinions about such a dispute!
It is no accident, of course, that a man of this type comes to be
governor of a State like Colorado. The corporations deliberately select
such men because they wish to be let alone, and they prefer men who are
too weak to interfere with them, even if they wish to interfere. So now
at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning this poor pitiful Governor sends
for his advisors—the leaders of the hand-picked machine majority in the
State legislature. What is to be done? If the President’s telegram is
sent to the legislature, it may refuse to adjourn, and insist upon
considering the President’s demand. Therefore, at all hazards, the
telegram must be suppressed. Also, it must be sent to the coal-operators
in the city, in order that they may consult and tell the Governor what
reply to make to the President. All the newspaper men in Denver knew the
names of the two men who took the message about to the operators. It was
considered by the operators for three or four hours, and a reply drafted
and sent; and meantime desperate efforts were made by the machine
leaders to obtain the adjournment of the legislature. The reply drafted
by the operators and sent by the Governor was as follows:
Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Washington:
I regret exceedingly that you have been misinformed. The legislature
has just passed an act, which I have approved, providing for a bond
issue of one million dollars for the purpose of paying the
indebtedness which has been incurred and which may be incurred in
suppressing insurrection and defending the State. As soon as these
bonds can be issued, these funds will be available and this State can
and will control the situation. This is the only constitutional method
of raising funds in immediate future. In addition to this act the
legislature has enacted a law permitting the Governor to dose saloons
in time of disorder, and also a law prohibiting the carrying and
disposition of firearms in time of disorder. Moreover, a committee on
mediation on the present strike has been provided for and appointed.
Now the heart of our story is this last sentence in the Governor’s
telegram: this “committee on mediation on the present strike.” If such a
committee had been appointed, the legislature might fairly claim to have
done its best to settle the strife. But _had_ such a committee been
appointed? It had _not_. The coal-operators, confused by the President’s
sudden action, had caused their poor Governor to telegraph the President
a lie; and now all their agencies of repression were brought to bear to
keep the truth, not merely from the President, but from the whole
country.
First of all, it must be kept from the State legislature itself! A
senator tried to have the President’s telegram and the Governor’s answer
read in the senate, but by parliamentary juggling this was prevented.
All debate was forbidden; but a Democratic woman senator, Helen Ring
Robinson, succeeded in getting in a few words of protest, under the
guise of an “explanation” of her vote. Senator Robinson read the last
sentence of the Governor’s answer: “Moreover a committee on mediation on
the present strike has been provided for and appointed.” Said Senator
Robinson: “I know of no such committee which has been appointed by this
assembly.”
Lieutenant-Governor Fitzgarald replied that the resolution providing for
the “strike investigating committee” provided for mediation.
“But,” protested Senator Robinson, “I can’t find a sentence in that
resolution that mentions ‘mediation.’ I can’t see a word on ‘mediation’
in the resolutions.”
“Whereupon” (I am quoting the account from the “Rocky Mountain News” of
May 17th), “Senator A. N. Parrish, conservative Republican, objected
that the motion was not debatable. Further discussion was shut off, the
motion to read the President’s telegram was laid on the table, and the
senate adjourned.”
Now on that critical Saturday evening it happened that I was a guest at
the home of the late Chief Justice Steele of Colorado, and there I met
Senator Robinson. She asked me if I could not do something to make this
matter clear to the country. Could I, for example, find out if the
Associated Press had gotten the point straight? With the Senator sitting
by my side I called the Associated Press on the ’phone and spoke with
Mr. A. C. Rowsey, its night editor in charge in Denver. I told Mr.
Rowsey that I was in consultation with an opposition Senator, and that
my attention had been called to this point, which I endeavored to
explain.
Mr. Rowsey laughed good-naturedly at my effort to enlighten his great
institution. He informed me that they had trained men up at the capitol
watching every point of the procedure, and that they had got the story
quite correct. I endeavored to make the precise point about the phrase
“mediation”; but not having any copy of the proceedings before me, and
being really unable to believe that Senator Robinson could be correct in
attributing such an open falsehood to the Governor of the State, I
permitted Mr. Rowsey to back me down, and hung up the receiver feeling
that I had made a fool of myself.
But later that evening I went to the office of the “Rocky Mountain
News,” where I was able to see a copy of the official record in the
case, the House Journal of the proceedings of May 15, 1914. The measure
was contained on pages 7, 8, and 9, and on page 47 there was an
amendment. I read the bill and amendment, line by line, and I did not
find in it the word “mediation.” The measure provided as follows:
Resolved, That a joint committee of six members, three selected by the
senate and three by the house, said members to be selected by the body
of each house shall be appointed and directed to confer and advise
with the Governor and other executive officers of the State to the end
that the legislative department may render all assistance in its power
to the executive department in the enforcement of law and the
maintenance of order, and to consider ways and means of restoring and
maintaining peace and good order throughout the State; and to
investigate and make report at the next session of the legislature
upon the following matters and subjects:
The bill then goes on to outline an elaborate series of matters for
investigation—whether the coal companies have obeyed the laws; what
wages they have paid; the terms of the mining leases; the employment of
gunmen; what efforts have been made to settle the strike, etc. The
amendment provides for further inquiry into the names of strike leaders,
their nationality, etc., and the causes of violence. These subjects
were, of course, enough to occupy a committee for many months. There was
nowhere in the bill anything suggested about settling the present
strike. On the contrary, the express task of the committee was said to
be “to generally investigate all matters connected with said strike;
that remedial legislation may be enacted _at the next General Assembly_
which will tend to prevent _a recurrence of insurrection and public
disorder_.”
Now, do not think that I am juggling words over the question of the
precise meaning of the above bill. The distinction between the bill
which had actually been passed, and the bill which the Governor told
President Wilson had been passed, was vital and fundamental. Here was a
desperate struggle, the class-war in literal truth, involving the two
greatest forces in modern society. The whole State was torn apart over
it, and if anybody were going to “mediate” and “settle” it, the whole
State wished to know it, and must have known it. At the time that this
investigation bill was passed, it was an investigation bill and nothing
else, and this was understood by everyone who had anything to do with
it. The measure was regarded as of so little importance that the “Rocky
Mountain News” of the day after its passage did not even refer to it. It
was one more “committee to investigate,” and the State was sick of such.
By actual count there had been more than _sixty_ such committees
appointed already—one of them a committee from Congress, which had taken
testimony filling ten volumes! It was perfectly understood by everyone
that the purpose of this new legislative committee was to collect a lot
of facts prejudicial to the strikers. Its members were all machine
politicians of the very worst type. The idea of such a committee
attempting to “mediate,” or to “settle the strike,” would have been
regarded as a joke by the whole State; but no one had any such idea. It
was not until Governor Ammons and his advisors found themselves “in a
hole,” that they hit upon the scheme of calling this a “committee on
mediation.”
Also, let us get clear the purpose of this trickery. The purpose was to
keep the President of the United States from intervening to force a
compromise, as he was threatening to do. The legislature was to be
adjourned, and the President was to find himself in a position where he
would have to keep the Federal troops in the field and do the work of
repression which the prostituted State militia of Colorado could no
longer do. Such was the plan—and I might add that it was carried out
completely.
Next morning, by consulting with other members of the legislature, and
with several lawyers in Denver, I made quite certain of the facts. Also
I made certain that the Associated Press had sent out no hint of these
facts. The Associated Press had sent merely the President’s telegram and
the Governor’s answer. Presumably, therefore, the President had
swallowed the Governor’s lie. Beyond question the country had swallowed
it. It seemed to me that here was an occasion for an honest man to make
his voice heard; so I sent a telegram to President Wilson, as follows:
President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C.:
As one in position to observe from inside the events in this capital,
I respectfully call your attention to the lack of fairness of Governor
Ammons in withholding your telegram from the legislature for four
hours while efforts were made to adjourn. All newspaper men know that
during that time your telegram was in the hands of all coal-operators
in this city, and they know the men who took it to them. Furthermore,
they know that Governor Ammons’ telegram to you contains a falsehood.
The word “mediation” did not appear in the measure referred to, which
provides for investigation only. There has been a ten-volume
investigation already. Governor Ammons declared to me personally that
he means to return the militia to the strike-fields. Twenty
independent investigators, reporters, lawyers, relief-workers assure
me result will be civil war on a scale never before known in American
labor dispute. Miners by thousands pledged to die rather than submit
to more government by gunmen.
UPTON SINCLAIR.
I took this telegram on Sunday evening to the editor of the “Rocky
Mountain News.” He said, “It is a splendid telegram; it covers the
case.” I said, “Will you publish it?” He answered, “I will.” I said,
“Will the Associated Press get it from the News?” He answered, “It
will.” It might be well to finish this part of the matter by stating
that on the next evening I had a conversation with Mr. Rowsey, in charge
of the Associated Press, as follows: “Did you get my telegram from the
‘News’?” “We did.” “You did not send it out, I believe?” “We did not.”
The “Rocky Mountain News” had been for many years a hide-bound
corporation newspaper, but at this moment the owner of the paper had, so
I was told, some kind of a personal quarrel with the coal operators. At
any rate, he had placed in charge a young Chicago newspaper man, Wm. L.
Chenery, with orders to publish the truth. That the “News” was not
favoring me personally will be clearly seen from the fact that on
Tuesday morning it published a ferocious attack upon me by Gov. Ammons,
and refused to publish a word of what I offered in reply. Nevertheless,
on Monday morning the “News” published a two-column editorial headed:
“To the Patriots of Colorado.” Says the “News”: “Not one word about
mediation is contained in the entire resolution. The committee is given
no power to mediate. They may investigate, examine and report, and that
is all.” And elsewhere the editorial says: “A committee on mediation has
not been provided for; and none has been appointed. Think of the
inutterable weakness of such conduct! Think of its stupidity!”
Such was the voice of unprejudiced opinion in the city of Denver on the
subject of the Governor’s telegram. And what did the country hear about
the controversy? Not a word! The Associated Press had all facts. It came
to the “News” office and got everything the “News” had; and it sent out
not one word! On the contrary, the Associated Press did its best to
persuade the country that the President was pleased with Ammons’ reply.
It sent out the following:
Washington, May 16.—President Wilson expressed satisfaction with the
situation after he received Governor Ammons’ reply late tonight. It
was said by officials in close touch with the President that Wilson
was greatly pleased with what had been done after he had been informed
by Governor Ammons of the work of the Colorado legislature, and that
he hoped the State would assume control of the situation in the near
future so the Federal troops might be withdrawn.
That this was an Associated Press invention, made to help out the poor
Governor, was made clear the next morning by the “News,” whose own
correspondent wired the following:
Washington, May 17.—At the White House it was stated that nothing had
been given out which would justify the statement printed in some of
the morning papers that the President is entirely satisfied with the
telegram received yesterday from Governor Ammons.
I was by this time thoroughly wrought up over the situation, determined
that the country should somehow hear the truth. I besieged the offices
of the Denver newspapers; as a result the “Denver Post,” on Monday
afternoon, published on its front page, with a heading in large red
letters, an interview with Governor Ammons, in which that worthy
denounced me as an “itinerant investigator,” also as a “prevaricator.”
The Governor’s defense on the point at issue was this:
In regard to Sinclair’s declaration that the word “mediation” did not
appear in the resolution appointing a committee to investigate the
strike, Ammons explained:
“Probably that particular word does not occur, but a reading of the
resolution will show that it gives the legislative committee power ‘to
assist in settling the strike.’ If that isn’t mediation I’d like to
know the true meaning of the word.”
I felt pretty sick when I read that interview; I thought the Governor
must “have” me for sure! With sinking heart I went and procured a copy
of the House Journal, to see if I could possibly have overlooked such a
phrase as “to assist in settling the strike.” I read over line by line
the three pages of the bill, and the one page of amendment; and, behold,
there was no such phrase: “to assist in settling the strike.” There was
nothing in any way remotely suggesting it! On the contrary, there was
the explicit statement of the purposes of the committee “_to generally
investigate all matters connected with said strike; that remedial
legislation may be enacted_ AT THE NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY _which will
tend to prevent_ A RECURRENCE OF INSURRECTION AND PUBLIC DISORDER.”
The Governor had lied again!
So then I wrote the Governor a letter. I said:
You have relied upon the fact that the man in the street has not
access to the volume of the House Journal, and will accept your
statements upon their face. This, of course, puts me at a cruel
disadvantage, for you are a prominent official and I am only an
“itinerant investigator.” But I propose, if possible, to compel you to
face this issue. I will name two friends as a committee to represent
me to settle this question at issue. I request you to name two
friends. I request you to point out to them in the measure in question
the word “mediation” or the phrase “to assist in settling the strike.”
Your two friends will then bring it to my two friends, who, seeing the
phrase in print in the House Journal, will be obliged to admit that I
am wrong. You have objected to my presence in the state, upon the
ground that I am meddling in the affairs of the people of Colorado.
Very well, sir, I hereby offer you a simple way to rid the state of my
presence. I hereby agree that if your two friends can point out to my
two friends the word or phrase in question, I will quit the borders of
your State within twenty-four hours and never return to it. Upon your
acceptance of this proposition, I shall name my two friends.
This letter was mailed to the Governor on Monday night; also copies were
mailed to the newspapers. At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, while
dictating my article for the “Appeal to Reason,” I called up Mr. F. G.
Bonfils, editor in charge and one of the owners of the “Denver Post.”
The following conversation occurred:
“Good morning, Mr. Bonfils; this is Upton Sinclair. Did you receive the
copy of the letter which I mailed to Governor Ammons last night?”
“I did.”
“May I ask if you intend to publish it?”
“I do not.”
“May I ask what is your reason for refusing?”
“The reason is that things have been stirred up enough, we think. The
people in this city want peace.”
“Does it seem to you that this is fair journalism?”
“Now, listen, my boy, don’t try to argue with me; you have had plenty of
room to spread your ideas in our paper.”
“You are entirely mistaken, Mr. Bonfils. You have not reported a single
speech that I made in this town. You did not even print my telegram to
President Wilson. But you print the Governor’s answer to it.”
“Well, now, we don’t want to stir up this question any further. We think
this State is very much in need of peace. We are not looking for
trouble. If we printed your answer to the Governor, we should have to
print the Governor’s answer to you. And so it would go on indefinitely,
and we don’t want people calling each other names in our paper.”
“If that is the case, why did you print the Governor’s attack upon me?”
“Now, listen, kid, don’t get excited.”
“I was never less excited in my life, Mr. Bonfils. I am simply asking
politely for an explanation.”
“Well, now, we don’t care to argue this question with you.”
“You have called me a liar in your paper, and refuse me an opportunity
to defend myself? Is that correct?”
“Yes; it’s correct.”
“Well, then I simply wish to tell you this one further thing. I am at
present in a stenographer’s office dictating an account of this
conversation for a publication which has a circulation of five hundred
thousand——”
“I don’t care if it has a circulation of five hundred million.”
“Then you are willing for this conversation to be reported as expressing
the attitude of the ‘Post’?”
“Say, Bill, we have been attacked so often by fellows like you, and we
have got so prosperous on it, that we don’t care anything about it.”
“Very well, then; good morning.”
The above conversation was recorded in the following way. The
stenographer sat by my side at the telephone, and took down every word
that I said. Immediately afterwards this was read off to me, and I
filled in Mr. Bonfils’ answers. As it happens that I have a good memory
for words, I can state that the above is for practical purposes a
stenographic record of the conversation. And later on I went out and
bought an early edition of the “Post,” and found the man had “carried
over” the Governor’s attack, a reprint from the day before! And then,
walking down the street, I came to the building of the “Post,” and
looked up and saw—oh, masterpiece of humor!—an inscription graven all
the way across the stone front of the building:
JUSTICE, WHEN EXPELLED FROM OTHER HABITATIONS, MAKE THIS THY
DWELLING-PLACE.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT THE BAR
Let us return to Monday evening, and to our main theme, the Associated
Press. I saw here my long-awaited chance to put this organization on
record. I believed, and still believe, that this was a perfect case of
news-suppression. Here was the closest approach yet made to social
revolution in America; here was the class-war, naked and undisguised—on
the one side the lives of thirty or forty thousand wage-slaves, on the
other side a hundred million dollars of invested capital, controlling
the government of an entire state, and using this control to suppress
every legal and constitutional right of American citizens, and to drive
them to armed revolt. To this conspiracy the Associated Press had lent
itself; it was being used, precisely as the Baldwin-Felts Detective
Agency, precisely as the puppets of the State government. The directors
and managers of the Associated Press were as directly responsible for
the subsequent starvation of these thousands of Colorado mine-slaves as
if they had taken them and strangled them with their naked fingers. If
it had been such individual crimes of strangling, all society would have
agreed on the need of publicity. I have made it my task in life to force
the same kind of publicity for the economic crimes of predatory social
classes. I considered now that the time for action had come, and as my
final test of the “A. P.” I prepared a second telegram to President
Wilson, as follows:
President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C:
In interview tonight, Governor Ammons brands me as prevaricator for my
statement to you that commission of mediation was not provided. He now
admits the word “mediation” does not appear, but insists that the
phrase “to assist in settling the strike” is equivalent. No such
phrase occurs. I urgently request you to get the full text of this
resolution and realize what it means that the Governor of this State
is wilfully and deliberately endeavoring to deceive you and the public
in this crisis.
Wishing to make quite certain in this vital matter, I took the trouble
to write out my plan of action, and took it to a personal friend, a
leading newspaper editor in Denver. He said, “Don’t do it.” I asked,
“Why not?” The answer was, “It will make you so many powerful enemies
that you will be unable to do anything more to send out news.” I
answered that I had never been able to do anything with the Associated
Press—it was always and invariably closed to what I had to say, and only
mentioned me when it had something considered discreditable, such as my
being sent to jail. My friend answered, “Well, if you can stand being
hated and suppressed for the balance of your life, go ahead.”
I could stand that. So I took the volume of the House Journal and a copy
of my telegram to President Wilson, and went down to the office of the
Associated Press in the Ernest & Cranmer Building, and saw Mr. A. C.
Rowsey, with whom I had talked over the phone the night before. He was
very pleasant and friendly; and I wish to state that the attitude
manifested by the Associated Press in this test case was in no way due
to any personal difficulty or ill feeling. Mr. Rowsey showed himself a
gracious host, and I never had a more pleasant interview with anyone.
I showed him the House Journal, and he read the four pages with
interest. He read my telegram to the President, and then stated that
they would refuse to carry it, as they had refused to carry the one they
had got from the “News” on the previous day. His explanation was that it
was the policy of the Associated Press “to avoid controversy.” If they
once got started they would never know where to stop.
I said, “But Mr. Rowsey, this controversy is the most important item of
news on the Colorado situation tonight. I have here put before you
indisputable documentary evidence that Governor Ammons has lied to
President Wilson; and surely the public would want to know that fact.
Surely the public has at least a right to know of the charge, and to
make up its own mind as to its truth or falsity.” Mr. Rowsey’s answer
was, “Our wire from Colorado is very much crowded these days, and this
controversy does not seem to us to be news.” I said, “Very well, Mr.
Rowsey; will you now permit me to hand to you this letter, which I have
drafted to serve as a record of the circumstances.”
He took the letter and read as follows:
Denver, Colo., May 18, 1914.
CORRESPONDENT ASSOCIATED PRESS,
Denver, Colorado.
_Dear Sir_:
Yesterday I sent President Wilson a telegram, which I believed and
still believe was of vital public importance. A copy of this telegram
was put into your hands last night by the “Rocky Mountain News” and
was refused by you. I now offer you a second telegram, bearing upon
this subject. At the same time I offer for your inspection a copy of
the House Journal in order that you may verify the truth of the
statements contained in my telegram to President Wilson. I shall
first, in a personal interview, politely request you to send this
telegram over your wires. If you refuse to do so, I shall—in order to
put you upon record—place this letter in your hands and request you to
sign the statement below. If you refuse to sign it, I shall understand
that you refuse to send out this telegram over your wires, and I shall
proceed to send it to the papers myself, and I shall subsequently take
steps to make these circumstances known to the public.
Respectfully,
UPTON SINCLAIR.
MR. UPTON SINCLAIR, City:
_Dear Sir_:—The undersigned, correspondent of the Associated Press in
Denver, agrees to send your telegram to President Wilson over its
wires tonight.
........................................
Mr. Rowsey read this letter and handed it back to me, with the smiling
remark: “I see you are getting a good story.” I thanked him, and left. I
went down-stairs to the telegraph-office and sent a copy of my telegram
to President Wilson to a selection of newspapers all over the country.
They were as follows: New York “Times,” “World,” “Herald,” “Sun” and
“Call”; Chicago “Examiner” and “Tribune”; Philadelphia “North American”
and “Press”; Baltimore “Sun”; Washington “Times”; Boston “Herald” and
“Journal”; Topeka “Journal”; Kansas City “Star”; Milwaukee “Journal”;
Atlanta “Georgian”; New Orleans “Times-Democrat”; Omaha “News”;
Pittsburg “Post.”
Now, I submit that here is a definite test of the service of the
Associated Press. Is it sending out all the material which its papers
want? Is it suppressing anything which its papers would be glad to
publish if they could get it? Let the reader observe that these
newspapers are not merely radical and progressive ones; they include
some of the staunchest stand-pat papers in the country, the New York
“Times” and “Herald,” for example. They are all save two or three of
them Associated Press papers. To make the test automatic I sent the
telegrams “collect.” The editors had the right to read the message, and
if they did not want it, to refuse to pay for it, having it sent back to
me for collection. Out of the twenty papers, how many took this step?
Only five! The other fifteen took the story that the Associated Press
refused to send out. This is a remarkable showing, considering the fact
that I sent the telegram late in the evening, and too late for most of
the Eastern papers. It should be pointed out that a newspaper editor is
far less disposed to print a dispatch which comes from an unauthorized
person. My charge was a startling one, and an editor would naturally
doubt it. He would say, “If it is true, why doesn’t the Associated Press
send it?” Mr. Rowsey, in Denver, had the House Journal before him; but
the city editors of newspapers all over the country did not have this
advantage, and would naturally be disposed to rely upon Mr. Rowsey.
It might be worth while to add that the claims made in my two telegrams
to President Wilson were fully vindicated by subsequent events. The
committee of six machine legislators, appointed to collect material
discreditable to the strikers and their leaders, proceeded to vindicate
the Governor and redeem his reputation by going through a pretense of
“mediation”; but the public paid so little attention to the farce that
it petered out in two or three days. The strike lasted for another seven
months, and all that time the Federal troops remained in the field—the
very thing which President Wilson had declared himself determined to
avoid, and which the coal-operators had been determined to force upon
him!
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ITS NEWSPAPERS
I am giving a great deal of space in a small book to this one test of
the Associated Press. I think that the subject is an important one, and
that the documents in the case should be available to students. In the
present chapter I give the reaction of the press of America to this
particular test. If the reader is not interested in such details, he may
skip this chapter.
I have talked over this case with many lawyers, and shown them the
documents, and asked: “Is there any legal flaw in them?” They have never
been able to point out one. Also I have talked the case over with
journalists—some of the most eminent of capitalist journalists, as I
shall presently narrate, and have asked them to point out a flaw. They
have pointed out what they think is a flaw—that in presenting to the
Associated Press my telegram to President Wilson, I was asking the
Associated Press to give publicity to my name and personality, and the
Associated Press might have been justified in refusing the request.
I answer that there were many ways in which the “A. P.” could have
handled this matter without mentioning my name: a fact which I plainly
pointed out to Mr. Rowsey. The first time I spoke to him—over the
telephone—I was speaking, not for myself, but for Senator Robinson. She,
a duly elected representative of the people of Colorado, speaking in
their legislature, had nailed the Governor’s lie, and it was Mr.
Rowsey’s unquestionable duty to report her words. It was only when I
realized how completely the “A. P.” was in the hands of the
coal-operators that I “butted in” on the matter at all. And when my
telegram was refused by Mr. Rowsey, I was careful to point out to him
that there were other ways he might handle this news. He might give the
story as coming from Senator Robinson; he might send extracts from the
editorial of the “Rocky Mountain News”; he might send a dispatch saying,
“It is generally reported in Denver,” or “Protests are being made in
Denver.” All this I made clear, and he in return made clear why he did
not do so. Anyone who had been present at our long and partly humorous
interview would have perceived that this was no error in judgment of an
individual employe of the “A. P.,” but a definite policy of the great
machine. Mr. Rowsey went so far as to say to me that he was a Socialist,
in sympathy with my point of view, and that he personally would have
been willing to send out a straight story.
In exactly the same way, when I took this story to various newspapers
and magazines, I tried to suppress my own personality. I said to the
editors: “If you are not willing to discuss the grievance of Upton
Sinclair, then make an investigation of your own. Send a representative
to Denver and interview Senator Robinson and write about the efforts of
a progressive woman senator for fair play in this strike. Take the
telegrams which passed between the President and the Governor of
Colorado, take the pretenses of the fake mediation commission and the
false reports of the Associated Press about it, and write the story
without mentioning my name.” But all such suggestions were in vain.
There was no capitalist magazine or newspaper in the United States that
would take up the conduct of the Associated Press in the Colorado
strike.
In one of its published statements in the “New York Evening Post,” the
Associated Press had explained its stern attitude toward the editors of
the “Masses”:
The Associated Press is not prosecuting the case in any vengeful
spirit, but is fighting for a public vindication. For several years
the association has sat silent under accusations of this kind,
reflecting upon the integrity of the service and the personal honor of
its responsible officers, because the charges were made either on the
floor of Congress, where no redress is possible, or by persons who
were careful or lucky in avoiding the legal limitations of civil or
criminal libel. In several cases the persons making the charges
retracted them absolutely. At last they have a case involving libel
per se, and they purpose to avail themselves of the opportunity to
present to the public the facts regarding the service.
This, you perceive, is dignified and impressive; dignity and
impressiveness are virtues permissible to great capitalist institutions.
But now make note: my challenge to the Associated Press, published in
the “Appeal to Reason,” repeated the identical words for which the
editors of the “Masses” had been arrested; and I sent a copy to all the
leading officers of the Associated Press; I afterwards saw a letter,
signed by Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press,
acknowledging that he had seen it. Here surely was a charge “involving
libel per se,” and one which I had taken pains to make as emphatic, as
unconditional, as damaging as possible. It was a public challenge,
appearing on the front page of a newspaper whose circulation for that
week was five hundred and forty-eight thousand and forty. Yet the
Associated Press did not take up the challenge; it swallowed the insult.
Not only that, but every newspaper having the Associated Press service
did the same; some nine hundred newspapers throughout the United States
sat in silence and let this challenge pass unanswered. I had the “Appeal
to Reason” send a marked copy of this issue to every one of the nine
hundred Associated Press papers, and I wrote to my clipping-bureau,
asking them to watch especially for mention of the matter. This
clipping-bureau is the best in the country, and seldom misses anything
of importance. It could not find me a single mention of my challenge to
the Associated Press.
I next selected a list of forty of the leading papers of the country,
including the twenty to which I had sent the telegram from Denver. I
sent them a marked copy of the article, with a letter addressed to the
managing editor, pointing out what my challenge meant—that I had
publicly indicted the source from which this paper got the news which it
gave to the public. Would the paper defend the integrity of its news?
Would it force the Associated Press to explain this incident? Three
papers replied to my letter. I shall deal with them a little later. The
other thirty-seven papers left my letter unanswered. And let it be noted
that this included all the papers which make the greatest pose of
dignity and honor, such as the “Boston Evening Transcript,” the
“Springfield Republican,” the “New York Times,” the “Philadelphia Public
Ledger,” the “Baltimore Sun,” the “Chicago Tribune,” the “Louisville
Courier-Journal,” the “Memphis Commercial-Appeal,” the “Atlanta
Constitution.” Also, I tried the magazines. One week after the
publication of my challenge to the Associated Press there had appeared
in “Collier’s Weekly” a leading editorial entitled “In Justice to the A.
P.”:
The officers and members of the Associated Press have been kept busy
lately repelling attacks upon that organization. In so far as they are
defending themselves from the charge of wilful distortion of the news,
we sympathize with them. Six or seven years ago we printed a series of
articles which dealt with the general subject of “tainted news,” and
from time to time since then we have pointed out examples of this
insidious practice. During this time not less than a score of persons
have come to us with alleged examples of tampering with the news on
the part of the Associated Press. All of these cases we looked into
with care and pains, and many of the same were investigated by other
publications and persons. We have never found a case that justified us
in publishing the details or in making any charge of wilful distortion
against the Associated Press.
I wrote now to “Collier’s Weekly.” They had investigated a score of
cases, here was one more. Would they agree to investigate this, and to
publish the facts? To this challenge “Collier’s Weekly” made no
response. “Collier’s Weekly” did not investigate, and it never published
a line about the matter. Then I wrote to the editors of the “Outlook,”
the extremely pious instrument of the “clerical camouflage.” In its
issue of May 30, 1914, the “Outlook” had published two articles dealing
with the Associated Press. I now wrote and invited it to take up this
case, and the “Outlook” did not reply. Also I wrote “The Independent,”
which was once a liberal paper, and it too refused any publicity.
To return to the three newspapers which answered my letter: Mr.
Frederick S. Forbes, acting managing editor of the “Philadelphia North
American,” replied that his paper had “frequently had occasion to
criticize the news distributing agencies of the country,” and would
investigate my story. That was the last I ever heard from the matter.
When I wrote to remind the “Philadelphia North American,” they did not
answer. In the course of a year I wrote several times, but they did not
answer.
And then the “New York World.” The “World” had published a challenge,
defying anyone to point out where it had failed to print important news.
I now took this case of the Associated Press to the “World,” and the
“World” answered that having published my telegram to the President from
Denver, the “World” had published the news! The fact that the “World”
had got this telegram from me instead of from the Associated Press—that
was not news! The fact that I had published a challenge, deliberately
repeating the words of the “Masses” editors, and that the Associated
Press and all its newspapers had passed my challenge by—that was not
news, in the judgment of the “World”!
The third paper which replied to me was the “New York Evening Post”; the
only one which took up the matter in what I considered the proper
spirit. Mr. John P. Gavit, managing editor of the “Evening Post,” wrote
as follows:
Your letter of recent date, together with the exhibit embodied in the
first page of the “Appeal to Reason” for May 30th, is hereby
acknowledged. I have undertaken an investigation of the matter which
will take considerable time and I am writing now only to prevent your
having the mistaken impression that your communication is to be
ignored. I attach for your information copy of a self-explanatory
letter which I have addressed to Mr. Melville E. Stone, General
Manager of The Associated Press.
Dear Mr. Stone:
I hand you herewith copy of the letter which we have received from Mr.
Upton Sinclair, together with a page from the “Appeal to Reason”
published at Girard, Kansas, under date of May 30th, 1914. I have been
out of town, which fact will explain my delay in taking this matter up
with you.
I am perfectly aware of Mr. Sinclair’s reputation among newspaper men
as an insatiable hunter of personal publicity; but it seems to me that
his telegram to President Wilson, making specific allegations in
connection with a matter of the utmost public consequence at a
critical time, ought to have been transmitted by the Associated Press
men at Denver. Of course, it is perfectly absurd for any Associated
Press man to say that it is the policy of the Associated Press “to
avoid controversy”; that theory of the service is long out of date,
and two-thirds of its news reports relate to controversies in one way
or another. I have not examined the reports of the matters to which
Mr. Sinclair refers, but on its face his article certainly creates a
prima facie of suppression of important facts regarding the situation
at Denver. At the time to which he refers, I realize that the Denver
correspondent was in a very difficult position in all this business,
but in this case I think he made a palpable mistake.
It is evidently necessary under the circumstances that the “Evening
Post” should deal with this subject, and I shall be glad to have at
your early convenience any statement which you will be willing to have
published over your signature. I personally believe that this should
include some explanation from the Denver correspondent as to his
reason for refusing to mention Sinclair’s telegram to the President;
though, of course, that is a matter entirely within your discretion.
Yours very truly,
JOHN P. GAVIT,
Managing Editor.
The above letter was perfectly satisfactory to me. It did not trouble me
what either Mr. Gavit or Mr. Stone thought about my reputation among
newspaper men. All that I was concerned about, all that I have ever been
concerned about, was that the truth about social injustice should be
made public. Mr. Gavit sent me a copy of Mr. Stone’s reply, promising to
make an immediate investigation of the matter and report. I felt so sure
of the outcome that I ventured to make an announcement in the “Appeal,”
June 20, 1914, to the effect that the “A. P.” was to be “smoked out,” it
was to be compelled to answer my charges.
But alas for my hopes of fair play, my faith in the organ of arm-chair
respectability! Time passed, and I wrote to Mr. Gavit, again reminding
him of his promises, and in reply he asked me to call to see him. I
called, and found myself up against the concrete wall. Mr. Gavit was as
polite as I could have requested; all that he failed in was action. He
would not tell me the result of the investigation which Mr. Stone had
made, or had promised to make. He would not tell me anything, except
that the case was a subtle and difficult one to judge, and that he could
not see his way to take it up. I quoted to him his letter to Mr. Stone,
“It is evidently necessary under the circumstances that the ‘Evening
Post’ should deal with this subject”; Mr. Gavit was uncomfortable and
embarrassed, but he would not make good his words, nor would he publish
in the “Evening Post” the facts about my challenge to the Associated
Press. He never published a line about it, and on the basis of the facts
above stated, I believe that I can claim to have proven positively that
the “New York Evening Post” is not what it pretends to be, a newspaper
serving the public interest.
I make the same claim concerning the “New York Times.” The “Times” did
not answer my letter, it did not pay any attention to me; but it happens
that I read the “Times,” and know some of its editors, so I went after
it again and again. I will quote from the last of my letters, so that
the reader may see how desperately I tried to get something done:
New York City, June 15, 1914.
EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Some time ago I wrote you a letter with regard to charges I had made
against the Associated Press. I asked you to consider these charges
and lay them before your readers, and give them an opportunity to
decide of their truth. Not hearing from you, I wrote a second time, to
ask you to do me the courtesy to let me know your intentions in the
matter. Still not hearing from you, I assume that it is your intention
to treat my communication with contempt. I want to call your attention
to the fact that in writing to you I am making a test of the sense of
honor of your publication. I am putting you on record, and I shall
find means to make your attitude known to the public. You are an
Associated Press newspaper, and your honor is definitely bound up with
that of the organization which serves you. You sell Associated Press
news to the public. If the Associated Press news is false news, you
are selling false news to the public, and you are refusing the public
any opportunity to judge a most serious, a carefully documented charge
that this news is false. It is true that you published my telegram to
the President in one edition of your paper. But it is also true that
you published it only because I sent it to you. The Associated Press
did not send it to you. And I cannot always be in Colorado, and cannot
always make it my business to supply you with antidotes to the poison
which you are getting from the Associated Press. Only today, for
example, you are, through the agency of the Associated Press,
responsible for suppressing an important piece of news from Colorado:
that is to say, the fact that Judge Lindsey has issued a statement
defending himself, and especially the women who went with him, against
the charges which have been made against them by the “interests” in
Colorado. The “New York World” gave that letter a column, from its
special correspondent. The “New York Call,” having the Laffan Service,
also had some account of the letter. You, having the Associated Press
service, have not a word about it. And this is a vital and most
important piece of news.
I then went on to tell about the “Evening Post” and its promise to
investigate. I said:
The “Times” is involved in the matter in exactly the same way, and to
exactly the same extent as the “Evening Post.” The “Times” published
the officially inspired defense of the Associated Press in exactly the
same way as the “Evening Post.” I believe that it is up to you to
explain the reasons for your silence in this matter. I believe that if
you maintain silence, I shall be justified in declaring to all the
world that you have shown yourself in this matter a newspaper without
a high sense of honor, and false to the motto which you carry, “All
the News that’s Fit to Print.” I assure you that I shall make this
charge against you on many occasions in future. You may think that the
five hundred thousand a week circulation of the “Appeal to Reason” is
a factor which you can afford to neglect, but I believe that in the
course of time you will realize that you were mistaken in permitting
me to place you on record in this matter.
So ends the story of my test of the Associated Press and its newspapers.
In the second part of this book, which deals with causes, I shall return
to the subject, and show exactly why these things happen: Why the “New
York Times” is without honor where the Associated Press is concerned,
and just how many thousands of dollars it would have cost the “New York
Evening Post” if its managing editor had carried out his bold promise to
me.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SCANDAL-BUREAU
There is one other incident which must be told before I finish with the
subject of Denver, its criminal government and prostitute newspapers. I
had been in Denver before, also I had read Ben Lindsey’s “The Beast”; so
I knew, before I arrived, what I might expect to encounter. Standing in
the Pennsylvania station, bidding my wife farewell, I said: “Let me give
you this warning; whatever you read about me, don’t worry. If there is
any scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in
Denver.”
And when I reached my destination, I had cause to be glad of my
forethought. John Reed, who had just come up from the coal-country, told
me of the vile slanders which had been invented and circulated
concerning the women of the coal-fields who had been active in defense
of their cause. The scandal-mongers had not even spared a poor,
half-crazed Italian woman, whose three babies had been burned to death
in the holocaust at Ludlow! Louis Tikas, a young Greek idealist, a
graduate of the University of Athens, who had been trying to uplift his
people and had been foully murdered by corporation thugs, they
blackguarded as a “brothel hanger-on” before his corpse was under
ground! John Reed himself they had got involved with a charming young
widow in Denver; he had met her twice at dinner-parties! (In passing, to
show you how far Colorado had progressed toward civil war, I might
mention that this lady, upon learning what had been done to the
strikers, sent to the East and purchased two machine-guns and hid them
in her cellar, ready to be shipped to the strike-field for use by the
strikers in case the militia attempted to return.)
Every Socialist and magazine-writer, even every writer for conservative
publications, was taken in hand upon his arrival in Denver, and fitted
out with a scandal. So far as I know, the only one who escaped was
Harvey O’Higgins—and this because he took the precaution to bring his
wife along. I had not brought my wife; also I was a “divorced man,” and
an easy victim. There was a young Jewish girl, a probation-officer in
Judge Lindsey’s court, whom I was so indiscreet as to treat to a
sandwich in a dairy lunch-room; that was sufficient for the
scandal-bureau, which had to hustle in these crowded days. I recollect a
funny scene in the home of James Randolph Walker, where several of these
“affinities” learned for the first time to whom they had been assigned.
We had a merry time over it; but meanwhile, at the meetings of the Law
and Order League, and other places where the ladies of “good society” in
Denver gathered to abuse the strikers, all these scandals were solemnly
taken for granted, and quoted as evidence of the depravity of “foreign
agitators” and the radicals who abetted them!
For myself, let me explain that during my three weeks in Denver I kept
two stenographers busy all day; I wrote a score of articles, I sent
hundreds of telegrams and letters—working under terrific pressure,
hardly taking time to eat. My wife was back in New York, risking her
frail health in the midst of public uproar, and with reason to fear that
she might be assaulted by thugs at any moment. Every thought I had to
spare was for her, all my loyalty was for her; yet “good society” in
Denver was imagining me involved in a dirty intrigue! In several
intrigues—such a Bluebeard I am! I had been in the city perhaps a week,
when a young lady came to me and spoke as follows:
“Mr. Sinclair, I represent the ‘Denver Post.’ We have a rumor concerning
you about which I wish to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“We understand that you are about to move from your hotel.”
“I have no such intention. Who told you that?”
“Well, I hope you will not take offense; I will tell you the report,
just as it was given to me.”
“Very well, go ahead.”
I am sorry I cannot remember the exact words of the rigmarole; it was
five years ago, and I have had more important things to remember.
Suffice it to say that it was a new scandal—not the Jewish
probation-officer; I had uttered a mysterious and portentous sentence,
expressive of my guilty fear; if my wife were to learn why I had left
the hotel, “it would be all over.” I looked the young lady from the
“Denver Post” in the eye and answered: “Standing in the Pennsylvania
station, bidding my wife farewell, I said to her: ‘Let me give you one
warning; whatever you may read about me, don’t worry. If there is any
scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in
Denver.’” And so the young lady from the “Denver Post” went away, and
did not publish that awful “rumor.”
There are people who live upright and straightforward lives, and
concerning whom no breath of scandal is ever whispered; such people are
apt to think that all anyone has to do to avoid scandal is to lead
upright and straightforward lives as they do. They see some man who
keeps dubious company, and is given to “smart” conversation; concerning
such a man an evil report is readily believed; and they conclude that if
any man is a victim of scandal, he must be such a man as that. But how
if a scandal were deliberately started, concerning a person who had done
nothing whatever to deserve it? My wife tells of a woman in her home
town who would destroy the reputation of a young girl by the lifting of
an eyebrow, the gesture of a fan in a ballroom. She would do this,
sometimes from pure malice, sometimes from jealousy for her daughter.
You can understand that among sophisticated people such practices might
become a subtle art; and how if it were to occur to great “interests,”
threatened in their power, to hire such arts? Let me assure you that
this thing is done all over the United States; it is done all over the
world, where there is privilege defending itself against social protest.
There was a certain labor leader in America, who was winning a great
strike. It was sought to bribe him in vain, and finally a woman was sent
after him, a woman experienced in seduction, and she lured this man into
a hotel room, and at one o’clock in the morning the door was broken
down, and the labor leader was confronted with a newspaper story, ready
to be put on the press in a few minutes. This man had a wife and
children, and had to choose between them and the strike; he called off
the strike, and the union went to pieces. This anecdote was told to me,
not by a Socialist, not by a labor agitator, but by a well-known United
States official, a prominent Catholic.
I cite this to show the lengths to which Big Business will go in order
to have its way. In San Francisco they raised a million dollar fund, and
with the help of their newspapers set to work deliberately to railroad
five perfectly innocent labor-men to the gallows. In Lawrence,
Massachusetts, the great Woolen Trust planted dynamite in the homes of
strike-breakers, and with the help of their newspapers sought to fasten
this crime upon the union; only by an accident were these conspirators
exposed, and all but the rich one brought to justice. Do you think that
“interests” which would undertake such elaborate plots would stop at
inventing and circulating scandal about their enemies?
Most certainly they did this in Denver. I was assured by Judge Lindsey,
and by James Randolph Walker, at that time chairman of Denver’s reform
organization, that the corporations of that city had a regular bureau
for such work. The head of it was a woman doctor, provided with a large
subsidy, numerous agents, and a regular card catalogue of her victims.
When someone was to be ruined, she would invent a story which fitted as
far as possible with the victim’s character and habits; and then some
scheme would be devised to enable the newspapers to print the story
without danger of libel suits.
There are a hundred ways by which this can be done; watch “Town Topics”
in New York, or “Town Talk” and the “Wasp” in San Francisco, and you
will see. The victim will be asked if there is dissension between him
and his wife; when he denies it, there will be an item to the effect
that he denies it—the item being so worded as to cause people to smile
knowingly. I know a radical whose wife nearly died of appendicitis;
while she was still bed-ridden, she was taken to a sanatorium by her
mother and her family physician, a man old enough to be her grandfather.
The day after she left, her husband was called upon to “deny” a report
that his wife “had eloped with a Jew.”
Or perhaps maybe a report will be brought to the man that somebody else
has made charges against him; he is naturally indignant, and when he is
asked if he will bring a libel suit, he answers that he will think about
it; so the newspaper has a story that the man is thinking about bringing
a libel suit. Or someone will be hired to slander him to his face, and
when he knocks the slanderer down, the newspaper will have a story of a
public disturbance, so worded as to put the victim in the wrong, and at
the same time to make known the slander.
In extreme cases they will go as far as they did with Judge
Lindsey—hiring perjured affidavits, and getting up a fake reform
organization to give them authority. Lindsey, you understand, has made
his life-work the founding of a children’s court, which shall work by
love and not by terror. Love of children—ah, yes, all scandal-bureaus
know what that means! So they had a collection of affidavits accusing
Lindsey of sodomy. They brought the charges while he was in the East; a
reporter went to the Denver hotel where his young bride was staying, and
when she refused to see the reporter, or to hear the charges against her
husband, the reporter stood in the hallway and shouted the charges to
her through the transom, and then went away and wrote up an interview!
Or perhaps the Scandal-Bureau will maintain for its foul purposes a
special publication which is libel-proof; one of those “fly-by-night”
sheets, whose editor-in-charge is an office-boy, and whose worldly
possessions are a telephone address and three pieces of furniture. This
was a part of their scheme in Denver. The publication was called—oh,
most delicious allurement!—“Polly Pry”! I don’t know if it is still
published, but I saw copies of it during the coal-strike, and it was
full of the cruelest libels concerning everybody who stood for the
strikers.
I remember one full-page story about “Mother Jones,” a white-haired old
woman of eighty-two years, who was being held in jail without warrant or
charge for several months, because she persisted in coming back to the
strike-field every time she was deported. And what do you think they
said about “Mother Jones”? In her early years she had been the keeper of
a house of prostitution! They went into the most elaborate detail about
it; they gave the names of people who knew about it, they gave the
address of the house—and then they had their “kept” congressman, a man
by the name of Kindel, to read this number of “Polly Pry” into the
“Congressional Record”! So, of course, it was “privileged”; all the
“kept” newspapers all over the state of Colorado and elsewhere might
quote the story without danger of punishment! They might quote it, not
from “Polly Pry,” but from the “Congressional Record”!!
I took the trouble to ask “Mother Jones” about this story. It appears
that in those early days she was a sewing woman; she earned a precarious
living, and felt herself justified in working for anyone who would pay
her. She did some sewing for a girl of the streets, and this girl died
of tuberculosis, and the Catholic church refused her a burial service,
and “Mother Jones” wrote to a newspaper to protest against this
action—her first appearance in public life, her first utterance of
radicalism. And this had been remembered all these years, it was brought
up against her in one labor struggle after another; only they made her
the “madame” of the house where the poor girl of the streets had lived!
We who sympathize with the cause of labor grow used to such things, and
do not care for ourselves. What hurts us is this—that in a time of
crisis, when the need of labor is so great, our influence with the
public is destroyed by these slanderers. The average law-abiding and
credulous citizen has no remotest idea of the existence of such
machinery for influencing his mind. He takes the truth of these stories
for granted, and concludes that a cause which is represented by such
advocates can have no claim upon him. While I was in Denver, the “Law
and Order League” held several meetings in the parlors of the great
hotels. I offered to address these ladies, and I know that if I had been
permitted to do so, I could have opened the eyes of some of them. But
the league voted against it, and I have no doubt that this vote was
because of the Scandal Bureau and its work. Instead of hearing me, the
league heard a clergyman, the Rev. Pingree, who declared that if he
could have his way he would blow up all the strikers’ homes with
dynamite! After that I always referred to this organization as the “Law
and Murder League.”
But the crowning achievement of the Scandal-Bureau was still to come. In
the effort to induce President Wilson to intervene in the strike, I had
evolved what I thought was a wonderful idea—that Judge Lindsey and his
wife should escort three of the miners’ wives to Washington to tell
their story to the President. It took days and nights of diplomacy, for
Lindsey had an election campaign ahead of him, and his wife was in
delicate health; but the emergency was extreme, and at last “our little
Ben,” as the children called him, made up his mind to the sacrifice. The
party set out, and spoke at large meetings in Chicago and New York, and
interviewed the President in Washington, and afforded the Associated
Press another opportunity to display its complete subservience to the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
And meantime, in Denver, the newspapers were pouring out an incessant
stream of invective upon Lindsey. The Scandal-Bureau revived the old
yarn, that he was “the insane son of insane parents.” (I knew his
mother, an excellent old lady, as sane as I am.) On every stage of this
journey Lindsey was accompanied by his young wife, to whom he had been
married only a few months; nevertheless, it was plainly stated in the
Colorado papers, and generally believed by Denver “society,” that the
three strikers’ wives constituted part of a harem. If only you could
have seen them—three pathetic, bedraggled poor women, two of them in
deep mourning! And when Mrs. Lindsey, owing to the strain of the
journey, suffered a miscarriage, and had to be carried from the train to
a hospital in Chicago, several Colorado newspapers reported that this
was owing to mistreatment by her husband! At a meeting of the Denver
Real Estate Exchange, it was proposed to appoint a committee to “spit on
Lindsey’s shoes” when he returned; and this was the kind of news that
was thought worth forwarding out of Denver!
I write to Judge Lindsey, so that you may have these incredible
incidents upon his authority, not upon mine. He confirms every statement
I have made. He tells of a woman detective, employed by the
Scandal-Bureau—
The Lewis woman circulated the story that my wife came out of a house
of prostitution, and that her mother was a “madame”; and the
corporations paid the woman for it. There is no doubt about this, and
it can be proved.
Judge Lindsey goes on to narrate the extraordinary circumstances under
which these proofs became available. One of the members of the State
legislature, a man named Howland, was caught receiving a bribe in the
legislature. He had introduced a “strike bill” against the Tobacco
Trust, and a messenger-boy had handed him an envelope of money, said to
be from an agent of the Tobacco Trust. In order to save this man
Howland, the head of the Scandal-Bureau, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates, came
forward and testified before the legislative committee that she had sent
this money to Howland in order to pay detectives to “get Lindsey.” Says
Lindsey in his letter to me:
Mind you, _she testified_ to her part in the infamy, and was backed up
by some of our rich citizens, feeling that she was quite safe from
prosecution—as she was. But Howland was found guilty of perjury in
this case, having sworn that the money came for an entirely different
purpose. Because of the general belief of the legislators that the
whole thing was part of a frame-up against me, and the fear that it
would lead to the truth being told about the fight against me, they
came to a compromise in the case against Howland, which was merely to
expel him from the legislature for perjury. He never was tried for
perjury or conspiracy to ruin me and my court work, as was undoubtedly
his plan.
And how stands the matter today? Let Lindsey tell it in his own words:
During the war I was absolutely outlawed from every opportunity to be
of any patriotic service here by the privilege and special interest
crowd who control all patriotism, especially in the food and other
administrations. When I returned from France I was permitted to speak
for the Liberty Loan, but the chairman of the meeting told me that one
of Boss Evans’ old tools had threatened to “read him out of the
Republican party” for daring to let me take part in that patriotic
celebration. Fourteen bills for the protection of women and children
were killed in the last legislature through the open statement of
certain members of the legislature who were tools of the Interests
that: “If Lindsey has anything to do with it, swat it.” All this you
will understand is my heritage of hate because of the part my wife and
I took in that strike, and against big crooks generally when they have
time and again tried to rob our city. Since “The Beast and the Jungle”
stories, and my part in the Colorado coal-strike, it has been almost
impossible for me to speak before such assemblies as High Schools,
Woman’s Clubs, Mothers’ Congresses and the like. As one woman said to
me frankly, “Mrs. So-and-so’s husband is a big contributor to our
club, and if we permitted you to appear on the program she would be
highly indignant and withdraw her support.” I am sure you will
understand just exactly what the influence is, and how insidiously it
works.
As I read the page-proofs of this book, the great coal strike comes, and
the miners in the Southern Colorado field are out again, and Federal
troops are guarding the mines. But this time it is not necessary for the
Scandal Bureau and the Associated Press to muzzle the strikers and their
sympathizers. This time the job has been done by the Federal court
injunction!
CHAPTER XXX
THE CONCRETE WALL
I returned to New York, and at a meeting in Berkeley Hall I told the
story of conditions in Colorado. I did not get myself arrested, however,
so the New York newspapers printed only a few words of what I said, and
the Associated Press sent out nothing. It was again the concrete wall,
impenetrable, insurmountable: on one side I, with my facts about the
outrages upon the miners; and on the other side the public—as far out of
reach as if it had been in the moon.
The greatest atrocity of the strike was the fact, previously set forth,
that the state militia in the coal-fields had been recruited from
strike-breakers and Baldwin-Felts gunmen. The facts had been refused,
even to the state legislature; until finally the legislature appointed a
committee to wait upon the militia general and not leave his office
until they got the roster of the guard. So it was disclosed that in
Company A of the state guard there had been one hundred and twenty-two
members, and all but three of them coal-company employes, receiving the
pay of coal-companies while they wore the uniform and carried the flag
of the state!
It was an incredible prostitution of government; and what did the
newspapers do with the story? What did the Associated Press do with it?
I was unable to find the story in a single newspaper, outside of Denver.
I brought the full-page story clipped from the “Rocky Mountain News” to
New York with me, and tried the big New York dailies, and could not get
one of them to publish it.
The “Chicago Tribune” had published in full a letter of mine to John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., setting forth these facts in detail. Also the
“Tribune” had published a very fair and just editorial, headed: “All the
Truth,” from which I quote:
Facts are charged by Mr. Sinclair—and others, it must be said—which,
if true, are a disgrace to the men responsible and to the community in
which they existed. To ascertain the truth and to deal with the
situation are duties which must be performed.... Let us have the facts
about this terrible industrial tragedy, and all the facts. Let us know
the guilty and all the guilty.
Three days later the “Chicago Tribune” took up my definite charges
concerning the guard. It said:
If, as he asserts, the Adjutant General’s report shows any such abuse
of the guard, the situation calls for prompt rebuke and effective
action, if such action is possible under our laws.... We suggest the
National Guard take cognizance of the above allegations of Sinclair,
and if they are substantiated by the Adjutant General of Colorado that
the guard publicly protest against the abuse.
Five days after that the “Chicago Tribune” published a letter from P. A.
Wieting of Denver, as follows:
Referring to your editorial “Abusing the Guard,” in your issue of June
5. If Upton Sinclair said that the official records of Adjutant
General Chase showed that an overwhelming majority of the Colorado
militia were mine guards and other employes of the coal companies, he
deliberately lied. Mr. Chase’s records showed nothing of the sort, and
could not; for the statement is absolutely false and absurd. The
National Guard of Colorado is made up like in other states, of young
business and professional men, students, farmer boys and the like, and
includes the sons of many of our best families.
It is surprising that a paper of the standing of the “Tribune” should
accept offhand such a preposterous charge against a great state made
by a professional muck-raker. If you still entertain the slightest
belief in Sinclair’s foolish charge, any banker, any reputable
business man, any college president in Colorado will tell you, as I
do, that the man who made the statement quoted lied and knew that he
lied.
Now here was a direct issue of fact. If P. A. Wieting were a real
person, living in Denver, Colorado, and if he read a morning newspaper,
he must have read the “Rocky Mountain News,” because that was the only
morning newspaper published in Denver. And on the entire front page of
the “Rocky Mountain News” had been published the roster of Company A of
the Colorado state militia, as given to the press by a committee of the
state legislature, also a report of this committee of the legislature,
giving all the facts as to these members of Company A, the capacity in
which one hundred and nineteen out of one hundred and twenty-two of them
were employed by the coal-operators or the Baldwin-Felts Detective
Agency, and the wages they were paid by these concerns. The evidence was
as complete and as authoritative as it was possible for evidence to be;
and therefore, when P. A. Wieting wrote this letter to the “Chicago
Tribune,” deliberately accusing me of deliberate lying, he was
deliberately lying himself.
I thought, of course, that the “Tribune,” having taken a brave stand and
called for the truth, really wanted the truth, and would push the
controversy to the end. Therefore I sent to the “Tribune” by registered
mail a copy of the “Rocky Mountain News,” containing the facts, and I
looked to see this full-page report transferred to a page of the
“Chicago Tribune.” Or I looked to have the “Tribune” have some
representative in Denver look up the facts, as it might so easily have
done. Instead of that, I saw not one line about the matter. What strings
had been pulled in the “Tribune” office, I don’t happen to know. All I
know is that I wrote several times, protesting, and that no attention
was paid to my letters. Now, while I am preparing this book, I write to
the “Tribune,” lest by any chance the “Tribune” published something in
some edition which I missed, and which my clipping bureau missed; but
the “Tribune” leaves my letter unanswered!
Also I write to Denver to find out about P. A. Wieting—if he is a real
person. I find that he is assistant cashier of the Colorado Fuel & Iron
Co., Mr. Rockefeller’s concern which broke the strike!
All this time, you must understand, the “kept” writers on the other side
of the concrete wall were having their will with the public. Arthur
Brisbane, for example, whose editorial against the strikers was
submitted to Mr. Rockefeller by Mr. Rockefeller’s press agent as a proof
of the press agent’s skill! And Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora—you will
find a special chapter in this book devoted to the “Fra,” and in it you
may read how he sought to sell out the Colorado strikers. And the Rev.
Newell Dwight Hillis, a clerical gentleman whom we have seen spurning
George D. Herron in public, and apologizing in tears before his
congregation because his greed for money had led him into a mess of
lawsuits. This clerical gentleman preached a sermon, in which he
referred to our Broadway “pickets” as “a lot of silly people,” and
incidentally told some score of lies about the strikers. Somebody, name
unknown, was circulating this sermon in expensive pamphlet form by the
hundreds of thousands of copies; so George Creel wrote to Hillis—but in
vain. If you are near a library, look up Creel’s “Open Letter” in
“Harper’s Weekly,” May 29, 1915, and see how many lies a greedy preacher
can pack into one sermon. I also wrote to the reverend gentleman, and
succeeded in getting a reply from him. I quote my final letter, which
covers the case, I think:
REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS,
Brooklyn, New York.
_My Dear Sir_:
I have your letter and note that you are going West to Colorado, and
that if you can find any errors in your sermon you will correct them.
I would say that definite and specific errors are pointed out in
George Creel’s letters; errors that you would not have to go to
Colorado to find out about. They are proven in the sworn testimony
given before the Congressional Investigation Committee and before the
hearings of the Commission on Industrial Relations. While you can, of
course, not recollect who gave you this or that detail of information,
you must certainly know from what source you took the definite false
statements of figures and facts to which Mr. Creel calls your
attention. Moreover, the most important questions in both Mr. Creel’s
letter and mine, you have entirely ignored. I wish to ask you, before
you go West, will you answer the following specific questions?
Who is circulating and paying for the expensive pamphlet form of your
sermon?
Second, did this party obtain your permission to circulate it in this
form?
Third, did you receive any payment for permitting this circulation?
Fourth, if, after investigation of Mr. Creel’s points in Colorado you
find that you were wrong and he was right, will you compel the party
who is circulating this pamphlet to give to your corrections the same
amount of circulation?
I have, of course no right to insist that you should answer any of
these questions. I will merely say that by failing to answer them, and
answer them promptly and explicitly, you will leave your name open to
exceedingly grave suspicions.
This letter remained unanswered; yet such utter lack of concern about
his good name has not injured the pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn,
with the great organs of capitalist opinion! Only recently “McClure’s
Magazine” has selected him for its prize anti-Bolshevik liar. Please
make a mental note of him, for reference when we come to the
anti-Bolshevik liars and their lies.
It was still our hope that President Wilson could be persuaded to
interfere in the strike and force the Rockefellers to some compromise.
It being the way of public officials to move only in response to public
clamor, we were driven to keep on butting our heads against the concrete
wall. Our “mourning picket” demonstration had gathered about us a group
of young radicals, who could not endure to see the effort die down and
the strangling of the strike completed. Every day one would come to us
with some new idea. One group wished to go up to Rockefeller’s home on
Madison Avenue, and walk up and down in front of it. We objected to
this, because we were not attacking Mr. Rockefeller personally, we were
attacking his business policy, and his office seemed the proper place.
Nevertheless, one boy ventured up on Madison Avenue, and was promptly
arrested and sent to jail for sixty days.
There was another group which wished to visit Tarrytown, where young
Rockefeller had retired to the seclusion of his country home, with a
high iron fence all around it, and iron gates, and a score or two of
armed guards patrolling day and night. This group tried to hold a street
meeting in the village of Tarrytown, and were arrested. So I was driven
into a campaign on behalf of free speech. I have told in Chapter XII of
my experience with the “Tarrytown News”; I have now to tell of my
experience with the “New York Herald.” It is one of the few of my
newspaper adventures from the contemplation of which I derive
satisfaction.
I had several sessions with the board of trustees of the village of
Tarrytown. They were courteous, and permitted me to argue the issue of
free speech—which I did courteously. I brought to them a charming letter
from Georg Brandes, then a visitor in New York. They held a public
session, addressed by Leonard Abbott, Theodore Schroeder, and myself,
and in the course of my talk I pointed out that the result of repression
of free speech was violence. In England, where the radicals were allowed
to gather in Hyde Park and say what they chose, crimes of political
violence were practically unknown. On the other hand, in America, where
it was customary for the police to arrest radicals and club and jail
them, such crimes were common. Only the other day the newspapers had
told of the assassination of the chief of police of Seattle, where the
I. W. W. had been prevented from speaking.
There were a dozen newspaper reporters present at this hearing, and
accounts of it appeared in the New York papers next morning. The
“Herald” stated that I had threatened the trustees of Tarrytown with
violence in case they refused my request. I quote from the “Herald’s”
narrative:
Suddenly Frank R. Pierson, president of the village, leaped to his
feet and said:
“We shall not be intimidated by threats. We will hear no more of this
kind of argument. For one, I was willing to listen to what these
people had to say and to hear them fairly and honestly, but when they
come here with threats of death, of assassination and of mob rule, I
will not hear them further.”
Now, concerning this account there is only one thing to be said: it was
absolute fiction. I have never met a more agreeable gentleman than Mr.
Pierson, president of the Tarrytown village board; he voted my way on
every occasion, and from first to last we never exchanged a word that
was not cordial. On reading this account I at once went to see him, and
ascertained that both he and the other trustees considered the report to
be false and inexcusable. I then sent a letter to the “Herald” informing
them that they had libeled me, and threatening them with a suit. They
sent a reporter to see me, and I explained to this reporter the basis of
my complaint, and next morning the “Herald” published my letter of
complaint, together with an article reiterating its statement, and
quoting three of the trustees as supporting its statement. I quote the
“Herald” reporter’s words:
I saw Frank R. Pierson, president of the village, and asked his
opinion of the correctness of the account published in the “Herald.”
Mr. Pierson carefully read the article and then said:
“Mr. Sinclair certainly made the remarks attributed to him in the
‘Herald,’ if I heard aright, and I did jump up and declare that we
should not be intimidated by threats. Mr. Sinclair may not have
intended to make a threat, but the inference was plain. The ‘Herald’
did not misquote either Mr. Sinclair or me.”
And concerning the above interview also there is only one thing to be
said; it was absolute fiction. I went to see Mr. Pierson again, and he
assured me that he had given no such interview, and would appear in
court and testify accordingly. Another of the trustees wrote me that the
“Herald” interview with him was a “fake,” and so I put the matter into
the hands of my attorneys, and a libel-suit was filed against the “New
York Herald.” It dragged for a year or two, and I came to California and
dismissed the matter from my mind. When the time came for the suit to
come to trial, I was unwilling to take the trip to New York, and asked
my lawyers to have the matter dropped. You may imagine my consternation
when I received a letter from them, telling me that they had been
negotiating with the attorneys for the “Herald,” and had succeeded in
settling the case upon the basis of a payment of twenty-five hundred
dollars damages! Never, if I live to be as old as Methuselah, shall I
spend money that will bring me more satisfaction than that twenty-five
hundred dollars!
Throughout these Tarrytown adventures, which lasted several weeks, each
newspaper had one reporter who followed the story day by day, and two or
three of these men became friendly to me. Isaac Russell, reporter for
the “Times,” invited me to lunch in a restaurant in Tarrytown, with a
couple of other men. I explained that I was ill and not eating anything,
but would sit and chat with them. As they were finishing, there came in
the reporter for the “World,” who, as it happened, had been drunk during
most of the time. Next morning there appeared in the “World” a
particularly nasty account of the day’s events, in which it was
described how I had come to Tarrytown with four women in my train, had
had lunch with several reporters, and had permitted them to pay the
bill. I took the trouble to go down to the office of the “World” and see
Mr. Frank Cobb, managing editor; explaining to him that I had come alone
to Tarrytown, had spoken to no woman in Tarrytown, and had eaten no
lunch in Tarrytown. Mr. Cobb admitted that I had a grievance, and by way
of recompense allowed me to dictate a column interview about the meaning
of the free speech fight in Tarrytown; incidentally he took the drunken
reporter off the assignment. From the other reporters I got the “inside”
story of what had happened, and it throws an amusing light upon
newspaper ethics. The drunken reporter had lost out in the contest with
me, not because he had been drunk, nor because he had lied about a
radical, but because he had implied in his article that a reporter was a
social inferior! Was not a reporter privileged to invite an author to
lunch, and to pay for the lunch if he saw fit?
CHAPTER XXXI
MAKING BOMB-MAKERS
It had been agreed by the trustees of Tarrytown that while we might not
tell about the Ludlow massacre at a street-meeting, we might tell about
it at a meeting in a theatre or hall. I set out to find a theatre or
hall, but there was no theatre or hall that could be rented for that
purpose. I then went up on the heights, where the Rockefellers live, and
appealed to the sense of fair play of Mr. Rockefeller’s neighbors. This
is the Pocantico hills country, a line of magnificent estates and
palatial homes, of which you see pictures in the “Sunday supplements.”
You might have thought it poor territory for radical propaganda;
nevertheless, I was able to persuade one of the residents, Mrs. Charles
J. Gould, to allow the use of her open-air theatre for a meeting in
defense of free speech. Imagine, if you can, the excitement of the New
York newspapers, when they learned that there was to be an I. W. W.
meeting—so they called it—in an open-air theatre on a millionaire estate
almost next door to the Rockefellers!
We held the meeting, attended by some three hundred people of the town,
rich and poor, including a number of laborers from young Mr.
Rockefeller’s estate. John W. Brown, organizer of the United
Mine-workers, told the story of the strike, and we moved a resolution
that it was the sense of the meeting that Mr. Rockefeller’s treatment of
his strikers had been such that we called upon the President of the
United States to confiscate his mines. We discussed that resolution for
a couple of hours, and we carried it _unanimously_! But alas, it
happened that Adolf Wolff, an Anarchist sculptor and poet, got up and
delivered a tirade, abusing me for having pleaded for free speech with
the trustees of Tarrytown. “We shouldn’t plead, we should take!”
declared Comrade Wolff. A lady from the South got up and sang
negro-songs to pacify the tumultuous meeting, and so the newspapers
could make a joke of the whole affair—which they did.
In their last public session with us, the trustees of the village had
admitted that there could be no interference with a meeting held upon
the strip of property through which ran the city aqueduct—this property
being under State control. So now the radicals whose friends were in
jail wanted to hold a meeting on this aqueduct property. They asked me
to come, but I happened to be ill. Leonard Abbott went with them, also a
boy named Arthur Caron, whose story I must briefly tell. Caron had been
one of the finest lads who had joined our Broadway demonstrations. He
was a French-Canadian, whose wife and baby had starved to death during
the Lawrence strike. He had come to New York and taken part in the
unemployed demonstration of the previous winter, and the police had
arrested him and beaten him in his cell, breaking his nose and one
ear-drum. He was a non-resistant, he told us, and had been one of the
most useful in helping us to keep our demonstration peaceable. Now he
went, at my suggestion, to avail himself of the public assurance given
by the Tarrytown trustees, that a meeting on the aqueduct would not be
interfered with.
But, as it happened, the “Tarrytown News” was carrying on a furious war
against the village trustees, because of their halfway-decent treatment
of the “agitators”; the “News” wanted us all exterminated, and it called
on the “law-abiding” citizens of the village to assemble at the aqueduct
and stop that meeting. So the speakers were met by a mob of rich men and
chauffeurs, who tooted horns and howled at them, threw rotten vegetables
and sand and stones into their faces, filling their eyes and mouth with
filth and streaming blood. Running through the village toward the
railroad-station, the little group was ridden down by mounted members of
the aqueduct police-force, who pursued them even on board the train, and
clubbed them over the heads when they sought refuge in the seats. These
incidents were described to me by several indignant newspaper reporters,
including my friend Isaac Russell, of the “Times.” But the “Times” cut
out from Russell’s story the incident of the clubbing on the train.
Here was another call for protest; but by this time the Sinclair family
had reached the point of exhaustion. My wife had been a semi-invalid at
the beginning of the affair, and was now near to nervous breakdown. We
had spent every dollar we owned, and a great many that we did not own;
so we were forced to retire, and let the Tarrytown rowdies and their
rowdy newspapers have their way. We remained in New York for a couple of
weeks to straighten our affairs; and on the very day we had planned to
leave for the country, the telephone rang, and my wife answered, and a
voice said: “This is the 100th St. Police Station. Do you know a man
named Arthur Caron?”
Yes, my wife knew Arthur Caron. “What about him?” she asked, and the
voice answered: “We found your name in a note-book in his pocket. Will
you come to the station and identify his body?”
There had been, it appeared, an explosion in a tenement-house on Third
Avenue. At first the police thought it was a gas-explosion, but soon the
truth became known; Arthur Caron and two or three of his friends had
been making bombs with the intention of blowing up the Rockefellers.
There had been a premature explosion, which had blown out several
stories of the tenement, and killed the three lads.
It was interesting to observe the conduct of the New York newspapers
during this affair. It made, of course, a tremendous excitement. Bombs
are news; they are heard all the way around the world. But the outrages
which have caused the bombs are not news, and no one ever refers to
them. No one makes clear that these outrages will continue to cause
bombs, so long as the human soul remains what it is.
Now the New York newspapers knew perfectly well that our Broadway
demonstration, our “Free Silence League,” as they had dubbed it, had
been a peaceable demonstration. They knew that at the opening meeting,
at which the plan was discussed, I had declared that I desired the
co-operation only of those who would pledge their word to me personally
that they would offer no resistance, no matter what was done to them;
that they would not even speak a word, nor argue with anyone, they would
do nothing but walk up and down. At our first meeting Frederick Sumner
Boyd, an I. W. W. leader, repudiated my ideas, and called upon the
meeting to organize itself to raise money and send arms to the
coal-strikers. I replied that if any wished to organize such a group, it
was his right, but I had called this meeting for the purpose of
organizing one kind of demonstration, and I thought that those who
wished to organize some other kind of demonstration should utilize one
of the other rooms of the Liberal Club; whereupon Boyd and about half
the audience withdrew. All this had been fully reported in the New York
papers, and was known to everyone.
Also it was known to the Rockefellers that at the headquarters of our
Colorado Committee I personally obtained the pledge of every man and
woman, before I allowed them to join us, that they would conform to the
rule laid down. I say this was known to the Rockefellers, because they
had spies among us; I knew perfectly well who those spies were, and
allowed one of them to think he was my friend. From first to last I had
nothing to hide, and for that reason I had nothing to fear, and this was
as well known to the newspapers as it was to the police who were probing
the explosion. Except for the first telephone call, which had come from
a desk-sergeant who knew nothing about the matter whatever, the police
did not trouble us, nor even question us; yet day by day, while that
sensation was before the public, the whole effort of the New York
newspapers was concentrated upon making it appear that Upton Sinclair
was in some way connected with the bomb-plot. Day after day there would
be circumstantial accounts of how the police and the coroner and other
officials were preparing to summon my wife and myself, and to subject us
to a “rigid examination” concerning Arthur Caron and the other victims
of the explosion. We would call up the police and the coroner and other
officials, and inform them that we were perfectly willing to be
questioned, but that we knew nothing but what we had told the public; to
which the police and the coroner and the other officials would reply:
“We have no wish to question you; that’s just newspaper talk.” All
officials understand what “newspaper talk” means; but the public doesn’t
understand, and so what the public carried away from this affair was the
general impression that my wife and I were dangerous characters. We were
too cunning to get caught, of course; but we incited obscure and
half-educated young people to make bombs and set them off, and then we
washed our hands of them and left them to their fate.
There is one final story which ought to be told in connection with these
“mourning pickets.” You may recall that I had appealed against the
decision of Police-magistrate Sims, to the effect that one whose conduct
had been “that of a perfect gentleman” might properly be found guilty of
“using threatening, abusive and insulting behavior.” I had told the
story of this court-decision at a public meeting in the State capitol in
Denver, and again at a dinner of the Progressive Party workers in
Chicago—saying: “I don’t know whom the magistrate supposed I had
threatened, abused and insulted—unless perhaps it were John D.
Rockefeller, Junior!” The audience had laughed appreciatively; they
thought that was a funny joke; I, too, thought it was a funny joke. But
now—can you believe it?—Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions
handed down his august decision, which had cost me several hundred
dollars in lawyer’s fees and court costs to obtain; and this Daniel come
to judgment upheld the decision of Police-magistrate Sims, and gave his
reasons therefor—and lo, his reasons were my funny joke! Seventeen
thousand, five hundred dollars per year the people of New York State pay
to Justice Crain of the Court of General Sessions, for handing down such
august decisions; and forever and ever, so long as capitalist
civilization endures, that particular august decision will be printed on
expensive paper, and bound in expensive sheepskin, and treasured in the
libraries of learned jurists. Such a wonder of a decision deserves to be
read, as well as preserved in law-books; so I will quote it here, as
follows:
No citizen has a right to rebuke another citizen by subjecting him to
ridicule or insult.
The defendant intended by his conduct in the presence of others to
rebuke the conduct of Mr. Rockefeller. His action was in the language
of the statute, abusive or insulting; abusive because it is derogatory
to the one whose conduct is referred to, and the insult lies in part
in the subject matter of the rebuke and in part in the publicity of
the infliction.
Now let me put to you this problem. The “New York Herald” had published
a cartoon, in which I was portrayed as a hideous monster with a filthy
muck-rake; and now suppose that I had appealed to Justice Crain of the
Court of General Sessions, complaining that James Gordon Bennett had
“rebuked a citizen” by “subjecting him to ridicule or insult”—do you
think that Justice Crain would have sent Bennett to jail? And do you
think that the newspapers would have printed the decision with solemn
and respectful comment, praising it as a proper rebuke to a disturber of
public order?
I close the story of this long Colorado struggle with a benediction sent
to me all the way across the continent: the “Los Angeles Times,” July
9th, 1914:
It develops that Upton Sinclair only served two of his three days’
sentence, after all. He was on a hunger strike, and after he had gone
unfed for two days, his wife came and paid the rest of his fine and
forced him out of jail. Wait till they have been married a little
longer, and perhaps she will let him serve three years if he wants to
do it.
I enquire among friends and learn that the general impression is that I
declared a “hunger-strike,” and couldn’t stick it out, and let my wife
come to my rescue. Again the newspapers! The truth is that I was as
comfortable as any man ought to ask to be in jail; I had a cell to
myself, and it was clean, and near a window, and I was allowed to have
my mail, and all the books I wanted, and visitors at reasonable hours.
But I wanted to appeal from that stupid decision; and in order to
appeal, the lawyers explained, I must have something to appeal _for_. I
couldn’t appeal for the time I spent in jail, for no court could restore
that to me. I had to pay some money—one dollar at the least; and having
paid this, I had to come out, whether I would or no. So the newspapers
had a chance to report that Upton Sinclair, who had written a book
telling how he had fasted for ten or twelve days, had been unable to
stick out a three-day “hunger-strike”!
CHAPTER XXXII
THE ROOF-GARDEN OF THE WORLD
After these strenuous adventures I retired to private life to
recuperate. I edited “The Cry for Justice,” and then, finding that I was
still haunted by the Colorado situation, I wrote “King Coal.” Meantime I
had moved to Southern California, seeking an open-air life. I have been
here four years, and alas, I have had a new set of experiences with
newspapers. As preliminary to them, there must be given a brief account
of this “Roof-garden of the World.”
It exists because of climate. There are, of course, ranchmen who raise
fruits and vegetables, and there are servants and chauffeurs and
house-builders and plumbers, but the main industry of Southern
California is climate. Everybody is consuming climate, and in addition
to this, nearly everybody is trying to sell climate to “come-ons” from
the East. The country has been settled by retired elderly people, whose
health has broken down, and who have come here to live on their incomes.
They have no organic connection with one another; each is an individual,
desiring to live his own little life, and to be protected in his own
little privileges. The community is thus a parasite upon the great
industrial centres of other parts of America. It is smug and
self-satisfied, making the sacredness of property the first and last
article of its creed. It has a vast number of churches of innumerable
sects, and takes their aged dogmas with deadly seriousness; its social
life is display, its intellectual life is “boosting,” and its politics
are run by Chambers of Commerce and Real Estate Exchanges.
There are, of course, a great number of ladies in Southern California
with nothing to do. They have culture clubs, which pay celebrities to
come and entertain them, and next to marrying a millionairess, this is
the easiest way to get your living in Southern California. They will pay
you as much as a hundred dollars for a lecture, and such an opportunity
is naturally not to be sneezed at by a strike-agitator in debt. I had
been living quietly for a year or so, working on “King Coal,” when I was
invited to meet at luncheon one of the officials of the ultra-exclusive
Friday Morning Club of Los Angeles. I was duly inspected and adjudged
presentable, and received an invitation to set forth my intellectual
wares before the club assemblage.
Now, this was an important opportunity, as my friends pointed out. There
are many such clubs in Los Angeles, and scores of others in the
leisure-class towns round about. This first lecture was a test, and if I
“made good,” I would receive more invitations, and might be able to live
quietly and do my writing. The ladies who came to hear Upton Sinclair
would, of course, come expecting to be shocked. If I didn’t shock them
at all, my lecture would be a failure; I must be judicious, and shock
them just exactly enough, so that they would come for more shocks. I am
fortunate in having a wife who understands the psychology of ladies, and
who undertook to groom me for this new role of leisure-class lecturer.
In the first place, there was the question of clothes. “You haven’t had
a new suit in four or five years,” said my wife.
“How about the one I bought in England?”
“That heavy woolen suit? If you wore that on a summer day, the
perspiration would stream down your face!”
“Well,” I ventured, “mightn’t they think it proper for a Socialist to
wear old clothes? Mightn’t I be pathetic——”
Said M. C. S. “They don’t want anybody around who is not well dressed.
It’s depressing. You must have a new suit.”
“But—we just haven’t the money to spare.”
“You can get a Palm Beach suit for ten dollars.”
“Isn’t that rather festive? I never wore anything like it.”
“Idiot! Papa wears them all the time.”
Now “papa,” you must understand, is—well, what “papa” does is the
standard. So it was arranged that I should go into Los Angeles an hour
or two earlier in the morning, and provide myself with a Palm Beach suit
and pair of white shoes for two dollars. “They will be made of paper,”
said my wife, “but you won’t have far to walk, and they’ll do for other
lectures.”
M. C. S. does not go with me on these adventures, having not been well
since the Colorado excitement. She stays at home and mends socks and
writes sonnets, while I administer shocks to the leisure-class ladies.
Her last injunction was a hair-cut. “The day of long-haired geniuses is
past. Promise me you’ll have your hair cut.”
I promise, and I get the Palm Beach suit and the shoes, and then look
for a barber. It is ten or eleven months before America’s entry into the
war, but the “preparedness” enthusiasts are having some kind of
celebration in Los Angeles, and the streets are a mass of red and white
bunting; I walk a long distance, and find half a dozen places with red
and white ribbons wound about poles, but they are not barber-shops. At
last, however, I find one, just in the nick of time, and at ten o’clock
sharp I present myself, all freshly groomed, to the charming ladies of
the club, and am escorted onto the platform.
My theme is “The Voice of the Ages,” and I bring with me a copy of “The
Cry for Justice,” and read passages from eminent ancient authors,
startling my hearers by the revelation that Plato and Euripides and
Isaiah and Jesus and Confucius and Dante and Martin Luther and George
Washington were all members of the I. W. W. of their time. I read them
Isaiah on “Ladies of Fashion”—all save one obscene sentence, which could
not be uttered before modern ladies. I give them just exactly the proper
number of thrills, mixed with the proper number of smiles, and they
bombard me with questions for an hour, and we have a most enjoyable
time.
But one tragedy befalls. I am quoting Frederick the Great on the subject
of Militarism, and am moved to mention the fact that Los Angeles is now
in a military mood. “I promised my wife I would get a hair-cut before I
came here, but I almost missed it, because there were so many red and
white decorations on the streets that I couldn’t find a barber-shop.”
The instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had, as
the boys say, “spilled the beans.” Driving home with a friend who is a
member of the club, she told me what a success the lecture had been, and
I replied: “Ah, no, you are mistaken! I ruined everything!”
“How?” asked my friend.
“Didn’t you hear me confuse the American flag with a barber-pole?”
“Nonsense!” said my friend. “They all laughed.”
“May be so,” said I. “But wait until you see the papers tomorrow
morning!”
And sure enough, it was as I said! Next morning the “Los Angeles Times”
published an account of the lecture, in which I was portrayed as a
dandified creature who had appeared before the ladies decked in tennis
flannels. Having since met Alma Whitaker, the woman who wrote this
account, I dare stake my life that she knows perfectly well the
difference between a Palm Beach suit and tennis flannels; but she wanted
to make me hateful, and that was such a little lie! She went on to tell
about my lecture, in which I had sneered at Jesus, and compared the
American flag to a barber-pole! My audience had been highly indignant,
according to her account, and one eminent lady had left the room in
disgust.
And so next morning there was an editorial in the “Times,” of which I
will quote about half. You will be struck by its peculiar style, and may
be interested to know that it was written by General Otis himself, being
a fair sample of the vitriol which every day for thirty years he poured
out upon everything enlightened in California:
UPTON SINCLAIR’S RAVINGS
Many people believe that the prattlings of an anarchistic Upton
Sinclair before a woman’s club are unworthy of serious attention; but
the fact that the hall of the Friday Morning Club was filled to
overflowing at his programme, and that the great majority of them sat
throughout the entire lecture, would seem to prove that such illogical
ravings have at least some power to impress. Some few women have been
found courageous enough to voice their indignation that the club
rostrum should be used for such ungodly purposes.
It is depressing to find a great number of intelligent women, well
able to think for themselves, lending time and ear to a piffling
collection of more-or-less brilliant quotations upholding anarchy,
destruction, lawlessness, revolution, from the lips of an effeminate
young man with a fatuous smile, a weak chin and a sloping forehead,
talking in a false treble, and accusing them of leading selfish,
self-indulgent lives. It would be laughable if it were not a little
disconcerting. These women, who are doing such earnest work for their
city, who, indeed, rank among the best intellect of the city, who have
deeds rather than words to their credit—it seems incredible that they
should be prepared to lend encouragement to such unintelligent,
witless, anarchistic outpourings.
While slyly veiling his false doctrines as quotations from
“intelligent ancient peasants,” and the prophet Isaiah, and the Greek
classics, Upton Sinclair nevertheless makes no secret of his sympathy
with dynamiters and murderers, and considers it an example of
exquisite wit to speak of Jesus Christ with patronizing irreverence.
His sense of humor also demanded that he belittle the flag of the
United States, and, after pretending to confuse it with a barber’s
pole scoff at the great national wave of emotion for the country’s
righteous defense and honor.
An assembly of men of the same standing as the women of the Friday
Morning Club could never be induced to listen to such insults to their
creed and their country without violent protest. Never before an
audience of red-blooded men could Upton Sinclair have voiced his weak,
pernicious, vicious doctrines. His naïve, fatuous smile alone would
have aroused their ire before he opened his vainglorious mouth.
Let the fact remain that this slim, beflanneled example of perverted
masculinity could and did get several hundred women to listen to him.
Now, as a matter of fact, it happened that I had given a far more
radical lecture at the monthly dinner of the University Club, where
three hundred men of Los Angeles had heard me with every evidence of
cordial interest. The secretary of the club had told me that it was the
only occasion he could remember when none of the diners had withdrawn to
play chess until after the speaking was finished. But I had, of course,
no way to make known this fact to the readers of the “Times,” nor even
the true sentiments of the ladies of the Friday Morning Club. It
happened that my friend George Sterling spoke at the club the following
week, and I went with him and was asked to speak at the luncheon. I
referred playfully to what the “Times” had said about me, and was
astonished at the ovation I received. The women rose from their seats to
let me know that they appreciated the insult to them involved in the
“Times” editorial. It is the same thing that I have noted everywhere,
whenever I refer to the subject of our newspapers. The American people
thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no
idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on
reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!
CHAPTER XXXIII
A FOUNTAIN OF POISON
I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is literally a
fact that I have yet to meet a single person who does not despise and
hate his “Times.” This paper, founded by Harrison Gray Otis, one of the
most corrupt and most violent old men that ever appeared in American
public life, has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable
social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with abusiveness
which seems almost insane. To one who understands our present economic
condition, the volcano of social hate which is smouldering under the
surface of our society, it would seem better to turn loose a hundred
thousand mad dogs in the streets of Los Angeles, than to send out a
hundred thousand copies of the “Times” every day.
You cannot live in Southern California and stand for any sort of liberal
ideas without encountering the wrath of this paper. And when you have
once done this, it pursues you with personal vindictiveness; no occasion
is too small for it to lay hold of, nor does it ever forget you, no
matter how many years may pass. My friend Rob Wagner writes me an
amusing story about the feud between Otis and the city of Santa Barbara,
a millionaire colony about a hundred miles from Los Angeles:
When the big fleet came around here some years ago I was
director-generaling a very snappy flower festival at Santa Barbara,
and as the “Times” played up all the bar-room brawls the sailors got
into and belittled my pretty show, I got hold of the local
correspondent and says: “Mac, why are you crabbing the show and
featuring the rough stuff?” “Well the truth is, Bob, my pay depends
upon the kind of stuff I send. A rotten story is good for columns,
against a few paragraphs of the birds and the flowers. You know the
General has towns as well as individuals on his index, and Santa
Barbara is one of them. The General once owned the Santa Barbara
‘Press,’ and with his usual cave-man methods got in bad with the
villagers, and they bumped him socially so hard that he finally left
in great heat and swore vengeance, which he practices to this day.
This has been going on for years.”
Now the old “General” is gone, but his “index” still stands. The song
should read: “Old Otis’ body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave, but his
soul goes cursing on!” It goes on cursing, not merely movements of
social reform and those who advocate them; it goes on cursing Santa
Barbara! Soon after we came to Pasadena there was an earthquake shock,
sufficiently severe to cause us to run out of our house. You understand,
of course, that earthquakes are damaging to real-estate values;
therefore there was no report of an earthquake in any Los Angeles paper
next day—save that the “Times” reported an earthquake in Santa Barbara!
A year or two later this happened again—and again it was an earthquake
in Santa Barbara.
Also, Rob Wagner tells me of his own amusing experience with the
“Times.” I quote:
During the Harriman campaign I deserted my class, kicked in and had
Socialist meetings at my studio, and even enjoyed the degradation of
offering hospice to Ben Reitman and Emma Goldman the night after they
were run out of San Diego. So the General paid me the amazing
compliment of putting me on his index, and gave orders that my name
should not appear thereafter in his art columns. Anthony Anderson
proved it to me by slipping in a harmless little notice of a portrait
exhibit I was holding, which got the blue pencil. So you see that even
an artist who might help the town in its very ingrowing aestheticism
got the General’s axe if the General didn’t like his politics!
It happens, curiously enough, that I have met socially half a dozen
members of the “Times” staff. They are cynical worldlings, doing a work
which they despise, and doing it because they believe that life is a
matter of “dog eat dog.” I met the lady, Alma Whitaker, who had written
the account of my Friday Morning Club lecture. She had enjoyed the
lecture, she said, but afterwards had gone to the managing editor and
inquired how I was to be handled; she took it for granted that I would
understand this, and would regard it tolerantly. I explained to her the
embarrassments of an author in relation to an unpaid grocer’s bill. As a
result of what she had written about me, I had not been invited by any
other woman’s club in Southern California!
Also I met one of the high editors of the “Times,” an important
personage whom they feature. Talking about the question of journalistic
integrity, he said: “Sinclair, it has been so long since I have written
anything that I believed that I don’t think I would know the sensation.”
My answer was: “I have been writing on public questions for twenty
years, and I can say that I have never written a single word that I did
not believe.”
I have had much to say about the Associated Press in the course of this
book. I need say only one thing about it in Southern California—that its
headquarters are in the editorial rooms of the “Los Angeles Times.” A
good part of what goes on the Associated Press wire is first strained
through the “Times” sieve; and so I can inform Mr. Fabian Franklin,
formerly of the “New York Evening Post” and now of the “Review,” that
his sacred divinity, the Associated Press, has established here in
Southern California a system which makes it impossible that any news
favorable to the radical cause should get onto the Associated Press
wires, and that everything dealing with the radical movement in Southern
California which goes over the Associated Press wires should be not
merely false, but violently and maliciously false. For example a
prominent criminal lawyer in Los Angeles is blown up by a bomb, and the
report goes out to the country that the police authorities believe that
this was the work of “radicals.” But next day the police authorities
state officially that they have no such belief; and a couple of days
later the crime is proven to have had a purely personal motive.
I have myself tested out, not once but several score of times, the
system of the concrete wall and the news channel as it works here in Los
Angeles. For example, when I read that Russia had a Socialist premier by
the name of Kerensky, and that he did not know what to do with the Tsar
and his family, I wrote to him a letter suggesting “An Island of
Kings”—one of the Catalina Islands, off Los Angeles, as a place where
the dethroned sovereigns of Europe might be interned, under the
guardianship of the United States government. This, you perceive, was a
“boost” to Southern California; it conveyed to the outside world the
information that Southern California has a wonderful out-door climate,
and beautiful islands with wild goats running over them, and deep sea
fishing off the shores. I offered this story to the “Los Angeles Times,”
and they grabbed it, and it went out at once over the Associated Press
wires.
Then, again, America went into the war, and I found myself compelled to
revise the conclusions of a life-time, and to give my support to a war.
I debated the issue at a gathering of Socialists; and here again was
news which world-capitalism desired to have circulated, here was a
well-known Socialist turning to the capitalist side! The “Times” printed
the story and the “A. P.” sent it out. In order to make the record
clear, I quote from the “Times”:
UPTON SINCLAIR FAVORS WAR
Has a Complete Reversal of Former Ideas.
Publicly Announces Views in Crown City.
Holds World’s Democracy Is in Danger.
Pasadena, Feb. 19.—After preaching vehemently against war for twenty
years, Upton Sinclair, the Socialist writer, has joined hands with
Mars. The propagandist’s exit from the ranks of the peace-at-any-price
Socialists was made unexpectedly and dramatically yesterday afternoon
at a mass meeting at the Pasadena High School. Sinclair’s announcement
of his change of heart came after an address by Prof. I. W. Howeth of
the University of California on the history and causes of war. In the
open forum, which followed the addresses, Sinclair was the storm
center in a discussion in which his stand was criticized by the
Socialists and other peace advocates and applauded by others in favor
of supporting the stand taken by President Wilson.
And then followed long extracts from my speech. As sent out by the
Associated Press it was so garbled that I will ask the reader to read
four paragraphs of the “Times” account. My reasons for asking this will
appear later:
“My one interest in the world is democratic self-government. I have
fought for this at every sacrifice of personal advantage for twenty
years. I consider that all modern governments are evil, based upon
injustice, but I am bound to recognize that there are degrees in this
evil. The test is whether the government leaves the people free to
agitate against it. This the British government to a great extent has
done; so has the French; the German has not.
“For us to permit the Prussian ruling class to beat England to her
knees by the methods of general piracy that have been adopted is to
put democracy in peril of its life, and to make certain an age of
military preparation in the United States, Canada and Australia.
“If we go into the war the thing to do is to decide in advance the
terms, and let these be such as to unite all the democratic forces of
the world behind us. We do not want Germany beaten to her knees and
territories given to her enemies. We do not want to underwrite the
program of Russia in Constantinople. We want to remove these points of
contention from the arena.
“We want to heal up the ancient wounds. We want to teach all rulers
and all peoples that civilization will permit no one to gain territory
by war. We want to inter-nationalize the Dardanelles, Alsace-Lorraine,
Belgium, Poland, and to say that we, all the world, will fight to put
down any state which at any time attempts to invade them.”
Again, on the first anniversary of the Russian revolution, before a mass
meeting of the Russian Revolutionary Society of Los Angeles, I defended
the idea that Russia must stand by the Allies until the Kaiser was
overthrown. The “Times” gave two columns to this story, with big
headlines. I quote the opening paragraphs, with apologies for the
“Times’” atrocious English:
TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINE
Invited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
Upton Sinclair threw a monkey-wrench of facts of American manufacture
into a mass meeting of Socialists and near-Socialists at the Labor
Temple yesterday, that after cheers and tears for the Bolsheviki,
their red riot of revolution, pledges of support of Lenine and his
associates, and a notable evasion of facts for the sake of indulgence
in rhetorical idealism, wound up by adopting a resolution for home
rule in Ireland.
“So long as the United States government is behind the small nations
and for justice in the world, every Socialist and every revolutionist
should be behind the American government,” Sinclair told more than
five hundred men and women, ranging in their sympathies from pale
pacifism and yellow disloyalty up, amid hisses and cheers.
Mr. Sinclair’s speech, while not unexpected by the committee in charge
of the arrangements, was not in keeping with the spirit of the meeting
and threw a damp blanket on the more radical element that had gathered
to pass resolutions and cheer the social revolution and the economic
disintegration of the Russian Empire.
The Sinclair speech, which bristled with loyal and patriotic
utterances, was sandwiched between an address by Michael Bey,
secretary to Prof. Lomonosoff of the Russian Mission, and the address
of Paul Jordan Smith.
Such was my stand during the war, as set forth in the news columns of
the “Times.” But when the Kaiser was overthrown, and I saw America’s war
for democracy being turned into a war to put down the first proletarian
government in history, I went back into the radical camp—and what
happened then? What happened was that instantly the news channels became
a concrete wall! If you know anything about my going back into the
radical camp, and the reasons therefor, you know it from the radical
press, and not from the capitalist press. Since the day when I announced
the change, the Associated Press has sent out _not one word_ about my
point of view or my utterances; while the “Los Angeles Times” goes
farther yet—the “Times” deliberately blinks the fact that I once “tossed
a wrench into the red Russian machine,” and embarks on a campaign to
make the public believe that I was disloyal during the war! You may find
this beyond believing; but I shall prove it to you. And so far
successful has it been that recently a high school principal in Los
Angeles, addressing the pupils of her school, referred to me as a
“notorious disloyalist and traitor”!
There are, of course, libel laws in California, so the “Times” dares not
come out fairly and squarely with the statement that I was disloyal
during the war. What it does is to scan my every word and action, and
report them with subtly chosen phrases which expose me to suspicion,
without making definite charges. Surely you must admit that such
calculated and systematic treachery on the part of an enormously rich
and powerful newspaper is of public importance. You will expect me to
prove my charge. Very well, here are two cases. Case one:
While I stood by the war, I didn’t stand by the Espionage act, and when
some of my friends were arrested as pacifists, and stood in danger of
ten or twenty years in jail, I went to the authorities and interceded,
and succeeded in having the cases settled on the basis of a plea of
guilty and the payment of fines. The “Times” knew what I was doing, and
was foaming at the mouth about it, so I was told by several of its
staff; but it dared not say anything, because I had won both the Federal
judge and the prosecuting authorities to my way of thinking.
The deputy United States attorney, Mr. Palmer, happened to be a
Southerner, a type of man I understand, and I got to know him during
these negotiations. Later on I went to see him and said: “Mr. Palmer, I
am writing a story, ‘Jimmie Higgins,’ which I want to publish serially
in my magazine. It is a story of a Socialist in war-time, and its
purpose is to win the Socialists to the idea of supporting the war. But
I am in this dilemma. If I am going to show a man converted from
opposition to the war, I first have to show how he felt when he was
opposing it; I have to make him a real character, I have to make his
arguments real arguments—which is a difficult thing to do in war-time. I
would not want anybody to misunderstand my purpose and point of view; so
I wonder if you would read the manuscript, and tell me if there is
anything in it that might be open to misunderstanding.”
Mr. Palmer’s answer was that he was forbidden to give official opinions
on anything before publication, but he would be very glad to give me a
personal, unofficial opinion. I answered that I would regard this as a
favor, and Mr. Palmer read the manuscript. No doubt he spoke about it to
others, and the “Times” must have heard of the matter. Some months later
appeared the following paragraph on the editorial page of the “Times”:
Upton Sinclair has stuck his fingers in the Tom Mooney mess. Sinclair
has dropped his pen that for some time has been engaged in preparing
the manuscript of a book whose loyalty had to be passed on by the
United States District-Attorney, and is therefore in a position to
sympathize with those who might run afoul of the law.
Now, note the subtle treachery of this phrasing. The loyalty of my
manuscript “had to” be passed on. Practically everybody who read that
paragraph would understand from it that the government had taken some
action in the matter, had placed me under compulsion to submit the
manuscript. Nobody would get the impression that the compulsion in the
matter was the compulsion of my own conscience and judgment, my wish to
make sure that my piece of fiction was not open to misunderstanding.
Needless to say, the “Times” didn’t mention the fact that Mr. Palmer,
having read the manuscript, wrote cordially to assure me that there was
no possibility of its being misunderstood, and no need of any changes
being made.
Case two—and still more significant:
It happened a year or more ago that I had to undergo an operation for
appendicitis. I requested the authorities at the hospital not to give
out news about this operation, because I do not care to have purely
personal matters exploited in the papers. Thus it was a couple of weeks
later, after I was out of the hospital, before anything was known about
my operation. A friend of mine called me on the phone to ask if I would
meet the Pasadena correspondent of the “Times,” Robert Harwood, a decent
young fellow who was trying to learn to write. I said that I could not
meet him at that time, because I had just come out of the hospital. My
friend explained these circumstances to Harwood, and Harwood sent in a
news item, which appeared next morning under the headline: “_Anarchist
Writer in Hospital_.”
Now, of course, the editors of the “Times” know perfectly well that I am
not an Anarchist. When they call me an Anarchist, they do it merely to
hurt me. When in war-time they add the words: “Sinclair is still under
surveillance,” they mean, of course, that their readers shall derive the
impression that the “Anarchist writer” is under surveillance by the
Department of Justice; but if I should sue them for libel, they would
plead that they meant I was under surveillance by a surgeon!
A couple of weeks later I met young Harwood, and he made an embarrassed
apology for the item, explaining that he had turned in to the “Times” a
perfectly decent and straight mention of my operation; the article had
been rewritten in the “Times” office, and the false headline put on by
the managing editor of the paper. The manuscript of the copy that
Harwood had turned in had been read in advance by another man who was
present at the dinner, Ralph Bayes, formerly city editor of the “Los
Angeles Record,” so there were two witnesses to the facts.
To call a man an Anarchist at this time was to place him in obloquy and
in physical danger. Both Harwood and Bayes were willing to testify to
the facts, and I considered the possibility of suing the “Times.” I
consulted a lawyer who knows Los Angeles conditions intimately, and he
said: “If you expect to win this suit, you will have to be prepared to
spend many thousands of dollars investigating with detectives the
records and opinions of every prospective talesman. The ‘Times’ will do
that—does it regularly in damage-suits. If you don’t do it, you will
find yourself confronting a jury of Roman Catholics and political
crooks. In any case you will have a jury which has no remotest idea of
any difference between a Socialist and an Anarchist, so the utmost you
could possibly get would be six cents.”
A few days later young Harwood came to see me again. He was anxious for
me to bring suit, because he was sick of his job. There was a strike of
the Pacific Electric Railway employes in Los Angeles. The city, you
understand, is celebrated as an “open shop” town, and the “Times” is the
propaganda organ of the forces of repression.
“Mr. Sinclair,” said Harwood, “I was at the car-barns here in Pasadena
all evening yesterday, and not a single car came in. I wrote the facts
in my story, and the ‘Times’ altered it, reporting that the cars had run
on schedule every ten minutes.”
This is the regular practice of the “Times.” All its accounts of strikes
are hate-stories, entirely disregarding the facts; all its accounts of
political events and conditions, local, state, or national, are
class-propaganda. It will write its own views of political conditions in
Washington, and label it “Exclusive Dispatch.” It will take the
dispatches which come through the Associated Press, and put hate
headlines over them—and sometimes it is so overpowered by hate that the
headlines do not fit the context! Thus I read a large headline, “STOKES
WOMAN SENT TO PRISON”; and when I read the dispatch under the headline I
discover, quite plainly stated, that the “Stokes woman” is _not_ sent to
prison! Again, the Western Union Telegraph Company defies the United
States Government, refusing to accept the decision of the War Labor
Board. This is placed under the headline: “TELEGRAPH COMPANY DEFIES
UNION LABOR.” A few days later comes the news that the telegraphers’
union is threatening to strike because of the company’s attitude. This
bears the title: “TELEGRAPHERS’ UNION DEFIES GOVERNMENT.”
Needless to say, a newspaper which thus lies in the interest of
privilege is deeply and reverently religious. Every Monday the “Times”
prints a couple of pages of extracts from sermons, and now and then its
editorial page breaks into a spiritual ecstasy of its own. I clipped one
sample during the war—two columns, twelve point leaded, with caps here
and there: “_The One Tremendous Thought_.”
And what is this thought which overwhelms the “Times”? The thought “that
in this war the world is to be made safe, not so much for democracy, as
for men’s souls.” This war, “sinister, cruel, bloody and bestial though
it be,” has placed our soldier-boys under the care of religion. “Upon
the Protestant soldiers are the sleepless eyes of the Young Men’s
Christian Association. Around our Catholic soldiers are the faithful
arms of the Knights of Columbus.” Christianity had been weakening before
“the noisy school of the sciences”; but—
Now cometh the war! And behold, a professedly Christian world that had
been slipping away from belief in THE GREAT MIRACLE OF THE AGES, now
swings back to the old belief again. The Christian world is more truly
Christian.
This then is the striking fact of the war.
And this is the one tremendous thought.
And from this overpowering sublimity, take a jump to the news columns,
in which the “Times” reports family scandals in minute detail. Observe
the chaste refinement of its headlines—this pious organ of sanctity!
RACY CHARGES MADE BY RICH
Says Wife Sneaked Paramour Into Room to Beat Him.
She Avers He Made Love to Widow in a Flat.
Sensational Accusations in Wealthy Man’s Fight.
Also the “Times” has deep convictions on the subject of Economics. I
quote about half of one editorial:
MY LADY POVERTY
There is many a thing in this world much dreaded by us that we have no
need to dread. We often regard as a foe that which is really a friend.
And how many times we think of as being ugly that which is indeed
beautiful.
Perverted thus as we are in our natures, how unwelcome at the door of
life is the presence of poverty. Next to sickness and disease we dread
to be poor. And yet poverty is not a curse but a blessing.
Have you ever dwelt upon the sweet dignity and the beauty with which
St. Francis of Assisi clothed poverty? “My Lady Poverty” he called it,
giving to his rags and his hunger a personality, and taking that
personality into his heart.
And richly did his Lady Poverty reward Francis for his devotion and
his love. She cast out the dross from his nature, made life
unspeakably sweet and joyous for him, endeared him to the world
forever and immortalized him as few men have ever been
immortalized....
It must be that you will have thought often, too, of old blind Homer
who begged his way from door to door in the old times of Greece. He
was the master singer. He was the greatest, by far, of all the poets
that sung before him or that since have sung. Not Sappho, nor
Shakespeare, nor Tasso, nor Longfellow nor any one of all that
palm-crowned company was the peer of old blind Homer begging his way
from door to door.
Now, had not My Lady Poverty claimed Homer as a lover, had he been
rich, with a palace to live in and servants to wait upon him, there
would have been no Odyssey, no Iliad.
It was My Lady Poverty that lured Schiller to his garret and the crust
that was there; it was she who wove her fingers in Goldsmith’s hair
when he wandered through Erin playing for pennies on his flute.
So, if some day, there shall be some among us who will wake to find
the Lady Poverty standing at the door, think not that fate will then
have served us ill. Fling back the creaking hinges and let her in.
Make room for her gracious presence in the wide guest chambers of your
heart.
This, you perceive, is exquisitely written and deeply felt. In order to
appreciate fully its passionate and consecrated sincerity you need to be
informed that the newspaper which features it boasts a profit of
something like a million dollars a year; this income being derived from
the publication of the filthiest patent medicine advertisements, of
pages upon pages of news about moving-picture rubbish, real estate
speculations, oil stocks, gold mines, every kind of swindling—all paid
for.
I shall have much to say in later chapters about the “Times” fortune and
the way it was made. For the moment I give one anecdote, to round out my
picture.
My authority is a gentleman who a few years ago was managing editor of
the “Los Angeles Herald.” The “Herald” was then a morning paper, a rival
of the “Times,” and was controlled and practically owned by the Farmers’
& Merchants’ National Bank of Los Angeles. The president of this
institution is the biggest banker on the coast, and was engaged, with
the connivance of the newspapers, in unloading upon the city for two and
a half million dollars a water company which was practically worthless.
It was found that the “Herald” was not paying, and the banker decided to
reduce the price from five cents to two cents. But Otis of the “Times”
got wind of it, and notified the banker that if he lowered the price of
the “Herald,” the “Times” would at once open up on the water company
swindle. “Oh, very well, General,” replied the banker. “If that’s the
way you feel about it, we’ll forget it.” So the price of the “Herald”
stayed up, and the paper lost money, and finally Otis bought it for a
song, ran it for a while in pretended rivalry to the “Times,” and then
sold it at a profit, upon condition that it be made an evening paper, so
that it should not interfere with the “Times.”
Reading this, you will not be surprised to learn that the particular
page upon which appeared the rhapsody to “My Lady Poverty” bears the
name of the particular “Times” editor who told me: “It has been so long
since I have written anything that I believe, that I don’t think I would
know the sensation!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE DAILY CAT-AND-DOG FIGHT
There are other newspapers published in this “Roof-garden of the World.”
There is the Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” which
publishes the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, and follows, somewhat
haltingly, the Hearst propaganda for government ownership. But so far as
its local policy is concerned, it is entirely commercial, its fervors
are for the local industry, of “boosting.” It has an especially annoying
habit of disguising its advertisements so as to trap you into reading
them as news. You will be informed in headlines of a notable event in
local history, and when you read, you learn that Johnnie Jones, of 2249
S. Peanut Street, sold all his chickens within two hours by using
“Examiner Want Ads.” Again, you read a headline about an aviator just
returned from France, and what you learn about him is that Jones & Co.
have put out twenty thousand pictures of him in twenty thousand boxes of
“Frizzlies.” “This confection is especially delicious,” says our naïve
“Examiner.” And now, as I write, some editor has an inspiration, and day
after day I am confronted with an illustrated article: “_Aspirants to
Shapely Limbs Title_. Who owns the most beautiful limbs on the stage?
Look them over.”
Later on I shall tell of the “Examiner’s” treatment of various radicals.
For the present I am dealing with personal experiences, so I relate that
in the spring of 1919 I was invited to speak at a mass-meeting of the
Jews of Los Angeles, in protest against the pogroms in Poland. The other
speakers at this meeting expressed indignation at these pogroms; I
endeavored to explain them. The French bankers, who now rule the
continent of Europe, are engaged in setting up a substitute for the
Russian Tsardom on the east of Germany; and this new Polish empire is
using the Jews as a scapegoat, precisely as the Russian Tsardom did.
Referring to President Wilson, I said; “I have supported him through the
war, and I am not one of those who are denouncing him now. I think he
has made a pitiful failure in Europe, but I understand that failure; it
is due in part to the fact that the American people do not realize what
is going on in Europe, and do not make clear their determination that
American money shall not be poured out in support of reaction and
imperialism.”
Such was the substance of my argument. Next day the “Los Angeles Times”
did not mention it; while the “Los Angeles Examiner” reported it with
outraged indignation, under the scare headline: “SINCLAIR ATTACKS
WILSON.” In this form it was telegraphed all over the country. The
amusing feature of the story is that the “Examiner” itself was at this
time attacking Wilson most venomously—both on its editorial page and in
its Washington dispatches. But it did not want my aid; it would not
permit a Socialist to “attack” the President of the United States!
In various cities there are various standards prevailing for the conduct
of newspapers in their rivalries with one another. In New York the rule
is that they never praise one another, and only denounce one another in
extreme cases. One thing they absolutely never do is to mention one
another’s libel suits. But here in Los Angeles the rivalry between the
“Times” and “Examiner” is a daily cat-and-dog fight. Not merely do they
spread each other’s libel suits over the front page; they charge each
other with numerous crimes, they call names and make faces like two
ill-mannered children. And they keep this up, day after day, for weeks,
so that it is impossible to get the news of world-events in Southern
California without having their greeds and spites thrust upon you.
One day you read in the “Times” that the “Examiner” is dressing up
agents as soldiers, and circulating slanders against the “Times.” Next
day there begins in the “Examiner” a series of cartoons of Harry
Andrews, managing editor of the “Times,” representing him in grotesque
and disgusting positions. Next day you read in the “Times” that William
Bayard Hale, a former correspondent of the “Examiner,” is charged with
having taken German money. Next day you read in the “Examiner” that
Harry Carr, assistant managing editor of the “Times,” has been shown to
have had his travelling expenses in Germany paid by the German
government; also that Willard Huntington Wright, former literary editor
of the “Times,” is accused of having taken German money. Next day you
read in the “Examiner” that the mayor of Los Angeles has been indicted
upon a charge of taking bribe-money from negro brothel-keepers, and that
his chief confederate is Horace Karr, former political editor of the
“Times.” Next day you read in the “Times” about this same Horace
Karr—only he isn’t a former political editor of the “Times,” he is a
former reporter for the “Examiner”! This particular civic scandal is
spread over a page of both papers for a month, the “Examiner” playing it
up, the “Times” playing it down, both of them telling patent falsehoods,
and both of them continuing, day after day, to describe Horace Karr as a
former employe of the other!
One of the funniest instances of this rivalry occurred recently upon the
death of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, mother of William Randolph Hearst, owner of
the “Examiner.” I made a study of the “Examiner” and the “Times” next
morning. The “Examiner” gave three columns on the first page and five
columns on the third page to accounts of Mrs. Hearst and her virtues.
There were two pictures, one a picture of Mrs. Hearst, occupying
fifty-eight square inches, and the other a picture of “the family of
William Randolph Hearst visiting their grandmother,” this occupying
forty square inches.
The “Times,” of course, was not so much interested in Mrs. Hearst. It
gave her only the amount of space which it would give to any California
millionaire who died—that is, two columns. The picture of Mrs. Hearst
occupied only twenty-four square inches, and the contrast with the
picture in the “Examiner” was most diverting. The picture in the
“Examiner” showed a magnificent and stately lady, some duchess by
Gainsborough. How the picture in the “Times” originated I do not know,
but it appeared as if the editor of the “Times” had said to his artist:
“Find me a picture of the ugliest old woman you have on file; or better
yet, get me a picture of a grim old man with a double chin, and draw me
a woman’s bonnet on top of him, and a woman’s dress over his shoulders,
and label it ‘Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst’.”
Also there are three afternoon papers in Los Angeles—all three
sensational, all three commercial, with hardly the pretense of a public
policy. There was brought to my attention the case of Raoul Palma, a
young Mexican Socialist of an especially fine type, who had earned the
enmity of the Los Angeles police by persisting in speaking on the Plaza.
They had brought against him a charge of murder, as perfect a case of
“frame-up” as I ever saw. I spent much time investigating the case,
which failed for lack of evidence when brought before a jury. But the
city editors and managing editors of the Los Angeles newspapers, to whom
I took the evidence of this “frame-up,” were not moved to any fervors. I
was able to get one or two small items published, but I was not able to
find a spark of human feeling, nor yet an ideal of public welfare in the
management of the journals upon which I called. But suppose that I had
gone to them with the news that I was about to build a new million
dollar hotel in Los Angeles; or that I had purchased the Catalina
Islands, and was about to develop them for tourists; or that I was about
to start an airplane service up the coast!
Quite recently a great rubber concern has started a six million dollar
factory in Los Angeles; and such ecstasies as seize our papers! Columns
and columns, day after day; pictures of the wondrous structure, and of
the president of the company—I think I have had the features of this
pudgy little person thrust upon me not less than a dozen times! And his
ideas—not merely about the rubber business and the commercial prospects
of Southern California, but about the League of Nations, and the “Plumb
plan” and labor unions and strikes and Bolshevism!
On the other hand, there is a movement now under way to organize the
actors in the motion-picture industry in Southern California; and how
much space does this get from the Los Angeles newspapers? On August 18,
1919, there was held in the Hollywood Hotel a mass meeting of members of
the theatrical profession, to inform them concerning the meaning of the
actors’ strike in New York, and to solicit donations for the strikers.
Not a line about this meeting in any Los Angeles paper! And not a line
about the strike of the moving picture workers which came soon
afterwards!
Now, as I finish this book, the office of the “Dugout,” a returned
soldiers’ paper, is raided by the Federal authorities. The editor,
Sydney R. Flowers, served three years as a volunteer in the Canadian
army, was twice wounded, and once gassed. He joined a veterans’
organization in Los Angeles, but found it was being courted by the
Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association as a strike-breaking agency;
so he rebelled, and started a rival organization, and now the “M. and
M.” plotters have persuaded the government to raid his rooms and break
up his propaganda. It happened that I myself was present, and saw the
raid, and half a dozen witnesses can testify to the condition in which
the offices were left. At my instance the “Examiner” sent a photographer
and took a flashlight of the scene; but then it suppressed the picture!
As for the “Times,” it quite solemnly informs its readers that the war
veterans wrecked their own offices, in order to have a ground of
complaint against the government! It repeats this, in circumstantial
detail, two days in succession!
This is a somber tale I am telling, so let us not miss the few laughs
that belong. Some time ago I had a call from a young lady reporter for
the “Los Angeles Record.” She was a very young lady indeed—just out of
school, I should say—and she explained that Max Eastman had given an
interview on the subject of “free love,” and would I please to give an
interview on the subject of “free love.” In reply I explained to this
young lady that as a result of previous painful experiences I had made
an iron-clad rule on the subject of the sex-question. I would not trust
any newspaper reporter, not even the most amiable, to interpret my views
on that delicate subject.
The young lady argued and pleaded. She did her very charming best to get
me to give her a hint of my opinion of Max Eastman’s opinion of “free
love.” But I have become a wise bird—having had my wing-feathers shot
out so many times; I gave no hint, either of my own opinions or of my
opinions of Max Eastman’s opinions.
Finally the young lady said: “Do you ever write on the subject, Mr.
Sinclair?”
I answered: “Sometimes I do. When I write, I choose my own words and say
what I mean, and then I am willing to stand by it.”
“Well,” said the young lady, “will you write an article on ‘free love’
for the ‘Record’?”
“Certainly I will,” said I—“if the ‘Record’ will pay my price.”
“What is your price?”
“Ten cents a word.”
The young lady looked troubled. “I don’t know if the ‘Record’ could pay
that,” said she, “but this is my position—I will explain frankly, and
hope you won’t mind. I’ve just started to be a newspaper woman, and I’m
very anxious to make good. I don’t have to earn my living, because my
parents have money. What I want to do is to have a career. If I go back
to the ‘Record’ and report that I failed to get an interview, I won’t
keep this job. So won’t you please write an article for me, and let me
pay for it at the rate of ten cents a word?”
You may share a smile over this queer situation. I pleaded
embarrassment, I argued with the young lady that I couldn’t possibly
take her money. But she argued back, very charmingly; she would be
heart-broken if I did not consent. So at last I said: “All right, I
will write you an article. How many words do you want?”
The young lady meditated; she figured for a while on the back of her
note-book; and finally she said: “I think I’d like fifty words, please.”
Really, I explained, I couldn’t express my views on such a complicated
subject in the limits of a night letter; so the young lady raised her
bid to a hundred words. In the end we had to break off negotiations, and
she went away disappointed. I was told afterwards by friends that she
published an article in the “Record,” describing this interview, and
having an amusing time with me; so presumably her job was saved. I
didn’t see her article, for the “Record” is an evening paper, and
publishes half a dozen editions, no two alike, and the only way you can
find out what it says about you is to stand on the street-corner for six
or eight hours, and catch each fleeting edition as it fleets.
I have come to the end of my own experiences. I read the manuscript and
the proofs, over and over, as I have to do, and a guilty feeling haunts
me. Will the radical movement consider that I have forced upon it a
ventilation of my own egotisms, in the guise of a work on Journalism? I
cannot be sure; but at least I can say this: Have patience, and read the
second part of the book, in which you will find little about myself, and
a great deal about other people, to whom you owe your trust and
affection; also a mass of facts about your Journalism, without reference
to anybody’s personality.
PART II
THE EXPLANATION