THE CAUSES OF THINGS
I studied Latin for five years in college, and from this study brought
away a dozen Latin verses. One of them is from Virgil: “Happy he who has
learned to know the causes of things.” The words have stayed in my mind,
summing up the purpose of my intellectual life: Not to rest content with
observing phenomena, but to know what they mean, how they have come to
be, how they may be guided and developed, or, if evil, may be
counteracted. I would not have taken the trouble to write a book to say
to the reader: I have been persecuted for twenty years by prostitute
Journalism. The thing I am interested in saying is: The prostitution of
Journalism is due to such and such factors, and may be remedied by such
and such changes.
Here is one of the five continents of the world, perhaps the richest of
the five in natural resources. As far back as history, anthropology, and
even zoology can trace, these natural resources have been the object of
competitive struggle. For the past four hundred years this struggle has
been ordained by the laws and sanctified by the religions of man. “Each
for himself,” we say, and, “the devil take the hindmost.” “Dog eat dog,”
we say. “Do others or they will do you,” we say. “Business is business,”
we say. “Get the stuff,” we say. “Money talks,” we say. “The Almighty
Dollar,” we say. So, by a thousand native witticisms, we Americans make
clear our attitude toward the natural resources of our continent.
As a result of four centuries of this attitude, ordained by law and
sanctified by religion, it has come about that at this beginning of the
twentieth century the massed control of the wealth of America lies in
the hands of perhaps a score of powerful individuals. We in America
speak of steel kings and coal barons, of lords of wheat and lumber and
oil and railroads, and think perhaps that we are using metaphors; but
the simple fact is that the men to whom we refer occupy in the world of
industry precisely the same position and fill precisely the same roles
as were filled in the political world by King Louis, who said, “I am the
State.”
This power of concentrated wealth which rules America is known by many
names. It is “Wall Street,” it is “Big Business,” it is “the Trusts.” It
is the “System” of Lincoln Steffens, the “Invisible Government” of
Woodrow Wilson, the “Empire of Business” of Andrew Carnegie, the
“Plutocracy” of the populists. It has been made the theme of so much
stump-oratory that in cultured circles it is considered good form to
speak of it in quotation marks, with a playful and skeptical
implication; but the simple fact is that this power has controlled
American public life since the civil war, and is greater at this hour
than ever before in our history.
The one difference between the Empire of Business and the Empire of
Louis is that the former exists side by side with a political democracy.
To keep this political democracy subservient to its ends, the industrial
autocracy maintains and subsidizes two rival political machines, and
every now and then stages an elaborate sham-battle, contributing
millions of dollars to the campaign funds of both sides, burning
thousands of tons of red fire, pouring out millions of reams of paper
propaganda and billions of words of speeches. The people take interest
in this sham-battle—but all sensible men understand that whichever way
the contest is decided, business will continue to be business, and money
will continue to talk.
So we are in position to understand the facts presented in this book.
Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its
control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day,
between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept
in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election
comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the
two candidates of their exploiters. Not hyperbolically and
contemptuously, but literally and with scientific precision, we define
Journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the
news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.
A modern newspaper is an enormously expensive institution. The day is
past when a country printer could set up a hand-press and print news
about the wedding of the village blacksmith’s daughter and the
lawn-party of the Christian Endeavor Society, and so make his way as a
journalist. Now-a-days people want the last hour’s news from the
battle-field or the council-hall. If they do not get it in the local
paper, they get it in the “extras” from the big cities, which are thrown
off the fast express-trains. The franchise which entitles a paper to
this news from all over the world is very costly; in most cities and
towns it is an iron-clad monopoly. You cannot afford to pay for this
service, and to print this news, unless you have a large circulation,
and for that you need complicated and costly presses, a big building, a
highly trained staff. Incidentally you will find yourself running an
advertising agency and a public employment service; you will find
yourself giving picnics for newsboys, investigating conditions in the
county-hospital, raising subscription funds for a monument to Our Heroes
in France. In other words, you will be an enormous and complex
institution, fighting day and night for the attention of the public,
pitting your composite brain against other composite brains in the
struggle to draw in the pennies of the populace.
Incidentally, of course, you are an institution running under the
capitalist system. You are employing hundreds, perhaps thousands of men,
women and children. You are paying them under the iron law of wages,
working them under the rule of “the devil take the hindmost.” You have
foremen and managers and directors, precisely as if you were a
steel-mill or a coal-mine; also you have policemen and detectives,
judges and courts and jailers, soldiers with machine-guns and sailors
with battleships to protect you and your interests—precisely as does the
rest of the predatory system of which you are a part.
And, of course, you have the capitalist psychology; you have it complete
and vivid—you being the livest part of that system. You know what is
going on hour by hour; you are more class-conscious, more alert to the
meaning of events than anyone else in the capitalist community. You know
what you want from your wage-slaves, and you see that they “deliver the
goods.” You know what you are furnishing to your advertisers, and your
terms are “net cash.” You know where you get your money, your “credit”;
so you know “Who’s Who” in America, you know whom to praise and whom to
hate and fear.
There are perhaps a dozen newspapers in America which have been built up
by slow stages out of the pennies of workingmen, and which exist to
assert the rights of workingmen. The ones I happen to know are the “New
York Call,” the “Jewish Daily Forwards,” the “Milwaukee Leader,” the
“Seattle Union Record,” the “Butte Daily Bulletin.” It should be
understood that in future discussions I except such newspapers from what
I say about American Journalism. This reservation being made, I assert
there is no daily newspaper in America which does not represent and
serve vested wealth, and which has not for its ultimate aim the
protection of economic privilege.
I am trying in this book to state the exact facts. I do not expect to
please contemporary Journalism, but I expect to produce a book which the
student of the future will recognize as just. So let me explain that I
realize fully the differences between newspapers. Some are dishonest,
and some are more dishonest; some are capitalistic, and some are more
capitalistic. But great as are the differences between them, and clever
as are the pretenses of some of them, there is no one which does not
serve vested wealth, which has not for its ultimate aim the protection
of economic privilege. The great stream of capitalist prosperity may
flow irregularly, it may have eddies and counter-currents, stagnant
places which deceive you for a while; but if you study this great stream
long enough, you find that it all moves in one direction, and that
everything upon its surface moves with it. A capitalist newspaper may
espouse this cause or that, it may make this pretense or that, but
sooner or later you realize that a capitalist newspaper lives by the
capitalist system, it fights for that system, and in the nature of the
case cannot do otherwise. Some one has said that to talk of regulating
capital is to talk of moralizing a tiger; I would say that to expect
justice and truth-telling of a capitalist newspaper is to expect
asceticism at a cannibal feast.
It would be instructive to take the leading newspapers of America and
classify them according to the nature of their financial control,
showing precisely how and where this control shapes the policy of the
paper. There will be certain immediate financial interests—the great
family which owns the paper, the great bank which holds its bonds, the
important local trade which furnishes its advertising. Concerning these
people you observe that no impolite word is ever spoken, and the début
parties given to the young ladies of these families are reported in
detail. On the other hand, if there are interests aggressively hostile
to the great family, the great bank, the important local trade, you
observe that here the newspaper becomes suddenly and unexpectedly
altruistic. It will be in favor of public ownership of the gas-works; it
will be in favor of more rigid control of state banks; whatever its
policy may be, you will, if you sit at the dinner-tables of the rich in
that city, have revealed to you the financial interests which lie behind
that unexpected altruism.
In the days of the ancient régime, nations went to war because someone
made a slighting remark about the king’s mistress; and in our present
Empire of Business you find exactly the same thing happening. I know of
a newspaper which is still living upon the reputation it made by
defending the strikers in a great labor struggle. The paper had never
defended strikers before, it has never defended strikers since; but on
this occasion it happened that the president of the corporation involved
in the strike had remarked at a dinner-party that the owner of the
newspaper was living with an opera-singer.
Some ten years ago I remember that the city of Chicago was torn wide
open by a teamsters’ strike. Brickbats were flying, mobs were swarming
in the streets, militiamen were stabbing people with bayonets. Some time
afterwards there was an investigation, and it transpired that a certain
labor-leader, Sam Parks by name, had been paid five or ten thousand
dollars by a great mail-order house to call a strike on a rival
mail-order house. And in precisely this way great newspapers quarrel,
and the public has no idea what it means. I have heard a leading Hearst
editor tell, quite simply and as a matter of course, how Mr. Hearst
would come into the office at twelve o’clock at night and turn the
batteries of the “New York American” and “Journal” upon the business and
politics of August Belmont, because Mr. Belmont had slighted Mr. Hearst,
or Mr. Hearst’s wife—I forget which—at a dinner-party. One year you
would see Mr. Hearst printing a cartoon every day, showing “Charlie”
Murphy, boss of Tammany Hall, in convict’s stripes; next year Mr. Hearst
would make a deal with Tammany—and the other newspapers of New York
would be showing Mr. Hearst in convict’s stripes!
Or come to the other side of the continent, and consider the “San
Francisco Chronicle,” owned by “Mike” de Young. Here is a picture of Mr.
de Young, drawn by one of his wage-slaves, a man who for many years has
helped to run his profit-machine:
He uses much perfume, and is extremely conceited. He is author of the
remark that no reporter is worth more than twenty dollars a week, or
ever will be. He is a secret laugh-producer because of his inordinate
love for the camera spotlight. Strangely enough, his likeness is
seldom to be found in any paper except his own; the “Chronicle’s”
camera men have standing instructions at public gatherings to pay as
little attention to other men as possible and to concentrate on de
Young. On his own paper everybody is Jones or Smith except himself. He
must always be referred to as Mr. de Young. Owner of much valuable
real estate near Golden Gate park, he made a vigorous fight to have
the Panama-Pacific Exposition located in the park, hoping thereby to
increase the value of his holdings. Defeated, he turned his wrath on
the exposition officials, and denounces them at every opportunity.
Mention of President C. C. Moore of the Exposition Company is
forbidden in the columns of the “Chronicle.”
There are differences, of course, in the moral character of men. There
are some men who do not take part in large-scale real-estate intrigues,
and some who do not live with opera-singers; there are capitalists who
pay their debts, and regard their word of honor as their bond. And there
have been newspapers owned by such men, and conducted according to such
principles. You could not buy the editorial support of the “Springfield
Republican” or the “Baltimore Sun”; you could not buy the advertising
space of these papers for the cheaper and more obvious kinds of fraud.
But ask yourself this question: Is there a newspaper in America which
will print news unfavorable to department-stores? If the girl-slaves of
the local department-store go on strike, will the newspaper maintain
their right to picket? Will it even print the truth about what they do
and say?
Some years ago a one-time teacher of mine was killed by falling down the
elevator-shaft of a New York department-store. I noted that my newspaper
did not give the name of the department-store. As a matter of curiosity,
I bought all the newspapers, and discovered that none of them gave the
name of the department-store. It was not absolutely essential, of
course; my one-time teacher was just as dead as if the name of the store
had been given. But suppose the accident had taken place at the People’s
House, owned by the Socialists—would all the newspapers of New York have
withheld the name of the place?
In New York City one of the Gimbel brothers, owners of a Philadelphia
department store, was arrested, charged with sodomy, and he cut his
throat. Not a single newspaper in Philadelphia gave this news! This was
in the days before Gimbel Brothers had a store in New York, therefore it
occurred to the “New York Evening Journal” that here was an opportunity
to build up circulation in a new field. Large quantities of the paper
were shipped to Philadelphia, and the police of Philadelphia stopped the
newsboys on the streets and took away the papers; and the Philadelphia
papers said nothing about it!
And this department-store interest supervises not only the news columns,
but the editorial columns. Some years ago one of the girl-slaves of a
New York department-store committed suicide, leaving behind her a note
to the effect that she could not stand twenty-cent dinners any longer.
The “New York World,” which collects several thousand dollars every day
from department-stores, judged it necessary to deal with this incident.
“The World,” you understand, is a “democratic” paper, a “liberal” paper,
an “independent” paper, a paper of “the people.” Said the “World”:
There are some people who make too large a demand upon fortune. Fixing
their eyes upon the standards of living flaunted by the rich, they
measure their requirements by their desires. Such persons are easily
affected by outside influences, and perhaps in this case the recent
discussions, more often silly than wise, concerning the relation of
wages to vice, may have made the girl more susceptible than usual to
the depressing effects of cheap dinners.
And do you think that is a solitary instance, the result of a temporary
editorial aberration? No, it is typical of the capitalistic mind, which
is so frugal that it extracts profit even from the suicide of its
victims. Some years ago an old man committed suicide because his few
shares of express-stock lost their value. The “New York Times” was
opposing parcel-post, because the big express-companies were a prominent
part of the city’s political and financial machine; the “New York Times”
presented this item of news as a suicide caused by the parcel-post!