POISON IVY
I have asked the difficult question, When is a bribe not a bribe? When
it is “legitimate business”? When, for instance, the “New Haven” is
discovered to have ordered 9,716 copies of the “Outlook” containing a
boost of the “New Haven” system by Sylvester J. Baxter, a paid writer of
the “New Haven”? You may read the details of this in “The Profits of
Religion”; the president of the “Outlook” corporation wrote to me that
the “New Haven” bought these copies “without any previous understanding
or arrangement.” They are so naïve in the office of this religious
weekly; nobody had the slightest idea that if they boosted some railroad
grafters in peril of discovery, these grafters might come back with a
big order! And right now, while the railroads are trying to get their
properties back, and all their debts paid out of the public treasury,
the spending of millions of dollars upon advertising is perfectly
legitimate—it does not have the slightest effect upon newspaper
editorial policy! When the miners of Colorado go on strike, and the
Rockefellers proceed to fill every daily and weekly newspaper in the
state of Colorado with full-page broad-sides against the miners, this of
course is not a bribe; the fact that on the page opposite there will
appear an editorial, reproducing completely the point of view of the
advertisements—that is a pure coincidence, and the editorial is the
honorable and disinterested opinion of the newspaper editor! When the
United States Commission on Industrial Relations exposes the fact that
these attacks on the miners contain the most outrageous lies, and that
the thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers knew they
were lies—it is a pure coincidence that very little about this
revelation is published in the Colorado newspapers!
This last incident is so important as to deserve fuller exposition. The
thousand-dollar-a-month press-agent of the Rockefellers was a gentleman
by the name of Ivy L. Lee, and after the strikers had experienced his
methods for a while, they referred to him as “Poison Ivy.” He took the
published annual report of the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine
Workers, which showed that the national vice-president of the union in
charge of the Colorado strike had received a yearly salary of $2,395.72
and a year’s expenses of $1,667.20. He put these two figures together,
calling it all salary, $4,062.92; and then he added the expenses again,
making a total of $5,730.12; and then he said that all this had been
paid to the national vice-president for nine weeks’ work on the
strike—thus showing that he was paid over ninety dollars a day, or at
the rate of thirty-two thousand dollars a year!
By the same method, he showed that another official was paid sixty-six
dollars a day; that John R. Lawson had received $1,773.40 in nine weeks!
Old “Mother” Jones was listed at forty-two dollars a day; the actual
fact being that for her work as organizer she was paid $2.57 a day—and
this not including the many months which she spent in jail for refusing
to leave the strike-district! The “bulletin” containing these figures
was published in all the newspapers, and was mailed out over the country
to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies; and when the miners
exposed the falsity of the statements, “Poison Ivy” postponed correcting
them until the strike was lost, and until he knew that the Walsh
Commission was on his trail! Thirty-two separate “bulletins” this
scoundrel sent out over the United States, and many of them were full of
just such lies as this. If you want details, you may consult two
articles by George Creel in “Harper’s Weekly,” for November 7th and
14th, 1914.
There are thousands of such press agents serving our predatory
interests, but not often are we permitted to peer into their inmost
souls, to watch them at their secret offices. The Walsh Commission was
so cruel as to put “Poison Ivy” on the stand, and also to publish his
letters to his master. An examination of these letters shows him
performing functions not usually attributed to press-agents. We see him
preparing and revising a letter for Governor Ammons to send to President
Wilson. (You remember, perhaps, in my story of Governor Ammons, my
charge that the coal operators wrote his lying telegram to the
President? Maybe you thought that was just loose talk!) We see “Poison
Ivy” arranging for the distribution of an enormous edition of a speech
on the Colorado coal-strike by the “kept” congressmen of the
coal-operators—the speech containing “Polly Pry,” with the slanders
against “Mother Jones,” sent out under government frank! We see him
following the newspapers with minute care; for example, calling Mr.
Rockefeller’s attention to the fact that the Northampton, Massachusetts,
“Herald” had used a part of his first bulletin as an editorial; also
sending to Mr. Rockefeller an editorial by Arthur Brisbane, sneering at
our “mourning pickets.” Finally, this remarkable press-agent claims that
he persuaded the Walsh Commission not to come to Colorado till the
operators had finished strangling the strike. That he actually did this,
I cannot say. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the commission
delayed to come, and “Poison Ivy” was “stringing” Mr. Rockefeller, to
make sure of that thousand dollars a month!
Would you like to be such a press-agent, and get such a salary as this?
If so, you can find full directions, set forth by “Poison Ivy” himself
in an address to the “American Railway Guild.” At this time he was prize
poisoner for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he explains that it is all a
question of psychology. “Success in dealing with crowds, that success we
have got to attain if we are to solve the railroad question, rests upon
the art of getting believed in.” And our prize poisoner goes on to give
concrete illustrations of how to get the railroads “believed in.” If you
are opposing a “full crew” law, you will get “believed in” by changing
the name of the measure to an “extra crew” law. If you are going into
bankruptcy, you will get “believed in” by calling it a “readjustment of
finances.” If you are fighting a strike, and one small group of the
strikers demands a particularly large increase in wages, you will get
“believed in” by so phrasing your statement as to make it appear that
all the miners are making the same unreasonable demand as the little
group. “Miners Ask One Hundred and Fifty Per Cent Increase in Wages,”
cites “Poison Ivy.” He sent a copy of this brilliant production to Mr.
Rockefeller, and on the strength of it got a considerable increase in
wages himself!