THE PRESS AND LABOR
I have told many stories of newspaper lies about myself, and perhaps you
thought that was just one person who was wronged, and it didn’t make
much difference; but when it comes to lying about the labor movement,
thousands and even millions of people are wronged, and that surely does
make a difference. When newspapers lie about a strike, they lie about
every one of the strikers, and every one of these strikers and their
wives and children and friends know it. When they see deliberate and
long-continued campaigns to render them odious to the public, and to
deprive them of their just rights, not merely as workers, but as
citizens, a blaze of impotent fury is kindled in their hearts. And year
by year our newspapers go on storing up these volcanic fires of
hate-against the day when labor will no longer be impotent!
Imagine, if you can, the feelings of a workingman on strike who picks up
a copy of the “Wall Street Journal” and reads:
We have a flabby public opinion which would wring its hands in anguish
if we took the labor leader by the scruff of his neck, backed him up
against a wall, and filled him with lead. Countries which consider
themselves every bit as civilized as we do not hesitate about such
matters for a moment.
Whenever it comes to a “show-down” between labor and capital, the press
is openly or secretly for capital—and this no matter how “liberal” this
press may pretend to be. Says Professor Ross:
During labor disputes the facts are usually distorted to the injury of
labor. In one case (Chicago), strikers held a meeting on a vacant lot
enclosed by a newly-erected billboard. Forthwith appeared, in a yellow
journal professing warm friendship for labor, a front-page cut of the
billboard and a lurid story of how the strikers had built a “stockade”
behind which they intended to bid defiance to the blue-coats. It is
not surprising that when the van bringing these lying sheets appeared
in their quarter of the city, the libeled men overturned it.
During the struggle of carriage-drivers for a six-day week, certain
great dailies lent themselves to a concerted effort of the liverymen
to win public sympathy by making it appear that the strikers were
interfering with funerals. One paper falsely stated that a strong
force of police was being held in reserve in case of “riots,” and that
policemen would ride beside the non-union drivers of hearses. Another,
under the misleading headline, “Two Funerals Stopped by Striking
Cabmen,” described harmless colloquies between hearse-drivers and
pickets. This was followed up by a solemn editorial, “May a Man Go to
His Long Rest in Peace?”—although, as a matter of fact, the strikers
had no intention of interfering with funerals....
That was in Chicago, ten years ago. And now, as I write, the employes of
the packing-houses, my old friends of “The Jungle,” are on strike again,
and the Chicago newspapers are at their usual game of deliberate lying:
“Violence is Expected,” “Situation is Critical,” and so on. It happens
that an honest man, Alfred W. McCann, is on the scene. He writes:
I say it isn’t true. To the shame of the press, no foundation can be
discovered for the wild stories now filling their columns, spreading
public anxiety and inciting labor to outbursts of indignation against
what is called “the deliberate misrepresentation of the press.”
The packers advertise heavily in Chicago newspapers; and so also do the
Chicago department-stores. Says Prof. Ross:
In the same city (Chicago), during a strike of the elevator men in the
large stores, the business agent of the elevator-starters’ union was
beaten to death, in an alley behind a certain emporium, by a
“strong-arm” man hired by that firm. The story, supported by
affidavits, was given by a responsible lawyer to three newspaper men,
each of whom accepted it as true and promised to print it. The account
never appeared.
Try, for a moment, to put yourself in the position of a girl-slave of
one of these big department-stores. You resist the flirtatious advances
of the floor-walker, and continue to eat your twenty-cent dinners; but
after a few years you grow desperate, and in the face of the heaviest
pressure you organize and declare a strike for better pay. How much
chance do you stand for fair play from the newspapers? Why, they won’t
even print the names of the stores against which you are striking! Says
Max Sherover:
While addressing a street meeting, held under the auspices of the
Retail Clerks’ Union, in front of Stern Brothers’ department-store,
Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested at the instigation of one of the
store-managers. Miss Dutcher is highly prominent in social and labor
circles, and the papers did not dare to be entirely silent about the
arrest. Every paper in New York, except one—and that one does not
carry department-store advertising—spoke of a meeting at the doors of
a “large retail establishment.” They also referred to an earlier
incident as a disturbance at the doors of a “Sixth Avenue Store,” not
daring to mention the name, Gimbel’s.
Or again, Prof. Ross:
In New York the salesgirls in the big shops had to sign an exceedingly
mean and oppressive contract, which, if generally known, would have
made the firms odious to the public. A prominent social worker brought
these contracts, and evidence as to the bad conditions that had become
established under them, to every newspaper in the city. Not one would
print a line on the subject.
And not only do they exclude the news; they keep watch over the general
ideas which go into their columns, to make sure there is nothing to
injure the sensibilities of department-stores, or to favor the
girl-slaves of department-stores. Would you think I was absurd if I were
to declare that there is a whole set of philosophical ideas which the
newspapers forbid you to know about, because the department-stores
ordain? Yes, even so! You must believe in free will, you must not
believe in economic determinism! You must think that prostitution is a
sexual phenomenon; you must not learn that prostitution is an economic
phenomenon. Anybody who advocates the heretical, anti-department-store
doctrine that white-slavery is caused by low wages will be suppressed,
and if necessary will be slandered as an immoral person. You remember
the “New York World,” its solemn editorial about twenty-cent dinners?
Some years ago the “World” was under contract to publish every week a
short story by O. Henry. They received the manuscript of what posterity
has come to recognize as O. Henry’s masterpiece, “The Unfinished Story”;
they refused to publish this “Unfinished Story,” because it was
injurious to department-stores!
Or consider what happened when the Illinois Vice Commission made an
investigation of the causes of prostitution, and submitted one of the
best reports on this subject ever written. The report was highly
sensational, also it was highly important; it was news in every possible
sense of the word. But it attributed prostitution to low wages, and
therefore only one Chicago newspaper gave an adequate account of this
report!
You saw the “Boston Herald” and “Journal,” and also the “Boston Post,”
forbidding you to know that President Wilson was urging you not to spend
money on luxuries. In the same way, when there is a crisis of
unemployment, the department-stores and other advertisers command that
falsehoods shall be told you. If you know that business is bad, you may
be cautious and save your money; whereas the department-stores want you
to spend your money, and the kept press wants its share of this money
for advertisements. Says Prof. Ross:
The alacrity with which many dailies serve as mouth-pieces of the
financial powers came out very clearly during the recent industrial
depression. The owner of one leading newspaper called his reporters
together and said in effect, “Boys, the first of you who turns in a
story of a lay-off or a shut-down, gets the sack.” Early in the
depression the newspapers teemed with glowing accounts of the
resumption of steel-mills and the revival of business, all baseless.
After harvest-time they began to cheep “Prosperity,” “Bumper Crops,”
“Farmers Buying Automobiles.” In cities where banks and employers
offered clearing-house certificates instead of cash, the press usually
printed fairy tales of the enthusiasm with which these makeshifts were
taken by depositors and workingmen. The numbers and sufferings of the
unemployed were ruthlessly concealed from the reading public. A mass
meeting of the men out of work was represented as “anarchistic” or
“instigated by the Socialists for political effect.” In one daily
appeared a dispatch under the heading “Five Thousand Jobs Offered;
Only Ten Apply.” It stated that the Commissioner of Public Works of
Detroit, misled by reports of dire distress, set afoot a public work
which called for five thousand men. Only ten men applied for work, and
all these expected to be bosses. Correspondence with the official
establishes the fact that the number of jobs offered was five hundred,
and that three thousand men applied for them.
That was twelve years ago, in the Middle West. Six years ago we had
another unemployment crisis, and I watched the newspapers handling it in
New York. You might have thought they would not have been able to fool
_me_; but they did! A boy out of this unemployed army, Frank Tanenbaum
by name, led a number of starving men to the Catholic Church of St.
Alphonsus to request shelter on a winter’s night. I read several
newspapers, in the hope of getting the truth from one of them; on this
occasion all the papers agreed that the unemployed men and their leader
abused and threatened the priest, and were noisy and blasphemous in
their behavior. I was heartsick about it. Oh, what a pity! If only those
poor devils had had the sense to go to the churches in a quiet and
respectful way, their position would have been impregnable. Christian
churches would not have dared to turn out starving men on a winter’s
night!
But Christian churches did! And the capitalist press backed them up! The
leader, Frank Tanenbaum, was arrested, and he called as witnesses the
very newspaper men who had written the stories of his “raid.” These men
had been willing to lie in what they wrote—that was part of the
newspaper game; but they were unwilling to lie under oath—that was _not_
part of the game! So they testified that these unemployed men had been
entirely peaceful in their conduct, that Tanenbaum had addressed the
priest with politeness and respect, and that the crowd had left the
church when told that they must do so!
Some years ago there was a strike of the hotel-workers in New York, an
I. W. W. strike—and of course there is nothing with which the newspapers
deal more freely than the I. W. W. They quoted Joe Ettor as having
advised the strikers to put poison in the soup which they served to
hotel patrons; also as having insulted the American flag. Ettor denied
vigorously having made any such statements, but of course his denial
went for nothing. Some of us who knew Ettor thought that the public
ought to get a little of the truth about conditions under which these
hotel-workers were forced to live—conditions menacing not only to
themselves, but to the public they served. Therefore the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society called a meeting in Carnegie Hall to hear the I. W. W.
leaders. A fiery little New York politician who held the office of
sheriff saw an opportunity to leap into the limelight. He would attend
that meeting with a large force of deputies, and protect the American
flag from insult! He brought some thirty deputies, to whom the county
paid three dollars each; and we provided them with seats on the
platform, and all the orators made speeches to them, and the young
ladies who passed the collection-plates took away a part of their three
dollars. And next morning the newspapers reported that the gallant
sheriff had protected the American flag and tamed the seditious fury of
the I. W. W.!
You remember, perhaps, my story of the Paterson silk-strikers, and how
the “New York Times” quoted me as telling them that they “had the police
at their mercy.” Here is another glimpse of this strike, through the
eyes of Max Sherover:
At the I. W. W. pageant held about two years ago at Madison Square
Garden, New York, for the benefit of the Paterson, N. J.
silk-strikers, the writer was an eye-witness to the following scene: A
reporter, whose identity we were unable to learn, in the basement of
the Garden hurriedly printed the following words on an improvised
banner, “No God and No Master, I. W. W.” One of the illiterate
strikers was asked to hold the banner aloft and pose while a newspaper
photographer was taking a flashlight photo.
This Paterson pageant was a result of the effort of a few literary men
and women in New York, who saw the shameless lying of the press and the
shameless violation of law by the authorities in Paterson. A group of
people, including Ernest Poole, Hutchins Hapgood, Leroy Scott, John
Reed, Thompson Buchanan, Margaret Sanger, and myself worked for weeks,
giving all our time and energy and a great deal of money, and brought
about a thousand strikers to New York City to rehearse the story of
their sufferings before an audience in Madison Square Garden. This was
so sensational that the newspapers could not suppress it; therefore what
they did was to ridicule and betray it. They always make out that
labor-movements are rolling in wealth, and that “agitators” are making
fortunes. In this case they said that we were planning to finance the
strike by this pageant. Every newspaper man knew this was absurd, for
they knew the seating capacity of the Garden and could figure the
possible gross receipts. The enterprise suffered a deficit of one or two
thousand dollars; so of course the poor, starving strikers, who had read
in the newspapers that they were to be “financed,” were bitterly
disappointed. The “New York Times” thus had a chance for a story to the
effect that the strikers were accusing us of having robbed them; and
this while we were engaged in making up the deficit out of our own
pockets!
Or take the Lawrence strike. I have told the story of how conspirators
of the great Woolen Trust planted dynamite in the homes of
strike-breakers as a “frame-up” to discredit the strikers. The man who
was convicted of this was a school commissioner and a prominent
Catholic, a close friend of the mill-owners. When this dynamite was
found, the Associated Press sent the story fully. When the plot was
exposed, it sent almost nothing. These statements were made publicly at
a conference at the University of Wisconsin by A. M. Simons, and never
challenged by the Associated Press. And at this same conference it was
stated by George French that the department-stores served notice upon
all the Boston newspapers that if they featured this strike they would
get no more Sunday advertising!
Or take the present struggle of the railroad brotherhoods for a living
wage. The “Saturday Evening Post” published a series of articles by
Edward Hungerford, full of gross falsehoods regarding the wages of
railroad workers and managers under the Federal administration. These,
mind you, were flat misstatements of facts officially recorded and
available to any one. The brotherhoods asked a certain United States
railroad administration official to prepare from official records a
statement concerning these misrepresentations. This was formally
submitted to the “Saturday Evening Post,” and was absolutely ignored.
Or take the case of Tom Mooney. The capitalist newspapers of San
Francisco tried Tom Mooney, with the help of a million dollar corruption
fund, raised by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of the city.
They found him guilty, but the prosecuting authorities didn’t have
enough evidence to make good the verdict in court, so they manufactured
the evidence. Mooney was a Socialist and a well-known labor organizer,
so the case was taken up by the Socialists and the unions of the
country, and became the great labor issue of the time—all without one
word getting into the capitalist newspapers of the East! There were two
or three million copy “protest editions” of the “Appeal to Reason”
issued—and still not a word about it in the capitalist newspapers
outside of California! Finally the Anarchists in Petrograd took up the
matter; they attacked the American embassy, and the news was cabled back
to New York that the attack was on account of a certain “Tom Muni.” The
newspapers of New York didn’t know anything about the case, and couldn’t
find out about it in time; they had to publish the name as it came over
the cables—thus laying bare their shame to the whole world! Could any
writer of farce-comedy have invented a greater satire upon New York
Journalism than the fact that it had to get its San Francisco labor-news
misspelled from Petrograd?