THE PRESS AND THE WAR
War came upon the world, and the writer, as a student of Journalism,
watched the great tide of public opinion. There had been newspapers in
America which had kept a careful pretense of impartiality; under the
pressure of war this pretense was forgotten. For example, the “New York
Times.” Everyone would admit that the editorial page of the “Times” is
class-propaganda, but the “Times” tries not to let you know that its
news-columns are class-propaganda. It avoids the cruder blunders, such
as false headlines. But when the threat of war came, and the “Times” was
trying to force the country into war, the “Times” forgot even that
precaution. On Thanksgiving Day, 1915, some twelve hundred clergymen in
New York preached sermons. The “Times” selected eleven of these sermons
and put them all under this headline:
PREPAREDNESS FROM MANY PULPITS
Thanksgiving Sermons Justify War for Defense of American Liberty and
Ideals
Then you read the sermons, and what did you find? Three of them
contained utterances which might be construed as urging preparedness;
the other eight contained not a word in reference to preparedness!
And the same with the magazines. There had been magazines which in the
old days would give excuses for not publishing this or that—they were
concerned with questions of dignity, of art; they could not lend their
columns to propaganda. But now these magazines became frankly organs of
propaganda. Long before America entered the war, “McClure’s” turned all
its energies to a campaign for “preparedness.” The “American,” the
“Metropolitan,” the “Outlook” did the same. “Current Opinion” abandoned
its policy of reprinting from other publications, and introduced
propaganda of its own. The “Literary Digest,” supposed to be an
impartial survey of public opinion, became a partisan organ of hate.
Says a writer in “Reedy’s Mirror”:
The standardizing of the press had already proceeded to inordinate
lengths before the war. As one sectional bookcase may differ from
another of the same pattern only in its greater or lesser number of
sections, so differs one American newspaper from another American
newspaper. However, some small opportunity for individuality, for
thought or pretense of thought, still existed, but even this has
ended. With the opening of the war the American press ceased to think.
The abstention has been so complete and prolonged that it may never be
possible to resume the habit of thinking.
Look over these newspapers as they come in from the mails. Flag-waving
of the cheapest, most brainless sort, Liberty Bonds, Thrift Stamps,
Red Cross. This is the gamut that has countless repetition from New
York to San Francisco, supplemented only by supercensored, mercilessly
standardized stuff from the fighting fronts.
The writer of this book gave his support to the war against Germany, and
has no apology to make for that course. He believed that the world would
be a safer place for radicals to work in when the Kaiser had been
overthrown; he still believes this—even though at the moment it seems
that the result of our fighting has been to set up new imperialisms in
Italy, France, England and America.
But my support of the war did not mean that I had given myself into the
hands of war-profiteers. I saw that the old-time plunderers of America
were among the war’s most ardent supporters, and they went right on with
their plundering—becoming “dollar-a-year” men in Washington, with a
great cry of patriotism, and letting themselves contracts out of which
hundreds of millions of profit were made! The Beef Trust, the Steel
Trust, the Oil Trust, the Powder Trust, multiplied many times over the
profits they were taking from the necessities of the people; also they
dictated legislation which spared their profits, and saddled the cost of
the war upon future generations. A war has to be won with materials then
existing in the world, or immediately produced; it manifestly cannot be
won with materials produced a generation later. The only question is,
shall the necessary materials be taken from the owners by means of
taxes, or shall they be borrowed, shall the labor of future generations
be pledged in exchange? This is clear and simple; but if you tried to
explain it to the people during the war you would be lynched, or sent to
jail for twenty years.
It was the grand chance for the plunderers of America to put their
enemies, the radicals, out of the way. Many of these radicals opposed
the war, but others were put out of the way merely for opposing the
profiteers, and they received sentences which, for ferocity, exceed
anything in the records of the Russian Tsardom. Some two thousand of
them are still in jail, their sentences aggregating twenty-five thousand
years.
It would have been a simple matter to persuade the Socialists to support
the war. We know today that Nicholas Lenine asked only a promise of
support from America, offering to repudiate the Brest-Litovsk treaty and
join the war on Kaiserism. As to labor at home, an intelligent army
officer showed the way in the Northwest; he gave the lumbermen an
eight-hour day, decent living conditions, and generous wages, and so
turned the I. W. W. of the spruce country into a patriotic society. But
elsewhere the army officers were less intelligent, and the profiteers
had their way; in the oil country of Kansas they threw scores of I. W.
W. organizers into jail without trial, and held them there for a couple
of years. They are holding some thirty of them still, and my mail is
full of pitiful letters from poor devils who are asked to raise ten
thousand dollars bail. All over the country this was done—in a frenzy of
public excitement, deliberately created by the capitalist press.
The story of what the newspapers did to American radicals in this crisis
would be unbelievable—if you had not read the rest of this book. Thus,
for example, the case of Bannwart, a Boston pacifist, one of a committee
which called upon Senator Lodge to protest against the declaration of
war. Senator Lodge lost his temper and struck Bannwart in the face; and
all over the country went the report that Senator Lodge had been
assaulted in his office by a pacifist! The Senator became a national
hero; the Boston newspapers printed columns and columns about the
incident, and when Bannwart called upon the Senator to admit the truth,
he not only refused to admit it, but gave out for publication many
telegrams congratulating him upon his heroism. No newspaper would
publish Bannwart’s side, and he was helpless for two years, until his
suit for damages was about to come up in court; then the Senator gave
way, and admitted in writing that he had struck the first blow. You have
been acquainted with the “Evening Transcript,” organ of Boston’s
aristocracy of wealth and culture, which publishes half-page
advertisements of “Harvard Beer 1,000 pure,” and full-page
advertisements of the arguments of gas company attorneys, and sends out
“dope” for the “New Haven” plunderers; so you will be prepared to hear
that the “Transcript” buried this apology of Senator Lodge in a remote
corner, and without comment!
Or take the experience of my friend Feigenbaum, Socialist Assemblyman of
New York State. The Socialist assemblymen had been protesting against
the custom of the machine gang to drive through bills without
consideration. They resolved to put a stop to the custom; whereupon the
machine leaders set a little trap for the Socialists. A bill was
introduced, without being read, and the speaker asked unanimous consent
to advance it to the second reading. The leader of the Socialist group
immediately objected. The bill had not been read, he declared, no one on
the floor knew what was in the bill, no one even knew the name of the
bill. The speaker cut him short: “No explanation is necessary. Your
objection is sufficient.” So the bill, under the rules, went over to the
next day. Says Feigenbaum:
The members drifted out to the cloak-rooms, or they remained at their
desks. They didn’t know what the bill was about, because nine-tenths
of them hadn’t read it, and not more than four or five were in the
secret of the day’s mysterious doings.
But next morning the Socialists found out what had happened. The bill
was to turn over certain lands in Saratoga County to the War Department,
and the Socialists had been guilty of stopping war legislation which was
desperately needed! The “New York Tribune” carried an elaborate account
of a tempestuous scene, in which the speaker had “scathingly rebuked,”
the Socialist leader. The members had swarmed around the Socialists,
shaking their fists in their faces, threatening them with physical
violence; also, the Socialist leader had refused to stand at the playing
of the national anthem. Says Feigenbaum: “The whole story was a
fabrication, pure and simple, out of whole cloth.” And he tells what
happened afterwards—
A campaign of vilification hitherto unheard of. It went so far that
Albany papers called for the raiding of the rooms we occupied, called
for a boycott of us by shop-keepers and restaurant-men in Albany, and
gave high praise to a drunken ruffian, an ex-prizefighter, member of
the Assembly, who in a drunken fit of temper called for the lynching
of the Socialists. This speech was highly praised editorially in
Albany and Troy.
During the war our industrial autocracy has learned to organize for
propaganda; it has learned the arts of hate. Today all the energies
which were directed against the Kaiser have been turned against the
radicals; also the spy-system which the government developed for the war
has been turned against the radicals. Government agents raid their
offices and seize their letters, and these letters are spread broadcast
in the capitalist press—duly doctored, of course, and supplied with
commentaries to distort their meaning.
For example, the “Lusk Committee” of the New York State Legislature
holds a secret session with the executives of the New York newspapers
(June 3, 1919, at the Murray Hill Hotel), and lays out its campaign in
detail. It then proceeds, with a carload of soldiers and detectives, to
raid the Rand School of Social Science; taking along a secret service
agent of the British government, which is shooting radicals in Ireland
and India, and wishes to find out all it can about their supporters in
America. They find a manuscript, outlining a plan for propaganda among
negroes. It was a rejected manuscript, as it happens; but the Lusk
Committee “accepts” it, and spreads it broadcast. I shiver,
contemplating the day when they raid my office, and publish all the
queer manuscripts that arrive in my day’s mail! Manuscripts of
health-cures, manuscripts of bible-prophecies, manuscripts of plans to
abolish money, to communicate with Mars, to exterminate the vermin in
the Los Angeles County Jail!
Also they find a circular of the Rand School, saying that the Socialists
“must prepare to take over the government.” They publish this in the
newspapers with horrified clamor: Sedition! Treason! Let the charter of
the Rand School be annulled! As if there were any political party or
political association in America which does not propose to take over the
government! As if there were anything else which any political party or
political association could propose!
Among the other seditious documents are some copies of “The Profits of
Religion,” which gives occasion for sarcasm from the investigators. They
propose to investigate “the profits of agitation”; so they spread
broadcast the fact that Scott Nearing was paid six hundred dollars by
the Rand School—and deny Nearing an opportunity to testify that part of
this was payment for lectures delivered outside of the school, for which
the school had collected the money on a percentage basis; and the
balance for lecturing at the school, at a rate approximating ten cents
per week for each student!
They lie about the pacifists and those whom they call Bolsheviks; they
lie equally about a man like myself, who supported the war, and is
opposing Bolshevism. In the accounts of the proceedings of the Senate
Committee investigating “Bolshevism in America,” there was submitted,
according to newspaper accounts, a long list of writings “urging the
overthrow of the United States government by violence”; among the
writers named being Upton Sinclair. I at once wrote to Solicitor Lamar
of the postoffice department, to Major Humes, and to Senator
Overman—these being the parties who had compiled the writings in
question. I explained to these gentlemen that for twenty years I had
been writing for the precise purpose of avoiding “the overthrow of the
United States government by violence,” and I requested to know what
writings of mine could have justified their charge. I have letters from
all three of these parties, stating that nothing of mine was included,
or had been included in the list; the published report of the Overman
Committee reveals that this statement is correct; yet the dispatch
including my name was sent broadcast over the country by the Associated
Press—and I am without redress!
The listing of anecdotes of this sort is merely a question of the amount
of space one is willing to give. The United States government is
deporting Hindu revolutionists to be executed by the British government
when they reach India. Prof. Richard Gottheil of Columbia University
writes to the “New York Times” denying that this is so. Robert Morse
Lovett, editor of the “Dial,” writes to the “Times,” citing case after
case, upon British official authority. And the “Times” refuses to print
Mr. Lovett’s letter! A friend of mine writes to Prof. Gottheil about it,
and he answers that he wishes the “Times” would print Mr. Lovett’s
letter, because he believes in fair play. But the “Times” does not
believe in fair play!
In the same way, the “Times” attacks “Jimmie Higgins.” In the last
chapters of this story an American soldier is represented as being
tortured in an American military prison. Says the “Times”:
Mr. Sinclair should produce the evidence upon which he based his
astounding accusations, if he has any. If he has simply written on
hearsay evidence, or, worse still, let himself be guided by his
craving to be sensational, he has laid himself open not only to
censure but to punishment.
In reply to this, I send to the “Times” a perfectly respectful letter,
citing scores of cases, and telling the “Times” where hundreds of other
cases may be found. The “Times” returns this letter without comment. A
couple of months pass, and as a result of the ceaseless, agitation of
the radicals, there is a congressional investigation, and evidence of
atrocious cruelties is forced into the newspapers. The “Times” publishes
an editorial entitled, “Prison Camp Cruelties,” the first sentence of
which reads: “The fact that American soldiers confined in prison-camps
have been treated with extreme brutality may now be regarded as
established.” So again I write a polite letter to the “Times,” pointing
out that I think they owe me an apology. And how does the “Times” treat
that? It alters my letter without my permission! It cuts out my request
for an apology, and also my quotation of its own words calling for my
punishment! The “Times,” caught in a hole, refuses to let me remind its
readers that it wanted me “punished” for telling the truth! “All the
News that’s Fit to Print!”
Or take the case of Henry Ford, who brings suit against the “Chicago
Tribune” for libel, and cites five lies in one single news item:
Lie No. 1. That guardsmen employed by Ford would lose their places.
Lie No. 2. That no provision would be made for their dependents.
Lie No. 3. That their families could get along as best they might.
Lie No. 4. That when they returned they would have to apply for their
old jobs as strangers.
Lie No. 5. That this rule applied to the Ford plants everywhere.
At the trial it was proven that all these statements were false. All the
Ford workers who were drafted to Mexico had their wages paid to their
families while they were away. On the other hand it was shown, through
the testimony of Joseph Medill Patterson, one of the editors of the
“Tribune,” and a renegade Socialist, that he had ordered the stopping of
the pay of all those “Tribune” men who were drafted to Europe! I quote
the testimony.
“How many of your employes went to the great war?”
“About two hundred and sixty-eight.”
“None of them drew salaries?”
“No.”
“But you drew your salary when you went over-seas, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And your salary is about twenty thousand dollars a year, isn’t it?”
Witness admitted that it was.
“The World’s Greatest Newspaper.”
Or take the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota. All through the war the
newspapers strove to make this appear a disloyal organization. The
League held a convention at St. Paul, at which hundreds of speeches were
made; and the Associated Press found it possible to make one of the
speakers, La Follette, appear disloyal by misquoting him. So it featured
La Follette—and reported the other speakers hardly at all. As this book
is going to press, the League bank is raided, and the farmers by
thousands come pouring into Fargo in the rain, and at two enormous
gatherings they pledge themselves to make their bank the biggest in the
state. The bank is reopened, and on the first day forty-five thousand
dollars is put in and only nine thousand taken out. And how is all this
handled by the Associated Press? Hear the “Idaho Leader”:
Several newspaper representatives from St. Paul and Minneapolis were
present to send as unfavorable reports of the great meeting to their
papers as they could, and the Associated Press, the news agency which
supplies the “Boise Statesman” with its daily fables from North
Dakota, evidently fearing that their local manager was not capable of
falsifying in the manner which big business demands, sent a special
representative out from St. Paul to report the meeting. And this “A.
P.” representative did himself proud, or rather he did the bidding of
his masters.
Among other highly colored and untrue statements which the Associated
Press representatives made was that “when the speaking was ended in
the auditorium and a recess taken before the evening meeting, the
crowds made a rush for the doors to get away so that they would not
have to subscribe for stock in the Scandinavian bank!”
The crowd _did_ make a rush but it was not for the doors. The crowd
rushed, jostled, and pushed, in the anxiety of dozens of men to reach
the front of the building, where a number of persons took
subscriptions for stock. Those handling the subscriptions were
swamped, and many men were forced to stand in line for a long time
before they were waited on.