A PRACTICAL PROGRAM
As I am about to send this book to press, I take one last look at the world around me. Half a million coal-miners have struck, a court injunction has forced the leaders to call off the strike, the miners are refusing to obey their leaders—and the newspapers of the entire United States are concealing the facts. For a week it has been impossible for me to learn, except from vague hints, what is happening in the coal-strike. And at the same time, because of false newspaper stories from Centralia, Washington, a “white terror” reigns in the entire West, and thousands of radicals are beaten, jailed, and shot.
I have pleaded and labored long to avoid a violent revolution in America; I intend to go on pleading and laboring to the last hour. I know that thousands of my readers will, like myself, be desperately anxious for something they can do. I decided to work out a plan of action; something definite, practical, and immediate.
I propose that we shall found and endow a weekly publication of truth-telling, to be known as “The National News.” This publication will carry no advertisements and no editorials. It will not be a journal of opinion, but a record of events pure and simple. It will be published on ordinary newsprint paper, and in the cheapest possible form. It will have one purpose and one only, to give to the American people once every week the truth about the world’s events. It will be strictly and absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a circulation of a million inside of a year.
Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my work, and it isn’t editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors, composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who have proven by their life-time records that they believe in fair play. By way of illustration, I will indicate my idea of such a board: Allan Benson, Alice Stone Blackwell, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Arthur Bullard, William C. Bullitt, Herbert Croly, Max Eastman, William Hard, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Hamilton Holt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Paul Kellogg, Amos Pinchot, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Ida Tarbell, Col. William Boyce Thompson, Samuel Untermyer, Frank A. Vanderlip, Oswald Garrison Villard, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.
The above list is confined to men and women who live in or near New York, and who therefore could attend directors’ meetings, and not be merely “dummies.” You will note that the list contains some practical publishers and editors; it contains Socialists and anti-Socialists, pro-Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks, radicals and liberals of all shades.
In addition I would like to provide for a number of directors to be appointed by various organized groups in the country: one representative each from the Nonpartisan League, The American Federation of Labor, the National Teachers’ Federation, the Federation of Catholic Societies, the Federation of Protestant Churches, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, etc. The members thus named should not be sufficient in number to control the publication, for it is obvious in common sense that control must rest with the stockholders who have founded and made possible the paper. But these various groups should have a voice on the board, for the purpose of criticizing the publication and holding it rigidly to its declared policy, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” It should be provided that each director has the right to a column twice a year in the publication, in which to state any criticism of its policy which he may have; also that any five directors have the right once a month to insert a column pointing out what they consider failure of the paper to live up to its professed standards. There should be a directors’ meeting in New York City once every month, and all these meetings should be open to representatives of the press; the editorial staff should be present, and answer all criticisms and explain their policy. Unless I am mistaken, this would result in making “National News” in another sense; the capitalist press would be forced to discuss the paper, and to advertise it.
I picture a publication of sixty-four pages, size nine inches by twelve, with three columns of ordinary newspaper type. The paper will have special correspondents in several of the big cities, and in the principal capitals of Europe, and will publish telegraphic news from these correspondents. It will obtain the names of reliable men in cities and towns throughout America, and in case of emergency it can telegraph, say to Denver, ordering five hundred words about the Ludlow massacre, or to Spokane, ordering the truth about the Centralia fight. The editor of the “National News” will sit in a watch-tower with the world spread before him; thousands of volunteers will act as his eyes, they will send him letters or telegrams with news. He and his staff will consider it all according to one criterion: Is the truth being hidden here? Is this something the American people ought to know? If so, the editor will send a trusted man to get the story, and when he has made certain of the facts he will publish them, regardless of what is injured, the Steel Trust or the I. W. W., the Standard Oil Company or the Socialist Party—even the “National News” itself.
Our editor will not give much space to the news that all other papers publish. The big story for him will be what the other papers let alone. He will employ trained investigators, and set them to work for a week, or maybe for several months, getting the facts about the lobby of the Beef Trust in Washington, the control of our public schools in the interest of militarism, the problem of who is paying the expenses of the American railway mission in Siberia. Needless to say, the capitalist press will provide the “National News” with a complete monopoly of this sort of work. Also it will provide the paper with many deliberate falsehoods to be nailed. When this is done, groups of truth-loving people will buy these papers by the thousands, and blue-pencil and distribute them. So the “National News” will grow, and the “kept” press will be moved by the only force it recognizes—loss of money.
There are in America millions of people who could not be persuaded to read a Socialist paper, or a labor paper, or a single tax paper; but there are very few who could not be persuaded to read a paper that gives the news and proves by continuous open discussion that it really does believe in “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I do not think I am too optimistic when I say that such a publication, with a million circulation, would change the whole tone of American public life.
What would such a paper cost? To be published without advertisements, it would have to charge a high subscription price, two dollars a year at least; and there are not enough who will subscribe to a paper at that price. It would be better for the people to go without shoes than without truth, but the people do not know this, and so continue to spend their money for shoes. If the “National News” is to succeed, the few who do realize the emergency must pay more than their share; in other words, the paper must have a subsidy, and the subsidy must be large enough to make success certain—otherwise, of course, no one ought to give anything.
I have telegraphed to publishers of liberal sympathies in the East, and present herewith the following estimate of the cost of launching and maintaining the “National News”:
Weekly cost on basis of half million circulation: Editorial, overhead and paid matter, $1,000; paper, composition and printing, $9,000; addressing and mailing, $1,000; stencil list, $1,000; postage, $1,250; telegraph 50; business and circulation, $500; total, $14,000 per week, $728,000 per year.
The above is figured, as requested, on 64 page paper, size nine by twelve. Such work has to be done in a job plant and is more expensive. By making 32 pages, size twelve by eighteen, the cost could be cut to $650,000 per year.
Income on basis of 500,000 circulation, three-fifths consisting of paid subscriptions at one dollar per year, and two-fifths of news-stand sales at five cents per copy retail, three cents wholesale: $612,000. Deficit to be made up by subsidy, $116,000. Deficit on larger size, $38,000.
On basis of one million circulation, cost in smaller size will be $1,300,000; income will be $1,224,000; deficit, $76,000. On the larger size there would be no deficit.
It is recommended that no definite policy as to advertising be fixed in preliminary stages, but the matter left to the directing board. There is a great deal of advertising, relating to books, liberal organizations and political movements, which adds to the interest of a publication; also there is some commercial advertising which would not seek to control policy. A definite declaration contained in advertising contracts, to the effect that the contract carries no expectation of editorial favors, and rigid adherence to this principle should suffice. The deficits here figured would be covered by one or two pages of advertising per week, so it is not necessary to figure a permanent deficit on the paper.
The income from subscriptions has been figured without agents’ commissions and premiums, on the understanding that the paper will rely on volunteer labor for canvassing. For the same reason the sum of one hundred thousand dollars may be set as the maximum cost of establishing the paper.
The above represents the combined views of three different persons, all qualified experts. As suggested, I will leave the questions of detail to be worked out by the governing board. It appears that we may have an honest paper if we will give one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and will pledge, say thirty thousand dollars a year for two years to cover a possible deficit.
Such are the figures. I believe that this amount of money can be raised, and I purpose to set out and raise it. To every reader of this book I say: Will you help, and if so, how much? Presumably nobody will want to cut out a page from a book, so I will not print a stock subscription blank. I ask that you write me a letter as follows:
Upton Sinclair,
Pasadena, California:
Assuming that you are able to raise the total necessary endowment fund and permanent annual subsidy for the “National News,” and that you name an organization committee satisfactory to us, we, the undersigned, agree to contribute to the project as follows:
Then give, in vertical columns, names; addresses; the number of subscribers that each signer undertakes to obtain, on a basis of not more than one dollar per year; the amount of money that each signer will contribute to the endowment fund; the amount that each will contribute each year to make up the permanent deficit.
Please do not send money for the paper. I will let you know when I reach that stage, and meantime I do not want the responsibility of keeping money. If you are enough interested in the plan to care to help in advertising it, printing circulars and soliciting pledges from people of means, I will be glad to receive such money and to account for it. If I succeed in raising the necessary sum, I will name an organization committee, and have a charter prepared, and submit the whole matter to you for endorsement.
Sometimes people criticize my books as being “destructive.” Well, here is a book with a constructive ending. Here is something to be done; something definite, practical, and immediate. Here is a challenge to every lover of truth and fair dealing in America to get busy and help create an open forum through which our people may get the truth about their affairs, and be able to settle their industrial problems without bloodshed and waste. Will you do your share?