THE PRESS.
The first important witness in behalf of the defense is the great metropolitan press, the peculiar and special product of the dying years of the present century.
Now, the modern newspaper is a corporation, formed for the one purpose of paying dividends to stockholders. In order to make money it must serve the people who have money, for now all the profits of the great dailies are derived from the sale of space in their columns, the receipts for the sale of papers not covering expenses. The business manager, with a few exceptions, controls the editorial department and dictates all policies. So we poor wayfarers, hungry for information concerning some important interest, seize upon a learned editorial in a great metropolitan daily, and while we think we are being instructed by the weighty opinion of some friendly and scholarly writer, we are in fact reading THE PAID ADVERTISEMENT of our enemies, placed in the paper to confuse us. When, in the news department, we read a speech or an interview, it is often so garbled that the meaning is quite changed. And what we consider to be a simple statement of fact is often a doctored narrative, containing fictitious figures, and printed for the sole purpose of misleading the public.
The attempt of the gold press to array the agricultural producers against the city laborers, and the mechanics against the agriculturists is cruel and deliberate. And this power to deceive and mislead carries with it the power of life or death.
Suppose I were to go to Mr. Jones and tell him that Mr. Smith had declared to me that he was going to shoot him on sight, and that I had seen him purchase a revolver for that purpose; and then I should go to Mr. Smith and tell him that his friend Jones had just armed himself to the teeth for the purpose of killing him, stating that I had heard him swear and curse and declare before heaven that Smith should not live another day. Now, suppose these two neighbors, heretofore warm friends, were to approach each other, and Smith, as a precaution, would reach his hand toward his hip-pocket, and Jones, in order to save his life, would pull out his weapon and fire, both men shooting each other at the same time.
The result would be TWO DEAD FOOLS, the victims of ONE LIVE LIAR.
The power to deceive great masses of people by simultaneous and premeditated conspiracy on the part of the papers owned by monopoly, carries with it the power to weaken the masses by dividing them in a struggle over false issues; and while they fight among themselves, to rob them and legislate their children into slavery.
Here are the words of the great journalist, John Swinton, before the New York Press Association, in response to a toast, "The Independent Press:"
"There is no such thing in America as an independent Press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare express an honest opinion; if you express it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. Any man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and race for his daily bread, or for about the same thing—his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an 'Independent Press.' We are tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
In the case of "The American People versus the Banks and Trusts," we have found, by personal examination, as also by the confession of a member of the family, John Swinton, that the money which inflates the purse of the prominent editorial witness consists of the marked coins that made up a portion of the booty in question. No sane juror will believe the testimony of such a witness.