Now, what is it that Mr. Liggett has to say? His statements are briefly as follows:
The “St. Paul Dispatch” and “Pioneer Press” were financed and put on their feet by a street-car magnate, and for twenty years, from a generous and pure emotion of gratitude, have supported this street-car magnate in all his doings; hiding his tax-dodging and his franchise grafting, ridiculing and misrepresenting his employes when they go on strike. The papers could probably not be purchased for a million dollars, yet they pay taxes on less than fifty-seven thousand dollars. Until quite recently they were charging the city an illegal price for the publication of city advertisements, and only quit when an independent citizen forced an exposure. They have defended the Hill railroad interests systematically; they have suppressed news of public agitation against the packers and the millers, and have editorially defended these and other profiteers. After borrowing three hundred thousand dollars from the Capital Trust and Savings Company, they did their best to start a run on the St. Paul municipal bank, and only failed because their false statements were promptly exposed. They have lied systematically about the farmers’ movement, and have refused to publish corrections, even in the form of paid advertisements. They were ultra-patriotic, and urged all employers to continue their employes’ wages while the latter were in the army; but they themselves failed to follow this advice!
And now come, Mr. Galt, and explain to a jury of American citizens how it happened that these articles, “untruthful in every particular in which they reflect upon the ‘Dispatch’ and the ‘Pioneer Press’,” were allowed by you to be published in a paper having two hundred thousand circulation in Minnesota and adjoining states, and were left unanswered and unchallenged by you for a period of fifteen months!
The Nonpartisan League is an issue, not only in Minnesota and North Dakota, but all over the country where the interests are in terror of a farmers’ revolt. And so the whole power of the kept press is enlisted to malign it. The League is doing business through the Scandinavian-American Bank of Fargo, and the enemies of the League raid this institution, with the help of subservient public officials, and throw it into the hands of a receiver. From one end of the country to the other goes the story of crooked banking by the farmers’ party, and is featured by the capitalist press. The “New York Times” has several detailed dispatches, also solemn editorials. A week or two later the Supreme Court of the State denounces the proceedings as a conspiracy, declares the bank sound, and orders its return to the owners. The “Times” gives this—not one line! Or take the “Kansas City Star,” a most completely respectable organ, which features the smash-up of the bank, and reports the restoration in a tiny item, giving the name of the bank, but not mentioning it as the League bank—understanding perfectly well that ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will not make the connection, and will not know that the League has been vindicated!
And then, a few days later, the American Bar Association issues a denunciation of the League, declaring it is “pure Socialism,” and Socialism means the “nationalization of women.” The “Chicago Tribune” gets out a big headline:
“SOCIALISTS HOPE TO COMMUNIZE U. S. GIRLS, CLAIM.”
The “Chicago Tribune” is in politics you see; and like Richard Croker, it is working for its own pocket all the time. Let us hear William Marion Reedy, a journalist of forty years’ training:
In Chicago there is the case of two great newspapers, one of them Republican and the other Independent, which have been found clearly guilty of robbery of the school children of that city. Through the connivance of a school board, one of the members of which was an attorney for one of these newspapers, the land occupied by both these journals, in the very heart of the business center of Chicago, was leased to these great institutions for the moulding of public opinion, on a basis of a site-value absolutely absurd and ridiculous, and upon terms very much lower than those granted on similar lands to other lease-holders in the same neighborhood. This favor exacted of a public body, and at public expense was given solely through fear of attack by, or desire to stand well with the publications in question. When there came into power in the school board, under Mayor Dunne, a number of men who could not be reached by political or other interests, and these men attempted to set aside the outrageous lease in question, both these papers began a crusade against the honesty and intelligence of the school board, and developed the campaign into one for the election of a mayor who would oust these school board members who tried to win back the property for the school children. They rallied to their support all the corrupt and vicious element of the Chicago slums, likewise the forces that could be controlled by the street railways and other public service corporations, elected the mayor, and turned the honest members of the school board out of office. They have since been reinstated, but not until the corporation Mayor had appointed a sufficient number of “safe and sane” friends of the powers that be, to block any effort that might be made by the honest members to secure from these great publications a just compensation for the use of the land belonging to the public schools of Illinois and Chicago.
Reedy omits to give us the names of these two Chicago newspapers. As I am dealing with names in this book, I state that one of them is the most “respectable” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Tribune,” which carries on its front page the legend: “The World’s Greatest Newspaper.” The other is the most “liberal” of all Chicago’s newspapers, the “Daily News,” owned by Victor F. Lawson, who is generally cited as the one among the fifteen directors of the Associated Press who has any trace of progressive sympathy.