In Louisville is the “People’s Church,” conducted by an independent clergyman in a theatre, and attended by one or two thousand people every Sunday. The “Louisville Courier-Journal” and its evening edition, the “Times,” have not contented themselves with suppressing all news about these meetings for several years; they have also refused all advertisements of this “People’s Church.” (Since this was written they have put the “People’s Church” out of business!)
Some fifteen years ago the most important news being put before the American people was in the form of paid advertisements signed by Thomas W. Lawson. The “New York Times” refused to publish these advertisements, and tens of thousands of New Yorkers, myself among them, were obliged to buy other newspapers in consequence. It cost the “Times” large sums of money to refuse these Lawson broad-sides, but the “Times” made a virtue of it, because the broad-sides threatened the entire profit system, without which the “Times” could not exist. In the same way the newspapers of Baltimore and Boston refused advertisements of a magazine run by Thomas E. Watson in Georgia, on the ground that he was publishing in his magazine articles attacking foreign missions. If you do not believe that interests like this exercise pressure upon newspapers, just try to publish in any capitalist newspaper an advertisement of a book or pamphlet attacking the Roman Catholic Church!
Here in Los Angeles I know a man who set himself up in business as a land-appraiser, and interfered with the leading industry of our community, which is selling real estate to “come ons” from the East. He advised one client that some land in Imperial Valley was worthless, because it contained nearly three per cent of alkali; and this judgment was later vindicated by a report of the U. S. Bureau of Soils, which I have read. But it happened that this land lay perilously near to the tracts of a great land company, in which the heads of Los Angeles newspapers are interested. The three leading newspapers of Los Angeles broke their contracts with this land-appraiser, threw out his “copy” and ruined his business, and now he is working as a cowboy in the “movies.” And if you think that the power of the real estate sharks is confined to the places where they prey, consider the experience of Rob Wagner, who wrote two articles about the Southern California land-sharks for the “Saturday Evening Post.” The first article, being full of fun, a farce-comedy, was accepted and paid for at once; the second, giving the real story, and being full of meat, was turned down.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT
If the newspaper fails to protect its big advertisers, the big advertisers will get busy and protect themselves. This happens every now and then, and every newspaper editor has seen it happen. Sometimes an editor gets sick of the game and quits, and then we have a story. For example, William L. Chenery, who was editor of the “Rocky Mountain News” during the Colorado coal-strike, tells me that “the business men of Denver attempted both an advertising and a social boycott in order to prevent the publication of strike news.... I was told that the owner of the paper would not be admitted to the Denver Country Club so long as our editorials seemed to support the cause of the strikers.”
Or take the case of Boston. George French, managing editor of a Boston paper, told how his paper lost four hundred dollars on account of one item which the “interests” had forbidden. Says Mr. French, “That led to a little personal conversation, and to my retiring from the paper.” He goes on to state:
You cannot get anything into the newspapers that in any way rubs up against the business policy of the banks and department stores, or of the public service corporations. Those three great departments of business are welded together with bands ever so much stronger than steel, and you cannot make any impression on them. News of department stores that is discreditable, or in any way attracts unfavorable attention, is all squelched, all kept out of the papers.
I have told how Otis of Los Angeles ran the “Times” as a Republican paper and an “open-shop” paper, and at the same time ran secretly the “Herald,” a Democratic paper and a “closed-shop” paper. Here is a glimpse of the “Herald” office, as narrated by Frank E. Wolfe, former managing editor of the paper.
The Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association took up the proposition of an aviation meet at Domingues Field. This was managed by the walking delegate of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association. The manager gave out the concessions. I went to Domingues Field personally after the meet had been running a few days and found conditions so abhorrent there that I came back and personally wrote a story about fourteen or sixteen “blind pigs” running....
Immediate reprisals came through the M. and M.—which controls all the advertising placed in the newspapers of the city—by way of taking out of the “Herald” the advertising of a certain department-store—the manager or proprietor of this store being one of the chief moguls of the aviation field. They took their ad out, and the business-manager of the “Herald” came storming in to see me, as they always do in cases of this sort, to see who wrote the story. And when I told him I wrote it myself from facts I had, he wanted me to print an apology. That I have not yet done.