A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues—
The whole world’s gibbets loaded with de Youngs!
Let us go to Denver, where there lives another fighter and teller of truth, Ben Lindsey. I have made you acquainted with the “Denver Post,” and with one of its owners, Mr. F. G. Bonfils, who made his “pile” as a lottery-promoter, and went into partnership with another man. Now let Judge Lindsey introduce us to this other man:
The “Post” was then as independent as a highwayman. One of its proprietors, H. H. Tammen, had begun life as a bar-keeper, and he would himself relate how he had made money by robbing his employer. “When I took in a dollar,” Tammen said, “I tossed it up—and if it stuck to the ceiling, it went to the boss.” He had a frank way of making his vices engaging by the honesty with which he confessed them; and he had boasted to me of the amount of money the newspaper made by charging its victims for suppressing news-stories of a scandalous nature in which they were involved. He admitted that he supported me merely because it was “the popular thing to do”—it “helped circulation.” I knew it was a very precarious support, although the editorial writer, Paul Thieman, seemed to me an honest and public-spirited young man.
Or come to Kansas City, where William Salisbury is working on the “Times.” There is a fight on with the gas companies, which have formed a trust and doubled the price of gas. A solitary alderman named Smith has spoken against the ordinance.
When I returned to the “Times” office that night the city editor came up to my desk, sat down, and said, confidentially: “We’ll have to print a favorable story on this consolidation. I wouldn’t give much space to that man Smith’s remarks. I don’t know what the gas people have done here in this office, but you can guess. They’ve bought the Council.”
Mr. Salisbury, you see, is only a reporter, so all he gets is gossip and suspicion. He notes that the Kansas City, Pittsburg & Gulf Railway is completing a line to Port Arthur, Texas; the railway company is advertising heavily in the “Times,” and he is sent to write up “a two-column interview upon the beauties of Port Arthur.” Again, he tells us:
I could write columns about Cuban revolutions, and anti-cigarette and anti-high hat laws. But there were things that I couldn’t write about at all, and other things that I had to write as the city editor told me, and as the owner or managing editor told him to tell me. These included street railway and paving and gas and telephone and other corporation measures, and anti-department store bills. And the City Hall reporters of the three other newspapers wrote of such things just as I did—from dictation.
Again, in Kansas City are great packing-houses, and the people of Kansas City think they should have cheaper meat. The newspapers take up the campaign, and Mr. Salisbury tells what comes of it:
I did some detective work. At the end of several days I found that all the packing-houses were represented at a meeting each week in the Armour Building, at Fifth and Delaware Streets. I gave a negro porter five dollars to show me the room. It was his business to bring the packers wine and cigars during the sessions at which they fixed the prices of food for millions of people. He pointed out the chairs in which each of them sat. He told me their names. He was willing to arrange for me to listen in the next room when the meeting was held again.