But alas, it is notorious how the business man fails to appreciate genius! Mr. Rockefeller consults “Poison Ivy” Lee, whose advice is that the worm shall be allowed to go out to Colorado and see everything, but “have it distinctly understood that he is making this study entirely on his own initiative and at his own expense. If, after he has produced his article and you have read it, it seems to you something worth distributing, an arrangement for such distribution can be made with him.”
A cold, cold world for a public educator and prophet of judiciousness! These business men haggle, precisely as if Pegasus could be harnessed to a garbage-wagon! Says Mr. Rockefeller, writing to the president of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Denver:
I have not seen Mr. Hubbard nor given him any encouragement in this matter, other than as set forth in the above correspondence.
To which comes the reply from Denver:
Mr. Hubbard’s price for extra copies of his publication is to my mind high.... We can determine after he has produced his article whether or not we should go any further than we already have in enlarging its distribution.
There was more of this correspondence. It was printed in “Harper’s Weekly” under the title, “Elbert Hubbard’s Price”; the substance of the matter being summed up by “Harper’s Weekly” as follows:
Mr. Hubbard’s proposal, it will be seen, had two parts. 1. To sell his opinion. 2. Later on to make an “investigation” in support of that opinion.
CHAPTER L
THE PRESS AND PUBLIC WELFARE
As a result of the operation of all these forces, we have a class-owned press, representing class-interests, protecting class-interests with entire unscrupulousness, and having no conception of the meaning of public welfare. These words may seem extreme, but I mean them to be taken literally. When our press says “the public,” it means the property-owning class, and if in a newspaper-office you should assume it meant anything else, you would make yourself ridiculous. “We are not in business for our health,” is the formula whereby this matter is summed up in the “business-office” of our newspapers. It is only in the editorial columns that any other idea is suggested.
What kind of “public welfare” will you consider? Here, for example, is William Salisbury, working for the “Chicago Chronicle,” owned by a great banker. Was this banker working for the public welfare? He was working for his own welfare so diligently that later on he was sent to jail. Is Mr. Salisbury working for the public welfare? No, Mr. Salisbury is working for an actress, he tells us, and the actress is working for a diamond ring. Mr. Salisbury comes upon a “tip” that will earn him the price of the ring. A certain merchant has conceived the idea of a co-operative department store, an enterprise which might be of great service to the public; but if the big department-stores get wind of it, they will kill it. Mr. Salisbury takes the problem to his city editor, who consults owner Walsh over the telephone, and then tells Mr. Salisbury to write the story in full.