Now, I hear you say, with a knowing smile, “That’s the story John Jones tells!” No, reader, I assure you I am not so naïve; I did not get this story from John Jones, I did not get it from any friend of John Jones. It happens that I know the “literary editor” fairly well, and I know a dozen of his friends. To one of these, an intimate friend of mine, this “literary editor” told the entire story. Two friends of mine were present at a club dinner, when the man was confronted by accident with his victim, and admitted what he had done, and begged pardon for it. It was his “job,” he said—his “job” of thirty dollars a week! And that is how I came on the story!
I go over in my mind the newspapers concerning which I can make the statement that I know, either from direct personal knowledge, or from the evidence of a friend whom I trust, that the owner or manager of this paper has committed a definite act of crime for which, if the laws were enforced, the owner or manager would be sent to the penitentiary. I count a total of fifteen such papers, located in leading American cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Each one of these criminals sits in a seat of power and poisons the thinking of hundreds of thousands of helpless people. I ask myself: In what respect is the position of these people different from that of the peasantry of mediaeval Germany, who lived and labored subject to raids from robber knights and barons whose castles they saw upon distant cliffs and mountain tops?
CHAPTER LV
THE PRESS AND JACK LONDON
I once had the pleasure of hearing Jack London express his opinion of American Journalism; it was a picturesque and vivid experience, a sort of verbal aurora borealis. Not wishing to trust to my memory of the incidents, I write to Mrs. London, and she sends me a huge scrap-book, the journalistic adventures of Jack London during the year 1906. I open it, and the first thing I come upon is a clipping from the “St. Louis Post-Dispatch,” with a picture of Mrs. London which is not Mrs. London! Then, a couple of pages on, a clipping from the “New Haven Palladium,” with a picture of Jack London which is not Jack London!
They just take any old picture, you understand, and slap your name under it. I have seen Jack London’s picture serving for me, and I have seen my own picture serving for a vaudeville actor. As I write, the “Los Angeles Times” comes to my desk, with a scare-headline all the way across the page: “Britain Defies Union Labor Threat of Revolution.” It appears that the miners are preparing a general strike, and the “Los Angeles Times,” wishing to make them odious, publishes on its front page a large portrait, with this caption: “Trying to Throw Britain Off Balance. Robert Smillie, Brains of the Triple Alliance of Powerful Labor Unions, Seeking Social and Economic Revolution in the United Kingdom.” The portrait shows a foreign-looking individual with straggly beard and tousled hair, wearing a Russian blouse. It is Abram Krylenko, commander-in-chief of the Russian Bolshevist armies! If you are near a library you may find the picture in the “Outlook,” Vol. 118, p. 254; or in the “Independent,” Vol. 93, p. 405; or in the “Metropolitan Magazine” for October, 1919. A picture of Smillie appears in “Current Opinion” for August, 1919—an entirely conventional-looking Englishman!
To return to Jack London: This was the year that Charmian and Jack got married. It was in Chicago, and the Hearst paper of that city reported it in this chaste fashion:
JACK LONDON WINS IN BATTLE FOR A BRIDE.
Messenger-boys, Telephones, Korean Valet, Political Influence, Pleadings, Many Explanations, and a Special Dispensation Finally Won a Marriage License on Sunday for Jack London.
And then next day the Hearst reporters discovered that this marriage was not legal; Jack was liable to three years in jail; so, as a matter of precaution, he was going to be married in every state in the Union! All over the country this story was telegraphed; such trifling with a sacred institution displeased certain women’s clubs in Iowa, which canceled their engagements to hear Jack London lecture! Returning to his home after these excitements, I find Jack being interviewed by the “Oakland Herald.”
That report was all the imagination of the Chicago reporters who were scooped on the wedding story. There was nothing in that at all.