During labor disputes the facts are usually distorted to the injury of labor. In one case (Chicago), strikers held a meeting on a vacant lot enclosed by a newly-erected billboard. Forthwith appeared, in a yellow journal professing warm friendship for labor, a front-page cut of the billboard and a lurid story of how the strikers had built a “stockade” behind which they intended to bid defiance to the blue-coats. It is not surprising that when the van bringing these lying sheets appeared in their quarter of the city, the libeled men overturned it.
During the struggle of carriage-drivers for a six-day week, certain great dailies lent themselves to a concerted effort of the liverymen to win public sympathy by making it appear that the strikers were interfering with funerals. One paper falsely stated that a strong force of police was being held in reserve in case of “riots,” and that policemen would ride beside the non-union drivers of hearses. Another, under the misleading headline, “Two Funerals Stopped by Striking Cabmen,” described harmless colloquies between hearse-drivers and pickets. This was followed up by a solemn editorial, “May a Man Go to His Long Rest in Peace?”—although, as a matter of fact, the strikers had no intention of interfering with funerals....
That was in Chicago, ten years ago. And now, as I write, the employes of the packing-houses, my old friends of “The Jungle,” are on strike again, and the Chicago newspapers are at their usual game of deliberate lying: “Violence is Expected,” “Situation is Critical,” and so on. It happens that an honest man, Alfred W. McCann, is on the scene. He writes:
I say it isn’t true. To the shame of the press, no foundation can be discovered for the wild stories now filling their columns, spreading public anxiety and inciting labor to outbursts of indignation against what is called “the deliberate misrepresentation of the press.”
The packers advertise heavily in Chicago newspapers; and so also do the Chicago department-stores. Says Prof. Ross:
In the same city (Chicago), during a strike of the elevator men in the large stores, the business agent of the elevator-starters’ union was beaten to death, in an alley behind a certain emporium, by a “strong-arm” man hired by that firm. The story, supported by affidavits, was given by a responsible lawyer to three newspaper men, each of whom accepted it as true and promised to print it. The account never appeared.
Try, for a moment, to put yourself in the position of a girl-slave of one of these big department-stores. You resist the flirtatious advances of the floor-walker, and continue to eat your twenty-cent dinners; but after a few years you grow desperate, and in the face of the heaviest pressure you organize and declare a strike for better pay. How much chance do you stand for fair play from the newspapers? Why, they won’t even print the names of the stores against which you are striking! Says Max Sherover:
While addressing a street meeting, held under the auspices of the Retail Clerks’ Union, in front of Stern Brothers’ department-store, Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested at the instigation of one of the store-managers. Miss Dutcher is highly prominent in social and labor circles, and the papers did not dare to be entirely silent about the arrest. Every paper in New York, except one—and that one does not carry department-store advertising—spoke of a meeting at the doors of a “large retail establishment.” They also referred to an earlier incident as a disturbance at the doors of a “Sixth Avenue Store,” not daring to mention the name, Gimbel’s.
Or again, Prof. Ross:
In New York the salesgirls in the big shops had to sign an exceedingly mean and oppressive contract, which, if generally known, would have made the firms odious to the public. A prominent social worker brought these contracts, and evidence as to the bad conditions that had become established under them, to every newspaper in the city. Not one would print a line on the subject.