The story of what the newspapers did to American radicals in this crisis would be unbelievable—if you had not read the rest of this book. Thus, for example, the case of Bannwart, a Boston pacifist, one of a committee which called upon Senator Lodge to protest against the declaration of war. Senator Lodge lost his temper and struck Bannwart in the face; and all over the country went the report that Senator Lodge had been assaulted in his office by a pacifist! The Senator became a national hero; the Boston newspapers printed columns and columns about the incident, and when Bannwart called upon the Senator to admit the truth, he not only refused to admit it, but gave out for publication many telegrams congratulating him upon his heroism. No newspaper would publish Bannwart’s side, and he was helpless for two years, until his suit for damages was about to come up in court; then the Senator gave way, and admitted in writing that he had struck the first blow. You have been acquainted with the “Evening Transcript,” organ of Boston’s aristocracy of wealth and culture, which publishes half-page advertisements of “Harvard Beer 1,000 pure,” and full-page advertisements of the arguments of gas company attorneys, and sends out “dope” for the “New Haven” plunderers; so you will be prepared to hear that the “Transcript” buried this apology of Senator Lodge in a remote corner, and without comment!
Or take the experience of my friend Feigenbaum, Socialist Assemblyman of New York State. The Socialist assemblymen had been protesting against the custom of the machine gang to drive through bills without consideration. They resolved to put a stop to the custom; whereupon the machine leaders set a little trap for the Socialists. A bill was introduced, without being read, and the speaker asked unanimous consent to advance it to the second reading. The leader of the Socialist group immediately objected. The bill had not been read, he declared, no one on the floor knew what was in the bill, no one even knew the name of the bill. The speaker cut him short: “No explanation is necessary. Your objection is sufficient.” So the bill, under the rules, went over to the next day. Says Feigenbaum:
The members drifted out to the cloak-rooms, or they remained at their desks. They didn’t know what the bill was about, because nine-tenths of them hadn’t read it, and not more than four or five were in the secret of the day’s mysterious doings.
But next morning the Socialists found out what had happened. The bill was to turn over certain lands in Saratoga County to the War Department, and the Socialists had been guilty of stopping war legislation which was desperately needed! The “New York Tribune” carried an elaborate account of a tempestuous scene, in which the speaker had “scathingly rebuked,” the Socialist leader. The members had swarmed around the Socialists, shaking their fists in their faces, threatening them with physical violence; also, the Socialist leader had refused to stand at the playing of the national anthem. Says Feigenbaum: “The whole story was a fabrication, pure and simple, out of whole cloth.” And he tells what happened afterwards—
A campaign of vilification hitherto unheard of. It went so far that Albany papers called for the raiding of the rooms we occupied, called for a boycott of us by shop-keepers and restaurant-men in Albany, and gave high praise to a drunken ruffian, an ex-prizefighter, member of the Assembly, who in a drunken fit of temper called for the lynching of the Socialists. This speech was highly praised editorially in Albany and Troy.
During the war our industrial autocracy has learned to organize for propaganda; it has learned the arts of hate. Today all the energies which were directed against the Kaiser have been turned against the radicals; also the spy-system which the government developed for the war has been turned against the radicals. Government agents raid their offices and seize their letters, and these letters are spread broadcast in the capitalist press—duly doctored, of course, and supplied with commentaries to distort their meaning.
For example, the “Lusk Committee” of the New York State Legislature holds a secret session with the executives of the New York newspapers (June 3, 1919, at the Murray Hill Hotel), and lays out its campaign in detail. It then proceeds, with a carload of soldiers and detectives, to raid the Rand School of Social Science; taking along a secret service agent of the British government, which is shooting radicals in Ireland and India, and wishes to find out all it can about their supporters in America. They find a manuscript, outlining a plan for propaganda among negroes. It was a rejected manuscript, as it happens; but the Lusk Committee “accepts” it, and spreads it broadcast. I shiver, contemplating the day when they raid my office, and publish all the queer manuscripts that arrive in my day’s mail! Manuscripts of health-cures, manuscripts of bible-prophecies, manuscripts of plans to abolish money, to communicate with Mars, to exterminate the vermin in the Los Angeles County Jail!
Also they find a circular of the Rand School, saying that the Socialists “must prepare to take over the government.” They publish this in the newspapers with horrified clamor: Sedition! Treason! Let the charter of the Rand School be annulled! As if there were any political party or political association in America which does not propose to take over the government! As if there were anything else which any political party or political association could propose!
Among the other seditious documents are some copies of “The Profits of Religion,” which gives occasion for sarcasm from the investigators. They propose to investigate “the profits of agitation”; so they spread broadcast the fact that Scott Nearing was paid six hundred dollars by the Rand School—and deny Nearing an opportunity to testify that part of this was payment for lectures delivered outside of the school, for which the school had collected the money on a percentage basis; and the balance for lecturing at the school, at a rate approximating ten cents per week for each student!
They lie about the pacifists and those whom they call Bolsheviks; they lie equally about a man like myself, who supported the war, and is opposing Bolshevism. In the accounts of the proceedings of the Senate Committee investigating “Bolshevism in America,” there was submitted, according to newspaper accounts, a long list of writings “urging the overthrow of the United States government by violence”; among the writers named being Upton Sinclair. I at once wrote to Solicitor Lamar of the postoffice department, to Major Humes, and to Senator Overman—these being the parties who had compiled the writings in question. I explained to these gentlemen that for twenty years I had been writing for the precise purpose of avoiding “the overthrow of the United States government by violence,” and I requested to know what writings of mine could have justified their charge. I have letters from all three of these parties, stating that nothing of mine was included, or had been included in the list; the published report of the Overman Committee reveals that this statement is correct; yet the dispatch including my name was sent broadcast over the country by the Associated Press—and I am without redress!