I say ten days, and I do not speak loosely. Just imagine if the newspapers of America were to print the truth for ten days! The truth about poverty, and the causes of poverty; the truth about corruption in politics and in all branches of government, in Journalism, and throughout the business world; the truth about profiteering and exploitation, about the banking graft, the plundering of the railroads, the colossal gains of the Beef Trust and the Steel Trust and the Oil Trust and their hundreds of subsidiary organizations; the truth about conditions in industry, the suppression of labor-revolts and the corrupting of labor movements; above all, the truth about the possibilities of production by modern machinery, the fact that, by abolishing production for profit and substituting production for use, it would be possible to provide abundance for all by two or three hours’ work a day! I say that if all this legitimate truth could be placed before the American people for ten successive days, instead of the mess of triviality, scandal, crime and sensation, doctored news and political dope, prejudiced editorials and sordid and vulgar advertisements upon which the American people are now fed—I say that the world would be transformed, and Industrial Democracy would be safe. Most of our newspaper proprietors know this as well as I do; so, when they read of the seizing of newspaper offices in Europe, they experience cold chills, and one great newspaper in Chicago has already purchased half a dozen machine-guns and stored them away in its cellar!
For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes, pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new industrial order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution. What shall I do? What can I do—save to cry out one last warning in this last fateful hour? The time is almost here—and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of America today.
CHAPTER LXIV
THE PROBLEM OF THE REPORTER
One important line of attack upon Capitalist Journalism occurred to me some five years ago, after the Colorado coal-strike. I have saved this story, because it points so clearly the method I wish to advocate. You will find the story in “Harper’s Weekly” for July 25, 1914; “Hearst-Made War News,” by Isaac Russell.
You remember how Hearst “made” the war with Spain. Sixteen years later, in 1914, Hearst was busy “making” another war, this time with Mexico. President Wilson, trying to avoid war, had arranged for arbitration of the difficulty between Mexico and the United States by delegates from Argentine, Brazil and Chile. This was the Niagara Conference, and to it the “New York American” sent an honest reporter. It did this, not through oversight, but because the usual run of Hearst reporters had found themselves unable to get any information whatever. One Mexican delegate had taken the card of a Hearst reporter, torn it to pieces, and thrown the pieces into the reporter’s face. The delegates for the United States refused to talk to the Hearst representatives, the other newspaper-men refused to have anything to do with them. So the managing editor of the “New York American” selected Mr. Roscoe Conklin Mitchell, a man known to be honest.
Mr. Mitchell came to Niagara, and got the news—to the effect that all was going well at the conference. He sent a dispatch to that effect, and the “New York American” did not publish this dispatch. Day by day Mr. Mitchell sent dispatches, describing how all was going well at the conference; and the “American,” which was determined that the Conference should fail, doctored these dispatches and wrote in false matter. Mr. Mitchell had to explain to the delegates and to the other reporters how he was being treated by his home office. On two occasions Mr. Mitchell forced the “American” to send up another man to write the kind of poisoned falsehoods it wanted; and on each occasion these men were forced to leave, because no one would have anything to do with them, they could get no information. Finally, in the midst of Mr. Mitchell’s dispatches, the “New York American” inserted a grand and wonderful “scoop”: “President Carranza’s Confidential Message to the Mediators.” Mr. Mitchell had sent no such dispatch, and upon inquiry he learned that the document was a fake; no such “confidential message” had been received from President Carranza. So Mr. Mitchell wired his resignation to the “New York American.”
The managing editor of the “American” protested. “Please be good soldier and good boy,” he telegraphed. Again he telegraphed: “Come home comfortably, be philosophical. Good soldiers are patient, even if superior officers make mistakes. Be resigned without resigning.” When the news of Mitchell’s resignation reached the other reporters, they formed an impromptu committee and rushed in automobiles to his hotel to congratulate him. The American delegates to the convention held a reception, during which the head of the delegation made to Mr. Mitchell a speech of congratulation. Summing up the story, Isaac Russell puts this question to you, the reader: Will you leave it to the men on the firing line, the reporters, to fight out alone the question of whether you are to receive accurate information concerning what is going on in the world? Or will you help to find means whereby both you and your agent, the reporter, may be less at the mercy of the unscrupulous publisher, who finds that lying and misrepresentation serve his personal ends?
Isaac Russell, you recall, was the reporter for the “New York Times” who had stood by me through the struggle over the Colorado coal-strike. This struggle was just over, and both Russell and I were sick and sore. Russell was fighting with his editors day by day—they objected to his having written this “Hearst-made War News,” by the way, and took the first opportunity thereafter to get rid of him. Russell had word of an impending break between Amos Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, and wrote it up. Gifford Pinchot, brother of Amos, made a furious denial, whereupon the “Times” fired Russell. But very soon afterwards Amos Pinchot broke with Theodore Roosevelt!
Russell and I talked over the problem of the reporter and the truth. Must a reporter be a cringing wretch, or else a man of honor in search of a job? Might not a reporter be a member of an honored profession, having its own standards, its sense of duty to the public? Obviously, the first trouble is that in his economic status the reporter is a sweated wage slave. If reporting is to become a profession, the reporters must organize, and have power to fix, not merely their wage-scale, but also their ethical code. I wrote an article calling for a “reporters’ union,” and Russell began to agitate among New York newspaper-men for this idea, which has now spread all over the country.
What would be the effect upon news-writing of a reporters’ union? What assurance have we that reporters would be better than owners? Well, in the first place, reporters are young men, and owners are nearly always old men; so in the newspaper-world you have what you have in the world of finance, of diplomacy, of politics and government—a “league of the old men,” giving orders to the young men, holding the young men down. The old men own most of the property, the young men own little of the property; so control by old men is property control, while control by young men would be control by human beings.