So, if some day, there shall be some among us who will wake to find the Lady Poverty standing at the door, think not that fate will then have served us ill. Fling back the creaking hinges and let her in. Make room for her gracious presence in the wide guest chambers of your heart.
This, you perceive, is exquisitely written and deeply felt. In order to appreciate fully its passionate and consecrated sincerity you need to be informed that the newspaper which features it boasts a profit of something like a million dollars a year; this income being derived from the publication of the filthiest patent medicine advertisements, of pages upon pages of news about moving-picture rubbish, real estate speculations, oil stocks, gold mines, every kind of swindling—all paid for.
I shall have much to say in later chapters about the “Times” fortune and the way it was made. For the moment I give one anecdote, to round out my picture.
My authority is a gentleman who a few years ago was managing editor of the “Los Angeles Herald.” The “Herald” was then a morning paper, a rival of the “Times,” and was controlled and practically owned by the Farmers’ & Merchants’ National Bank of Los Angeles. The president of this institution is the biggest banker on the coast, and was engaged, with the connivance of the newspapers, in unloading upon the city for two and a half million dollars a water company which was practically worthless. It was found that the “Herald” was not paying, and the banker decided to reduce the price from five cents to two cents. But Otis of the “Times” got wind of it, and notified the banker that if he lowered the price of the “Herald,” the “Times” would at once open up on the water company swindle. “Oh, very well, General,” replied the banker. “If that’s the way you feel about it, we’ll forget it.” So the price of the “Herald” stayed up, and the paper lost money, and finally Otis bought it for a song, ran it for a while in pretended rivalry to the “Times,” and then sold it at a profit, upon condition that it be made an evening paper, so that it should not interfere with the “Times.”
Reading this, you will not be surprised to learn that the particular page upon which appeared the rhapsody to “My Lady Poverty” bears the name of the particular “Times” editor who told me: “It has been so long since I have written anything that I believe, that I don’t think I would know the sensation!”
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE DAILY CAT-AND-DOG FIGHT
There are other newspapers published in this “Roof-garden of the World.” There is the Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” which publishes the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, and follows, somewhat haltingly, the Hearst propaganda for government ownership. But so far as its local policy is concerned, it is entirely commercial, its fervors are for the local industry, of “boosting.” It has an especially annoying habit of disguising its advertisements so as to trap you into reading them as news. You will be informed in headlines of a notable event in local history, and when you read, you learn that Johnnie Jones, of 2249 S. Peanut Street, sold all his chickens within two hours by using “Examiner Want Ads.” Again, you read a headline about an aviator just returned from France, and what you learn about him is that Jones & Co. have put out twenty thousand pictures of him in twenty thousand boxes of “Frizzlies.” “This confection is especially delicious,” says our naïve “Examiner.” And now, as I write, some editor has an inspiration, and day after day I am confronted with an illustrated article: “Aspirants to Shapely Limbs Title. Who owns the most beautiful limbs on the stage? Look them over.”
Later on I shall tell of the “Examiner’s” treatment of various radicals. For the present I am dealing with personal experiences, so I relate that in the spring of 1919 I was invited to speak at a mass-meeting of the Jews of Los Angeles, in protest against the pogroms in Poland. The other speakers at this meeting expressed indignation at these pogroms; I endeavored to explain them. The French bankers, who now rule the continent of Europe, are engaged in setting up a substitute for the Russian Tsardom on the east of Germany; and this new Polish empire is using the Jews as a scapegoat, precisely as the Russian Tsardom did. Referring to President Wilson, I said; “I have supported him through the war, and I am not one of those who are denouncing him now. I think he has made a pitiful failure in Europe, but I understand that failure; it is due in part to the fact that the American people do not realize what is going on in Europe, and do not make clear their determination that American money shall not be poured out in support of reaction and imperialism.”
Such was the substance of my argument. Next day the “Los Angeles Times” did not mention it; while the “Los Angeles Examiner” reported it with outraged indignation, under the scare headline: “SINCLAIR ATTACKS WILSON.” In this form it was telegraphed all over the country. The amusing feature of the story is that the “Examiner” itself was at this time attacking Wilson most venomously—both on its editorial page and in its Washington dispatches. But it did not want my aid; it would not permit a Socialist to “attack” the President of the United States!
In various cities there are various standards prevailing for the conduct of newspapers in their rivalries with one another. In New York the rule is that they never praise one another, and only denounce one another in extreme cases. One thing they absolutely never do is to mention one another’s libel suits. But here in Los Angeles the rivalry between the “Times” and “Examiner” is a daily cat-and-dog fight. Not merely do they spread each other’s libel suits over the front page; they charge each other with numerous crimes, they call names and make faces like two ill-mannered children. And they keep this up, day after day, for weeks, so that it is impossible to get the news of world-events in Southern California without having their greeds and spites thrust upon you.