Page:Herr Glessner Creel - Tricks of the Press (1911).djvu/36

 You see, he couldn't lose. It is so with you and the Capitalist newspapers, regardless of their politics. If the Republican candidate is voted into office the Morning Sun is jubilant over the confidence of the people in its man. If the Democratic nominee is successful the Evening Star is elated because the voters have seen fit to place ITS man in office. And the banker, the department store owner and the street car magnate own both papers. They play both ends against the middle. And you're the middle.

The political coin tossed by the master class has a Republican head and a Democratic tail. Once in four years you are allowed to guess which side will be turned to view after the toss-up. The tricky language of the Capitalist newspaper is no more deceptive than that of the Harelip. Yet you allow yourselves to be gulled year after year by the same old subterfuges. On election night you go without sleep to buy an early morning extra and be greeted with a political

"N'at's it, N'at's it!"

As opposed to this the Socialist Party and the Socialist press comes to you with the proposition of public ownership of the things publicly used and private ownership of the things privately used. In that program, and in that program alone, lies freedom from exploitation and from the acknowledged ills of our political, industrial and economic system. So long as the things publicly used can be made to turn a private profit, just so long will those of you who own no public utilities continue to pay the bills of those who do own them.

When you collectively own and control the press of the nation, when that press is operated solely for the dissemination of news of a public character; when the newspapers of the world are printed for the information and use of the many, instead of for the profit of the few, then, and then only, may you be off your guard against these and other tricks of the press.

I thank you.