Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/190

 and would push the controversy to the end. Therefore I sent to the "Tribune" by registered mail a copy of the "Rocky Mountain News," containing the facts, and I looked to see this full-page report transferred to a page of the "Chicago Tribune." Or I looked to have the "Tribune" have some representative in Denver look up the facts, as it might so easily have done. Instead of that, I saw not one line about the matter. What strings had been pulled in the "Tribune" office, I don't happen to know. All I know is that I wrote several times, protesting, and that no attention was paid to my letters. Now, while I am preparing this book, I write to the "Tribune," lest by any chance the "Tribune" published something in some edition which I missed, and which my clipping bureau missed; but the "Tribune" leaves my letter unanswered!

Also I write to Denver to find out about P. A. Wieting—if he is a real person. I find that he is assistant cashier of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., Mr. Rockefeller's concern which broke the strike!

All this time, you must understand, the "kept" writers on the other side of the concrete wall were having their will with the public. Arthur Brisbane, for example, whose editorial against the strikers was submitted to Mr. Rockefeller by Mr. Rockefeller's press agent as a proof of the press agent's skill! And Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora—you will find a special chapter in this book devoted to the "Fra," and in it you may read how he sought to sell out the Colorado strikers. And the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis, a clerical gentleman whom we have seen spurning George D. Herron in public, and apologizing in tears before his congregation because his greed for money had led him into a mess of lawsuits. This clerical gentleman preached a sermon, in which he referred to our Broadway "pickets" as "a lot of silly people," and incidentally told some score of lies about the strikers. Somebody, name unknown, was circulating this sermon in expensive pamphlet form by the hundreds of thousands of copies; so George Creel wrote to Hillis—but in vain. If you are near a library, look up Creel's "Open Letter" in "Harper's Weekly," May 29, 1915, and see how many lies a greedy preacher can pack into one sermon. I also wrote to the reverend gentleman, and succeeded in getting a reply from him. I quote my final letter, which covers the case, I think: