Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/206

 CHAPTER XXXIII

A FOUNTAIN OF POISON

I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is literally a fact that I have yet to meet a single person who does not despise and hate his "Times." This paper, founded by Harrison Gray Otis, one of the most corrupt and most violent old men that ever appeared in American public life, has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with abusiveness which seems almost insane. To one who understands our present economic condition, the volcano of social hate which is smouldering under the surface of our society, it would seem better to turn loose a hundred thousand mad dogs in the streets of Los Angeles, than to send out a hundred thousand copies of the "Times" every day.

You cannot live in Southern California and stand for any sort of liberal ideas without encountering the wrath of this paper. And when you have once done this, it pursues you with personal vindictiveness; no occasion is too small for it to lay hold of, nor does it ever forget you, no matter how many years may pass. My friend Rob Wagner writes me an amusing story about the feud between Otis and the city of Santa Barbara, a millionaire colony about a hundred miles from Los Angeles:

When the big fleet came around here some years ago I was director-generaling a very snappy flower festival at Santa Barbara, and as the "Times" played up all the bar-room brawls the sailors got into and belittled my pretty show, I got hold of the local correspondent and says: "Mac, why are you crabbing the show and featuring the rough stuff?" "Well the truth is, Bob, my pay depends upon the kind of stuff I send. A rotten story is good for columns, against a few paragraphs of the birds and the flowers. You know the General has towns as well as individuals on his index, and Santa Barbara is one of them. The General once owned the Santa Barbara 'Press,' and with his usual cave-man methods got in bad with the villagers, and they bumped him socially so hard that he finally left in great heat and swore vengeance, which he practices to this day. This has been going on for years."

Now the old "General" is gone, but his "index" still stands.