Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/217

 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 head-lines 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