Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/237

 I have told about several of the magazines which consented to "be good." I have shown the pitiful plight of the "American," and the miserable piffle they are publishing. And what is the meaning of it? The meaning was given in an item published in the "New York Press" early in 1911, when the "American Magazine" was taken over by the Crowell Publishing Company. The "Press" stated that this concern was controlled by Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan and Company, and declared "The 'American' will do no more muck-*raking." In answer, the "American" in its next issue made a statement, haughtily announcing that the same editors, John S. Phillips, Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell and Finley Peter Dunne were remaining in charge, and that "the policy of the magazine will be unchanged." To a discussion of this, my own language is inadequate; I have to employ the vocabulary of my son, a student in high school: "The poor boobs!" Four years these editors stuck it out, and then they quit, and a couple of young fellows who had been their office-clerks are now the "editors" of the "American Magazine"—which boasts a million circulation, and fifty-eight thousand lines of advertisements per month! Now, as I write, I learn that this Crowell Publishing Company has purchased "Collier's," and we shall see the same thing happening to our "National Weekly"!

In the same tragic way, my old friend Ridgway, who published the "Condemned Meat Industry," is out of "Everybody's," and a new and wholly "tame" staff is in charge, acceptable to the Butterick Publishing Co. In the same way S. S. McClure was turned out of his magazine, which once published Ida Tarbell's exposure of Standard Oil, and now publishes the solemn futilities of Cleveland Moffett, and anti-Socialist propaganda by the unspeakable Newell Dwight Hillis. It happened the other day that I was glancing over a back number of "McClure's," and my eye was caught by the opening instalment of a serial, announced in this style:

At last! A great new novel by the author of "The Broad Highway." "BELTANE THE STRONG," by JEFFREY FARNOL, who also wrote "The Amateur Gentleman" and "The Money-Moon." This is no ordinary story. Many novelists would have written three books, some six, in the time Jeffrey Farnol has given to this tremendous love-tale of Beltane and Lady Helen. The result is the finest thing of its kind "McClure's" has ever printed—by all means the novel of the year.

And opposite this is a full-page pink and purple illustration