Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/277

 However, Mr. Stone consented to give me a list of the present bond-holders; also his explanation of the matter:

In the organization of the Associated Press in 1900 it was necessary to provide a certain sum to buy fixtures, etc., and certain first mortgage bonds were issued and sold to the members, the proceeds being applied in the way indicated. The Charter authorized an issuance of $150,000. But this sum was found to be unnecessary. The actual issue was $131,425. This has since been reduced by redemption in certain cases so that today there is outstanding $113,125. Under the law of New York, holders of first mortgage bonds are entitled to vote for Directors in proportion to their holdings. They have no right to vote upon bonds on any other matter in the conduct of the business.

Many times, in the course of my experiences as a muck-*raker, I have had great captains of privilege endeavor to impose upon my intelligence; but I cannot recall having ever been offered so childish a pretext as I am here offered by Mr. Stone. I am asked to believe that in the nineteen years of its history, this enormous concern has been able to pay off less than twenty thousand dollars of the debt incurred for its office furniture! I am asked to believe that these bond-holders have votes because the law requires them to have votes; and that never once has it occurred to the shrewd gentlemen who manage the Associated Press that by the simple device of remaining in debt for their office furniture, they can keep their organization permanently and irrevocably in the control of the big reactionary newspapers of the country!

Will Irwin, writing in "Harper's Weekly" five years ago, speaks of the "ring of old, Tory, forty-one vote papers in control" of the Associated Press. It appears that the bonds of the organization are for twenty-five dollars each, and when the association was formed, the big insiders each took one thousand dollars worth—giving them forty votes, with one additional vote as member.

I look down the list which Mr. Stone sends me, and I see that these "forty-one vote papers" include all of the biggest reactionary sheets in America. One after another I look for those which I have pilloried in this book—they are all here! The "Los Angeles Times" is here, and de Young's "San Francisco Chronicle," and the "San Francisco Bulletin," of the itching palm, and the "San Francisco Examiner," which sent out my Shredded Wheat story, and the "Sacramento Union," which was sold to the Calkins syndicate. Here is the "Pueblo Chieftain," which circulated the foul slanders about Judge