Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/305

 sleeping-car, to be carried into Southern California, where the "S. P." controlled everything, and could "put him away." He told me the story, and to this day I remember my consternation. Two or three years later I happened to tell it in England, to a group of members of parliament; they were Englishmen, and were too polite to say what they thought, but I knew what they thought. It was hopeless to tell that story to Englishmen; such things did not happen—except in "movies"!

The story of the "San Francisco Bulletin," as Fremont Older tells it, is a story of corruption, systematic and continuous. The "Bulletin" was controlled in all four of the ways I have described; not merely by the owner, by the owners of the owner, and by the advertising subsidy, but by the bribe direct. The owner of the "Bulletin" was a man named Crothers, and he had an itching palm. It was itching at the beginning of the story, when it was empty, and it was still itching at the end of the story, when it was full. Says Fremont Older:

In addition to this, the "Bulletin" was on the payroll of the Southern Pacific Railroad for $125 a month. This was paid not for any definite service, but merely for "friendliness." Being always close to the line of profit and loss, it was felt the paper could not afford to forfeit this income.

These were in the early days, you understand, when Older was playing the dirty game for his owner. He tells us, quite frankly, how he did it. For example, here is a picture of a great newspaper in politics:

I hoped to convince Charley Fay, Phelan's manager, to accept the same plan in Phelan's fight that I used in the McKinley campaign; that is to get Phelan to buy a certain number of extra "Bulletin" editions. I suggested the idea to Fay that if I could be allowed several 10,000 editions of the "Bulletin" in addition to our regular circulation, for which we would charge $500, I thought I could hold the paper in line throughout the campaign.

But this was not enough for the itching palm, it appears:

He (Crothers) felt that the "Bulletin's" support was worth more than an occasional $500. His pressure upon me for more money finally became so strong that I called on Charley Fay and told him that I would have to get out another extra edition to the number agreed upon between us.

And then, a year or two later: