Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/323



Thus was nipped in the bud by the frost of publicity a project which might have revolutionized trade—and all because an actress wanted a bracelet, and a reporter wanted a scoop, and a newspaper wanted to protect its advertisers.

But sometimes the "Chronicle" was merciful, as Mr. Salisbury lets us see. All the newspapers in Chicago were pouring ridicule upon John Alexander Dowie, a fake religious prophet.

When I returned to the office I offered to write of Dowie's weeping about the birds. That was the only thing that struck me as unusual. Anything that would put Dowie in a ridiculous or unfavorable light was generally wanted by all the papers. But I was told to write nothing.

"We've just got orders to let up on Dowie," said the city editor. "Mr. Walsh wants to increase the paper's circulation among the Dowieites. Our political views have cost us subscribers lately, and we want to make up for it. If there is any good hot news about Dowie, of course we'll print it, but not unfavorably.

Maybe you distrust Mr. Salisbury. A man who could fake so much Journalism might fake one book! Very well; but here is one of the most eminent sociologists in the country, a man whose honor is not to be questioned—Prof. E. A. Ross of the University of Wisconsin. Writing in the "Atlantic Monthly" for March, 1910, Prof. Ross gives several pages of incidents of this sort. I quote:

On the desk of every editor and sub-editor of a newspaper run by a capitalist promoter now under prison sentence lay a list of sixteen corporations in which the owner was interested. This was to remind them not to print anything damaging to these concerns. In the office these corporations were jocularly referred to as "sacred cows."

Nearly every form of privilege is found in the herd of "sacred cows" venerated by the daily press.

The railroad company is a "sacred cow." At a hearing before a state railroad commission, the attorney of a shippers' association got an eminent magnate into the witness chair, with the intention of wringing from him the truth regarding the political expenditures of his railroad. At this point the commission, an abject creature of the railroad, arbitrarily excluded the daring attorney from the case. The memorable excoriation which that attorney gave the commission to its face was made to appear in the papers as the cause instead of the consequence of this exclusion. Subsequently, when the attorney filed charges with the governor against the commission, one editor wrote an editorial stating the facts and criticizing the commissioners. The editorial was suppressed after it was in type.

The public-service company is a "sacred cow." In a city of the Southwest, last summer, while houses were burning from lack of water for the fire hose, a lumber company offered to supply the firemen with water. The water company replied that they had "sufficient."