Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/334

 Wilshire has been awarded a gold medal by a chamber of commerce; or that Upton Sinclair has been made a bishop of the Episcopal Church for writing "The Profits of Religion"?

One of the most interesting illustrations of newspaper lying about Socialists occurred during a May-day meeting in Union Square, New York, a few years ago. It is interesting because we may go behind the scenes and watch the wires being pulled. It appears that police arrangements for this meeting were in charge of Chief Inspector Schmittberger, an old-style Tammany clubber; but he could not handle the affair in the usual fashion of the New York police, because the administration of Mayor Mitchel had ordained "free speech." Schmittberger had his clubbers hidden in an excavation of the subway, ready to sally forth when the meeting gave excuse. But the meeting did not give excuse, and some of the policemen grew impatient, and sallied out without orders and started clubbing. My friend Isaac Russell, who was reporting the day's events for the "New York Times," was standing by Schmittberger's side, and heard him shout to these unauthorized clubbers. Says Russell:

I ran beside Schmittberger into the fracas, and he yanked and pulled cops over backwards to break up the thing. And finally he got them under control, and then gave them fits for acting without orders.

Russell, being an honest man, went back to the "Times" office, and wrote a story of how the New York police had been seized by a panic, and had broken out without orders; and that story went through. But it happened that up in the editorial rooms of the "Times" somebody was writing the conventional "Times" editorial, denouncing the Socialists for their May-day violence, and praising the police for their heroism. It never occurred to the editorial writer that the news editors could be so careless as to pass a story like Isaac Russell's! So next day here was this comical discrepancy, and an organization of magazine editors, the "Ragged Edge Club," invited Isaac Russell to come and explain to them the war between the news columns and the editorial columns of the "Times"! Russell was called up before his boss and, as he says, "roasted to a frazzle" for having written the truth. Arthur Greaves, city editor of the "Times," told him that he had "got off all wrong in that situation." But Russell's job was saved—and how do you think? The police commissioner of New York