Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/340

 is James Davenport Whelpley, a well-known journalist, writing in the "Fortnightly Review," one of the most dignified of English monthlies:

Another issue has come to the fore in the American political campaign quite unusual in American politics With all the freedom that is given to the American Press, and with all the pernicious intrusion into private affairs that finds expression in the columns of American newspapers, it has been many years since the personality of a candidate has played any part in the publicity work of a campaign, no matter how great the temptation may have been to use material at hand. In reading American newspapers today, however, much can be gleaned from between the lines. Something seems to be struggling against precedent and unwritten rules for clear expression, and that something finds itself articulate in the communications of man to man.

And then Mr. Whelpley goes on to tell about "elections being won and lost at the last moment by psychological waves which have swept across the national mind, swamping on their way the political hopes of one or the other candidate." So Mr. Whelpley is unable to predict the re-election of Woodrow Wilson!

More definite even than this, there was a story in "McClure's Magazine," which had already gone to press, and could not be recalled. "McClure's," now a tool of the "interests," was conducting a raging campaign for "preparedness," and Wilson stood in the way. The story was called "That Parkinson Affair," by Sophie Kerr, and was published in the issue of September, 1916—just when the scandal was ready to be sprung. It is ostensibly a piece of fiction, but so transparent that no child could fail to recognize it. It is the vilest piece of innuendo in American political history, and remains on our library shelves as a monumental example of the depths to which our predatory interests have been willing to drag their "kept" magazines.

When the big magazines were bought up by the "interests," we were solemnly assured that the purpose was to put an end to "scandal-mongering." But now it appears that the purpose was not to lay the "muck-rake" on the shelf, but merely to turn it against the friends of human progress!