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 CHAPTER LVII

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND LABOR

Great strikes are determined by public opinion, and public opinion is always against strikers who are violent. Therefore, in great strikes, all the efforts of the employers are devoted to making it appear that the strikers are violent. The greatest single agency in America for making it appear that strikers are violent is the Associated Press. How does this agency perform its function?

In the first place, by the wholesale method of elimination. There are some violent strikers, needless to say, and Capitalist Journalism follows this simple and elemental rule—if strikers are violent, they get on the wires, while if strikers are not violent, they stay off the wires; by which simple device it is brought about that nine-tenths of the telegraphic news you read about strikes is news of violence, and so in your brain-channels is irrevocably graven the idea-association:

Strikes—violence! Violence—strikes!

What about the millions of patient strikers who obey the law, who wait, day after day, month after month, starving, seeing their wives fading, their little ones turning white and thin—and still restrain themselves, obeying the laws of their masters? What about the strike-leaders who plead day in and day out—I have heard them a hundred times—"No violence! No violence!"—what about them? Why, nothing; just nothing! The Associated Press will let a big strike continue for months and never mention it—unless there is violence! For example, the great coal-strike in West Virginia. It happens, through a set of circumstances to be explained in the next chapter, that I have before me the sworn complete file of all the dispatches which the Associated Press sent out during the sixteen months of this strike. The strike began April 1, 1912. The first dispatch sent by the Associated Press was on April 6; a very brief dispatch, telling of threats of violence. The second dispatch was on June 1; this also very brief, to the effect that "serious rioting is imminent." The third dispatch was on July 23; also brief, telling of rioting, and of state troops