Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/363

 *throw of American institutions, the subjection of political democracy to industrial autocracy.

The copper miners of the "Upper Peninsula" went on strike. They stayed on strike for many months, and during that time they were slugged and beaten up by imported gunmen, their offices raided, their leaders shot or jailed. During this entire affair the Associated Press sent out to the country a string of subtle and knavish falsehoods, of which Charles Edward Russell gives seven pages, printing them in parallel columns, first the falsehood, and then the result of careful investigations, backed by numerous affidavits. (I might add that the Congressional investigation vindicated these affidavits in every detail.)

The parallel columns which Russell gives would fill about twenty pages of this book. I give four samples, and the reader may take my word that these samples are typical of the rest:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

(From Washington Post.)

Calumet, Mich., Sept. 1.—The copper strike situation took a serious aspect today as a result of the fatal shooting of Margaret Faxakas, aged 15, daughter of a striker, at the North Kearsarge mine, when a picket of strikers and women clashed with deputy sheriffs guarding a mine.

THE FACTS

Her name was Margaret Fazekes. She was not the daughter of a striker, and had no connection with the strike. There was no clash with any picket. A Labor Day procession was being held at Kearsarge. It had nothing to do with the strike. A band of armed guards without excuse or occasion attacked the procession and broke it up, firing about 100 shots from their revolvers. This girl was not in the procession. She was walking along the sidewalk, and a bullet from a gunman's revolver pierced her skull.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Calumet, Mich., October 22, 1913.

To the Associated Press, Chicago, Ill.

As a measure of precaution against possible disorder, the troops have kept on the move bodies of strikers who collect while men are going to work in the morning, but this is not construed as interference with any of the rights of the strikers.

THE AFFIDAVITS

For instance, Victor Ozonick swears that on July 31st he was walking quietly along the public road when he was arrested, taken to Houghton and thrust into jail. After a time he was taken into the sheriff's office and searched. A deputy sheriff struck him in the face with his clenched fist and then kicked him. He was then asked if he was a member of the miners' union. When he said