Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/376



Senator Kenyon: "Could you hear this train coming?"

Mrs. Estep: "We heard it after it commenced shooting. We had not heard it before. We had our doors closed."

Senator Kenyon: "Could you see the train?'

Mrs. Estep: "No, sir; I never went out the front way at all."

Senator Kenyon: "When did you know your husband was shot?"

Mrs. Estep: "I didn't know he was killed until after the train quit shooting, and I heard some of them speak to him and call his name, and I never heard him answer."

And now, put yourself in the place of the Associated Press correspondent, with your office in the Adjt. General's office in the State House. This train, you understand, starts from Charleston, and comes back to Charleston, and militia officers are on it, and deputy sheriffs are on it. You know Quinn Morton well; you know everybody concerned well; you are in the midst of the gossip and excitement, you see the warriors come back from the fray, boasting of their achievements, laughing and "kidding" one another. You know that they have done this thing several times before, and intend to go on doing it. It is your duty to furnish the American people with news concerning their doings.

The matter is a ticklish one, because Quinn Morton is the largest coal operator in the Kanawha Valley. Of course you cannot mention his name in such a connection; you cannot imply that any mine-operator ever had anything to do with violence, nor must you admit that a striker was killed during a machine-gun attack upon a village at night. You cover the death of Mrs. Estep's husband in one clever sentence as follows:

According to information received here late today, Robert Estep, a miner, was killed last night during the rioting at Mucklow.

The above sentence is from an Associated Press dispatch. And here are the three dispatches in which the news of the "Bull Moose Special" was sent out to the world. I give them exactly as they stand, with all the telegraph marks and technicalities. I might mention that the word "correct," which has been inserted, is an "A. P." mark; I do not know its relation to the dispatch. Also I might add that the words "passenger train" are Associated Press euphemism for "Bull Moose Special." You may not recognize the events, but this is really the same "Bull Moose" expedition that Lee Calvin and Quinn Morton and Mrs. Estep have just told us about: