The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

Upton Sinclair, the author and social colonizer, in a surprising statement last night announced his intention to bring suit for divorce....

The action of Mr. Sinclair in giving out such a statement, or bringing suit for divorce from his wife, will be a great surprise to his friends and co-workers....

You will note the phrasing of this, so carefully calculated to make me odious—a man who rushed to the newspapers with an attack upon his wife! And then followed several paragraphs from that old and false San Francisco interview on marriage, to the effect that women are bought in marriage as dogs and horses are bought. How singular that a man who held such ideas should object to marital infidelity!

I am not going into detail concerning the horrors of the next few weeks. Suffice it to say that the herd had me down and proceeded to trample on my face. My personality, my affairs, my opinions and my every-day actions became the subject of discourse and speculation upon the front pages of the New York papers. My mother’s apartment, where I was living, was besieged by reporters, and when I refused to see them, it made no difference—they went away and wrote what they thought I might have said. The other party to the case was interviewed to the extent of pages—I mean literally pages. Gelett Burgess, who passes for a man of letters, and was one of the founders of the Author’s League of America, wrote a full-page burlesque of the tragedy, which was published with illustrations in the “New York American.” Mr. Burgess told a friend of mine some time afterwards that he had done it because he needed the money, but he was ashamed of having done it. It is not my wish to spare him any of this shame; therefore I reproduce the headlines of his elegant composition:

Why Hungry Mrs. Upton Sinclair Went Home to Mamma.

Gelett Burgess Discusses the Failure of Poetry à la carte as an Appetite Satisfier, and the Triumph of a Meal Ticket over Free but Famished Love.

Also I ought not to fail to mention one of the editors of “Life,” who went to see my former wife in company with a fat little pig of a publisher, his pockets stuffed with bills, which were offered the lady to write a scandal-story of her life with me!

The opinions of the newspaper commentators on the scandal varied from day to day. The generally accepted explanation was that I had married an innocent young girl and taught her “free love” doctrines, and then, when she practised these doctrines, I kicked her out of my home. But some of the newspapers found the matter worse than that. The “Chicago Evening Post” gave an elaborate analysis of my character and motives. It said it would be possible to forgive me if what I had done was “the jealous rage of a male brute infuriated past reason”; but the awful truth was plain—I had done this deed as “publicity work” for the second volume of “Love’s Pilgrimage”!

The idea that there lived on earth a human being who could have enjoyed the experience I was then undergoing was one which would not have occurred to me; however, the fact that this newspaper writer could conceive it indicated that there was at least one such person living. I have since heard that certain actors and actresses have increased their fame and incomes by being many times divorced and remarried. But with authors it does not work out that way. Mitchell Kennerley, publisher of “Love’s Pilgrimage,” had been selling a thousand copies a week of this book, and after the divorce-scandal he did not sell a hundred copies in six months!

I felt in those terrible days precisely like a hunted animal which seeks refuge in a hole, and is tormented with sharp sticks and smoke and boiling water. Under the law it had been necessary for me to obtain certain evidence. I had taken steps to obtain it, and this became a source of mystery as thrilling as a detective-story. For days men followed me every step I took; my mail was tampered with continually, and likewise the mail of my friends. I ran away into the country to hide, I even changed my name for a while, but that did no good—I was found out. Up to this time I had never had a grey hair in my head, but I found many after these months, and have them still.

Among the mass of newspaper items I note one that seems trifling, yet is curiously significant. There appeared in the “New York Times” a telegraphic dispatch from Wilmington, Delaware, to the effect that I was being sued by a store-keeper in New Jersey for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer. Stop and think a minute how many men in America are sued every day for bills which they refuse to pay, and how seldom does the “New York Times” hunt out such news by telegraph! Often I have tried to get radical news into the “Times,” and heard the editors plead space limitations; yet they found room for a dispatch about my being sued for thirty-eight dollars!

Five years before this I had owned a little farm, and had left it in charge of a man who contracted bills in my name. I had paid all the bills which were properly rendered; but after four years had passed, and I had sold the farm and wiped the matter off my books, I received for the first time a bill for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer. Naturally I refused to pay this bill; so I was sued—and the “New York Times,” having me down and desiring to trample further on my face, obtained the news and published it in connection with my divorce-scandal.

Nor was that all. The day after this item was published, there appeared in the “New York World” a column of humor about me, one part of which I quote. Please take the trouble to read it carefully, because it illustrates a significant point.

The following statement, with several long-hand corrections, was received by the “World” yesterday:

“With regard to the report that I am being sued for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer I might mention that I am being sued for something I never purchased or received. The dealer has admitted in writing that he did not send me the bill until four years after the alleged purchase. I like to get my bills a little sooner than that.

“Please put the above in the form of an interview.”

Now this was funny, was it not? It was a complete exposition of an ass; reading it, you would be perfectly sure you were dealing with an ass—unless possibly with a crook. The “Chicago Evening Post” took the latter view. It quoted the tell-tale sentence with the comment: “Other papers fell for ‘Interviews,’ but it was evidently one of the ‘World’s’ busy days, when not even a cub-reporter could be spared for rewrite.” On the basis of this, the “Post” went on to expose me as a cold and calculating notoriety-hunter.

Now what is the truth about the statement in the “New York World”? Here it is:

Three times in the course of that day the “World” had sent a reporter to seek me out. Would I not say something about the report of my intention to file my suit in Delaware instead of in New York? Would I not say something about the fact that a man had called up the “New York World” on the telephone, and announced himself as the co-respondent in my divorce case, on his way to have a fist-fight with me? Finally, the third time, would I not at least say something about this suit for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer?

I saw no reason why I should not state the facts in this last matter, so I said to the reporter: “I will not give an interview, because I have been misquoted so many times, and am sick of it. But I will write out what I have to say, and you can make an interview of that, provided you do not change it. I have to look up the dates of the fertilizer bill, and I’ll send what I have to say by a messenger.” This was agreed to, and I wrote out the statement. Having been previously made to appear as seeking publicity, I wanted to be particularly careful in this case, so to remind the reporter of his promise, I added: “Put the above in the form of an interview.”

I have often written those words in sending copy to newspapers. For example, they wire asking for an expression of opinion, and in replying, I remind them that they made the first move, not I. They perfectly understand the meaning of the request, “Put the above in the form of an interview,” and do not commit a breach of confidence except for a definite purpose, to make some person odious. In this particular case it was no oversight, no lack of a “cub-reporter”; it was the deliberate act of malice of the “World” reporter, abetted by the editors who passed the copy. I know that my statement reached the right reporter, because the rest of the article contained things which he had said to me in the course of his calls. I have gone into such minute detail about this episode, because it shows so perfectly how these corrupt and greedy newspapers have you at their mercy. They do whatever they please to you, and you are helpless. If for any reason, good or bad, you make them angry, they trample you like a vicious stallion. Or perhaps you seem funny to them, and then they amuse themselves with you, about as a wanton child who picks a butterfly to pieces.

To understand the rest of this episode, you must know something about the divorce laws of New York, and about divorce procedure. The code of the State, which was framed by a combination of Puritan bigotry with Roman Catholic obscurantism, requires infidelity legally proven. The defendant cannot confess, and neither party to the suit can testify against the other; moreover, if it appears that both have desired the divorce or consented to the divorce, there is “collusion” and the divorce is not granted. These laws are administered by judges who are almost invariably corrupt, many of them in addition being under the spell of Catholic superstition, considering that they have decreased the period of their sojourn in purgatory when they succeed in twisting the law or the evidence so as to balk some person’s desire to be free from marital disharmony.

Into this jungle of ravening beasts and poisonous serpents I now walked, unarmed and unprotected—having made the mistake of employing a lawyer who was a sensitive and honorable gentleman. The Court appointed a referee to hear the case, and before this referee I appeared with my counsel and my witnesses; also there appeared the counsel for the other party, as required by law, and a solemn farce was played. The referee had got the case as a morsel of graft from the infamous Tammany machine; whether he was malicious or merely ignorant, I do not know, but he was evidently possessed with curiosity concerning the notorious scandal, and questioned me concerning my attitude toward the matters in evidence—how I had regarded them and what I had done about them. My attorney objected that under the law I was not permitted to testify concerning my wife’s conduct, but the referee insisted that I should answer his questions, and for fear of angering him, and possibly exciting his suspicions, I answered.

Under the law it was provided that all this testimony should be secret, the property of the Court. My attorney and the attorney for the other party demanded of the referee and of the clerk of the Court that the law should be obeyed. But when the referee’s report was handed in, a full account of it and of the testimony was published in every newspaper in New York. When inquiry was made by my attorney, it developed that twenty-six different clerks had had access to those papers, and it was not possible to determine which one of the twenty-six had accepted a bribe from the newspapers. Suffice it to say that the whole obscene story was spread before the world. I say “obscene”—it was that of necessity, you understand; the New York State divorce law requires it to be that, literally. The law requires that the witnesses must have seen something tending to prove a physical act of infidelity; and if they shrink from going into detail, the referee compels them to go into detail—and then the details are served as delicious tidbits by the “yellow” journals.

I waited a month or two in suspense and shame, until at last the august judge handed down his decision. The referee had erred in questioning me as to the other party’s actions and my attitude thereto; therefore the referee’s recommendations were not accepted, and another referee must be appointed and the solemn farce must be gone through with a second time. I observed with bewildered interest that the erring referee was not compelled to return to me the money which the law had compelled me to turn over to him as his share of the “swag.” I must pay another referee and a new set of court costs, and must wait several months longer for my peace of soul and self-respect to be restored to me.

The second referee was appointed and the farce was played again. This time the referee would make no mistake, he would ask me no questions; he was a business-like gentleman, and put the job through in short order. He turned in his report, with the recommendation that my petition should be granted; and again the newspapers got the story—only now, of course, it was a stale story, the public was sick of the very name of me.

Again I waited in an agony of suspense, until a Roman Catholic judge handed down his august decision. It appeared that the evidence in the case was defective. The other party had been identified by means of photographs, and this was not admissible. Both attorneys in the case and the referee declared that there were innumerable precedents for photographs having been admitted, but the Roman Catholic judge said no. Also he said that there was some indication of “collusion”; I had behaved too humanely towards the other party in the domestic conflict. Apparently it was my legal duty to behave like Othello, or to do what the relatives of Héloïse did to Abélard.

I understood, of course, what the decision meant; the Roman Catholic judge had got his opportunity to step upon the nose of a notorious Socialist, and he had taken it. My lawyer urged me to appeal the case, but I remembered a talk I had had with James B. Dill three or four years previously. Dill was the highest paid corporation-lawyer in America, having been paid a million dollars for organizing the Steel Trust. Before he died, he was judge of the highest court of New Jersey, and I had spent long evenings at his home listening to his anecdotes. I recalled one remark: “There are twenty-two judges of the Appellate Court in New York State, and only three of them are honest. To each of the other nineteen I can say, I know whose man you are; I know who paid you and just how he paid you. And not one of them would be able to deny my statements.” Reflecting on this, I decided that I would not spend any more of my hard-earned money in appealing—more especially as by so doing I stood to lose what little privacy the law had preserved to me; the law required that in the event of an appeal I must pay to have the evidence in the case printed, and made public property forever! I had received a letter from my friend Dr. Frederik van Eeden, the Dutch poet and novelist, assuring me that he lived in a civilized country, where divorce was granted upon admission of infidelity, without evidence being given. So I set out for Holland; and in establishing my residence I did not have to resort to any technicalities. I really intended to spend the rest of my life in Europe; it seemed to me that I could not bear the sight of America again.

My earning power had, of course, been entirely destroyed; no one would read my books, no one would publish what I wrote. As Mitchell Kennerley said to me: “If people can read about you for one cent, they are not going to pay a dollar and a half to do it.” Also, my health seemed permanently undermined; I did not think I was going to live, and I did not very much care. But I established my residence in Holland and obtained my divorce, quietly, and without scandal. I wish to pay tribute to the kindest and most friendly people I have ever met—the Dutch. When I came to them, sick with grief, they did not probe into my shame; they invited me to their drawing-rooms for discussions of literature and art, and with tact and sweetness they let me warm my shivering heart at their firesides. Their newspapers treated me as a man of letters—an entirely new experience to me. They sent men of culture and understanding to ask my opinions, and they published these opinions correctly and with dignity. When I filed my divorce-suit they published nothing. When the decree was granted, they published three or four lines about it in the columns given to court proceedings, a bare statement of the names and dates, as required by law. And even when I proposed to rid my home of fleas by means of cyanogen gas, they did not spread the fact on the front pages of their newspapers, making it a “comic relief” story for the vacuous-minded crowd.

There were many men in Holland, as in England and Germany and Italy and France, who hated and feared my Socialist ideas. I made no secret of my ideas; I spoke on public platforms abroad, as I had spoken at home. When reporters for the great Tory newspapers of England came to interview me, I told them of the war that was coming with Germany, and how bitterly England would repent her lack of education and modern efficiency, and her failure to feed and house her workers as human beings. These opinions were hateful to the British Tories, and they attacked me; but they did not attack the author of the opinions, by making him into a public scarecrow and publishing scandals about his private life. This, as my Dutch chemist would have said, is “a characteristically American procedure”!

The first American I visited in Europe was George D. Herron, then living in Florence, the home of his favorite poet, Dante. Dante had been exiled from Florence by the oligarchy which ruled that city, and in exactly the same way Herron had been exiled from America by America’s oligarchy, the capitalist press. I had known him for ten years, and had witnessed his martyrdom at first hand. The story is told in full in some pages of “Love’s Pilgrimage,” but I must sketch it here, where I am dealing with the subject of marriage and divorce, and the attitude of our Journalism thereto. As it happens, the story is timely, for Herron has again been brought into the public eye, and the capitalist press has dragged out the old skeleton and rattled its dry bones before the world.

George D. Herron had been a clergyman, a professor of Christian morals in a Middle Western college. He had been married as a boy and was wretchedly unhappy. I am not free to discuss that early marriage; suffice it to say that when he told me the story, the tears came into his eyes. He had become a Socialist, and had set out to preach the cause of the poor and oppressed from one end of America to the other. Among his converts was an elderly rich woman, Mrs. Rand, whose fortune came from railroad and lumber interests in the Middle West. And now Herron came to love the daughter of Mrs. Rand. Being a clergyman, he had no idea of divorcing his wife, and the discovery that he loved another woman only added to his misery. His health gave way under the strain, but he held out—until finally his wife brought suit for divorce, alleging desertion.

Herron had founded a Christian Socialist organization, and was one of the most popular radical orators in the country. He was a dangerous man to the “interests,” and here was the chance to destroy him. A perfect storm of obloquy and abuse overwhelmed him. He was a “free lover,” they declared, a proof of the claim that all Socialists believed and practised “free love.” The Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis refused to shake hands with him, turning his back upon him on a public platform: Newell Dwight Hillis, whose greed for money led him into a series of disgusting scandals, and forced him finally to bow his head with shame and confess his financial sins before his congregation! The Rev. Thomas Dixon wrote a novel, “The One Woman,” in which he portrayed Herron as a sort of human gorilla: Dixon, dealer in pulpit-slang, who has since turned to the movies as a means of glorifying race-hatred and militarism, and pouring out his venom upon all that is humane and generous in life.

I have many friends who were present at the marriage of George D. Herron and Carrie Rand. They were married by a Congregational clergyman, William Thurston Brown, and I have seen the marriage certificate. Yet all over this country, and in fact all over the world, the newspapers portrayed the ceremony as a “free love wedding,” no real marriage, but just a say-so to be terminated at pleasure. The most horrible tales were told, the most horrible pictures were published—of Herron, and of his first wife, and of his “soul mate” and his “soul mate’s” mother.

I saw that the strain of the thing was killing Herron, and persuaded him to go abroad to live and do his writing. Three or four years later old Mrs. Rand died, leaving a part of her money to found the Rand School; Herron and his wife came home to bury her, and again the storm broke out. He had purchased a farm at Metuchen, New Jersey, intending to live there; a reporter came, representing that the “Cosmopolitan Magazine” wished to publish a series of articles about the wives of distinguished American writers. On this pretext the reporter obtained a photograph of a painting which Herron had had made of his wife and baby, and a week later there appeared in the magazine section of the “New York Sunday American” a horrible scare story about the “free love colony” which Herron was founding in the midst of an exclusive residential suburb of New Jersey. There was a picture of the free love wife and the free love baby, and of Herron standing upon a ladder, tacking upon a wall his repudiation of the institution of marriage. The headlines ran:

How the Vast Fortune of the Late Mrs. Rand, Who Gave Prof. Herron’s Deserted Wife $60,000 to Divorce Him, is Being Used in an Amazing Warfare on Marriage and Religion Under the Leadership of Herron and Mrs. Rand’s Daughter.

This story went all over the country, and recently when Herron was named by President Wilson as one of the delegates to confer with the Russian Soviets, the story was rehashed in our newspapers, and made the subject of indignant protest by religious bodies. Having visited this Metuchen home and seen the whole story in the making, I am in a position to state that the Metuchen “free love colony” was entirely a product of the obscene minds of the editors of the “Sunday Yellows.” What is the moral character of these “yellow” editors you may judge from the fact that, soon after this, one of the editors of the “Sunday World” was arrested by Anthony Comstock and sent to jail for a year or two, for having in his possession several thousand obscene photographs which he used in the corrupting of boys. In such minds the Metuchen story was born; and seventeen years later its foul carcass is exhumed by the “Churchman,” organ of “the Church of Good Society” in New York, and made the basis of a vicious sneer at President Wilson. I quote:

In dealing with Russian liberals, it may be necessary to select as mediators men who share their political ideas. It is not necessary to choose men who share their moral practices. We read that the Presbyterian Union of Newark has adopted resolutions protesting against the appointment of George D. Herron as a representative of the United States to confer with the Bolsheviks. The resolution condemns Herron as a man who has flagrantly violated the laws of God and man, and they call upon President Wilson to revoke his appointment. They go into past history and assert that Mr. Herron endeavored at one time to establish a free love colony at Metuchen, New Jersey.

Time wasted! We warn the Newark protestants. Mr. Herron’s appointment will not be revoked. What is the marriage vow among the makers of millenniums?

And lest you think this is merely odium theologicum, I give an example of the comment of the laity, from “Harvey’s Weekly”:

Why not make Herron the Turkish Mandatory? Herron’s matrimonial views are broad and comprehensive. His poultry-yard standard of morals might possibly be a little looser than the Turkish, but he would doubtless conform himself in theory and practice to the narrower Turkish matrimonial prejudices.

I wonder which is the more disagreeable phenomenon, sexual license or venal hypocrisy. It is a question I face when I read denunciations of the morals of radicals in capitalist newspapers. I have known men and women in a score of different worlds; I have talked with them and compared their sexual ethics, and I know that the newspaper people cannot afford to throw stones at the rest.

There are causes for this, of course. Their work is irregular and exhausting; they squeeze out the juices from their nerve-centers, they work under high pressure, in furious competition. Such men are apt to make immoderate use of tobacco and alcohol, and to take their pleasure where they find it. But this applies only to the rank and file in the newspaper world, to reporters and penny-a-liners; it does not apply to the big men at the top. These men have ease and security, and surely we might expect them to conform to the moral laws which they lay down for the rest of mankind!

I have in mind a certain editor. In this book where I am sparing no one, I should perhaps give his name; but I yield to human weakness, having been a guest at his home. Suffice it to say that this editor is one of America’s very greatest, one to whom the masses of Americans look every day for enlightenment. This man wrote and published a most atrocious editorial concerning Herron’s sexual morals. And what was his own sexual life at the time?

When the “Jungle” was published, this editor wrote to me that he had a friend who wished very much to meet me. I accepted, and went to dinner in a beautiful apartment in New York, luxuriously furnished, where I met a charming and cultured lady whom I will call Mrs. Smith. There were two lovely children, and there was Mr. Smith, a quiet, rather insignificant gentleman. I spent an enjoyable evening, and went away with no suspicion of anything unusual in the Smith family. But afterwards, when I mentioned the matter to others who knew this editor, I learned that the editor was the father of the children, and that Mr. Smith was maintained in luxury as a blind to cover the situation. I could hardly believe my ears; but I found that everybody who knew this editor intimately knew all about it, and that the editor made no secret of it among his friends. Later on, I came to know a certain brilliant and beautiful young suffrage leader, since deceased, who told me how she had exercised the privilege of the modern emancipated young woman, and had asked this editor to marry her. His answer was that he was very sorry, but he was not free, Mrs. Smith having given him to understand that if ever he left her, she would kill herself.

Here again we face the New York State law, forced upon the public by the Roman Catholic Church, making the grounds of divorce infidelity plus a scandal. Driven by the terror of scandal, men have been led by thousands and tens of thousands to make arrangements such as I have here described. Believing as I do that this divorce-law is an abomination, a product of vicious priest-craft, I hesitate before I blame these men; but no one need hesitate to blame them when, knowing what the law is, and what they themselves have been driven to, they publicly spit upon and trample the face of a modern prophet like George D. Herron.

And lest you think this case exceptional, I will give you another. There is a newspaper in New York, a pillar of capitalist respectability, the very corner-stone of the temple of bourgeois authority. This paper, of course, denounced Herron in unmeasured terms; recently it took up the attack again, in its solemn and ponderous manner rebuking the President for his lack of understanding of the moral sentiments of the American people. This great newspaper is owned and published by a Hebrew gentleman, intimately connected with the great financial interests of New York. He is one of the most respectable Hebrew gentlemen imaginable. And what are his sexual habits?

I know a lady, one of America’s popular novelists. She is a charming lady, but without a trace of that appearance and manner which in the world is called “fast”; on the contrary, she is one of the women you know to be straightforward and self-respecting, the kind you would choose for your sister. She came to New York, young and inexperienced, desirous of earning a living. Naturally, she thought first of this great publisher, whom she had known socially in her home city. She went to him and told him that she had made something of a success at writing, and she wanted to write for the great metropolitan paper. He answered that he would be delighted, and arrangements were made. They were alone in the office, and she stood by his desk to shake hands with him in parting, and he pulled her over and took her on his knee; whereupon she boxed his ears and walked out of the office, and never did any writing for the great metropolitan paper.

The above anecdote is, of course, hearsay so far as I am concerned. I was not in the publisher’s office, and I did not see him take the lady-novelist on his knee; but my wife and I knew this lady-novelist well, and she had no possible motive for telling us a falsehood. The story came up casually in the course of conversation, and was told spontaneously, and with humor; for the lady takes life cheerfully, and had got over being angry with the publisher—satisfied, I suppose, with having boxed his ears so thoroughly. I wrote to her, to make sure I had got matters straight, and in reply she asked me not to use the story, even without her name. I quote:

You know, of course, that I should be glad to do, at once and freely, anything I could to be helpful in your affairs. I have thought it over and it stands about like this in my mind. I am living a life that has its own aims—a thing apart from public attack and defense. If I had determined to make public—after all these years—any offense —— was guilty of toward me, my own feeling is clear that I should do it myself, openly and for reasons that seemed to me compelling.... So leave me out of this matter, my dear Upton.

And so I confront a problem of conscience, or at any rate of etiquette. Have I the right to tell this story, even without giving names? I owe a certain loyalty to this friend; but then, I think of the great publisher, and the manifold falsehoods I have known him to feed to the public. I think of the prestige of such men, their solemn hypocrisy, their ponderous respectability. After weighing the matter, I am risking a friendship and telling the story. I hope that in the course of time the lady will realize my point of view, and forgive me.

A different kind of problem confronts me with another story, which I heard three or four years ago, just after it happened. I had this book in mind at the time, and I said to myself: “I’ll name that man, and take the consequences.” But meantime, alas, the man has died; and now I ask myself: “Can I tell this story about a dead man, a man who cannot face me and compel me to take the consequences?” I think of the man’s life-long prostitution of truth, his infinite betrayal of the public interest, and I harden my heart, and write the story, naming him. But then I weaken, and ask advice. I ask women, and they say: “Name him!” I ask men, and they say: “You cannot tell such a story about a dead man!” Which is right?

Everything that the profit-system could do for one of its darlings had been done for this man. Millions of books, millions of magazinelets went out bearing his name; wealth, power, prominence, applause—all these things he had; his life was one long triumph—and one long treason to public welfare. And what was the man’s private life? What use did he make of his fame, and more especially of his wealth?

The story was told to me by a woman-writer—not the one I have just referred to, but as different from her as one woman can be from another: a vivid and dashing creature, especially constructed both in body and mind for the confounding of the male. This lady was standing on a corner of Fifth Avenue, waiting for the stage, when a man stepped up beside her, and said out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ll give you five dollars if you come with me.” The lady made no response, and again the voice said, “I’ll give you ten dollars if you come with me.” Again there was no response, and the voice said, “I’ll give you twenty-five dollars if you come with me.” The stage arrived, and the auction was interrupted. But it happened that evening that the lady was invited to a dinner-party, to meet a great literary celebrity, a darling of the profit-system—and behold, it was the man who had bid for her on the street! “Mr. —— and I have met before,” said the lady, icily; and, as she writes me, “this paralyzed him.”

I ask this lady if I may tell the story. She answers: “Go the limit!” So here, at least, my conscience is at ease!

I was obliged to return to America to give testimony concerning an automobile accident of which I had been a witness. I had been sitting in the rear seat of a friend’s car, which was proceeding at a very moderate rate of speed along a down-town street, when a fruit-peddler leaped out from behind an ice-wagon. He had a bunch of bananas in his hand and was looking up toward a woman in a window; he was not two feet ahead of the car when he sprang in front of it, and was struck before those in the car could move a finger. The account in the news column of the “New York Times” made clear that I had been merely a passenger, in another man’s car, yet the “Times” found space on its editorial page for a letter from some correspondent, sneering at me as a Socialist who rode down poor men in automobiles!

During my return to America I remarried. The ceremony took place in Virginia, at the home of relatives of my wife’s family, and I was interested to observe that the “Times,” which had pursued me so continually, printed a perfectly respectful account of the wedding, with no editorial sneers. I was not puzzled by this, for I observed that the “Times” had taken the trouble to telegraph to Mississippi, to make inquiries concerning the lady I was marrying, and the report from their correspondent stated that the bride’s father was “one of the wealthiest men in this section, and controls large banking interests.” How many, many times I have observed the great organ of American plutocracy thus awed into decency by wealth! When Frank Walsh, as chairman of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, made a radical speech in New York, the “Times” telegraphed to Kansas City and learned that Walsh was a lawyer earning an income of fifty thousand dollars a year. It was comical to observe the struggle between its desire to lambast a man who had made a radical speech, and its cringing before a man who was earning fifty thousand dollars a year!

In the same way, I have observed the attitude of the New York newspapers toward my friend, J. G. Phelps Stokes, a Socialist who is reputed to be a millionaire, and who belongs to one of the oldest families in New York “society.” So it makes no difference what he says or does, you never see a disrespectful word about him in a New York newspaper. On one occasion, I remember, he and his wife made Socialist speeches from a fire-escape in the tenement-district of New York—and even that was treated respectfully! Upton Sinclair, who is not reputed to be a millionaire, gave a perfectly decorous lecture on Socialism, at the request of his fellow passengers on an ocean-liner—and when he landed in New York he read in the “Evening World” that he had delivered a “tirade.” I might add that the above remarks are not to be taken as in any manner derogatory to Stokes, who is in no possible way to blame for the fact that the newspapers spare him the treatment they give to other American Socialists, including Mrs. Stokes.

At this time ten or twenty thousand silk-workers in Paterson, New Jersey, went on strike, affording the usual spectacle—a horde of ill-paid, half-starved wage slaves being bludgeoned into submission by policemen’s clubs, backed by propaganda of lying newspapers. The silk-mill owners of Paterson of course owned the city government, and were using the police-force to prevent meetings of the strikers; but it happened that the nearby village of Haledon had a Socialist mayor, and there was no way to keep the strikers from walking there for open air mass-meetings. There was clamor for the State troops to prevent such gatherings, and the newspapers were called on to make them into near-riots. My wife and I would go out to the place and attend a perfectly orderly gathering, addressed by such men as Ernest Poole and Hutchins Hapgood, and then we would come back to New York and buy a copy of the “Evening Telegram” and read all across the front page scare-headlines about riots, dynamite and assassination. I have before me a clipping from the “New York World,” of Monday, May 19, 1913. “Paterson’s Fiercest Fight Feared Today,” runs the headline.

On this same date my old friend the “New York Times” achieved a little masterpiece of subtle knavery. I quote:

After Mohl came another newcomer so far as Paterson is concerned—Upton Sinclair.

“I just simply could not stand it any longer,” said Sinclair, “and I let my books go and came here to congratulate you. Yours is the finest exhibition of solidarity ever seen in the Eastern States.”

Sinclair stated that the strikers had the police at their mercy, but added that perhaps they did not realize it.

This, please understand, was part of a campaign to make the general public regard the Paterson silk-workers as anarchists and desperadoes. “The strikers have the police at their mercy,” says Sinclair; and what conclusion does the reader draw from these words? Obviously, Sinclair is advising the strikers to grab up clubs and brick-bats and overwhelm the police. You would have drawn that conclusion, would you not? Perhaps maybe you are one of the readers of the “Times,” and did draw that conclusion! As it happens, when I read that item, I took the trouble to jot down what I actually did say, and to preserve the record along with the clipping. I quote:

You fellows go out on the picket-line and the police fall upon you with clubs, they ride you down with their horses, they raid your offices, and suppress your papers and throw your leaders into jail, and you think you are helpless. You don’t realize that you have the police at your mercy. All those policemen are appointed by the city government; they get their orders from the city government and every year or two you go to the ballot-box and say whether you like what they have been doing. In other words, you vote for Republican or Democratic politicians, instead of electing Socialists to office, and having a city government that will give you your lawful rights.

To get the full significance of the above, you must realize that this was an I. W. W. strike; I went out to a meeting conducted by Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and was permitted to preach a doctrine of political action which these leaders despised. I, who have all my life urged upon the workers of America the futility of the strike alone, and the necessity of political action, went out and said my say in the midst of a campaign of “direct action”; and see how much understanding I got from the great metropolitan newspapers for my defense of political methods! One year later, after the Colorado coal-strike, the little urchins in the village of Croton-on-Hudson where I lived used to follow me on the street and shout: “I won’t work!” I used to reflect that our great organs of publicity, the “New York Times” and “World” and “Herald” and “Tribune” and “Sun,” stood upon precisely the same level of intelligence as these little village urchins.

At this time the newspapers were trying to obtain from me a photograph of the lady who went with me to strike-meetings, in spite of the fact that her father was “one of the wealthiest men in this section, and controls large banking interests.” They didn’t get the photograph, so they were in desperate straits. A reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper—I have the clipping, but unfortunately not the name of the paper—went to Arden to look me up, and was told by my friend Donald Stephens that I was not there. The homes in Arden are scattered about through the woods, and life is informal; I had locked the doors of my house, but the windows were not fastened. I am not in a position to prove that the reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper burglarized my house and stole a picture of my wife. I cannot state positively that a course in house-breaking is a part of the training of newspaper reporters in the City of Brotherly Love. All I can state is the following set of facts:

1. In my desk in the house there lay a kodak-picture of my wife and myself and my wife’s younger sister.

2. This copy was the only one in existence, having been taken by my sister-in-law in an out-of-the-way place, and developed by a photographer who knew nothing about us.

3. Upon my return to Arden, this picture was discovered to be missing from my desk.

4. This missing picture was published in a Philadelphia newspaper.

The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public interests, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but property; they value a man, not because he is great, or good, or wise, or useful, but because he is wealthy, or of service to vested wealth. And suppose that you wished to make a test of this thesis, a test of the most rigid scientific character—what would you do? You would put up two men, one representing property, the other representing humanity. You would endeavor rigidly to exclude all other factors; you would find one man who represented property to the exclusion of humanity, and you would find another man who represented humanity to the exclusion of property. You would put these two men before the public, having them do the same thing, so far as humanly possible, and then you would keep a record of the newspaper results. These results would give you mathematically, in column-inches, the relative importance to each newspaper of the man of property and the man of humanity. Such an exact, scientific test I have now to record.

I introduce the two persons. First, the man of humanity: At the time the test was made, in December, 1913, he was thirty-five years of age; he was known everywhere throughout the United States, and was, with the possible exception of Jack London, the most widely known of living American writers throughout the world. At the time of the test he did not own more than a couple of hundred dollars.

Second, the man of property. He was at this time twenty-two years of age, and had done four things which had been widely heralded: First, he was born. Second, he decided to conduct some experiments in farming. Third, he decided to marry a young lady of his acquaintance. Fourth, he inherited sixty-five million dollars. Three of these things are not at all unusual; many a farmer’s boy has done them, and has not had the distinction of seeing the newspapers devote columns of space to them. But the other thing is quite unique; since the beginning of American history, no other person has ever inherited sixty-five million dollars. So it may be asserted beyond dispute that this young man’s reputation depended upon property, and nothing but property; he was the perfect specimen which the sociological scientist would require for his test—the man of property pur sang.

And now for the action of the two men. It appears that the “New York Times,” a great organ of world-capitalism, in its efforts to camouflage its true functions, had resorted to the ancient device of charity, used by the Christian Church ever since it sold out to the Emperor Constantine. Early in December of each year the “Times” publishes a list which it calls “One Hundred Neediest Cases,” and collects money for these hundred families in distress. The “Times” never goes into the question of the social system which produces these harrowing cases, nor does it allow anyone else to go into this question; what it does is to present the hundred victims of the system with enough money to preserve them until the following December, so that they may again enter into competition for mention in the list, and have their miseries exploited by the “Times.”

In addition to this, the “Times” publishes every Sunday an illustrated supplement of pictures to entertain its variety of readers; and it happened that on the Sunday when it published the “Hundred Neediest Cases” it published also a photograph of a “recreation building” which young Mr. Vincent Astor was erecting on his country estate at a cost of one million dollars. This building was for the use of Astor and his friends; it had no place for the public. It was devoted to tennis and swimming and gymnastics; it had no place for literature, music, art, science, or religion—it was a typical product of the private property régime. So the man who represented humanity sat himself down and wrote a “Christmas letter” to the millionaire, in substance asking him how he could enjoy his Christmas, how he could be content to play in a million-dollar “recreation building,” when he had before him such positive evidence that millions of his fellow-beings were starving. This letter was picturesque, interesting and well-written; as news it was in every way “live.”

So came the first test. This “Christmas letter” to Vincent Astor was offered to every newspaper in New York City on the same date, addressed “City Editor,” special delivery. It was sent to both morning and afternoon papers. And how many published it? Just one—the New York “Call”—the Socialist paper. No other paper in New York, morning or afternoon, printed a line of it, or referred to it in any way. It was offered to every big news agency in the country. And how many handled it? Not one. Outside of New York it was published in the “Appeal to Reason,” and in one Chicago paper which happened to be edited by a personal friend of the author’s. So here you have the first verdict of the capitalist journalism of New York City; a letter written by a man of humanity represents a total news-value of precisely 0.

There the matter might have rested, the test might never have been completed, but for the fact that the millionaire disagreed with the judgment of his newspaper editors; he thought the letter of the author was important, and he answered it.

How this came to happen I have no idea. Maybe the millionaire’s conscience was touched; maybe he had ambition to be something else than a man of property pur sang. Maybe he himself wrote the answer; maybe some shrewd family lawyer wrote it; maybe his secretary or some other employe wrote it—all I know is that two or three weeks later the millionaire wrote to the author, and at the same time gave his letter to the newspapers.

The author’s letter had been, of course, an attack upon capitalism. The millionaire’s was a defense of it. And so came the second test. Every New York newspaper was offered an opportunity to publish the millionaire’s letter to the author. And how many availed themselves of the opportunity? Every one, absolutely every one! Every one published the letter, and published it entire! Most of them put it on the front page, with the millionaire’s picture; some of them added columns of interviews about it, and editorials discussing it. The New York newspapers’ idea of the news-value of a man of property was precisely one hundred per cent!

The above would have been sufficient for any sociological scientist; but, as it happened, the test was carried one stage farther yet. The author was not entirely overwhelmed by the evidence of his unimportance as compared with a millionaire; he was a Socialist, and Socialists are notoriously hard to squelch. He wrote a second letter to the millionaire, answering the millionaire’s arguments; and again he offered it to every paper and to every news agency in New York—the same ones that had spread out the millionaire’s arguments in full. And how many printed it? How many printed the whole of it? Just one—the “Call,” the Socialist paper. How many printed parts of it? And how large were these parts? Let us see.

The author’s first letter measured in newspaper columns sixty-three inches; the millionaire’s reply measured nineteen, and the author’s reply to that measured sixty-one. If it be objected that the author was claiming more than his fair share, it should be pointed out that the author was attacking an established institution, something one cannot do in a few sentences. On the other hand, the most foolish person can reply, “I don’t agree with you”—and claim the virtue of brevity. Also, be it noted that the question here is not what the author claimed, but what he got. Here is a table showing what he got, in column inches, from the leading morning papers of New York:

Let it be noted that the above takes no account of headlines, which were all big for the millionaire and small for the author; it does not include editorials, interviews and photographs, nor does it reckon the advantage of first-page position.

In order to make the significance of the figures quite clear, let them be reduced to percentages. Each paper had 124 author-inches offered to it, and 19 millionaire-inches. To begin with the “Times”: this paper printed all the millionaire inches—also a few extra which it hunted up for itself; it printed none at all of the author-inches. Hence we see that, to put it mathematically, the “Times” considers an author absolutely nothing in comparison with a millionaire. Exactly the same is true of the “Herald,” the “Press,” and the “Tribune.” The “World” printed 100 per cent of possible millionaire-inches and less than 2 per cent of possible author-inches, thus giving the millionaire more than fifty times the advantage. Similarly, the “American” favored him sixty to one. The “Call” placed the two on a par—that is to say, the “Call” printed the news.

I conclude the account of this little episode by quoting a passage from the published “Memoirs” of a wise old Chinese gentleman, Li-Hung-Chang, who happened to be a man of humanity as well as of property:

A poor man is ever at a disadvantage in matters of public concern. When he rises to speak, or writes a letter to his superiors, they ask: “Who is this fellow that offers advice?” And when it is known that he is without coin they spit their hands at him, and use his letters in the cooks’ fires. But if it be a man of wealth who would speak, or write, or denounce, even though he have the brain of a yearling dromedary, or a spine as crooked and unseemly, the whole city listens to his words and declares them wise.