The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

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 sent in. Thus it appears that during one hundred and thirteen days of a great strike the Associated Press considered it necessary to send only two brief items—and these containing not one line about the causes of the strike, not one line about the demands of the miners, not one line about the economic significance of a ferociously bitter labor struggle! I have before me the affidavit of Thomas Cairns, president of the United Mine Workers’ West Virginia district, stating that during these sixteen months, which brought West Virginia to a state of civil war, not once did the correspondent of the Associated Press come to him for information about the strike!

And now, in 1919, there is more trouble in this district, and I pick up my morning paper and read that three thousand miners of Cabin Creek have taken up arms and are marching to battle against machine-guns. The strike has been going on for weeks, says the report; but this is the first hint I have heard of it—I who read four Associated Press newspapers, the “Los Angeles Times” and “Examiner,” and the “New York Times” and “World”!

The first point to be got clear is that in cases of big strikes the Associated Press is getting its news through its local newspaper member. I have shown that in Los Angeles it is content to co-operate with the unspeakable “Times.” In San Diego it works with the “Union,” personal organ of John D. Spreckles, the “sugar-king”; and a few years ago, when a murderous mob of bankers, lawyers and merchants was engaged in shooting, clubbing, tarring and feathering, throwing into prison, and there torturing, drugging, and starving the radicals of that city, the “San Diego Union” paid editorial tribute to the fact that the Associated Press was handling this situation to the satisfaction of the murderous mob of bankers, lawyers and merchants. The “San Diego Union,” which had done most of the inciting of this mob, stated editorially:

Great credit is due the Associated Press for the manner in which it has handled the news end of this matter.

In city after city, you will find the Associated Press thus tied up with the worst reactionary influences. In Louisville, for example, it co-operates with the “Courier-Journal,” whose serio-comic story I have told in detail. In St. Paul, Minnesota, we saw the Associated Press misquoting Senator La Follette in a manner calculated to ruin him. It sought at first to put the blame upon its “member paper,” the “St. Paul Pioneer Press.” You recall the charges made against this paper by Walter W. Liggett, quoted on page 268. Note that the Associated Press did not cease taking its news through a paper which had failed to resent such grave charges as these.

I cannot find that the “A. P.” ever did raise this issue with one of its member-papers. An interesting light is thrown on this very important subject by a controversy between the “Sacramento Bee” and the “San Francisco Star.” The “Bee” printed a long defense of the Associated Press, and the “Star” discussed it as follows:

Another damaging admission is that the Associated Press doesn’t care a picayune what manner of pirates buy a newspaper that has an Associated Press franchise. It mentions the case of the “San Francisco Globe,” which bought the special privilege news service of the “Post” when it bought the name of that paper. The franchise went with the name to a band of industrial pirates who wanted a special privilege news service to supplement their special privilege traction service in this city.

The “San Francisco Star” is a weekly, and so its editor does not need to be afraid of the Associated Press. I have a letter written by this editor, James H. Barry, to Prof. Ross of the University of Wisconsin:

You wish to know my “confidential opinion as to the honesty of the Associated Press.” My opinion, not confidential, is that it is the damndest, meanest monopoly on the face of the earth—the wet-nurse for all other monopolies. It lies by day, it lies by night, and it lies for the very lust of lying. Its news-gatherers, I sincerely believe, only obey orders.

In great labor centers, from which strike-news comes, you find this situation: that even if the Associated Press wished to deal with a fair newspaper, there is no fair newspaper to deal with. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, in Paterson, New Jersey, in Trinidad, Colorado, in Bisbee, Arizona, the newspapers are owned by the local industrial magnates and their financial and political henchmen. In Montana the Anaconda Mining Company, a Rockefeller concern, owns or controls practically every newspaper in the state; so of course the Associated Press sends no fair labor news from Montana. I asked Ex-Governor Hunt of Arizona how the Associated Press had treated him while he was giving the miners a square deal during the big copper strike. He answered: “They were so unfair that I quit dealing with them at all.” I said: “What paper in your state capital do they work with?” He answered: “There are only two—one owned by a millionaire land-speculator, the other owned by the ‘Ray’!” (The “Ray” is a copper company, one of the most powerful and most corrupt.) Said Ex-Governor Hunt: “I proposed a law in Arizona requiring that papers should carry the line: ‘This paper owned by the “Ray,” or the “Copper Queen,” or whatever the case might be.’” No wonder this ex-governor is an “ex”!

He comes to see me, and brings a clipping from the “Messenger,” an independent weekly of his state capital. It appears that the wealthy bandits of the copper companies, who two years ago seized over a thousand miners and deported them from their homes, are now being tried for their crime. Says the “Messenger”:

Associated Press reports from Bisbee and Douglas relative to the preliminary trial of alleged kidnappers are enough to condemn that service forever. It was bad enough to withhold service on July 12, 1917, the day of deportation, but the present stuff—

And then the “Messenger” goes on to explain in detail what is happening; the reporters of the local, copper-owned dailies of Bisbee and Douglas are acting as Associated Press correspondents, and are sending out “doctored stuff” to the country. Three times during one week of the trial at Douglas the “Bisbee Review” has had to apologize and correct statements attributed to a woman witness; these errors, “telegraphed broadcast” by the Associated Press, have been corrected “only by local mention”!

And here is the Central Trades Council of Tucson adopting a resolution, denouncing the “brazen one-sidedness” of the Associated Press reports of the trial:

Resolved, That to date we have not seen a single article that did not feature some silly remark made by some foreigner or illiterate witness for the state, and the vital news parts omitted.

In the case of the Colorado coal-strike, I have shown you what the Associated Press did in New York and in Denver. What was it doing meantime in the actual strike-field? In Walsenburg the publisher was “Jeff” Farr, whiskey-magnate, coal company sheriff and organizer of assassination, popularly known as the “King of Huerfano County.” In Trinidad there were two dailies owned by the chief attorney of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, whose son took command of one of the gunmen armies, and seized a United States mail-train to transport them. The “A. P.” day man was the editor of the evening paper; the “A. P.” night man was the telegraph-editor of the morning paper! Max Eastman tells me of interviewing one of them—introducing himself as a Chautauqua lecturer, desirous of getting the truth about the strike. The editor was in a mood of frankness, and said:

There’s no use coming to me for the truth. A man in my position naturally gets only one side, the operators’ side.

And, of course, he sent out that side. During the latter part of the strike the “Rocky Mountain News” of Denver sent its own correspondent to the field, and one of the editors told me of a conversation with the Associated Press representative in Denver. Said the latter, “Why do you keep a man down there?” Said the editor, “Because you people refuse to send me the news.” And it was exactly the same during a strike in another part of the state, the “Northern field,” where several score labor leaders were thrown into jail, but when it came to trial were nearly all acquitted. George Creel writes: “The Associated Press furnished the newspapers with accounts of these cases, but lost interest when the verdicts were returned.”

As I write, there is a great steel strike, and from the “Panhandle” of West Virginia comes the following special dispatch to the “New York Call”:

The capitalist press representatives have so falsely reported the existing strike conditions that steel strike leaders here now refuse to make any statements at all to them. Several times, after having promised to write, without alterations, the reports which the strike leaders had given, the Associated Press representatives deliberately reversed the statements.

So much for steel. And now hear what Charles Edward Russell has to say (Pearson’s for April, 1914) concerning the conduct of the Associated Press in the Calumet copper-strike. In a letter to me he writes:

I may say that the Associated Press made a loud squeal on the story and blacklisted me for some years afterward, so you will see that the subject is one on which they are sensitive.

I quote from the article, “The Associated Press and Calumet”:

Some of the richest copper deposits in the world are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, most of them purporting to be owned or controlled by a great corporation called the Calumet and Hecla. This is a mining company that is also the holding concern for seventeen other mining companies, owns a railroad or two, some smelting works, some other profit-making devices and an organized system of politics the equal of any.

It is one of the richest and most profitable enterprises in the world. Except for a few railroads like those of Mr. Hill, the Calumet and Hecla has made more money on a smaller investment than any other corporation that ever existed. In the sixteen years ending with 1912 the smallest annual dividend has been 80 per cent, and in other years it has been as much as 400 per cent.

As these dividends were declared upon a capital stock less than half of which was ever paid for, a nominal dividend of 400 per cent was an actual dividend of 800 per cent.

On every dollar ever invested in this company more than one hundred dollars have been paid in dividends, while millions of dollars of other profits have been diverted to the purchase of additional profit-making ventures. With a par value of $25.00 on which only $12.00 was paid in, the shares have now a value of $540.00 each.

This gigantic cornucopia is owned by the Shaws, Agassizs and Higginsons, leading families of Boston; and besides their dividends, they pay themselves enormous salaries as officers and directors of Calumet and Hecla, and of the seventeen subsidiary companies. Says Russell:

The Calumet and Hecla barony comprises one hundred and seventeen miles. There is every reason to believe that it occupies and has occupied this land without rightful title, and all the vast wealth it has taken therefrom really belongs to the people of the United States.

There is also good reason to believe that it has consistently violated its charter, and is now engaged in doing so every day and every hour of every day: a fact that will not in the least astonish you when you come to learn of some of its other activities, but that adds a rarely piquant taste to the pious exclamations of its attorneys on the subject of law-breaking.

And now, what of the men who worked for these copper barons? They were ill-paid and ill-treated, badly housed, worked for long hours at peril of life and limb; they lived in a community absolutely dominated by their masters; there was no other industry or source of wealth, and the politicians and the courts, the newspapers and the churches—everything was owned by “Copper.” It is the old, sickening story of the overthrow 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:

There are sheafs of such affidavits relating the manner in which the armed guards proceeded to obey the orders to “start something.” The results of their efforts to obey their orders was a reign of terror throughout the strike zone. Men, women and children were shot at, beaten, ridden down by armed guards, or pursued along the highways. At the road intersections shacks were erected, from the windows of which the guards could command every house in a village, and the inmates could not stir out of their dwellings except under the watchful eyes of the gunmen and the muzzles of rifles.

It might be worth while to summarize Russell’s narrative of the outcome of this last matter. The leader of the mob was an eminent Bostonian, James MacNaughton, vice-president and general manager of “Calumet and Hecla.” When he was accused, the Associated Press took the trouble to send out a dispatch explaining that he could not possibly have been the man, because of an elaborate and complicated alibi—which alibi was later proven to prove nothing. Mr. MacNaughton was never prosecuted in this matter; nor was the Associated Press prosecuted—except by Charles Edward Russell. We may believe the statement in Russell’s letter, that “the Associated Press made a loud squeal on the story!” I would ask: Why did they not prosecute Russell? Why is it that the general manager of the Associated Press makes nothing but a “loud squeal”? Why does he content himself with easy victories before church forums and chambers of commerce banquets? Why does he not come into court and vindicate his honor in an open contest before a jury?

I have been privileged to examine a mass of material, some three or four million printed and typewritten words, the evidence collected for the defense of Max Eastman and Art Young, when they were indicted for criminal libel in November, 1913, at the instance of the Associated Press. These three or four million printed and typewritten words enable us to enter the offices of the Associated Press, and to watch its work hour by hour. They enable us to study the process whereby the public opinion of America is “poisoned at the source.”

Three hundred miles from our national capital, in the lonely mountains of West Virginia, exists an empire of coal, governed in all respects as Russia was governed in the days of the Tsardom. I take up two printed volumes of testimony given before the investigating committee of the United States Senate, a total of 2,114 closely printed pages; I turn these pages at random, and pick out a few heads that will give you glimpses of how things are managed by the coal barons of West Virginia: “Check weighmen guaranteed by law, but not allowed to the miners.” “Men paid in scrip which they could not cash.” “Men discharged and put out of their houses, as fast as they talked unionism.” “Mail burned by store manager.” “Law of West Virginia relieves coal owners from liability for injuries in the mine, no matter how they occur.” “Independent store-keeper refused his goods at the express office which was on company grounds.” “Men not allowed to approach postoffice on company property.” “Provost Marshal imprisoned nine men without trial.” “No mine guard has ever been tried for participating in any battle.” “Machine-guns and guards turned on peaceful crowd coming from meeting.”

In “King Coal” I have portrayed the conditions in Colorado. In West Virginia conditions were in all respects the same, and for the same reason. When the sixteen months’ strike in West Virginia had been smashed, the same mine guards, with the same rifles and machine-guns, were shipped to Colorado, and under the direction of the same Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency they smashed the fourteen months’ strike in Colorado. And both in West Virginia and Colorado the same Associated Press was made use of to send to the country the same misrepresentations and suppressions of truth.

In the “Independent” for May 15, 1913, after the West Virginia strike had lasted more than a year, there appeared an article by Mrs. Fremont Older, describing the farcical military trial of some union officials at Paint Creek Junction. Mrs. Older, the only impartial person who was able to get into this court-room, made the statement: “The Provost Marshal was not only the ruling officer of Paint Creek Junction; he was the Associated Press correspondent. He had the divine gift for creating darkness.” In the next issue of the “Independent” appeared a letter from the assistant general manager of the Associated Press, declaring: “The Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press correspondent, and never had been.”

Nevertheless, this rumor would not down, and in the “Masses” for July, 1913, appeared a cartoon: “Poisoned at the Source,” representing the president of the Associated Press engaged in pouring the contents of a bottle labeled “Lies” into a reservoir labeled “Public Opinion.” Accompanying the cartoon was an editorial, one sentence of which read: “The representative of the Associated Press was an officer in that military tribunal that hounded the Paint Creek miners into the penitentiary in violation of their constitutional liberties.” The answer of the Associated Press to this was the indictment for criminal libel of Max Eastman and Art Young. The “Masses,” presumably by advice of counsel, did not discuss the case, and continued to maintain silence, even after the case was dropped. The facts are here made public for the first time—possibly because in preparing this book I have not taken the trouble to consult counsel. Here are certain facts which the public should have; and if I have to hand them to the public through the bars of a jail, it will not be the first time that has happened in history.

Was the Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia a correspondent of the Associated Press? He was, or he was not—according to whether you care about truth or technicality.

You are, doubtless, a loyal American. You believe in the constitution and laws of your country, and you do not understand just what it meant to be Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia during the coal strike of 1912–13. If you think that it meant to be a public official, performing a public service in the interest of the public, you are naïve. To have had anything to do with the West Virginia State Militia during that strike meant to be a creature of the mine operators, in the pay of the mine operators, owned body and soul by the mine operators. It meant that you were setting aside, not merely the laws of the state of West Virginia, but the Constitution of the United States. It meant that you were beating and flogging and shooting strikers, kicking their wives and children out of their homes to freeze in the mountain snows, turning machine-guns upon their tent-colonies, throwing their leaders into jail without trial, and torturing them there for months on end. It meant this, whether you were the lowest Baldwin-Felts mine-guard taken out of a city slum and put into the militia uniform; or whether you were Capt. Lester, an official of militia, who testified under oath before the Senate committee that it was not his business to know if miners had a legal right to organize or not—he was sent there to prevent their organizing, and he did what he was sent there to do.

And now, just what was the relationship of the Associated Press to this prostituted State Militia? Was the Provost Marshal of Militia the Associated Press correspondent in this field? He was, or he was not—according as you care about truth or technicality.

The Associated Press correspondent at Charleston, who covered all the strike, and who had been officially appointed and acknowledged, was a man named Cal Young, and he had his office in the office, or connected with the office, of the Adjt. General of Militia. This Cal Young had an intimate friend by the name of John C. Bond, who was Provost Marshal of Militia, and also was correspondent for several newspapers. Cal Young did not trouble himself to travel about in the strike field, which was widely scattered, occupying a number of mountain valleys. Bond, however, was compelled by his militia duties to travel to the scene of all troubles; therefore Bond and Young had an arrangement whereby Bond telephoned news from wherever he was, and Young sent this news, not only over the Associated Press wire, but to the papers which Bond represented.

The above was stated from first-hand positive knowledge by Jesse Sullivan at the State House to an attorney for whom I can vouch. Also it was sworn to by W. Bruce Reid, reporter for the “Charleston Gazette” and the “Kanawha Citizen.” Reid swore that he knew Young intimately; that Young maintained his offices in the Adjt. General’s office without charge; that Young from this office transmitted orders for the movements of the State Militia, and for these services was paid out of the Governor’s contingent fund; that he acted as official reporter for the state administration; that anyone who called at the State House for news was referred by the Governor and the Adjt. General to Young; that Young received news of military doings and of strike incidents from J. C. Bond, who was a printing clerk in the Secretary of State’s office, and also captain and paymaster of militia; that Bond was made Provost Marshal, with absolute authority over the strike territory, and tried a number of citizens, ninety-eight in all, by military tribunal; that Bond had a regular arrangement with Young whereby he furnished Young with news reports; and that Young had an understanding with the military department whereby all news was given out through him.

Reid further testified that he was instructed by the militia authorities to distort news, and also to write editorials for his paper, supporting the military policy; that when he refused to do this, the editors of his paper were called up and practically instructed to write such editorials, and that they did this; that furthermore Reid was threatened if he failed to distort news as directed; that all these things were well known to Young, correspondent of the Associated Press; that Young was “extremely bitter against the miners’ cause”; that he continually so expressed himself before Reid; that a correspondent of the “Baltimore Sun,” who came to Charleston, was so impressed with Young’s prejudice that he went into the field for himself, and wrote an entirely different account of the events. It was known that Young, while Associated Press representative, was seeking employment from the state administration, and he had since obtained such employment.

So much for outside evidence. And now let us hear from Young himself. The attorney sent by the “Masses” called upon Cal Young, who told him that after the strike he had been discharged from the Associated Press by W. H. French, manager of the Pittsburgh division, and that French had stated to him that the reason was that Fremont Older and others had made complaint concerning the news that the Associated Press had furnished from West Virginia. Young admitted practically everything as stated by Reid: his desk in the Adjt. General’s office, his relations with the administration, and his arrangement with Bond, whereby Bond furnished him regularly and continually with news from the field. I note three sentences from the investigator’s report:

Young also stated that before martial law he got most of his information from the Sheriff or Deputy Sheriff, or from telegraph operators who were in the employ of the railroad company or the mine owners. He stated that although he went up the Creek a few times, he obtained most of the information through official reports. Young stated that through the Senatorial investigation he had to cover other territory and that during that time Bond covered the investigation for the A. P.

Such are the facts. I have taken the trouble to give them at length, so that you may judge for yourself. And in the light of these facts, what do you think of the letter published in the “Independent” over the signature of Frederick Roy Martin, assistant General Manager of the Associated Press? Do you think that Mr. Martin was entirely ingenuous when he stated: “The Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press correspondent, and never had been”?

W. H. French, manager of the Pittsburgh division of the Associated Press, was subpoenaed by the “Masses” editors, and gave his deposition in advance of the expected trial. It was a trial all in itself, and the stenographic record of it lies before me. For the light it throws on Mr. French’s sincerity, let it be noted that he swore he could remember nothing whatever of his conversation with Cal Young when he discharged Young from the employ of the Associated Press. The discharge had taken place less than a year previously, and Mr. French had taken a special trip from Pittsburgh to Charleston, West Virginia, to attend to the matter. But he could not remember why he had discharged Young, nor what he had said to Young. He could not remember having mentioned Fremont Older’s complaints. He vaguely thought that he had mentioned Bond, but he couldn’t be sure in what connection he had mentioned Bond!

Mr. French explained in detail the methods by which the Associated Press handled its news, and the principles upon which he and his subordinates “edited” it. He produced a bulky mass of typewritten sheets, containing all the dispatches dealing with the West Virginia strike sent out by the Associated Press during sixteen months. Mr. French swore that this record was complete; and you will readily understand that in studying the reports it is of the utmost importance whether Mr. French was telling the truth. If the Associated Press sends out hundreds of dispatches about a strike, and if, before such dispatches are offered in evidence, they are carefully gone over and those which are flagrantly untrue and damaging to the reputation of the Associated Press are extracted and destroyed—then obviously the Associated Press has poisoned the evidence of the trial at the source.

Can I say that the officials of the Associated Press did thus poison the evidence by which they endeavored to send Max Eastman and Art Young to the penitentiary? No, I cannot say that. All I can say is, that Mr. French submitted this record under oath, as the original record, and a correct and complete record, and testified under oath that there was no possibility of its being incorrect or incomplete. Also I can say that an investigation made in the bound files of two Associated Press newspapers revealed the fact that these papers had published dispatches, marked as sent by the Associated Press, which did not appear in the correct and complete record offered under oath by the Associated Press. Such a dispatch may be found in the “Los Angeles Times,” September 9, 1912, marked “(by A. P. Night Wire to the Times).” Another such dispatch may be found in the “Nashville American,” September 22, 1912, marked “(By Associated Press).”

Let us take the five hundred and thirty-seven exhibits that the Associated Press did submit. By means of them we are enabled to enter the Associated Press’ Pittsburgh office and watch step by step the process of poisoning the news at the source. Mr. French, it appears, was not satisfied with the bitterly prejudiced reports which his correspondent, Young, and Young’s partner, Bond, sent in to him. He found it necessary to go over their dispatches, and to put in still more poison. The dispatches, as submitted in evidence, contained numerous pencil-marks, excisions and revisions; and all these were initialed, so that it was possible to tell whether Mr. French or one of his assistants had done the work.

Mr. French, under cross examination, explained exactly upon what principles this “editing” had been done. Thus there had been cut out a sentence: “That mine-guards have resorted to unlawful practice is generally conceded.” Mr. French explained that this sentence was editorial opinion; the dispatch did not say who conceded it. Mr. French declared that he used this same system of editing all through the dispatches. But in the same dispatch his attention was called to the sentence: “Contrary to expectations, the miners did not go to the meeting armed with rifles.” This clearly prejudiced sentence stayed in the dispatch—in spite of the fact that the dispatch did not reveal whose expectations were referred to! And Mr. French testified that such cutting out of a sentence favorable to the miners and leaving in of a sentence injurious to the miners did not in his judgment render the dispatch unfair. Mr. French repeated the words twice: “I do not say unfair. I do not say unfair.” So we are provided with a precise measure of the sense of fairness of an Associated Press manager in charge of strike-news!

In one case the story of an ambush by miners came to the Pittsburgh office, with the qualification: “According to the story which reached here this afternoon.” These words were cut out—the effect of the alteration being to make a rumor into a statement of fact. Mr. French could give no justification for this proceeding. From another dispatch the sentence had been cut: “The workers were ready to stick to the last.” That seemed to Mr. French a superfluous sentence! Again he had altered a dispatch which interviewed the President of the United Mine Workers of America. “He declared that the miners of West Virginia were groaning under oppressive methods.” Mr. French’s office had altered it to read that the miners had been groaning; and he could see no difference in this change of tense!

I have taken the trouble myself to study the dispatches; and how I wish that I might have Mr. French upon the witness-stand! I would like to go through the five hundred and thirty-seven dispatches and point out how utterly false is his claim that hearsays and opinions were not admitted. There are literally hundreds of hearsays and opinions! For example, the miners are threatening trouble, and “it is thought that on account of this situation the martial law zone may have to be extended.” Again: “In some quarters the opinion was expressed that the miners had retired into the mountains.” Again: “All the prisoners, it was reported, have been removed from box-cars and were being made as comfortable as possible.” Again: “This afternoon there was considerable shooting at Holly Grove. It is said that men employed in the mines were accosted by strikers.” Again: “Armed miners have taken possession of the strike territory, according to reports.” Such hearsays and opinions as this you find in every other dispatch. Certain testimony is introduced before a commission of the Governor of the State, and the Pittsburgh office of the Associated Press is so in love with hearsays and opinions that it takes some of the evidence introduced and deliberately turns it into hearsay and opinion! I quote one paragraph, first as it was sent in by the correspondent in the field, and second as it was altered in the Pittsburgh office:

The evidence introduced all tends to show that the prices at the company stores have been much higher than at independent stores, and that there had been no trouble until the mine-guards were brought into the district.

According to the miners the prices at the company stores have been much higher than at independent stores. They say there would have been no trouble if the mine-guards had not been brought into the district.

On November 20, 1912, the Charleston correspondent sent a long dispatch about the fighting, and whole paragraphs of this dispatch were cut out in the Pittsburgh office. I note that in these paragraphs were many hearsays and opinions; but I note that Mr. French’s assistants were not content to cut out the hearsays and opinions—they also cut out the news. Here, for example, is one paragraph that never saw the light:

During the first period of military control the sympathy, it is claimed of a majority of the West Virginians, was with the miners. Since that time many of the union miners have left this section, taking their families into other coal fields. Then, it is alleged, the contention was the removal of the mine-guard system maintained by the coal operators, which had become obnoxious to the miners.

Or these two sentences, cut from the same dispatch:

Many strike-breakers imported into the trouble zone have deserted. Today hundreds of these men reached this city from the mining district and walked the streets.

It is especially interesting to note that the date of the dispatch from which the above two paragraphs were cut corresponds exactly with a date when Mr. French, according to his own testimony, sent a special correspondent to Charleston to report the news more fully. He sent a special man, and when this special man sent news favorable to the miners, Mr. French or his assistants sliced out whole chunks from his dispatches—practically everything giving the miners’ side!

On September 25, 1912, the Associated Press correspondent in Charleston was moved by some unaccountable impulse to tell the world the precise mechanism of the blacklist which the companies maintained—while insisting, of course, that they had never heard of a blacklist. Says the dispatch:

This it was shown was accomplished through a personal description of a miner on the back of house leases. If the miner was dismissed as undesirable other operators were given a copy of the description.

But was this dangerous information allowed to go out to the world? It was not!

Or again, take the dispatch of February 10, 1913, which tells how, whenever the militiamen came after the strikers, the strikers would dodge trouble; they would “defeat the purpose of the authorities by quietly retiring into the mountains.” Mr. French’s office makes such a slight change; it merely cuts out one word—the word “quietly”—thus turning a joke into a military operation! Or take the night dispatch of April 22, 1913, which tells how the Governor of West Virginia made a speech to the miners’ delegates. Among other things the Governor said: “I assure you that the laboring world has no better friend in public office than myself.” The Pittsburgh office of the Associated Press cut out this incendiary sentence from the Governor’s speech!

A still more illuminating method of approaching the problem is to compare the Associated Press dispatches as they actually reached the public with the facts as developed by sworn testimony of hundreds of witnesses before the Senate committee. I have made many such comparisons; I will give one.

Among the men who testified before the Senate committee was Lee Calvin, a mine-guard of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. Calvin later made an affidavit, in the course of which he told of his experiences on board the “Bull Moose Special,” an armored train which was taken up and down the railroads of these valleys, to shoot up the homes and tent-colonies of the strikers with a machine-gun. This “Bull Moose Special” was at the disposal, not merely of the state militia and of the mine-guards, but of the mine-operators as well. Calvin tells how he was invited by Quinn Morton, the largest coal-operator in the Kanawha Valley, to join a shooting party on the night of February 7, 1913. There were two or three dozen men with several boxes of guns; also the machine-gun. I quote from an affidavit by Calvin:

When we got near Holly Grove the brakeman commenced turning down the lights. When the engineer came in front of Holly Grove he gave two short blasts from the whistle. I was leaning out of the window and they commenced firing out of the baggage car. Flashes, lights, reports and cracks from the machine-gun took me all at once, and the train was a long stream of fire which commenced coming out of the Gatling gun. In about twenty or thirty seconds there came a flash here and there from the tents. About four came from the tents altogether, and they were about 100 feet apart, it would seem to me. No shots had been fired from the tents prior to the time the shots were fired from the train.

Do not imagine that these incidents rest upon the credibility of Lee Calvin alone. They were sworn to by numerous persons of all classes. Mr. Quinn Morton himself admitted before the Senate committee that he had called up the superintendent of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and ordered the “Bull Moose Special” for that night; also that he had gone to a hardware store and purchased thirty Springfield rifles and taken them in a taxi-cab to the train. He objected to the train being referred to as “his” train—explaining that by the objection he meant that he did not own the train!

Also there was introduced the evidence of many persons who happened to be at the muzzle-end of Mr. Morton’s thirty Springfield rifles: for example, Mrs. Estep, wife of a miner in Holly Grove:

Senator Kenyon: “Had there been any disorder in the settlement that night? Had you heard any shooting before that time?”

Mrs. Estep: “No, sir.”

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: