The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

In concluding this, the most important and most dangerous book I have ever written, I have a personal word to leave with the reader. I have here attacked the most powerful interests in America, and it seems to me hardly conceivable that they will permit the attack to go out to the world, to be circulated among the general public, without some attempt at interference.

What will they do? I cannot say. There are things on every page of this book which are libelous unless they are true. If I am brought into court and required to prove them, I may be facing a judge who has been appointed by the interests I have exposed, a jury which has been selected by the interests I have exposed, a prosecuting attorney who is looking to these interests for his campaign-funds and his publicity at the next election. The trial will be conducted on this simple basis—that everything favorable to me is kept from the public, and everything that can be made to seem unfavorable to me is sent by telegraph and cable all over the world.

I would not mind losing what little property I own in the world; I would not mind going to jail for this book. There are only two things I would mind—first, having the book barred from circulation, and second, being discredited in the eyes of those I seek to influence in favor of Social Justice. So in this, the last word I may be able to get to you on the subject, I wish to warn you of one crucial fact, which is this:

Our police and prosecuting authorities, our political machines and Big Business interests, are many of them practiced in the art of producing in court whatever testimony may be required in an emergency. There are few traction interests or other public service corporations in America which do not regularly employ perjured witnesses in case of need; and those which have given up the custom have done so merely because they have got the courts and the jury system so completely in their hands that they no longer care what evidence is introduced against them. We have seen Tom Mooney held in jail for three years, entirely upon the basis of perjured testimony. Even the trial judge has written that he is satisfied that Tom Mooney is innocent—but still Tom Mooney stays in jail!

I am doing what I can to get this book to the people. I intend to go on doing what I can to that end. Meantime I say to you, my readers, what I said to my wife when I went out to Colorado on behalf of the coal-strikers: “Whatever you read about me, don’t worry. If there is any scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in Denver.”

That is the way Big Business fights all over America.

The above was written in August. In November I am reading the page proofs of the book, and “Big Business” steps forward to prove me a prophet. A plot is laid against me, so wanton and so utterly without basis of truth that no less than an assassin could have planned it. I escaped—but by a margin so narrow that it is unpleasant to think about it. Literally by a minute or two of time I missed having printed on the front page of every big newspaper in America convincing evidence that I am a secret German conspirator, contriving underhand plots for the undermining of my country! My wife remarks: “I have been watching the radical movement for seven or eight years, and I have heard much about ‘frame-ups.’ I always thought it was foolish talk, cheap melodrama; but now I know that the ‘frame-up’ is a real thing, and it has changed my whole view of the class struggle.”

I have mentioned on page 399 how I made a speech before the City Club of Los Angeles, exposing the dishonesty of the “Los Angeles Times,” whereupon the “Times” opened up a furious attack upon me, demanding that I should be put in jail. I have quoted one sample of its ravings. Every day or so for a week it printed similar abuse, and it continues the attack, both editorially and in its news columns. I have stated publicly in the “Appeal to Reason” that I am collecting evidence against the “Times,” and preparing a book exposing it; so the “Times” proclaims me as “the trumpet of Bolshevism,” and will be satisfied with nothing short of a life sentence for me.

There is in Los Angeles a returned soldiers’ paper, the “Dugout.” The editor, Sydney R. Flowers, is an American citizen who was in South Africa at the outbreak of the war, and was so anxious to fight the Kaiser that he left his wife and baby and enlisted. Invalided to England, he tried again to enlist, and finally enlisted in Canada, and served for three years in Belgium and France. He was twice wounded and once gassed, and has only one lung as a result. Returning to his home in Los Angeles with his wife and child, he found the war veterans’ organization being courted as a strike-breaking agency by the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of the city. Flowers rebelled, and started a rival organization, the Allied World War Veterans, and with the support of these veterans he started the “Dugout.” I met him, and heard him speak several times, and gave him my support to the extent of raising some money. He told me of the efforts of the “M. and M.” to bribe him, and of their plots against him; he knew, and I knew, that there were spies in his office.

There came to the office a letter from a stranger who signed himself “Paul Rightman.” The envelope bore a Chicago return address, but had been mailed in Los Angeles. It was typewritten, and the type was bad, the ribbon double, with traces of red showing here and there. “Paul” suggested to Flowers that he should send sample copies of his paper to Socialist and labor papers abroad. Flowers, who is out to prevent the next war by the spirit of international fraternity, thought this a good idea; his impulse was encouraged by a mysterious Austrian who happened into his office a few minutes after the letter arrived, and suggested to him exactly the sort of letter he should write to these foreign editors—most of whom, by a curious coincidence, happened to be in Silesia, where American troops are going!

Flowers wrote the letters and mailed them, and an hour or two after he had mailed them, two men who have been seen frequently in the offices of the “M. and M.,” called upon Flowers’ wife and terrified her by the announcement that her husband had committed a crime which would cause him to be sent to jail for life; his only chance was to drop the “Dugout,” and he had one hour in which to make his decision. Flowers was summoned by a telephone call, purporting to come from the United States District Attorney’s office. He obeyed this call, and in the hallway of the Federal Building was met by two mysterious persons who exhibited shields of authority, and informed him that he had three minutes in which to decide whether he would drop the “Dugout” or be sent to jail for life.

He refused to decide so quickly, and telephoned me for advice. I advised him to stand firm. I went to his office, and in my hearing he gave orders over the telephone for the printing of the next issue of his paper. In less than one hour after he had given that order, someone, identity unknown, came to the United States Attorney with “definite” information that Flowers was in relation with enemy publications abroad, and a search warrant was issued and served. I happened to be present in the office of the “Dugout” and witnessed the events, and can testify that the Federal agents, in defiance of the law, refused to permit Flowers to read the search warrant; that they held him against his will in violation of the law; that they raided the office of the Allied World War Veterans, which they had been given no authority to enter; and finally that they left the place a wreck.

Next morning there appeared in the “Los Angeles Times” a front page two-column story about the uncovering of a nest of treason. Among other things, it was stated that Flowers had been publishing seditious material before the armistice, and had been warned by the Federal authorities and forced to change his tone; the fact being that at this time Flowers was in the trenches in France, and did not start the publication of the “Dugout” until four or five months after the armistice!

I have said that the raid was brutally conducted. I might mention that I protested to one of the Federal agents against the unnecessary rowdyism, and this man remarked concerning the other man, his chief: “He’s a rough-neck. I don’t believe in rough-house business myself, there’s no sense at all in it.” Also I might mention that I brought two assistant U. S. Attorneys to the scene, and they arrived five minutes after their agents had left, and admitted to me that the proceedings were wholly unwarranted; one of them called up Flowers’ home and very angrily ordered the agents to desist from the search they were making of that place. But next morning the “Los Angeles Times” reported:

The government agents disturbed no property in the office, simply carrying away the papers they desired. After the inspectors had gone, witnesses say that certain known followers of Flowers took possession of the offices, tore down an American flag which was on the wall, threw it on the floor, and generally wrecked the place. Then they sent for a “Los Angeles Examiner” photographer to make a photograph of the offices, with the apparent desire to have the publication of the photograph give the impression that the Federal officers had desecrated the flag and destroyed the office property.

Prior to this episode I had been too busy with my own writings to have even read a copy of the “Dugout” through. But I knew the record of Flowers in the war, and I knew his purpose since the war, and when I saw this plot to destroy his magazine, I made up my mind to stand back of him. I engaged a lawyer for him, and I sent long telegrams about the case to the “Appeal to Reason” and other Socialist papers over the country. So the masters of Los Angeles decided to get me in the same net with Flowers.

There came to Flowers’ office a second letter signed by the mysterious “Paul.” This letter was written on the same bad typewriter, with a double ribbon showing traces of red. But this time the return address on the envelope was not “Paul Rightman, Chicago, Illinois”; this time it was “Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, California!”

Flowers called me on the ’phone, and said; “Did you mail me a letter yesterday?” I answered, “No, I haven’t written you any letter.” “Well,” said Flowers, “here is a letter with your name on the envelope. Evidently somebody wants it to appear that you are writing me letters signed with an assumed name.” “What is in the letter?” I asked, and Flowers started to read it to me over the ’phone. It was a letter of violent denunciation of the government, full of the most venomously treasonable sentiments, and offering to supply Flowers with more names of papers in Germany with which he might correspond. I waited to hear only about half of it, then I cried: “Get that letter out of your office!”

“But wait—” said Flowers.

“Don’t wait for anything,” I insisted. “Drop what you are doing and take that letter to my lawyer as quickly as you can run.”

Flowers promised me he would do that, and I hung up the receiver. Two or three minutes after he left his office with the letter in his pocket there were two agents of the District Attorney’s office of Los Angeles County looking for him at his office. When he returned there were four of them on hand, and they held him up and proceeded to make another raid. The man in charge, I might mention, was C. E. Sebastian, once mayor of the city, prosecuted for a sexual crime, kicked out of office by the people, and now working as a detective for the District Attorney’s office!

The first thing this man did was to examine all Flowers’ letters—letters on his desk, letters in the drawers of his desk, letters in his pockets. There were some hundred and fifty letters altogether, and they went over them all several times, studying the return addresses on the envelopes. They spent something like an hour and a half at it, and their balked anger was comically evident. In their whispered consultations Flowers heard them mention my name several times, and once he heard Sebastian say: “He’s a slick one.”

Flowers was haled before the Grand Jury, indicted under the Criminal Syndicalism law, and thrown into jail at once. The authorities fixed the bail at fifteen thousand dollars, which they hoped would be prohibitive, and denied Flowers the right to see his counsel that night. They have taken every scrap of paper belonging to the magazine. They have frightened off one printer and raided another, and so they think they have smashed the “Dugout.”

Come to my lawyer’s office for a minute and examine this mysterious “Paul” letter. It is a long letter, very abusive and stupid, and I won’t waste space on it, except to point out one more of the subtle traps that were placed in it. One sentence denouncing the acts of the government agents adds the phrase: “as I stated in the papers.” It so happens that out of the half million population of Los Angeles, just one person had been quoted in the newspapers as protesting against the raid on the “Dugout,” and that one person was myself. So when this letter was published, the newspapers would be able to say: Upton Sinclair is carrying a secret correspondence with a pro-German conspirator, using the alias “Paul.” But you see, he forgets and puts his name on the envelope! And also he gives himself away in the text of the letter—he identifies himself as the mysterious conspirator!

If you have any doubt that this was the plan, you have only to look at the “Los Angeles Times” next morning; a double-column, front page story about this second raid on the “Dugout,” giving the full text of the first “Paul” letter as a part of Flowers’ “conspirings” with the enemy—and without any hint that this mysterious “Paul” might be an imaginary person! If the second “Paul” letter had been found, that too would have been published in full, and the entire country would have read a story to the effect that both letters had come from Upton Sinclair, who was thus caught red-handed in a vile German conspiracy against his country!

Maybe you are like my wife; maybe you never believed in the “frame-up.” But study this case, and see what else you can make of it. Ask yourself: How comes it that the raids of both the Federal agents and of the Los Angeles County officers are so precisely timed to the arrival of letters from a mysterious “Paul” whom nobody has ever seen? And how comes it that this mysterious “Paul” puts the name of Upton Sinclair on his envelope? If “Paul” is afraid to put his own name on the envelope, why does he not mail it without return address, as millions of letters are mailed every day? And why does he employ the words: “As I stated in the papers”—when he hasn’t stated anything whatever in the papers, and when Flowers must know he hasn’t stated anything? Is it not plain that some dark agency is here working behind the scenes, plotting to ruin Upton Sinclair, and “tipping off” both the Federal authorities and the county authorities at the precise critical moment?

What is this agency? I do not know, and my lawyer, who takes this conspiracy very seriously, will not permit me to guess in public. But he admits my right to study these “Paul” letters, and to point out a peculiar bit of internal evidence. It would seem that this dark agency which is plotting to ruin Upton Sinclair is also interested in injuring the “Los Angeles Examiner.” The first “Paul” letter offers to supply Flowers with the names of more German papers, if he will insert a request in the personal columns of the “Examiner”; and the “Times” publishes this letter in full, calling particular attention to the damaging mention of the “Examiner.” Day after day the “Times” is attacking the “Examiner,” calling it a pro-German sheet; and here is a German conspirator using this pro-German sheet as a medium for his schemes!

The above is what is done to me before this book comes out. What will be done after my enemies have actually read the book, I cannot imagine. All I can do is to repeat my warning to you. Twenty years ago old “One-hoss” Wayland told me he had made it the rule of his life never to write a letter that he would not publish in the “Appeal to Reason.” And that is the principle upon which I have always carried on my propaganda. I have no secrets. What I have to say is said once a week in a full page of the “Appeal,” and the opposition to violence and conspiracy in the class struggle which I there write in public I advocate just as vigorously in private, and all my friends know it. So, if at any time you read that a carload of dynamite bombs has been found in my home, or that I have been carrying on a cipher correspondence with some foreign assassins, or that I have poisoned my wife and eloped with a chorus girl, or that I have taken a job on the “Los Angeles Times”—please go back and read this warning, and understand what is being done to both of us.

CONCLUSION

When I first talked over this book with my wife, she gave me a bit of advice: “Give your facts first, and then call your names.” So throughout this book I have not laid much stress on the book’s title. Perhaps you are wondering just where the title comes in!

What is the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelope every week—you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the market-place, who betray the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business. And down in the counting-room below sits the “madame” who profits by your shame; unless, perchance, she is off at Palm Beach or Newport, flaunting her jewels and her feathers.

Please do not think that I am just slinging ugly words. Off and on for years I have thought about this book, and figured over the title, and what it means; I assert that the Brass Check which serves in the house of ill-fame as “the price of a woman’s shame” is, both in its moral implications and in its social effect, precisely and identically the same as the gold and silver coins and pieces of written paper that are found every week in the pay-envelopes of those who write and print and distribute capitalist publications.

The prostitution of the body is a fearful thing. The young girl, trembling with a strange emotion of which she does not know the meaning, innocent, confiding and tender, is torn from her home and started on a road to ruin and despair. The lad, seeking his mate and the fulfilment of his destiny, sees the woman of his dreams turn into a foul harpy, bearer of pestilence and death. Nature, sumptuous, magnificent, loving life, cries: “Give me children!” And the answer comes: “We give you running sores and bursting glands, rotting lips and festering noses, swollen heads and crooked joints, idiot gabblings and maniac shrieks, pistols to blow out your brains and poisons to still your agonies.” Such is the prostitution of the body.

But what of the mind? The mind is master of the body, and commands what the body shall do and what it shall become; therefore, always, the prostitution of the mind precedes and causes the prostitution of the body. Youth cries: “Life is beautiful, joyous! Give me light, that I may keep my path!” The answer comes: “Here is darkness, that you may stumble, and beat your face upon the stones!” Youth cries: “Give me Hope.” The answer comes: “Here is Cynicism.” Youth cries: “Give me understanding, that I may live in harmony with my fellow-men.” The answer comes: “Here are lies about your fellow-men, that you may hate them, that you may cheat them, that you may live among them as a wolf among wolves!” Such is the prostitution of the mind.

When I planned this book I had in mind a sub-title: “A Study of the Whore of Journalism.” A shocking sub-title; but then, I was quoting the Bible, and the Bible is the inspired word of God. It was surely one of God’s prophets who wrote this invitation to the reading of “The Brass Check”:

Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters;

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

For eighteen hundred years men have sought to probe the vision of that aged seer on the lonely isle of Patmos. Listen to his strange words:

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hands full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Now, surely, this mystery is a mystery no longer! Now we know what the seer of Patmos was foreseeing—Capitalist Journalism! And when I call upon you, class-conscious workers of hand and brain, to organize and destroy this mother of all iniquities, I do not have to depart from the language of the ancient scriptures. I say to you in the words of the prophet Ezekiel:

So the spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house.

And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house:

Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them forever.

A PRACTICAL PROGRAM

As I am about to send this book to press, I take one last look at the world around me. Half a million coal-miners have struck, a court injunction has forced the leaders to call off the strike, the miners are refusing to obey their leaders—and the newspapers of the entire United States are concealing the facts. For a week it has been impossible for me to learn, except from vague hints, what is happening in the coal-strike. And at the same time, because of false newspaper stories from Centralia, Washington, a “white terror” reigns in the entire West, and thousands of radicals are beaten, jailed, and shot.

I have pleaded and labored long to avoid a violent revolution in America; I intend to go on pleading and laboring to the last hour. I know that thousands of my readers will, like myself, be desperately anxious for something they can do. I decided to work out a plan of action; something definite, practical, and immediate.

I propose that we shall found and endow a weekly publication of truth-telling, to be known as “The National News.” This publication will carry no advertisements and no editorials. It will not be a journal of opinion, but a record of events pure and simple. It will be published on ordinary newsprint paper, and in the cheapest possible form. It will have one purpose and one only, to give to the American people once every week the truth about the world’s events. It will be strictly and absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a circulation of a million inside of a year.

Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my work, and it isn’t editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors, composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who have proven by their life-time records that they believe in fair play. By way of illustration, I will indicate my idea of such a board: Allan Benson, Alice Stone Blackwell, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Arthur Bullard, William C. Bullitt, Herbert Croly, Max Eastman, William Hard, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Hamilton Holt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Paul Kellogg, Amos Pinchot, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Ida Tarbell, Col. William Boyce Thompson, Samuel Untermyer, Frank A. Vanderlip, Oswald Garrison Villard, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

The above list is confined to men and women who live in or near New York, and who therefore could attend directors’ meetings, and not be merely “dummies.” You will note that the list contains some practical publishers and editors; it contains Socialists and anti-Socialists, pro-Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks, radicals and liberals of all shades.

In addition I would like to provide for a number of directors to be appointed by various organized groups in the country: one representative each from the Nonpartisan League, The American Federation of Labor, the National Teachers’ Federation, the Federation of Catholic Societies, the Federation of Protestant Churches, the Federation of Women’s Clubs, etc. The members thus named should not be sufficient in number to control the publication, for it is obvious in common sense that control must rest with the stockholders who have founded and made possible the paper. But these various groups should have a voice on the board, for the purpose of criticizing the publication and holding it rigidly to its declared policy, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” It should be provided that each director has the right to a column twice a year in the publication, in which to state any criticism of its policy which he may have; also that any five directors have the right once a month to insert a column pointing out what they consider failure of the paper to live up to its professed standards. There should be a directors’ meeting in New York City once every month, and all these meetings should be open to representatives of the press; the editorial staff should be present, and answer all criticisms and explain their policy. Unless I am mistaken, this would result in making “National News” in another sense; the capitalist press would be forced to discuss the paper, and to advertise it.

I picture a publication of sixty-four pages, size nine inches by twelve, with three columns of ordinary newspaper type. The paper will have special correspondents in several of the big cities, and in the principal capitals of Europe, and will publish telegraphic news from these correspondents. It will obtain the names of reliable men in cities and towns throughout America, and in case of emergency it can telegraph, say to Denver, ordering five hundred words about the Ludlow massacre, or to Spokane, ordering the truth about the Centralia fight. The editor of the “National News” will sit in a watch-tower with the world spread before him; thousands of volunteers will act as his eyes, they will send him letters or telegrams with news. He and his staff will consider it all according to one criterion: Is the truth being hidden here? Is this something the American people ought to know? If so, the editor will send a trusted man to get the story, and when he has made certain of the facts he will publish them, regardless of what is injured, the Steel Trust or the I. W. W., the Standard Oil Company or the Socialist Party—even the “National News” itself.

Our editor will not give much space to the news that all other papers publish. The big story for him will be what the other papers let alone. He will employ trained investigators, and set them to work for a week, or maybe for several months, getting the facts about the lobby of the Beef Trust in Washington, the control of our public schools in the interest of militarism, the problem of who is paying the expenses of the American railway mission in Siberia. Needless to say, the capitalist press will provide the “National News” with a complete monopoly of this sort of work. Also it will provide the paper with many deliberate falsehoods to be nailed. When this is done, groups of truth-loving people will buy these papers by the thousands, and blue-pencil and distribute them. So the “National News” will grow, and the “kept” press will be moved by the only force it recognizes—loss of money.

There are in America millions of people who could not be persuaded to read a Socialist paper, or a labor paper, or a single tax paper; but there are very few who could not be persuaded to read a paper that gives the news and proves by continuous open discussion that it really does believe in “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” I do not think I am too optimistic when I say that such a publication, with a million circulation, would change the whole tone of American public life.

What would such a paper cost? To be published without advertisements, it would have to charge a high subscription price, two dollars a year at least; and there are not enough who will subscribe to a paper at that price. It would be better for the people to go without shoes than without truth, but the people do not know this, and so continue to spend their money for shoes. If the “National News” is to succeed, the few who do realize the emergency must pay more than their share; in other words, the paper must have a subsidy, and the subsidy must be large enough to make success certain—otherwise, of course, no one ought to give anything.

I have telegraphed to publishers of liberal sympathies in the East, and present herewith the following estimate of the cost of launching and maintaining the “National News”:

Weekly cost on basis of half million circulation: Editorial, overhead and paid matter, $1,000; paper, composition and printing, $9,000; addressing and mailing, $1,000; stencil list, $1,000; postage, $1,250; telegraph 50; business and circulation, $500; total, $14,000 per week, $728,000 per year.

The above is figured, as requested, on 64 page paper, size nine by twelve. Such work has to be done in a job plant and is more expensive. By making 32 pages, size twelve by eighteen, the cost could be cut to $650,000 per year.

Income on basis of 500,000 circulation, three-fifths consisting of paid subscriptions at one dollar per year, and two-fifths of news-stand sales at five cents per copy retail, three cents wholesale: $612,000. Deficit to be made up by subsidy, $116,000. Deficit on larger size, $38,000.

On basis of one million circulation, cost in smaller size will be $1,300,000; income will be $1,224,000; deficit, $76,000. On the larger size there would be no deficit.

It is recommended that no definite policy as to advertising be fixed in preliminary stages, but the matter left to the directing board. There is a great deal of advertising, relating to books, liberal organizations and political movements, which adds to the interest of a publication; also there is some commercial advertising which would not seek to control policy. A definite declaration contained in advertising contracts, to the effect that the contract carries no expectation of editorial favors, and rigid adherence to this principle should suffice. The deficits here figured would be covered by one or two pages of advertising per week, so it is not necessary to figure a permanent deficit on the paper.

The income from subscriptions has been figured without agents’ commissions and premiums, on the understanding that the paper will rely on volunteer labor for canvassing. For the same reason the sum of one hundred thousand dollars may be set as the maximum cost of establishing the paper.

The above represents the combined views of three different persons, all qualified experts. As suggested, I will leave the questions of detail to be worked out by the governing board. It appears that we may have an honest paper if we will give one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and will pledge, say thirty thousand dollars a year for two years to cover a possible deficit.

Such are the figures. I believe that this amount of money can be raised, and I purpose to set out and raise it. To every reader of this book I say: Will you help, and if so, how much? Presumably nobody will want to cut out a page from a book, so I will not print a stock subscription blank. I ask that you write me a letter as follows:

Upton Sinclair,

Pasadena, California:

Assuming that you are able to raise the total necessary endowment fund and permanent annual subsidy for the “National News,” and that you name an organization committee satisfactory to us, we, the undersigned, agree to contribute to the project as follows:

Then give, in vertical columns, names; addresses; the number of subscribers that each signer undertakes to obtain, on a basis of not more than one dollar per year; the amount of money that each signer will contribute to the endowment fund; the amount that each will contribute each year to make up the permanent deficit.

Please do not send money for the paper. I will let you know when I reach that stage, and meantime I do not want the responsibility of keeping money. If you are enough interested in the plan to care to help in advertising it, printing circulars and soliciting pledges from people of means, I will be glad to receive such money and to account for it. If I succeed in raising the necessary sum, I will name an organization committee, and have a charter prepared, and submit the whole matter to you for endorsement.

Sometimes people criticize my books as being “destructive.” Well, here is a book with a constructive ending. Here is something to be done; something definite, practical, and immediate. Here is a challenge to every lover of truth and fair dealing in America to get busy and help create an open forum through which our people may get the truth about their affairs, and be able to settle their industrial problems without bloodshed and waste. Will you do your share?

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Two years ago I finished “The Profits of Religion,” and offered it to publishers. They said it could not be sold; no book on religion could be sold, it was the deadest subject in the world. I believed that “The Profits of Religion” could be sold, and I published it myself. In less than a year I have sold forty thousand copies, and am still selling them.

One reason, of course, is the low price. Everybody told me that a book could not be published at that price. I would report on the figures if I could, but I gave the book as a premium for my magazine, and never made any attempt to separate the two ventures. All that I can report is that since February, 1918, when I started the magazine, I have taken in for magazines and books a total of $14,269, and I have paid out for printing, postage, labor and advertising, a total of $20,995. This deficit represents some two hundred thousand magazines sent out free for propaganda purposes; the deficit was made up by donations from friends, so it cost me nothing but my time, which I gladly gave. And I am willing to give it again; I can’t expect either royalty as author or profit as publisher from “The Brass Check.” The cost of book manufacturing has increased fifty per cent in the past two years, and to make matters worse, “The Brass Check” is exactly twice as long as “The Profits of Religion.” If this book were published in the ordinary way, to be sold to book-stores, it would be priced at $2.00, postage extra; or possibly even $2.50. Sold, as it is, at $1.00, postpaid, it is an appeal to the conscience of every reader to do his part in helping to get it widely distributed.

“The Profits of Religion” was practically boycotted by the capitalist press of America. Just one newspaper, the “Chicago Daily News,” reviewed it—or rather allowed me space in which to review it myself. Just one religious publication, the “Churchman,” took the trouble to ridicule it at length. Half a dozen others sneered at it in brief paragraphs, and half a dozen newspapers did the same, and that was all the publicity the book got, except in the radical press. That this was a deliberate boycott, and not the fault of the book, is something which I leave for my readers to assert.

“The Brass Check,” of course, will be treated in the same way. If it gets any publicity, it will be only because of a libel suit or something sensational. If the great mass of the people ever hear of the book, it will be because you, the reader, do your part. If it seems to you an honest book, and one which the public ought to know, get busy. If you can afford it, order a number of copies and give them to your friends. If you can’t afford that, make up a subscription list among your friends. If you need to earn money, turn agent, and sell the book among your neighbors, in the shop where you work, on the road. If your experience is the same as mine, you will find nearly everybody distrustful of Capitalist Journalism, and willing at least to consider the truth about it.

POSTSCRIPT TO SECOND EDITION.—A letter from E. J. Costello, managing editor of the “Federated Press”:

“Let me say in this very first sentence that the ‘Brass Check’ is the most remarkable book that has ever been published in America. It is one that should, in the quickest possible manner, be placed in the hands of every American who can read, and read to every American who cannot read.

“I have been in this newspaper game for about twenty years, and I know from my own experience that your story is the absolute truth. For dozens of the incidents of ‘kept press’ rottenness I can cite counterparts. Your story of the Associated Press is without doubt the most concise exposé on record of the despicable methods which prevail in that organization.”

Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he was for seven years a staff correspondent and editor for the Associated Press. He was in charge of its Des Moines bureau at the time I was trying to get out the truth from the Colorado coal strike. One day there came through on the Associated Press wire instructions from the New York office “that henceforth Upton Sinclair must be kept out of the Denver office, and that no relations with him might be had by any employe of the Denver bureau. I remember that my operator copied the message and brought it to me, and that I determined to keep it for possible future reference.

“Within fifteen minutes after the message had been sent the chief operator at Chicago asked the Des Moines operator if he had copied it, and on being informed affirmatively he ordered the copy sent to Chicago. The operator asked me for the message, but I declined to let him have it. I placed it in a locked compartment of my desk, where it remained for several weeks, when one day it turned up missing. I have never been able to ascertain just how it disappeared, but I am quite positive that other keys fitted my desk, and that there was a reason for its disappearance. It wasn’t so many months after this occurrence that I was ordered in to the Chicago office, presumably because it was thought I would bear watching. My radical views led finally, in 1916, to my leaving the Associated Press service entirely.

“Perhaps you have not heard that it was because of his efforts to do the square thing by you in the Ammons matter that Rowsey was discharged by Superintendent Cowles upon the orders of Melville E. Stone. Yet that was what was currently reported in inner ‘A. P.’ circles at the time.”

Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he left the Associated Press with his mind made up as to what was to be his life’s work, “the establishment of a press association which would represent the people who work, as against the eight or ten millionaire publishers, who, through the ownership of Associated Press bonds, outvote nearly 2,000 other members of the organization, and absolutely control the channels through which the great public gets its poisoned news.”

The “Federated Press” had its inception at a convention of the Labor Party in Chicago, November, 1919. It is a co-operative non-profit-making organization of working class newspapers, and maintains an admirable service of vital news from all over the world. It publishes a weekly four-page bulletin, which it will mail to you for five dollars a year, and which you will find worth the price many times over. The address of the “Federated Press” is 156 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois.