The Brass Check: A Study of American JournalismSinclair, Upton
General
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism
Sinclair, Upton
Associated Press; Journalism -- United States; Press -- United States
Also it was known to the Rockefellers that at the headquarters of our
Colorado Committee I personally obtained the pledge of every man and
woman, before I allowed them to join us, that they would conform to the
rule laid down. I say this was known to the Rockefellers, because they
had spies among us; I knew perfectly well who those spies were, and
allowed one of them to think he was my friend. From first to last I had
nothing to hide, and for that reason I had nothing to fear, and this was
as well known to the newspapers as it was to the police who were probing
the explosion. Except for the first telephone call, which had come from
a desk-sergeant who knew nothing about the matter whatever, the police
did not trouble us, nor even question us; yet day by day, while that
sensation was before the public, the whole effort of the New York
newspapers was concentrated upon making it appear that Upton Sinclair
was in some way connected with the bomb-plot. Day after day there would
be circumstantial accounts of how the police and the coroner and other
officials were preparing to summon my wife and myself, and to subject us
to a “rigid examination” concerning Arthur Caron and the other victims
of the explosion. We would call up the police and the coroner and other
officials, and inform them that we were perfectly willing to be
questioned, but that we knew nothing but what we had told the public; to
which the police and the coroner and the other officials would reply:
“We have no wish to question you; that’s just newspaper talk.” All
officials understand what “newspaper talk” means; but the public doesn’t
understand, and so what the public carried away from this affair was the
general impression that my wife and I were dangerous characters. We were
too cunning to get caught, of course; but we incited obscure and
half-educated young people to make bombs and set them off, and then we
washed our hands of them and left them to their fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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