My authority is a gentleman who a few years ago was managing editor of the “Los Angeles Herald.” The “Herald” was then a morning paper, a rival of the “Times,” and was controlled and practically owned by the Farmers’ & Merchants’ National Bank of Los Angeles. The president of this institution is the biggest banker on the coast, and was engaged, with the connivance of the newspapers, in unloading upon the city for two and a half million dollars a water company which was practically worthless. It was found that the “Herald” was not paying, and the banker decided to reduce the price from five cents to two cents. But Otis of the “Times” got wind of it, and notified the banker that if he lowered the price of the “Herald,” the “Times” would at once open up on the water company swindle. “Oh, very well, General,” replied the banker. “If that’s the way you feel about it, we’ll forget it.” So the price of the “Herald” stayed up, and the paper lost money, and finally Otis bought it for a song, ran it for a while in pretended rivalry to the “Times,” and then sold it at a profit, upon condition that it be made an evening paper, so that it should not interfere with the “Times.” Reading this, you will not be surprised to learn that the particular page upon which appeared the rhapsody to “My Lady Poverty” bears the name of the particular “Times” editor who told me: “It has been so long since I have written anything that I believe, that I don’t think I would know the sensation!” CHAPTER XXXIV THE DAILY CAT-AND-DOG FIGHT There are other newspapers published in this “Roof-garden of the World.” There is the Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” which publishes the editorials of Arthur Brisbane, and follows, somewhat haltingly, the Hearst propaganda for government ownership. But so far as its local policy is concerned, it is entirely commercial, its fervors are for the local industry, of “boosting.” It has an especially annoying habit of disguising its advertisements so as to trap you into reading them as news. You will be informed in headlines of a notable event in local history, and when you read, you learn that Johnnie Jones, of 2249 S. Peanut Street, sold all his chickens within two hours by using “Examiner Want Ads.” Again, you read a headline about an aviator just returned from France, and what you learn about him is that Jones & Co. have put out twenty thousand pictures of him in twenty thousand boxes of “Frizzlies.” “This confection is especially delicious,” says our naïve “Examiner.” And now, as I write, some editor has an inspiration, and day after day I am confronted with an illustrated article: “_Aspirants to Shapely Limbs Title_. Who owns the most beautiful limbs on the stage? Look them over.”