Such is the newspaper plight of the Pacific coast! And now come to the Atlantic coast, and take one of our great centers of culture; take the Hub of the Universe, take Boston. The newspaper plight of Boston is beyond telling. There is the “Evening Transcript,” owned by an extremely wealthy and reactionary family, serving every wealthy and reactionary interest, and incidentally taking advertising bribes, as I shall presently show. There is the “Boston American,” owned by Hearst, and the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” also owned by Hearst. The latter is the oldest newspaper in Boston, and a year ago its circulation was cut down to a thousand copies, its publication being continued merely in order that Hearst may retain its Associated Press franchise. There is the “Boston Globe,” and its evening edition, controlled, I am informed, by Standard Oil. There is the “Boston Herald,” and its evening edition, the “Traveler,” owned by the Plant and United Shoe Machinery interests, with ex-Senator Crane holding the balance of power. There is the “Post,” also heavily in debt to Crane—who is one of the leading reactionaries of New England. The owner of the “Post” is described to me by one who knows him as “a sick man, who like all men who have accumulated a great deal of wealth, is inclined to be conservative and fearful of change.” Finally, there is the “Christian Science Monitor,” owned and run by a group of wealthy metaphysicians, who teach that Poverty is a Delusion of Mortal Mind, and that Hunger can be relieved by Thinking. I make it a practice when a public emergency arises, and I have something to say which I think is important, to send it to leading newspapers by telegraph collect. Sometimes the newspapers publish it, nearly always they accept it and pay for it—because they judge there is a possibility of their getting something important by this method. The “Christian Science Monitor” stands alone among American newspapers in that it wrote me not to send it telegrams, because there was no chance of its caring to print what I might have to say! Or take Cincinnati, where I happen to have friends on the “inside.” There is the “Cincinnati Inquirer” and “Post,” owned by the estate of McLean, who made thirty million dollars out of street railway and gas franchises, obtained by bribery. This estate also owns the “Washington Post,” whose knaveries I shall tell about later on. And there is the “Times-Star,” owned by Charles P. Taft, brother of our ex-president. “Charlie” Taft married twenty million dollars, and bought a newspaper, and started out as a valiant reformer, and everybody in Cincinnati thought how lovely that a fine, clean, young millionaire was going in for civic reform. But at the very outset he trod on the toes of Boss Cox, and Boss Cox showed how he could injure the Taft fortune; whereupon “Charlie” made a deal with the boss, and since then his paper has been the leading champion of civic corruption.