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
“Oh, now, now, you don’t mind a thing like that! Surely, now, you ought
to understand a joke!”
“Well, as I say, I don’t mind, but some of my associates take it
seriously.”
“Well, I’ll show you about that. We’ll fix that up very easily.”
So the General went off, and next day there appeared in the “Times” an
editorial speaking very cordially of the Edward Bellamy brand of social
idealism. And thereafter for two or three weeks, the “Times” spoke
pleasantly of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism, and it
faithfully reported the meetings of the Nationalists. But the
“Nationalist” did not change its printing-plant, and so the General got
tired of waiting, and shifted back to his old method of sneering and
abuse. This, you understand, for a job-printing contract worth fifty, or
perhaps a hundred dollars, a week!
By methods such as these Otis grew wealthy, and later on he purchased
six hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in Northern Mexico. When
the Diaz régime was overthrown, Otis had trouble in getting his cattle
out, so he wanted a counter-revolution in Mexico, and for years the
whole policy of his paper has been directed to bringing on intervention
and conquest of that country. At one time the Federal authorities
indicted Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Otis, and his successor in
control of the “Times,” for conspiracy to ship arms into Mexico. Mr.
Chandler was acquitted. If you will turn back to page 209 of this book,
you will find a statement by a prominent Los Angeles lawyer as to jury
trials in the “City of the Black Angels.”
Mr. Hearst also owns enormous stretches of land in Mexico, and Mr.
Hearst also understands that if Mexico were conquered and annexed by the
United States, the value of his lands would be increased many times
over. Therefore for fifteen years the Hearst newspapers have been used
as a means of forcing war with Mexico. Mr. Hearst admits and is proud of
the fact that it was he who made the Spanish-American war. He sent
Frederick Remington to Cuba to make pictures of the war, and Remington
was afraid there wasn’t going to be any war, and so cabled Mr. Hearst.
Mr. Hearst answered: “You make the pictures and I’ll make the war.”
That was in 1897 or 1898. I was a boy just out of college, and fell
victim to this modern kind of “war-making.” I was walking on the street,
and heard newsboys shouting an extra, and saw these words, printed
across the front page of the “New York Evening Journal”:
_WAR
DECLARED!_
So I parted with one of my hard-earned pennies, and read:
_WAR_
may be
_DECLARED_
soon
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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