The general manager of the Associated Press makes public boast of the high character of his employes. “Throughout the profession, employment in its service is regarded as an evidence of character and reliability.” Such is the glittering generality; but investigate a little, and you find one Associated Press correspondent, Calvin F. Young, of Charleston, West Virginia, engaged in sending strike-news to his organization, and at the same time in the pay of the mine-owners, collecting affidavits against the strikers. You find a second Associated Press correspondent, E. Wentworth Prescott, of Boston, dipping into the slush funds of the New Haven Railroad, and giving an explanation of his services, so lacking in plausibility that Interstate Commerce Commissioner Anderson remarks: “I don’t see why they couldn’t just as well have hired you to count the telegraph poles on the street!” The Associated Press is probably the most iron-clad monopoly in America. It was organized originally as a corporation under the laws of Illinois, but the Illinois courts declared it a monopoly, so it moved out of Illinois, and reorganized itself as a “membership corporation,” thus evading the law. Today, if you wish to start a morning newspaper in the village of Corn Center, Kansas, you may get an Associated Press franchise; but if you want to start one in any city or town within circulating distance of the big “forty-one-vote” insiders, you might as well apply for a flying-machine to visit the moon. The members of the Associated Press have what is called “the right of protest”—that is, they can object to new franchises being issued; and this power they use ruthlessly to maintain their monopoly. Says Will Irwin: To the best of my knowledge, only two or three new franchises have ever been granted over the right of protest—and those after a terrible fight. Few, indeed, have had the hardihood to apply. When such an application comes up in the annual meeting, the members shake with laughter as they shout out a unanimous “No!” For owing to the exclusive terms of the charter, an Associated Press franchise to a metropolitan newspaper is worth from fifty thousand dollars to two hundred thousand dollars. Abolish the exclusive feature, throw the Association open to all, and you wipe out these values. The publishers are taking no chances with a precedent so dangerous. A few years ago the editor of the “News” of Santa Cruz, California, applied for the Associated Press franchise for his paper. The San Francisco manager of the Associated Press refused it, and gave this explanation, according to a statement by the editor of the “News”: The San Francisco daily papers owned all the Associated Press franchises for that city, and they also controlled a vast outlying territory, including Santa Cruz, eighty miles away, and would refuse to permit Associated Press dispatches to be printed by me or anyone else in Santa Cruz.