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
A friend of mine once had the honor of meeting Mr. Post and standing in
his private vault and being permitted to handle a package containing
four million dollars worth of government bonds. All this had been made
out of advertisements, which had persuaded the public to buy package
cereals, of precisely the same food-value as bread, at a price several
times as high as bread. On January 23rd, 1913, Mr. Post published in
“Leslie’s” an article, urging business men to organize and refuse to
give advertisements to “muck-raking” publications; and “Leslie’s”
contributed an illuminating cartoon, “The Fool Who Feeds the Monster!”
On April 10th Mr. Post contributed another article, describing his
methods. He had his clerks go over all publications, listing
objectionable matter, and he sent a form letter to offending
publications, threatening to withdraw his valuable advertising unless
they promised to be “good” in the future.
Mr. Post told what he was doing. There were others who preferred to work
in the dark. Perhaps the most significant case was that of “Collier’s
Weekly” and the Ballinger “land fraud” scandals. Norman Hapgood and
Robert Collier broke the Taft administration on that issue, and
President Taft, a venomous old man when he was crossed, issued a furious
denunciation of “Collier’s”: whereupon the National Association of
Manufacturers, the most powerful organization in the country, took the
field against “muck-raking” magazines. They not only applied the
advertising boycott to “Collier’s,” they set the banks to work, as in
the case of “Hampton’s,” and they took away control of the magazine from
Robert Collier, and put it into the hands of a banking committee, where
it stayed. “Robbie” took to flying aeroplanes, and a year or two ago he
died, and “Collier’s” published a full-page obituary of him, telling the
many services he had performed for the public—except the one really
important service, that he had broken the Taft administration over the
Ballinger “land fraud” issue! Imagine a magazine, that, on the death of
its owner, does not dare to mention the greatest event of its owner’s
life!
I had an opportunity to watch, from the inside, the operation of this
advertising boycott, in the case of my article, the “Condemned Meat
Industry.” Many pages of advertising were withdrawn from “Everybody’s
Magazine”—not merely advertisements of hams and lard, but of
fertilizers, soaps and railways. Lawson several times tried to publish
the names of these boycotting advertisers, but “Everybody’s” would not
let him. “Everybody’s” possibly reflected that it might not keep up this
muck-raking business always; when it had secured enough readers, it
might let down and become respectable, and then all the big advertisers
would come back to it—as they have done!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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