The few men who really did mean business knew that the advertisers would never come back to them, so they fought the fight through to a finish—their own finish. So it was with “Hampton’s,” so it was with “Pearson’s” under the old régime. “Pearson’s” tried publishing on the cheapest newsprint paper and with no advertisements, and for two or three years “Pearson’s” was the only popular magazine in America from which you could get the truth. It was the only one which dared to fight the Railroad Trust and the Beef Trust, the only one which dared tell the truth about the Associated Press, and about Capitalist Journalism in general. Early in 1914 it published a series of articles by Charles Edward Russell: “Keeping the Kept Press,” “The Magazine Soft-Pedal,” and “How Business Controls the News.” Russell told the story of the “Boston Traveller,” which was bought by a young reformer, and put under the control of a real newspaper man, Marlin E. Pew. The young reformer died, and the Shoe Machinery Trust bought the paper and ordered Pew to be good. He refused, and stood on the contract which he had with the paper. He had a story affecting a big financial house. Threats were made, the business manager was confronted with ruin, the paper was tied up, and Pew was forced to sell his contract for cash. I write this story, and the name of the paper sounds familiar to me. I search my memory. Oh, yes! It was the “Boston Traveller,” which, a couple of years ago, published a report to the effect that the authorities of Boston were about to confiscate copies of my magazine, and that copies had been thrown out of the library of Radcliffe College. I wrote to the librarian of Radcliffe College, and she replied that the report was a complete fabrication. Also Russell told how someone tried to run an independent newspaper in Indianapolis, where the street-railway companies, by various manipulations, had boosted the capitalization of the railways from three million dollars to fifty-seven million dollars. The “Indianapolis Sun” exposed the fact that the congestion on these railways was caused by the fact that all the cars were forced to pass in front of certain big department-stores. Then the wage-slaves of the railways started to organize; the “Sun” backed them, and told how the companies had automobiles which threw their lights on the entrance to the hall where the men met, and took the name of every man who entered. Also the “Sun” reported how the railway-companies were having the union leaders slugged—and so the “Sun” reporter was slugged! The Merchants’ Association got busy, and the “Sun” advertisers were warned of a boycott. A “safety commission” of the Chamber of Commerce was organized, and a meeting was held, at which explicit instructions were given to all newspaper editors. The circulation of the “Sun” had gone up from seventeen thousand to forty thousand, but the advertising was cut off, and so the paper had to quit.