There are thousands of such press agents serving our predatory interests, but not often are we permitted to peer into their inmost souls, to watch them at their secret offices. The Walsh Commission was so cruel as to put “Poison Ivy” on the stand, and also to publish his letters to his master. An examination of these letters shows him performing functions not usually attributed to press-agents. We see him preparing and revising a letter for Governor Ammons to send to President Wilson. (You remember, perhaps, in my story of Governor Ammons, my charge that the coal operators wrote his lying telegram to the President? Maybe you thought that was just loose talk!) We see “Poison Ivy” arranging for the distribution of an enormous edition of a speech on the Colorado coal-strike by the “kept” congressmen of the coal-operators—the speech containing “Polly Pry,” with the slanders against “Mother Jones,” sent out under government frank! We see him following the newspapers with minute care; for example, calling Mr. Rockefeller’s attention to the fact that the Northampton, Massachusetts, “Herald” had used a part of his first bulletin as an editorial; also sending to Mr. Rockefeller an editorial by Arthur Brisbane, sneering at our “mourning pickets.” Finally, this remarkable press-agent claims that he persuaded the Walsh Commission not to come to Colorado till the operators had finished strangling the strike. That he actually did this, I cannot say. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the commission delayed to come, and “Poison Ivy” was “stringing” Mr. Rockefeller, to make sure of that thousand dollars a month! Would you like to be such a press-agent, and get such a salary as this? If so, you can find full directions, set forth by “Poison Ivy” himself in an address to the “American Railway Guild.” At this time he was prize poisoner for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he explains that it is all a question of psychology. “Success in dealing with crowds, that success we have got to attain if we are to solve the railroad question, rests upon the art of getting believed in.” And our prize poisoner goes on to give concrete illustrations of how to get the railroads “believed in.” If you are opposing a “full crew” law, you will get “believed in” by changing the name of the measure to an “extra crew” law. If you are going into bankruptcy, you will get “believed in” by calling it a “readjustment of finances.” If you are fighting a strike, and one small group of the strikers demands a particularly large increase in wages, you will get “believed in” by so phrasing your statement as to make it appear that all the miners are making the same unreasonable demand as the little group. “Miners Ask One Hundred and Fifty Per Cent Increase in Wages,” cites “Poison Ivy.” He sent a copy of this brilliant production to Mr. Rockefeller, and on the strength of it got a considerable increase in wages himself!