Now that is plain enough even for me, a disillusioned newspaperman weary of piffle about “freedom of the press.” That is straight business talk as among “legitimate” monopolists. It is, in short, a cartel agreement for the division of the world market in news. But there is a sequel to the story. When Cooper returned from Europe with his new contract, A.P. Board members were horrified by the word “exploitation.” Cooper explains their squeamishness by saying that “the word has taken on a stigma in the United States which it does not have in Europe.” An evasive word was substituted and the contract was approved. “Exploitation” disappeared but the cartel reality remained.[C] With respect to Japan, the head of Reuters, Sir Roderick Jones, made a verbal agreement to permit A.P. dealings with Rengo. He could not put it in writing, he said, because it would be a loss of face to Reuters (that is, to the British Empire). Neither side had any intention of yielding to the other, in practice. Power would tell, they knew, and force would decide the issue. The Showdown They differed in their estimates of power distribution. The relationship of forces had vastly changed since 1893. The United States had been slow to enter world competition because it was busy with internal development. But the delay actually improved its chances, for when it finally laid down a claim for world position, it did so on the basis of an incomparable home market. In the commodity-news industry this was strikingly clear. At a meeting of the A.P. Board of Directors, _Chicago Tribune_ publisher McCormick once offered some estimates in this connection. The estimates were so impressive that Cooper got him to repeat his statement for the benefit of any directors who had missed the import. Said McCormick: We are pretty much the most important country in the world and much the richest country in the world, and in comparing America with other foreign countries the press stands probably higher in America than any other institution. I think it is a pretty good guess that American newspapers print and supply two-thirds of all the world’s news, and I think that the revenue of all the American newspapers is probably three-fourths of all the revenue of the newspapers of the world.