In behalf of the trade we would ask you to use your influence with the papers in Cleveland to discontinue this unnecessary publicity, and if you feel you can do so, we would like to have you wire the business managers of the Cleveland papers to discontinue their sensational drug articles, as it is proving very injurious to your business. Respectfully, E. R. Cooper.' "Because of that letter which we sent out, the Cleveland Press received inside of forty-eight hours telegrams from six manufacturers canceling thousands of dollars' worth of advertising and causing a consequent dearth of sensational matter along drug lines. It resulted in a loss to one paper alone of over eighteen thousand dollars in advertising. Gentlemen, when you touch a man's pocket, you touch him where he lives; that principle {090}is true of the newspaper editor or the retail druggist, and goes through all business." The Trust's Club for Newspapers. That is the account of how the patent-medicine man used his club on the newspaper head, told in the patent-medicine man's own words, as he described it to his fellows. Is it pleasant reading for self-respecting newspaper men--the exultant air of those last sentences, and the worldly wisdom: "When you touch a man's pocket you touch him where he lives; that principle is true of the newspaper editor..."? But the worst of this incident has not yet been told. There remains the account of how the offending newspaper, in the language of the bully, "ate dirt". The Cleveland _Press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers, all under Mr. McRae's ownership--but I will use Mr. Cooper's own words: "We not only reached the Cleveland _Press_ by the movement taken up in that way, but went further, for the Cleveland _Press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers known as the Scripps-McRae League, from whom this explanation is self-explanatory: "'Office Schipps-McRae Press Association. "'Mr. E. R. Cooper, Cleveland, Ohio: "'Mr. McRae arrived in New York the latter part of last week after a three months' trip to Egypt. I took up the matter of the recent cut-rate articles which appeared in the Cleveland _Press_ with him, and to-day received the following telegram from him from Cincinnati: 'Scripps-McRae papers will contain no more such as Cleveland _Press_ published concerning the medicine trust--M. A. McRae.' "'I am sure that in the future nothing will appear in the Cleveland Press detrimental to your interests. "'Yours truly, "'F. J. Carlisle.'" This incident was told, in the exact words above quoted, at the nineteenth annual meeting of the Proprietary Association of America.