The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism

The social body to which we belong is at this moment passing through one of the greatest crises of its history, a colossal process which may best be likened to a birth. We have...

Once upon a time there was a little boy; a nice little boy, whom you would have liked if you had known him—at least, so his mother says. He had been brought up in the traditions...

The boy, now become a youth, obtained a letter of introduction from his clergyman to the editor of his beloved “Evening Post,” and at the age of sixteen was given a trial as rep...

My next effort was “Manassas,” a novel of the Civil war. I poured into it all my dream of what America might be, and inscribed it: “That the men of this land may know the herita...

There was a strike of the wage-slaves of the Beef Trust in Chicago, and I wrote for the “Appeal to Reason” a broadside addressed to these strikers, trying to point out to them t...

“The Jungle” had been accepted in advance by the Macmillan Company. Mr. Brett, president of the company, read the manuscript, and asked me to cut out some of the more shocking a...

I was determined to get something done about the Condemned Meat Industry. I was determined to get something done about the atrocious conditions under which men, women and childr...

Roosevelt had hoped to get the new inspection bill through Congress without giving out the report of his commission. But the packers and their employes in Congress blocked his b...

I am telling this story chronologically, but in dealing with a subject like “The Jungle” it seems better to skip ahead and close the matter up. There was a last act of this Pack...

The publication of “The Jungle” had brought me pitiful letters from workingmen and women in others of our great American slave-pens, and I went to Ridgway of “Everybody’s” with...

For the sake of consecutiveness in this narrative, I have put off mention of a newspaper sensation which occurred during my “Jungle” campaign, and which I happened to observe fr...

thereby incurred the furious enmity of the “New York World”! So then the editors of the “World” remembered that story which they had got from the Russian Embassy; or maybe the E...

The next experience with which I have to deal is the Helicon Home Colony. I will begin by telling very briefly what this was: an attempt to solve the problem of the small family...

At three o’clock one morning in March there came a fire and wiped out the Helicon Home Colony. Everybody there lost everything, but that did not save us from dark hints in the n...

I had written a book showing what was going on at one end of the social scale. It now occurred to me to write a book showing what was going on at the other end. Who spent the mo...

My investigations for “The Metropolis” had brought me several permanent friendships; for there are true and gracious people in New York “society,” as everywhere else. One of the...

I had all but ruined my health by overwork, and I now went to California for a winter’s rest. I rested a couple of months, and then wrote three one act plays. Having received a...

Two or three days after the Shredded Wheat episode, there called on me a pleasant lady who introduced herself as a friend of an old friend of mine. She wanted to ask me some que...

I moved myself and family to the little single-tax colony at Arden, Delaware, and spent a winter living in tents. The newspapers of Philadelphia and Wilmington used Arden as the...

The adventure of Sabbath “gaming” served as a curtain raiser to the great tragedy of my life. I pause on the brink of this tragedy, hesitating to take the plunge, even in memory...

Now, I have a respect for Ellen Key’s personality, and for many of her ideas. I admit that she may know more about the nature of woman than I do, and may be correct in her state...

To understand the rest of this episode, you must know something about the divorce laws of New York, and about divorce procedure. The code of the State, which was framed by a com...

The first American I visited in Europe was George D. Herron, then living in Florence, the home of his favorite poet, Dante. Dante had been exiled from Florence by the oligarchy...

I was obliged to return to America to give testimony concerning an automobile accident of which I had been a witness. I had been sitting in the rear seat of a friend’s car, whic...

The thesis of this book is that our newspapers do not represent public interests, but private interests; they do not represent humanity, but property; they value a man, not beca...

The next story has to do with the phenomenon known as “Hearst Journalism.” It is a most extraordinary story; in its sensational elements it discounts the most lurid detective ya...

I had a book to write that winter, and my wife’s health to think about. We had got as far from the newspapers as we knew how—a little cottage in one of the remotest parts of the...

It must be understood that at this time the Colorado coal-strike had been going on for six or seven months. Most of the tent-colonies had been broken up, and the miners were bei...

The crux of the struggle in Denver during these critical months was the State militia. This militia had been called out and sent to the strike-field because of violence delibera...

Let us return to Monday evening, and to our main theme, the Associated Press. I saw here my long-awaited chance to put this organization on record. I believed, and still believe...

I am giving a great deal of space in a small book to this one test of the Associated Press. I think that the subject is an important one, and that the documents in the case shou...

There is one other incident which must be told before I finish with the subject of Denver, its criminal government and prostitute newspapers. I had been in Denver before, also I...

I returned to New York, and at a meeting in Berkeley Hall I told the story of conditions in Colorado. I did not get myself arrested, however, so the New York newspapers printed...

It had been agreed by the trustees of Tarrytown that while we might not tell about the Ludlow massacre at a street-meeting, we might tell about it at a meeting in a theatre or h...

After these strenuous adventures I retired to private life to recuperate. I edited “The Cry for Justice,” and then, finding that I was still haunted by the Colorado situation, I...

I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is literally a fact that I have yet to meet a single person who does not despise and hate his “Times.” This paper, founded...

There are other newspapers published in this “Roof-garden of the World.” There is the Hearst newspaper, the “Los Angeles Examiner,” which publishes the editorials of Arthur Bris...

I studied Latin for five years in college, and from this study brought away a dozen Latin verses. One of them is from Virgil: “Happy he who has learned to know the causes of thi...

Let the reader not misunderstand my thesis. I do not claim that there exists in America one thoroughly organized and completely conscious business government. What we have is a...

I would call the reader’s attention to the fact that in this book I am dealing with our standard magazines and newspapers, the ones which are considered respectable, which all l...

The methods by which the “Empire of Business” maintains its control over Journalism are four: First, ownership of the papers; second, ownership of the owners; third, advertising...

What is the moral tone in the offices of these great “kept” institutions? The best description I know of the inside of such a newspaper is found in an article, “The Blue Pencil,...

The second of the methods by which our Journalism is controlled is by far the most important of all the four. I do not mean merely that the owners are owned by mortgages, and su...

What counts with newspapers, as everywhere else in the business world, is not so much the bulk of the wealth as its activity. Wealth which is invested in government bonds and fa...

About nine hundred daily newspapers in the United States, comprising the great majority of the journals of influence and circulation, receive and print the news dispatches of th...

The third method by which the “kept” press is kept is the method of the advertising subsidy. This is the “legitimate” graft of newspapers and magazines, the main pipeline whereb...

If the newspaper fails to protect its big advertisers, the big advertisers will get busy and protect themselves. This happens every now and then, and every newspaper editor has...

Such was the fate of a magazine which rebelled. As for those which submitted, the answer is writ large on our newsstands. “McClure’s,” “Collier’s,” “Everybody’s,” the “American”...

We are accustomed to the idea that in Europe there exists a “reptile press,” meaning a press whose opinions are for sale, not merely to politicians and governments, but to promo...

Every now and then some pillar of Capitalism is overthrown, and a mess of journalistic worms go wriggling to cover. For example, the “New Haven” scandal: Some five years ago the...

I have asked the difficult question, When is a bribe not a bribe? When it is “legitimate business”? When, for instance, the “New Haven” is discovered to have ordered 9,716 copie...

The Egyptians had sacred beetles, and Capitalist Journalism has sacred insects of various unpleasant and poisonous species. There was one sacred worm which all Capitalist Journa...

As a result of the operation of all these forces, we have a class-owned press, representing class-interests, protecting class-interests with entire unscrupulousness, and having...

If you go into a New York club in the middle of August, you will be told in entire good faith that “everybody” is out of town. It is this “everybody” who is out of town in Augus...

The particular kind of radical who is most disliked by our newspapers is of course the Socialist. The Socialist meets the class-consciousness of the newspapers with another clas...

There is a whole field of problems connected with our sex-nature which we are only beginning to explore. Metchnikoff has told us something. Freud and Jung have told us more; but...

You guess that this chapter will show how the press exploits crime for its profit; and that sounds tiresome, you know all about that. You know how the yellow journals take up mu...

I once had the pleasure of hearing Jack London express his opinion of American Journalism; it was a picturesque and vivid experience, a sort of verbal aurora borealis. Not wishi...

I have told many stories of newspaper lies about myself, and perhaps you thought that was just one person who was wronged, and it didn’t make much difference; but when it comes...

Great strikes are determined by public opinion, and public opinion is always against strikers who are violent. Therefore, in great strikes, all the efforts of the employers are...

I have been privileged to examine a mass of material, some three or four million printed and typewritten words, the evidence collected for the defense of Max Eastman and Art You...

War came upon the world, and the writer, as a student of Journalism, watched the great tide of public opinion. There had been newspapers in America which had kept a careful pret...

But the perfect case of journalistic knavery, the case which in the annals of history will take precedence over all others, past or present, is the case of Russia. You might say...

And what of those American radicals who have ventured to protest against this policy, and to expose this campaign of falsification? Here again it is only a question of how much...

Every day the chasm between the classes in America grows wider; every day the class struggle grows more intense. Both sides become more conscious, more determined—and so the dis...

A solution that comes at once to mind is state-owned or municipal-owned newspapers. This is the orthodox Socialist solution, and is also being advocated by William Jennings Brya...

One important line of attack upon Capitalist Journalism occurred to me some five years ago, after the Colorado coal-strike. I have saved this story, because it points so clearly...

I doubt if my experiences as a daily newspaper editor would serve your purpose. When I was a daily editor I edited. I printed what I pleased. If I could not do so, I resigned. I...

In concluding this, the most important and most dangerous book I have ever written, I have a personal word to leave with the reader. I have here attacked the most powerful inter...