The Free Press

"Your letter of September 9 outlining the plan of the 'newspapers of the nation' to 'bring home to America the blessings of her free Press' by the 'observance of a National Newspaper Week, October 1 to October 7' and selecting me among others for the honourable task of preparing a "brief expression of appreciation of one of the most vital bulwarks of American freedom, an uncensored Press,' is before me. What between sheer awe of the corporation gall which unquestionably prompts and no doubt finances this industrious labour of yours, and wonder as to how, at this late date, I still come to be on your National Corporation sucker list, I am fairly flattened—not flattered.

"For as you know, or should know, I was in the service of various American newspapers as a reporter and travelling correspondent for five years of my life; also editor-in-chief of four advertising-kept magazines for five years more—so I ought, to know something about the blessings of a free Press. And again, before I was ever, a newspaperman even, I was a citizen of Chicago when Mr Cleveland sent 3000 Federal troops into the city to protect the robbing and thieving railways of that day from their underpaid and ill-used workers, and I noticed then with interest and some rage the editorial and news barrage laid down by the leading papers of Chicago and elsewhere on behalf of the suffering railways and against the workers. And ever since, wherever labour has been employed and has struck for decent treatment, I have noted and frequently written about the zest with which our liberty-loving Press invariably sprang to action on behalf of capital and violently against labour. Also in favour of every criminal monopoly programme of our corporations since.

"I assume, of course, that you never hoard of a book of mine called 'Newspaper Days'—nor another called "Tragic America'—promptly suppressed after one month of circulation—and a sale of 5000 copies. But I wrote then: Should you come to know, to expose the very lack of this liberty-loving Press in our national life and at the same time the criminal doings of our national monopolies which today, having grown finally ponderous with stolen money, and so supremely authoritative in our American affairs of government and liberty, prompt (if they do not directly finance) such a brassy burst of propaganda as your letter outlines. Really if it weren't because of awe (inspired by this latest corporation gall stone cast at a long suffering public) I should shout with laughter at your stupidity.