Upton Sinclair

“ It is not only the fury of resentment they awaken in the hearts of class-conscious workingmen and women; it is the condition of unstable equilibrium which they set up in society, by the mass of truth they suppress. Today every class-conscious workingman carries about with him as his leading thought, that if only he and his fellows could get possession of the means of news-distribution, could take the printing-offices and hold them for ten days, they could end forever the power of Capitalism, they could make safe the Co-operative Commonwealth in America. ”

“ I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution. What shall I do? What can I do - save to cry out one last warning in this last fateful hour? The time is almost here - and ignorance, falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who constitute the Invisible Government of America today. ”

“ And now again we face such a crisis; only this time it is in the world of industry that we have to abolish hereditary rule, and to build an industrial commonwealth in which the equal rights of all men are recognized by law. Such is the task before us; go to it with joy and certainty playing your part in the making of the new world, in which there shall be neither slavery nor poverty, in which the natural sources of wealth belong to all men alike, and no one lives in idleness upon the labor of his fellows. ”

“ Russell and I talked over the problem of the reporter and the truth. Must a reporter be a cringing wretch, or else a man of honor in search of a job? Might not a reporter be a member of an honored profession, having its own standards, its sense of duty to the public? Obviously, the first trouble is that in his economic status the reporter is a sweated wage slave. If reporting is to become a profession, the reporters must organize, and have power to fix, not merely their wage scale, but also their ethical code. ”

“ In Boston the "News-Writers' Union" declares a strike, and wins all demands. Incidentally they learn—if they do not know it already—that the newspapers of Boston do not publish the news! They do not publish the news about the News-Writers' strike; when the strike is settled, on the basis of recognition of the union, not a single Boston newspaper publishes the terms of the settlement!
In every union there is always a little group of radicals, occupied with pointing out to the men the social significance of their labor, the duty they owe to the working-class, and to society as a whole. ”

“ A modern newspaper, seen from the point of view of then workers, is a gigantic munitions-factory, in which the propertied class manufactures mental bombs and gas-shells for the annihilation of its enemies. And just as in war sometimes the strategy is determined by the location of great munitions-factories and depots, so the class struggle comes to center about newspaper offices. In every great city of Europe where the revolution took place, the first move of the rebels was to seize these offices, and the first move of the reactionaries was to get them back. ”

“ Wherever in America the workers organize and strike for a small portion of their rights, they come out of the experience with a bitter and abiding hatred of the press. I have shown you what happened in Colorado; in West Virginia; in Paterson, New Jersey; in Calumet, Michigan; in Bisbee, Arizona; in Seattle, Washington. I could show you the same thing happening in every industrial center in America.
The workers have come to realize the part that the newspapers play; they have come to know the newspapers as the crux of the argument, the key to the treasure-chamber. ”

“ To the argument that the taking of power by the workers is the substitution of one kind of class tyranny by another kind of class tyranny, the answer, complete and final, is that there is no need of the capitalist class as a class and that the world will be a happier place for all men when the members of that class have become workers, either of hand or brain. ”

“ You go on strike, and it plays upon your fears, it uses your hunger and want as weapons against you; it saps your strength, it eats out your soul, it smothers your thinking under mountain-loads of lies. You fall, and the chariot of Big Business rolls over you. ”

“ If the prevailing opinion is right, the monopoly of the Associated Press over the news of the world is complete. Unless the courts will hold, as I think they will, when the question comes before them, that news is a public utility; that the Associated Press is engaged in interstate commerce, using the cables, telegraph lines and telephones and that it is, therefore, bound to furnish its service on equal terms to all who choose to pay for it. ”

“ I am not one of those narrow radicals who believe that the pocket-nerve of the workers is the only nerve, or even the principal nerve, by which they will be moved to action. I know that the conscience of newspapermen is struggling all the time. Now and then I come on a case of truth telling in a capitalist newspaper, which cannot be explained by any selfish, competitive motive. ”

“ For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes, pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new industrial order. ”

“ I knew to how many men on the street the filthy details of some married woman’s shame would prove a lure to buy. And as I watched the circulation rise or fall, day by day, like a huge beating pulse, I became familiar, somewhat, with the mental processes of the average human animal. It was my tragedy, as it is the tragedy of the majority of my fellows, that this knowledge, acquired always at a tremendous cost of our life's energies, must be used not for the uplift, but for the further enslavement, the drugging of the minds of men. ”

“ The little clique that controls the Associated Press is in turn under the complete domination of a few of the most narrow-minded and reactionary of the great capitalists of the country. If our Government fails to stand the strain of these terrible times and if revolution and bloodshed follow—which God forbid!—the responsibility will rest at the doors of men like Gary and law- breakers like the U. S. Steel Company who lack all vision and sense of justice.
Also there should be a law forbidding any newspaper to fake telegraph or cable dispatches. ”

“ The difference is that today the world's resources are in the hands of a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of transferring such power to the people must be studied as the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press.
Fortunately there are parts of America in which the people have kept at least a part of their economic independence, and have gone ahead to solve the problem of the "kept" press in true American fashion—that is, by organizing and starting honest newspapers for themselves. ”

“ To one who has lived all his life in cities, to one who has spent most of his days and nights with the men who write the great daily papers of the cities, it is perfectly evident that ninety out of one hundred editorial writers on the press today are men who are in intellectual and sympathetic revolt against present-day conditions. You will find the average editorial writer a Socialist, and as for the reporter, he is most likely to be an Anarchist. ”

“ When that has been done, there will be no classes, therefore no class tyranny, and no incentive to class lying. Thus, and thus only, shall we break the power of the capitalist press by breaking the power of capitalism. ”

“ The menace of the controlled press in America is due to the fact that as a rule this press does not confine its arguments and opposition to the editorial columns, but uses the news columns for propaganda, and, failing to print the news, printing only a part of it, distorting it or actually lying, sways opinion through the news columns. ”

“ Such is the procedure in places where Americans are free. But what about our crowded cities, with their slum populations, speaking forty different languages, illiterate, unorganized, and dumb? Even in these cities there have been efforts made to start newspapers in the interest of the people. I know few more heroic stories than the twenty-year struggle to establish and maintain the "New York Call." It began as a weekly, "The Worker." Even that took endless campaigns of begging, and night labor of devoted men and women who earned their livings by daytime labor under the cruel capitalist grind. ”

“ The men who make the newspapers are behind the scenes—they see the workings of the wires—they note the demagogy of politicians, they are familiar with the ramifications by which the public service corporations control the old parties down to the smallest offices, and even at times finance reform movements, which always stop at the election of some respectable figurehead or dummy, but never proceed to any attack upon the fundamental evils of our social and economic system. ”

“ Little by little the workers of all industrial nations are acquiring class-consciousness, and preparing themselves for the control of industry. In America they seem backward, but that is because America is a new country, and the vast majority of the workers have no idea how the cards are stacked against them. I have just been reading an account of the general strike in Seattle, the most significant labor revolt in our history, and I observe how painfully chivalrous the Seattle strikers were. ”

“ 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 dishonesty of American Journalism becomes more deliberate, more systematic. ”

“ I should wish to see a government representative sitting in all councils where newspaper policy is laid down. The owner should be represented, so long as his ownership exists; but unless I misread the signs of the times, the days of the owner as owner are numbered in our industry. The owner may best be attended to by a government price-fixing board, which will set wages for newspaper work and prices of newspapers to the public at a point where interest, dividends and profits are wiped out. So the owner will become a worker like other workers ”

“ I would not mind losing what little property I own in the world; I would not mind going to jail for this book. There are only two things I would mind, first, having the book barred from circulation, and second, being discredited in the eyes of those I seek to influence in favor of Social Justice. ”

“ In the editorial rooms of the country there are good fellows and true, sheer tired of the daily assassination in which they participate. Their fine delusions are spent. Their faith in the old is waning. And when the big day comes, I think you will find the press full ripe—riper perhaps than most of our institutions—for the change.
On page 149 I stated that the publisher of the "New York Times" gave a dinner to his staff, and my friend, Isaac Russell, corrected me, saying: "WE REPORTERS PAID FOR THAT DINNER." Now let me give you another glimpse into a reporter's soul:
I can understand it now. ”

“ I say that if all this legitimate truth could be placed before the American people for ten successive days, instead of the mess of triviality, scandal, crime and sensation, doctored news and political dope, prejudiced editorials and sordid and vulgar advertisements ' upon which the American people are now feed I say that the world would be transformed, and Industrial Democracy would be safe. ”

“ For days, for weeks, perhaps for years, the Associated Press and its thousand newspapers prepare a carefully constructed set of falsehoods, and twenty or thirty million copies per day of these falsehoods are sold to the public.
Whereupon men and women of conscience all over this country are driven to protest. They call mass-meetings, they organize a new league and raise defense funds, print leaflets and pamphlets and devise a system of house-to-house distribution, they call big strikes and parades of protest ”

“ The first remedy to which every good American takes resort is the law. We pass fifty thousand new laws in America every year, but still we cling to the faith that the next thousand will "do the business." ”

“ By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery; but that misery has its purpose in the scheme of nature. Something more than a century ago we saw the people driven by just such misery to grope their way into a new order of society ”

“ Well, old man, I somewhat shamefully admit that I am at present guarding my bread and butter, and looking to the future with one eye on the boss’s and my own opportunities, and in my heart damning the conditions that make me an undoubted renegade. I am drawing a little better than forty per, am in the best of standing, being now and with the possibility of being its head shortly, and with certain advancement coming in both pay and rating. ”