Arbeiter-Zeitung

“ And this is the biggest thing about the whole movement - the fact that workers of hand and brain are uniting and preparing to take possession of the world. One purpose of this book is to urge a hand-and-brain union in the newspaper field; to urge that the news-writers shall combine with the pressmen and type-setters and the truck men - one organization of all men and women who write, print and distribute news, to take control of their own labor, and see to it that the newspapers serve public interests and not private interests. ”

“ Does the business man who takes a conservative, well-edited newspaper want news stories written to suit his point of view? Does the workingman who buys the Socialist daily or the labor union daily really want his news “shaded” to favor the cause of labor? In the case of a strike in which business or manufacturing interests are involved, do not both employers and employees want the actual facts as an unprejudiced reporter sees them? ”

“ If you workers think that the capitalist press is a safe guide in such a matter, you properly belong with the American Federation of Labor. But if you believe, as I believe, and as every intelligent workingman must believe, that the kind of labor organization that the capitalists endorse is not the kind that is for your good—that the organization the capitalist press condemns is the one that has working class virtue and efficiency—then you will do as we have done; you will join the Industrial Workers of the World. ”

“ The day of the labor editor is just commencing.
Newspapering is a trade. Avoid the set schools of journalism, training for the commercial press. Get job after job as reporter or copyreader on six or eight papers and one news agency in as many cities, including a metropolitan paper, a big small-town paper, and one in a state capital or in Washington. Learn something about the business office—the advertising revenue and circulation—and about the printing plant of each paper you work on. Study the news agencies. Your ambition is to lose your job the minute you have made good on it. ”

“ All the manifestations of the modern labor movement had appeared, in germ at least, by the time the mid-century was reached: unions, labor leaders, strikes, a labor press, a labor political program, and a labor political party. ”

“ The material prosperity of a labor paper of today is no guarantee of its moral or intellectual value. Indeed, some of the most worthless labor publications have the finest mechanical appearance, and are supported by the largest circulations.
Such a press is not only not a help to labor but a millstone about its neck, that only the awakening intelligence of the working class can remove. ”

“ The expense of supporting the labor press is but a trifle to the individual member—less than the daily outlay for other trifles that are of no benefit, and can easily be dispensed with.
The editor of a labor paper is of far more importance to the union and the movement than the president or any other officer of the union. He ought to be chosen with special reference to his knowledge upon the labor question and his fitness to advocate and defend the economic interests of the class he represents. ”

“ Jugded by the comparatively rapid increase in the circulation of the Democratic socialistic and progressive journal, there is change coming over public opinion which shows itself in a growing preference for the progressive stamp of newspaper. ”

“ THE PRESS AND LABOR 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 to lying about the labor movement, thousands and even millions of people are wronged, and that surely does make a difference. ”

“ In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. ”

“ There are but a very few newspapers that do not profess to be the advocates of the rights of labor. Let them be called upon to take hold of this matter, and take hold of it at just that point where the remedy must be applied. Let them lay before the people a plain exposition of the matter, and certainly aim to make the people understand it. ”

“ With trade union status, you will be leaving the local union in the direction of your real job—the labor press—probably via the road of publicity man in a strike, or in an organizing or defense campaign. You will work with six leaders and disagree with five. You will learn to assert that independence of judgment which is the backbone of any sound press; and to practice that cooperation which abides by the mistakes of fellow workers. ”

“ The American Labour Press.—The growth of the American labour press has been rapid. Each international and national union has its official organ, and the trade unions of most large cities publish their local labour papers. ”

“ Labor must have a press as formidable as the great movement of the working class requires, to worthily represent its dignity and fearlessly and uncompromisingly advocate its principles.
Every member of a trade union should feel himself obligated to do his full share in the important work of building up the press of the labor movement ”

“ Labor itself, particularly the larger progressive unions, the C.I.O. as a whole, and strong combinations in industrial areas where trade47 union membership is concentrated, must certainly give more thought to the publication of newspapers. ”

“ For the spirit of the movement the student must consult the contemporary literature of Socialism—the newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, and the campaign documents that flow in a constant stream from the Socialist press. ”

“ Fortunately the work of the journalist so brings him in contact with things as they are, that the body of newspaper writers, taken as a whole, represents the stability of society. The convictions and principles created by their daily work tend this way. The labor union has few illusions to the reporter, and it was the editorial writers of the land who carried the gold standard in 1896, when many a publisher was hazy and scary. ”

“ The newspapers represent the workers. If a paper dares to send to its composing-room an item opposed to the interest of the labor element, the compositors probably will refuse to put it in type. If they do set it up and it appears, the paper can expect no more newsprint from the docks.
I hear the reader says: “These strikers don’t represent the public; they represent themselves. You are only substituting one kind of class-interest for another.” Ah, yes—dear reader of capitalist opinion! ”

“ Since the war the labor press has grown rapidly in spite of unfavorable conditions, and a number of newspapers under labor auspices have been set up in various parts of the country. These papers now have their own news service, the Federated Press, which has recently established European connections, and is developing plans for enlarging its activities in the United States. The workers everywhere are awaking to the necessity of having sources of information upon which they can depend. ”

“ In the meantime, the working classes are now part of the public; in all discussions on matters of general interest they, or a portion of them, are now partakers; all who use the press as an instrument may, if it so happens, have them for an audience; the avenues of instruction through which the middle classes acquire such ideas as they have, are accessible to, at least, the operatives in the towns. With these resources, it cannot be doubted that they will increase in intelligence, even by their own unaided efforts ”

“ The organization of the proletariat grew. Perhaps this was most striking in Germany. During the last dozen years this growth has been especially rapid. We have seen the organization of the Social Democrats reach a half million members. Closely united to it in spirit is a trade union movement with two million members. Simultaneously has grown its press as a work of the organization and not of private enterprise. The political daily press now has a circulation of nearly a million, and the trade union press, composed mostly of weekly papers, reaches an even greater number. ”

“ And if the Socialistic programme be carried out with the least fulness, we shall have lost a thing, in most respects not much to be regretted, but as a moderator of oppression, a thing nearly invaluable—the newspaper. ”

“ The statements we read about the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by managers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing what they think will please their employers. They write what they imagine will please. Examine the labour press and you will find another class of writers who similarly seek to tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labouring man to have. ”

“ We must not lose sight of the fact that the German labor press, the Party press as well as the trade union papers, is now a powerful mechanism that in place of the education of the people's will for the class struggle has substituted the education of the people's will for military victories. ”

“ The lawyer and the capitalist are together adjusting the industrial relations of the country. We have trusts, syndicates, and corporation-problems handled with a firm intellectual grasp and a wide outlook over human affairs.
The reading of the world is in the hands of editors of enterprise and sagacity. They daily bring wars, statecraft, business plans, political situations, trade openings, scientific discoveries, forms of church-work and philanthropy, accidents, murders, and marriages, to our breakfast-table. The press of to-day has a tremendous scope. ”

“ That great austere toiler, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, upbraids me,—but kindly, and more in sorrow than in anger,—for trifling with aesthetics and poetical fancies, while he himself, in that arsenal of his in Fleet Street, is bearing the burden and heat of the day. An intelligent American newspaper, the Nation, says that it is very easy to sit in one's study and find fault with the course of modern society, but the thing is to propose practical improvements for it. ”

“ Thus the history of the Manifesto reflects, to a great extent, the history of the modern working-class movement; at present it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international production of all Socialist literature, the common platform acknowledged by millions of working men from Siberia to California. ”

“ Without a journalistic apparatus, no single mass movement can go on in a more or less civilized country. And, to carry on the work of the Press, it is absolutely necessary to employ the services of men from the bourgeois-intellectual class. ”

“ No, the editors of country and small-town newspapers are not giving their readers the truth about labor conditions in basic American industries. They know, as the phrase is, “which side their bread is buttered on,” and they keep that side up with care. I have said that there are fortunes to be 240made by giving the news to the people; I must qualify the statement by explaining that it must be done on a large scale, and you must have capital to keep you going until you reach the people who can understand you. ”

“ There is a brilliant magazine published in New York which takes pride in edging a little to the left of the leftmost radical, wherever for the moment that may be. Its editor is a poet, and he writes eloquently of the proletariat and the worker. Not long ago I was speaking of this editor to an actual leader of labour—a man who is a radical, and who also takes a daily part in the workers’ struggles. ”

“ The labor union movement, unlike the political socialist revolutionary movement, undertakes in its operation to supply labor with a certain working content, which the administrative scheme of industry has excluded from the experience of its workers. ”

“ However low may be the moral plane of some newspapers, your characterisation of all newspapers as mere business concerns, founded and carried on with the purpose of enriching their owners, and supporting certain special interests, "quite regardless of their effect, beneficial or the reverse, upon the real public interests of their own country, regardless of truth and justice," is not at all true of the class of papers read by the majority of intelligent Americans. I am not sufficiently familiar with a large number of German newspapers to make assertions as to their standards ”

“ The great nineteenth-century newspaper was a capitalistic enterprise as purely commercial in its principle as a woolen factory, and the editors were no more allowed to write their own opinions than the weavers to choose the patterns they wove. ”

“ An editorial, giving some of the plain facts about civilization—simple stuff to teach the people what industry means, what their work means, what they ought to be doing. Then news—news about all movements toward freedom—labor, strikes, reform, new laws, schools—news of all the forces working for betterment—a concrete statement of where the world stands to-day and what it is doing. ”

“ A report is made by the Special Committee on Un-American Activities that the Daily Worker issue of June 23, 1937, page 1, carried a letter addressed by you to David Leeds, business manager of the Daily Worker, official organ of the Communist Party, in which you state:
I feel that the Daily Worker is America’s outstanding daily labor paper and has done much during these past crucial labor years to bring true and accurate accounts of labor conditions throughout the entire country to the attention of the people. ”

“ This is the limit of the power of the modern newspaper of large circulation, the newspaper that appeals to the grey element, to the average democratic man, the newspaper of the deliquescence, and if our previous conclusion that human society has ceased to be homogeneous and will presently display new masses segregating from a great confusion, holds good, that will be the limit of its power in the future. ”