Universal Press Syndicate

“ So long as the infernal machinery which creates and molds public opinion and now aspires to govern the world can be set in motion by the Luciferian minds which control it, minds whose sole merit is a prodigious development of the modern business brain and its infinite capacity for combination and adjustment, hope of a stable peace on any of the five continents of this unlucky planet is out of the question. It cannot be said too often that such an engine as the [31] Universal Press is a power for evil and a dire menace to civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the war both the printing and publishing [151] businesses suffered from shortage of personnel, of metal, and of paper. Two hundred and fifty-two servants of the Syndics joined His Majesty's forces and of these forty-one were killed, or died, on service.
In conclusion, it may be remarked that the method of the government of the Press by a body of Syndics appointed by the Senate of the university has, with certain important modifications, persisted since 1698. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the same way should all the periodical and other press and all publications be fully subordinated to the Central Committee, whether the Party as a whole at the given moment is lawful or illegal; it is quite inadmissible that any publishers abusing their autonomy might carry on a policy different from that of the Party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no use dreaming about building—on however broad a liberal-labor cooperative plane—an independent apparatus to escape the news, picture and feature service squeeze. It would cost not millions but billions. Though the services have acquired an independent existence and structure, they are basically the American press itself. ”

“ The newspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news that serve their purpose. Thus it comes that the machinery for creating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose is that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits. There are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated Press of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth. ”

“ The point is trivial, and if critics busy themselves devising all kinds of possible anomalies and difficulties, all I can say is that if even to-day the country decided to nationalise its printing-presses and to make parties officially responsible for the papers published in their interests, two or three business men connected with party newspapers could draw up within a week a scheme of working which could set the whole plan going, and produce a freer and a more responsible press than we have now. ”

“ It was composed of three or four proprietors, ever so many editors, and an army of shareholders representing almost every class in Great Britain. Ah, those shareholders! There's the whole mischief of the press nowadays!"
"I suppose it's money again!" said Helmsley.
"Of course it is. Here's how the matter stands. A newspaper syndicate is like any other trading company, composed for the sole end and object of making as much [Pg 251] profit out of the public as possible. The lion's portion naturally goes to the heads of the concern—then come the shareholders' dividends. ”

“ For a variety of reasons, however, A.P. is the decisive agency. It is rather hopeless to try to compete with a major paper on the basis of U.P. or I.N.S. service.
Field could not get A.P. The by-laws of the “cooperative” permitted the Chicago Tribune to blackball his application for membership. He could not get I.N.S. because it is available only to the Hearst paper in Chicago, the Herald-American. He had no choice but to publish on the basis of United Press service only. ”

“ I quote from the announcement which the factory officials make to her old time friends—those who believed that Art should exist because she was Art, and that she should not be compelled to sell her very soul for the dollars she could earn by working overtime in their sweat shops:
“The Combined Press is a literary syndicate formed for the purpose of obtaining for writers commercial independence and liberal remuneration for high class work.” ”

“ Our friends will the more willingly help us; our foes will quail because they have lost their best allies—our own inertness, carelessness, strifes, and dependence upon others. And there is no way, except through a press—a national press—that we can tell the world of our position in the path of human progress.
"Let there be, then, in these United States, a printing press, a copious supply of type, a full and complete establishment, wholly controlled by colored men; let the thinking writing man, the compositors, pressmen, printers' help—all, all, be men of color ”

“ The war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose. They have been terrified by what happened in Russia and Hungary, and they propose to see to it that the foreign population of America is innoculated against modern ideas. They form the “Publishers’ Association of the American Press in Foreign Languages,” whose purpose it is “to foster unswerving loyalty to American ideals”—that is to say, to keep America capitalist. ”

“ Later on when I returned it I gave him a better drawing.
“Things broke for me the next day. A syndicate ’phoned and made me an offer, and I got a wire from the World the same day. Syndicates were just beginning. The only idea there had been of that kind was when two newspapers under the same ownership used the same features. The World and the Post Dispatch were both Pulitzer papers, and much of the New York stuff was print in St. Louis. ”

“ Efforts which might fairly be described as stupendous were put forth by the advocates of Kultur to win, if not the approval, at least the strict neutrality of America. That the program of calculated misrepresentation failed utterly was due in great part to the leading newspapers of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and the other main centers of industry and population. Never has the value of a free Press been demonstrated so thoroughly. ”

“ In such a world society, science and religion, the two most potent forces in human life, will be reconciled, will co-operate, and will harmoniously develop. The press will, under such a system, while giving full scope to the expression of the diversified views and convictions of mankind, cease to be mischievously manipulated by vested interests, whether private or public, and will be liberated from the influence of contending governments and peoples. ”

“ Displaying thus an enlightened and discriminating liberality, it might be expected he should be known,—as, indeed, he is,—as a genuine philanthropist—an ardent advocate for the largest liberty, and a warm friend of universal education; and consequently the friend of an enlightened, efficient and independent press, as contributing to those ends more powerfully than any other single means. ”

“ What did the newspapers do? Not a line about the matter in any newspaper of New York City!
To some of the rules which I lay down in this book there are exceptions. It is sometimes possible for a radical to be quoted honestly by a capitalist newspaper; it is sometimes possible to get news unfavorable to the profit-system into the most reactionary sheet. But to the following two rules there is no exception anywhere:
Rule 1. Any proprietor of a department-store anywhere in America may divorce, or be divorced, with entire immunity so far as concerns the press. ”

“ Our editor will not give much space to the news that all other papers publish. The big story for him will be what the other papers let alone. He will employ trained investigators, and set them to work for a week, or maybe for several months, getting the facts about the lobby of the Beef Trust in Washington, the control of our public schools in the interest of militarism, the problem of who is paying the expenses of 441the American railway mission in Siberia. Needless to say, the capitalist press will provide the “National News” with a complete monopoly of this sort of work. ”

“ As lately as fifty years ago, every democratic country could boast of a great number of small journals and local newspapers. Thousands of country editors expressed thousands of independent opinions. Somewhere or other almost anybody could get almost anything printed. Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communications are controlled by the State. ”

“ Mankind will not consent to be lied to indefinitely.
William Marion Reedy discussed the question ten years ago, and his solution was pamphleteering. We must return to the custom of the eighteenth century, printing and circulating large numbers of leaflets, pamphlets and books. And for the past ten years we have been doing this; the Socialist party, for example, is a machine for the circulating of pamphlets and leaflets, and the holding of public meetings to counteract the knaveries of the capitalist press. ”

“ If the trouble is Big Business, that is, the Steel Trust, Standard Oil and the like, why not urge everybody to read I. W. W. or Socialist papers? Mr. Sinclair does not say why not. But the reason is simple. He cannot convince anybody, not even himself, that the anti-capitalist press is the remedy for the capitalist press. He ignores the anti-capitalist press both in his theory of the Brass Check and in his constructive proposal. But if you are diagnosing American journalism you cannot ignore it. ”

“ Any editor may supplement his news service with syndicate articles—by which is meant, articles written in New York, Washington, the State Capital, or anywhere, and duplicated to any number of newspapers. Syndicate service has come to be an important feature of American journalism. ”

“ I had just come back from the Quaker City Excursion, and had made a contract with Bliss of Hartford to write "The Innocents Abroad." I was out of money, and I went down to Washington to see if I could earn enough there to keep me in bread and butter while I should write the book. I came across William Clinton, brother of the astronomer, and together we invented a scheme for our mutual sustenance; we became the fathers and originators of what is a common feature in the newspaper world now—the syndicate. We became the old original first Newspaper Syndicate on the planet ”

“ It is further said that we reach our conclusion by application of the 'public utility' concept to the newspaper business. This is not correct. We merely hold that arrangements or combinations designed to stifle competition cannot be immunized by adopting a membership device accomplishing that purpose.
Finally, the argument is made that to apply the Sherman Act to this association of publishers constitutes an abridgment of the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. ”

“ The great industrial syndicates, especially in the steel-making industry, which control so large a part of the Press among the majority of the States of Europe, and even beyond Europe, find easy allies in the inadequate preparation of the major part of the journalists to discuss the most important problems, and the indisposition on the part of the public to examine those questions which present difficulties, and are so rendered less convenient for discussion. ”

“ It is insisted that the Associated Press is in substance the press itself, that the membership consists solely of persons who own and operate newspapers, that the news is gathered solely for publication in the newspapers of members. ”

“ The most acute problem of this vexed time is the ever-growing power of the newspaper press. Legislation of a drastic kind is needed to cope with certain newspaper ‘bosses’ in Great Britain and America and their combinations, national and international, of periodicals, agencies, special correspondents and their sinister antennae, which persistently foul at the source the wells of truth. ”