CHAPTER LXVI

JABBERGRAB IN JOURNALISM

In all these new academic department-stores one of the leading departments is that of journalism. Here they teach you how to write for and edit newspapers; and needless to say, what the students want is to be prepared to fill positions on the capitalist press, and their judgment of a school of journalism is conditioned upon the salaries secured by its graduates. The first school of this kind was started at Columbia, with an endowment left by Joseph Pulitzer, the father of “yellow” journalism. Being curious to know what kind of ethics Mr. Pulitzer’s school is teaching, I pick up a publication of the Alumni Association, “Clean Copy.” The title page contains a list of officers, and I note the chairman’s name, and his address—prepare yourself for a laugh!—care Ivy Lee, 61 Broadway, New York City! So we learn that the Columbia School of Journalism is preparing students to work in the offices of “Poison Ivy!” Its standards are such that it is willing for an employe of “Poison Ivy” to be chairman of its Alumni, and to advertise that fact in its paper!

When I first came in touch with Mr. Lee’s lie-factory, he was press agent for John D. Rockefeller, Jr., at a thousand dollars a month; then he became prize poisoner for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and now he has in New York and Washington a great publicity bureau, serving all the railroads of the United States in their war upon the American people. What “Poison Ivy” gets for this work I have no idea, but it must be a generous sum; a friend of mine was looking for an apartment in New York, and entered one of those new palatial houses just off Fifth Avenue, and was informed by those in charge that the cheapest apartment in the place rented for twenty-five thousand dollars a year—and one of the tenants is Ivy L. Lee! It is interesting to note that it took a combination of our three most aristocratic universities, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia, to turn out this super-professor of prevarication!

Also the University of Wisconsin got in early on the journalism business. One of its professors got out a textbook, which was used until quite recently at Wisconsin, and is still used at many other places; there are thousands of practicing journalists in America today who got their ethical ideals from Professor Hyde’s text-book, which advises students about dramatic criticism: “Very few critics are so fortunate as to be able to say exactly what they think about a play; they must say what the editor wants them to say.”... The dramatic critic “must praise more cleverly, and give his copy the appearance of honest criticism.”

Needless to say, they have a school of journalism at the University of Jabbergrab. The director of this department is James Melvin Lee, who got his training for the teaching of journalistic ideals on the staff of “Leslie’s,” the barber-shop weekly, and later for four years as editor of “Judge,” the bar-room comic. Concerning Professor Lee’s journalistic standards I have intimate knowledge, derived from a protracted controversy over “The Brass Check”; so here I can draw you a complete picture of Jabbergrab in action.

A controversy with Professor Lee is a good deal like fighting one of those enchanters you read about in the fairy tales—your sword goes straight through him, and leaves him the same as he was before. He made his first attack on “The Brass Check” at the Brownsville Labor Forum, and his cry was that he wanted definite facts—there were none in my book! Again and again I supplied him with facts, and discovered the curious phenomenon—he paid not the slightest attention to any which I supplied; he would come again, demanding the same ones! The New York “Globe” saw in our controversy a good journalistic stunt, and they invited Professor Lee and myself to row it out, and gave each of us a total of six columns. And here in the “Globe,” Professor Lee repeated one after another all the various demands and challenges which he had issued at the Brownsville Labor Forum—overlooking almost all the data I had furnished him in the meantime!

For my first article in the “Globe,” I took the trouble to go over “The Brass Check” and count the number of cases which give complete documentation—names, places, and dates—and these came to a total of two hundred and thirteen. In addition, there are perhaps a dozen or two anecdotes which I narrate upon the authority of other people, being in every case careful to name my authority. Finally, there are half a dozen trivial incidents—such as the fact that an old college professor of mine fell down an elevator shaft in a department-store—which I did not document, for the reason that these incidents occurred to me in the final revision of the book, and I could not have the files of the New York newspapers consulted in time. Professor Lee’s method of controversy was to pick out these few trifling incidents, and recite them to the Brownsville audience, and to the readers of the New York “Globe,” with elaborate challenges to me to produce this information. Thus, to a single anecdote of Gaylord Wilshire being misrepresented by the Associated Press, Professor Lee devoted three paragraphs in the “Globe,” demanding at great length the names of the newspapers and the dates; I supplied him with the names and dates of two newspapers—but to no result that I could discover.

Both in his Brownsville address and in the “Globe” controversy he took up my story of the Associated Press crimes in Colorado; but he was careful to confine himself to one detail, my telegram to President Wilson—because he was able to argue that this telegram was libelous and that it was “self-advertising.” He made no mention of any other aspect of the whole series of suppressions which I proved against the Associated Press during that Colorado coal strike. Still more significant is the fact that nowhere in these controversies could I get him to mention the conduct of the Associated Press in the West Virginia coal strike. The reason was obvious enough; the Associated Press had here been so indiscreet as to come into court and submit its own dispatches in evidence, and its poisoning of the news was proved by its sworn official admissions. This was not the sort of “facts” that Professor Lee was looking for, and so he never let anyone hear about them!

Equally significant was his handling of the false report sent out by the Associated Press, to the effect that my wife had been arrested during our demonstration in front of the Standard Oil Building, New York, during the Colorado coal strike. I stated in “The Brass Check” that my wife notified the Associated Press of the falsity of this report, and demanded a retraction. In his first letter to me Professor Lee made the flat statement: “_The Associated Press does not have proof; it did not receive it._” In my reply, I pointed out to Professor Lee the naïveté of his own statement; how without one particle of evidence, he accepted the word of the Associated Press, and turned it into a flat statement of his own. My wife filed libel suits against thirty Associated Press newspapers which had published the false report, and the Associated Press was liable for every dollar that these newspapers might have to pay. Was it humanly believable that not one of these newspapers would notify the Associated Press of the filing of these suits? On the contrary, was it not certain that every one of these papers, under the advice of their attorneys, would notify the Associated Press of the filing of the suit, and of the paper’s expectation that the Associated Press would defend it? I sent to my New York office a copy of a newspaper, containing an account of the filing of the suit, and Professor Lee inspected this evidence in the presence of my New York manager; but did this make any difference to him? It made not a

## particle! When he took up the controversy in the New York “Globe,” he

brought up the same argument again: “The point at issue is whether such attention was called to the Associated Press!”

Still funnier was what happened in the case of Professor Lee’s demand that some one should name a newspaper which had suppressed the name of a department-store in connection with a discreditable news item. Professor Lee, reading “The Brass Check,” observed that most of my anecdotes of this kind dealt with newspapers in Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee and other cities. Therefore, he phrased his challenge at the Brownsville Labor Forum so that it referred only to _New York_ newspapers; he called for names, places and dates—and of course nobody at the Brownsville Labor Forum could supply such data. In the New York “Globe” he repeated this challenge, very proudly and very confidently. But, alas, right in the middle of the controversy, his friends on the kept press threw him down! On June 27 he published in the “Globe” his article headed, “Lee Calls on Sinclair for Names, Dates, Places”; and nine days later the New York “Evening Sun,” in its baseball edition, Wednesday, July 6, 1920, page two, column eight, published a story about a man who had sued a department-store and collected money from it—and nowhere in the article was the department-store named!

Also I ought to mention the behavior of this professor of Jabbergrab in connection with the New York “Times.” This controversy, with all the documents, is given in a pamphlet, “The Crimes of the ‘Times,’” which you may have for the asking. I will here mention only one or two details. The “Times” reported Professor Lee’s Brownsville address to the extent of two columns, quoting mainly his defense of the “Times.” I replied in a letter, and the “Times” did to this the most dishonest thing a newspaper can do—it refused to publish the letter, but discussed it in an editorial, and falsified its contents! I sent the “Times” a telegram, calling attention to the falsifications, but they refused any sort of redress. These falsifications stand in the files of the paper; they are listed in its index, found in every large library in the country. Students of “The Brass Check” will come upon those falsehoods; but they will know nothing about my answer, for my humble little pamphlet is not catalogued in libraries. I trust therefore that the reader will pardon me if I take two paragraphs of this book to state the facts; especially since every step of the controversy was a test, not merely of the “Times,” but of the Director of Journalism of New York University.

The incident in dispute is told on page 77 of “The Brass Check,” dealing with the publication of my novel, “The Metropolis.” The New York “Times” had prepared a front-page news story about this novel, and the story was killed at the last minute by Mr. Ochs, publisher of the “Times.” Professor Lee, in his Brownsville speech, declared that this narrative of mine was absurd upon its face. In my letter to the “Times,” I put it up to the “Times” to say whether my narrative was true or false. The “Times,” refusing to publish the letter, declared editorially that no such incident had occurred. Said the “Times”: “Mr. Sinclair refers to this tale in his letter to the ‘Times,’ but with a shifting of ground. For his own positive statement in ‘The Brass Check’ he now substitutes the alleged statement of a ‘publicity agent’ of a publishing house,” etc.

Now the facts were as follows: “The Metropolis” had been published in serial form in the “American Magazine”; and in “The Brass Check” I had stated that it was this magazine which had arranged for the story in the “Times.” Subsequently I recalled that it was Moffat, Yard & Company, the publishers of the _book_, who had made the arrangements, and this correction I noted in my letter to the “Times.” Manifestly, this made no difference, so far as concerned the “Times”; but you see what use they made of this “shifting of ground”! Their assertion, that I “relied upon the alleged statement of a publicity agent of a publishing house” was a flat falsehood; for in my letter to the “Times” I told them that “I saw the proofs of the proposed story with my own eyes.” A day or two later I was able to telegraph them statements from the two gentlemen who had composed the firm of Moffat, Yard & Company, Mr. W. D. Moffat and Mr. Robert Sterling Yard, both declaring that they plainly remembered the preparing of the story by the “Times,” and their disappointment when they found it did not appear as promised. The “Times” received this testimony, but refused publication to it, and paid no attention to my telegrams of protest!

And now, where was Professor Lee during this controversy? Professor Lee had furnished the “Times” with the ammunition to attack me; he had defended their journalistic practices, and they had published his defense. Here he saw them committing a piece of the baldest journalistic rascality—and what did he do about it? I telegraphed him again and again, asking him to take steps to induce the newspaper to correct its published falsehoods. Later on, I challenged him again and again to withdraw his published endorsement of the newspaper’s ethical code. His reply was to go before the University Settlement, and repeat his attack upon “The Brass Check” and his defense of the “Times”—and the “Times” once more featured his address! To the manager of my New York office Professor Lee made the smiling statement that he was publishing a magazine for business men, and he did not care how much I attacked him in public—it would only help him with his business clients!

You have heard me protesting against the practice of covering commercialists and servants of privilege with the mantle of academic dignity; and here you see what it means, and why it is done. The New York “Times” did not dare to answer “The Brass Check” itself; for a year it had ignored the book—save to post in its editorial rooms a statement that anyone found with a copy in the office would be summarily discharged! But then came forward a personage with the high-sounding title of “Director of the Department of Journalism of New York University”; and the “Times” made itself into a megaphone, to carry this hitherto negligible voice to the farthest ends of the earth!

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