Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/132

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same ones that had spread out the millionaire's arguments in full. And how many printed it? How many printed the whole of it? Just one—the "Call," the Socialist paper. How many printed parts of it? And how large were these parts? Let us see.

The author's first letter measured in newspaper columns sixty-three inches; the millionaire's reply measured nineteen, and the author's reply to that measured sixty-one. If it be objected that the author was claiming more than his fair share, it should be pointed out that the author was attacking an established institution, something one cannot do in a few sentences. On the other hand, the most foolish person can reply, "I don't agree with you"—and claim the virtue of brevity. Also, be it noted that the question here is not what the author claimed, but what he got. Here is a table showing what he got, in column inches, from the leading morning papers of New York:

        Author Millionaire Author

Times 0 19 0
Herald 0 19 0
Press 0 19 0
Tribune 0 19 0
American 0 19 2
World 0 19 2-1/4
Sun 0 19 4-1/2
Call 63 19 61

Let it be noted that the above takes no account of headlines, which were all big for the millionaire and small for the author; it does not include editorials, interviews and photographs, nor does it reckon the advantage of first-page position.

In order to make the significance of the figures quite clear, let them be reduced to percentages. Each paper had 124 author-inches offered to it, and 19 millionaire-inches. To begin with the "Times": this paper printed all the millionaire inches—also a few extra which it hunted up for itself; it printed none at all of the author-inches. Hence we see that, to put it mathematically, the "Times" considers an author absolutely nothing in comparison with a millionaire. Exactly the same is true of the "Herald," the "Press," and the "Tribune." The "World" printed 100 per cent of possible millionaire-inches and less than 2 per cent of possible author-inches, thus giving the millionaire more than fifty times the