features it boasts a profit of something like a million dollars a year; this income being derived from the publication of the filthiest patent medicine advertisements, of pages upon pages of news about moving-picture rubbish, real estate speculations, oil stocks, gold mines, every kind of swindling—all paid for.
I shall have much to say in later chapters about the "Times" fortune and the way it was made. For the moment I give one anecdote, to round out my picture.
My authority is a gentleman who a few years ago was managing editor of the "Los Angeles Herald." The "Herald" was then a morning paper, a rival of the "Times," and was controlled and practically owned by the Farmers' & Merchants' National Bank of Los Angeles. The president of this institution is the biggest banker on the coast, and was engaged, with the connivance of the newspapers, in unloading upon the city for two and a half million dollars a water company which was practically worthless. It was found that the "Herald" was not paying, and the banker decided to reduce the price from five cents to two cents. But Otis of the "Times" got wind of it, and notified the banker that if he lowered the price of the "Herald," the "Times" would at once open up on the water company swindle. "Oh, very well, General," replied the banker. "If that's the way you feel about it, we'll forget it." So the price of the "Herald" stayed up, and the paper lost money, and finally Otis bought it for a song, ran it for a while in pretended rivalry to the "Times," and then sold it at a profit, upon condition that it be made an evening paper, so that it should not interfere with the "Times."
Reading this, you will not be surprised to learn that the particular page upon which appeared the rhapsody to "My Lady Poverty" bears the name of the particular "Times" editor who told me: "It has been so long since I have written anything that I believe, that I don't think I would know the sensation!"
