Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/258

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"Well, as I say, I don't mind, but some of my associates take it seriously."

"Well, I'll show you about that. We'll fix that up very easily."

So the General went off, and next day there appeared in the "Times" an editorial speaking very cordially of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism. And thereafter for two or three weeks, the "Times" spoke pleasantly of the Edward Bellamy brand of social idealism, and it faithfully reported the meetings of the Nationalists. But the "Nationalist" did not change its printing-plant, and so the General got tired of waiting, and shifted back to his old method of sneering and abuse. This, you understand, for a job-printing contract worth fifty, or perhaps a hundred dollars, a week!

By methods such as these Otis grew wealthy, and later on he purchased six hundred and fifty thousand acres of land in Northern Mexico. When the Diaz régime was overthrown, Otis had trouble in getting his cattle out, so he wanted a counter-revolution in Mexico, and for years the whole policy of his paper has been directed to bringing on intervention and conquest of that country. At one time the Federal authorities indicted Harry Chandler, son-in-law of Otis, and his successor in control of the "Times," for conspiracy to ship arms into Mexico. Mr. Chandler was acquitted. If you will turn back to page 209 of this book, you will find a statement by a prominent Los Angeles lawyer as to jury trials in the "City of the Black Angels."

Mr. Hearst also owns enormous stretches of land in Mexico, and Mr. Hearst also understands that if Mexico were conquered and annexed by the United States, the value of his lands would be increased many times over. Therefore for fifteen years the Hearst newspapers have been used as a means of forcing war with Mexico. Mr. Hearst admits and is proud of the fact that it was he who made the Spanish-American war. He sent Frederick Remington to Cuba to make pictures of the war, and Remington was afraid there wasn't going to be any war, and so cabled Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst answered: "You make the pictures and I'll make the war."

That was in 1897 or 1898. I was a boy just out of college, and fell victim to this modern kind of "war-making." I was