opposed to the railroads had appeared in the newspapers of Nebraska, but after the bureau had been in operation for three months, in one week the newspapers of Nebraska had published two hundred and two columns favorable to the railroads, and only four columns against them!
And year by year, as the plundering of the people increases, this "bribe wholesale" becomes a greater menace; to-day, as I write, it has become a nation-wide propaganda. Testifying before the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry of the United States Senate, January 14, 1919, Frank Heney shows that to defeat the bill for government regulation of the packing industry now before Congress, Swift & Company alone are spending a million dollars a month upon newspaper advertising! Heney testifies that he has had an examination made of every newspaper in California, and every one has published the full-page advertisements of this firm. Senator Norris testifies that he has had an examination made in New York State, and has been unable to find a single paper without the advertisements—which, it is pointed out, are not in any way calculated to sell the products of Swift & Company, but solely to defeat government regulation of the industry. Armour & Company were paying over two thousand dollars a page to all the farm publications of the country—and this not for advertisements, but for "special articles"! J. Ogden Armour was put on the stand, and some amusement developed. He had given a banquet to the editors of these farm-journals; he did not expect this banquet to have any influence upon the advertising, but he did have a vague hope that both banquet and advertising might dispose the editors to look with less disfavor upon the Armour business!
Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive. 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. Then a
