group of our biggest exploiters, headed by Coleman du Pont of the Powder Trust, buy the "American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers." They give a dinner to the heads of all the newspaper advertising agencies, at the Bankers' Club of New York, and explain that in future all advertising must be placed through this great association. So the massed advertising power of American corporations is to be wielded as a club, to keep the newspaper columns and the editorial columns of foreign language newspapers free from radicalism. So when there is a strike anywhere in the "Powder barony," and Poles and Hungarians are being bayonetted and shot, the powder barons will know that Polish and Hungarian newspapers are printing no news of the shooting, and giving no encouragement to the strike.
I write the above a priori; that is to say, I understand American Capitalism so well that I venture to guess what it plans to do with its foreign-language press machine. And six months later, as I am sending this book to the printer, I discover that I have guessed correctly! The great steel-strike is on, and the following appears in an Associated Press dispatch from Youngstown, Ohio:
Managers of five foreign language newspapers to-day decided to
publish special editions of their papers explaining to their countrymen
that if they are satisfied with present mill-conditions they should meet
and vote on the question of returning to work.
And, on the other hand, if the foreign-language newspapers
decide to get along without advertising, and to stand by the
workers, what then? Then we denounce them as Bolsheviks,
and demand deportation of their editors and publishers; we
raid their offices and confiscate their lists and bar them from
our mails. If necessary, some of our corrupt interests "frame
up" evidence against them, and throw their editors and publishers
into jail.
The above may sound to you an extreme statement. But as this book is going to press I come upon definite evidence of precisely such a case, and you will find it in full in the last chapter.
