truth, and taboo what is false? I happen to know differently by personal experience. If there is in this country a strictly capitalist class institution it is the Associated Press.
Pardon me if I give you just an instance or two of my personal experience. During the heat of the Pullman strike, when the Pullman cars were under boycott, the Associated Press sent out a dispatch over all the country that I had ridden out of Chicago like a royal prince in a Pullman Palace car while my dupes were left to walk the ties. A hundred witnesses who were at the depot when I left testified that the report was a lie, but I could never get the Associated Press to correct it. This lie cost me more pain and trouble than you can well imagine, and for it all I have to thank the Associated Press, and I have not forgotten it.
During the last national campaign, at a time when I was away from home, the Associated Press spread a report over the country to the effect that scab labor had been employed to do some work at my home. It was a lie, and so intended. I had the matter investigated by the chief union organizer of the district, who reported that it was a lie, but I was never able to have the correction put upon the wires. That lie is still going to this day, and for that, and still others I could mention, I have also to thank the capitalistically owned and controlled Associated Press.
You might think this a pretty small lie for a big organization
like the Associated Press to bother with; but if you think
that, you do not know the Associated Press. Hardly ever do
I mention this organization to a radical that I do not hear a
new story, frequently just such a petty and spiteful story as
the non-union labor in the home of Eugene Debs. In Pasadena
lives my friend Gaylord Wilshire, and I mention the
Associated Press to him, and he laughs. "Did I ever tell you
my story of York, Pennsylvania?" "What did you do in
York, Pennsylvania?" "Nothing," says Wilshire; "that's the
story." It appears that he was on a Socialist lecture-tour, and
the schedule was badly arranged, the trains were late, and so
he cut out York, Pennsylvania, and on the date in question was
up in Maine. But the Associated Press sent broadcast over
the country a detailed report that the editor of "Wilshire's
Magazine" had spoken in York, Pennsylvania, had denounced
the courts, had offered ten thousand dollars for a debate with
Mark Hanna, and had been mobbed by the citizens of York!
You will say, perhaps, that this must have been a mistake. Yes, but how comes it that the Associated Press makes all its mistakes one way? Why is there never a mistake favorable to a Socialist? Why does not the Associated Press report that Gene Debs has rescued a child from drowning; or that Gaylord
