the same rifles and machine-guns, were shipped to Colorado, and under the direction of the same Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency they smashed the fourteen months' strike in Colorado. And both in West Virginia and Colorado the same Associated Press was made use of to send to the country the same misrepresentations and suppressions of truth.
In the "Independent" for May 15, 1913, after the West Virginia strike had lasted more than a year, there appeared an article by Mrs. Fremont Older, describing the farcical military trial of some union officials at Paint Creek Junction. Mrs. Older, the only impartial person who was able to get into this court-room, made the statement: "The Provost Marshal was not only the ruling officer of Paint Creek Junction; he was the Associated Press correspondent. He had the divine gift for creating darkness." In the next issue of the "Independent" appeared a letter from the assistant general manager of the Associated Press, declaring: "The Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press correspondent, and never had been."
Nevertheless, this rumor would not down, and in the "Masses" for July, 1913, appeared a cartoon: "Poisoned at the Source," representing the president of the Associated Press engaged in pouring the contents of a bottle labeled "Lies" into a reservoir labeled "Public Opinion." Accompanying the cartoon was an editorial, one sentence of which read: "The representative of the Associated Press was an officer in that military tribunal that hounded the Paint Creek miners into the penitentiary in violation of their constitutional liberties." The answer of the Associated Press to this was the indictment for criminal libel of Max Eastman and Art Young. The "Masses," presumably by advice of counsel, did not discuss the case, and continued to maintain silence, even after the case was dropped. The facts are here made public for the first time—possibly because in preparing this book I have not taken the trouble to consult counsel. Here are certain facts which the public should have; and if I have to hand them to the public through the bars of a jail, it will not be the first time that has happened in history.
Was the Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia a correspondent of the Associated Press? He was, or he was not—according to whether you care about truth or technicality.
