must hide them or lose my job." Poor fellow, his wife is dying of tuberculosis, and he is almost distracted with the burden of his financial troubles.
It was just another journalistic tragedy I had seen, but joy burst in upon me as I listened to him talk. "Things aren't so bad after all," I thought, "for the press, at least, isn't any more rotten or venal than the rest of the system." In the editorial rooms of the country there are good fellows and true, sheer tired of the daily assassination in which they participate. Their fine delusions are spent. Their faith in the old is waning. And when the big day comes, I think you will find the press full ripe—riper perhaps than most of our institutions—for the change.
On page 149 I stated that the publisher of the "New York
Times" gave a dinner to his staff, and my friend, Isaac Russell,
corrected me, saying: "WE REPORTERS PAID FOR
THAT DINNER." Now let me give you another glimpse into
a reporter's soul:
I can understand it now. We were trying to get together in an
association, but the big bosses always got in, and Mr. Ochs always
came TO OUR DINNER, and always made the principal speech, and
always dismissed the gathering after vaudeville stunts by "old vets."
I remember that at that dinner I PAID, but sat away at the foot of a
horseshoe table, and the BIG GUNS of the "Times" all sat around the
center of the horse-shoe, and the big guns thundered and sent us away—me
boiling, that we writers had to sit mute and dumb at our own
dinner, and could never talk over our affairs—the bosses rushed so to
every gathering we planned.
I wish you could print the menu card for that dinner—the illustration on the cover. I kept it as the most humiliating example I ever saw of the status of the news-writer. . . . The illustration showed Adolph S. Ochs as a man with his coat off wielding a big sledge-*hammer. He was knocking one of those machines where you send the ball away up in the air, and get a cigar if the bell rings at the top of the column. Well, a little figure stood behind the redoubtable plutocratic owner of the "Times." This little figure was labeled "THE STAFF."
"STAFF" WAS FLUNKEYING IT FOR OCHS—holding the great man's hat and coat, if you will—while he hit the circulation ball a wallop!
