goes on strike, and while they are on strike, they publish a paper of their own! In Boston the "News-Writers' Union" declares a strike, and wins all demands. Incidentally they learn—if they do not know it already—that the newspapers of Boston do not publish the news! They do not publish the news about the News-Writers' strike; when the strike is settled, on the basis of recognition of the union, not a single Boston newspaper publishes the terms of the settlement!
In every union there is always a little group of radicals, occupied with pointing out to the men the social significance of their labor, the duty they owe to the working-class, and to society as a whole. So before long we shall see the News-Writers' Union of Boston taking up the task of forcing the Boston newspapers to print the truth. We shall see the News-Writers' Union taking up the question: Shall the "Boston Evening Transcript" permit its news-columns to be edited by the gas company, and by "Harvard Beer, 1,000 Pure"? We shall see the union at least bringing these facts to public attention, so that the "Transcript" can no longer pose as a respectable newspaper.
I quote one paragraph more from my San Francisco letter:
All three evening papers, I am told, are one hundred per cent
organized; a charter is on the way from the I. T. U. and the movement
has the full backing—or is promised the full backing—of the
A. F. of L. and the local labor organizations. Just what that is
worth is yet to be learned.
This man, you see, is groping his way. He doesn't know
what the backing of organized labor is worth. But the newspapermen
of Boston found out; they won because the type-setters
and the pressmen stood by them. And the New York
actors won because the musicians and the stage-hands stood
by them. And this is the biggest thing about the whole movement—the
fact that workers of hand and brain are uniting
and preparing to take possession of the world. One purpose
of this book is to urge a hand-and-brain union in the newspaper
field; to urge that the news-writers shall combine with the
pressmen and type-setters and the truckmen—one organization
of all men and women who write, print and distribute news,
to take control of their own labor, and see to it that the newspapers
serve public interests and not private interests.
What I ask at the very outset is a representative of the News-Writers' Union, acting as one of the copy-readers of
