Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/443

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absolutely nonpartisan, and never the propaganda organ of any cause. It will watch the country, and see where lies are being circulated and truth suppressed; its job will be to nail the lies, and bring the truth into the light of day. I believe that a sufficient number of Americans are awake to the dishonesty of our press to build up for such a paper a circulation of a million inside of a year.

Let me say at the outset that I am not looking for a job. I have my work, and it isn't editing a newspaper; nor do I judge myself capable of that rigid impartiality which such an enterprise would require. It is my idea that control of the paper should be vested in a board of directors, composed of twenty or thirty men and women of all creeds and causes, who have proven by their life-time records that they believe in fair play. By way of illustration, I will indicate my idea of such a board: Allan Benson, Alice Stone Blackwell, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Arthur Bullard, William C. Bullitt, Herbert Croly, Max Eastman, William Hard, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Hamilton Holt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Paul Kellogg, Amos Pinchot, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Ida Tarbell, Col. William Boyce Thompson, Samuel Untermyer, Frank A. Vanderlip, Oswald Garrison Villard, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

The above list is confined to men and women who live in or near New York, and who therefore could attend directors' meetings, and not be merely "dummies." You will note that the list contains some practical publishers and editors; it contains Socialists and anti-Socialists, pro-Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks, radicals and liberals of all shades.

In addition I would like to provide for a number of directors to be appointed by various organized groups in the country: one representative each from the Non-partisan League, The American Federation of Labor, the National Teachers' Federation, the Federation of Catholic Societies, the Federation of Protestant Churches, the Federation of Women's Clubs, etc. The members thus named should not be sufficient in number to control the publication, for it is obvious in common sense that control must rest with the stockholders who have founded and made possible the paper. But these various groups should have a voice on the board, for the purpose of