CHAPTER XXXIII
A FOUNTAIN OF POISON
I have lived in Southern California four years, and it is
literally a fact that I have yet to meet a single person who
does not despise and hate his "Times." This paper, founded
by Harrison Gray Otis, one of the most corrupt and most
violent old men that ever appeared in American public life,
has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable
social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with
abusiveness which seems almost insane. To one who understands
our present economic condition, the volcano of social
hate which is smouldering under the surface of our society,
it would seem better to turn loose a hundred thousand mad
dogs in the streets of Los Angeles, than to send out a hundred
thousand copies of the "Times" every day.
You cannot live in Southern California and stand for any sort of liberal ideas without encountering the wrath of this paper. And when you have once done this, it pursues you with personal vindictiveness; no occasion is too small for it to lay hold of, nor does it ever forget you, no matter how many years may pass. My friend Rob Wagner writes me an amusing story about the feud between Otis and the city of Santa Barbara, a millionaire colony about a hundred miles from Los Angeles:
When the big fleet came around here some years ago I was
director-generaling a very snappy flower festival at Santa Barbara, and
as the "Times" played up all the bar-room brawls the sailors got
into and belittled my pretty show, I got hold of the local correspondent
and says: "Mac, why are you crabbing the show and featuring the
rough stuff?" "Well the truth is, Bob, my pay depends upon the kind
of stuff I send. A rotten story is good for columns, against a few
paragraphs of the birds and the flowers. You know the General has
towns as well as individuals on his index, and Santa Barbara is one
of them. The General once owned the Santa Barbara 'Press,' and
with his usual cave-man methods got in bad with the villagers, and
they bumped him socially so hard that he finally left in great heat and
swore vengeance, which he practices to this day. This has been going
on for years."
Now the old "General" is gone, but his "index" still stands.
