itself absolutely on the Mooney case. The publisher, a veteran labor union official, recently informed an applicant for the job of editor that he was "running the paper to make money." The applicant said that he favored the Plumb plan; so there was "nothing doing."
Moving on up the coast, there is the "Portland Oregonian," owned by the estate of a huge-scale lumber operator, one of the richest men in the Northwest. An employee of this paper writes to me:
He was so public-spirited and free-handed that the appraisal of
the estate showed that he had invested to the extent of five dollars in
war savings stamps and in only five thousand dollars worth of war
bonds, and that under direct compulsion, so it was revealed, of his
fellow-citizens. The "Oregonian" is born of corporate power, conceived
for corporate purposes, and exists to do the corporate bidding,
avowedly so.
Also there is the "Portland Telegram," owned by the two
sons of a timber magnate, who obtained most of his lands by
the popular "dummy entry" system. The same informant,
who once worked for this paper, writes me of these owners:
Neither has ever had to do a stroke of work in his life, and the
attitude of both toward the man on the payroll is the most typically
snobbish I have ever encountered. The younger brother directs the
paper, although he could not earn fifteen dollars a week salary in any
department if he were put on his own. The paper consequently is so
wobbly in its policies and practices that it rapidly is becoming a joke.
In this vicinity is a third paper, owned by a politician of
whom friends tell me that he has in past times taken the popular
side, but now is old, and has got himself a business manager. A
friend who knows this young man describes him:
"Energetic, cold as steel, a typical corporation, business, money
man, who is wiping the paper clean of every trace of democracy."
And then, moving farther North to Seattle, there is the
"Times," an enormously valuable property, built up with the
financial assistance of the Hill interests and the Great
Northern Railroad—which, I believe, made more money out
of a small investment than any other enterprise in America.
The "Times" is paying five per cent dividends on six million
dollars, and so naturally believes in the profit system. Also
there is the "Star," a Scripps paper—the "Shooting Star,"
which was willing to lose thirty-five thousand readers in order
