give; next morning I saw those instructions followed by the newspapers. Has any man ever held an executive position on a newspaper in America without witnessing incidents of this sort? The testimony available is not merely that of radicals and "muck-rakers." Here is a most conservative editor, Hamilton Holt, in his book, "Commercialism and Journalism," mentioning "a certain daily whose editor recently told me that there was on his desk a list three feet long of prominent people whose names were not to be mentioned in his paper."
Is there any newspaper which does not show consideration for the business interests of its owners? Come to Los Angeles, which I happen to know especially well, because I live only twelve miles away from it. It calls itself the "City of the Angels"; I have taken the liberty of changing the name to the "City of the Black Angels." This city gets its water-supply from distant mountains, and its great financial interests owned vast tracts of land between the city and the sources of supply. There were four newspapers, all in a state of most ferocious rivalry; but all of them owned some of this land, and all of them united in the campaign for an aqueduct. For years they kept the population terrified by pictures of failing water-supply; people say they had the water run out of the reservoirs, and the city parks allowed to dry up! So they got their aqueduct, and land that had cost forty dollars an acre became worth a thousand dollars. A single individual cleared a million dollars by this deal.
I have given in this book a fairly thorough account of the "Los Angeles Times," the perfect illustration of a great newspaper conducted in the financial interest of one man. The personality of that man infected it so powerfully that the infection has persisted after the man is dead. I have never heard anybody in Los Angeles maintain that the "Times" is an honest newspaper, or a newspaper which serves the public interest; but I have heard them say that Otis was "sincere according to his lights," that "you always knew where to find him." I have heard this said by several different men, and it is extraordinary testimony to the extent to which newspaper knavery can be successful.
No, you didn't "always know where to find Otis"; for many years it was a toss-up where you would find him, for Otis had two offices in Los Angeles. One was the office of the "Times,"
