And this is the testimony of every independent-minded newspaper man with whom I have talked about the Associated Press. Will Irwin, writing in "Harper's Weekly," shows how the old reactionary forces shape the policy of the organization. "The subordinates have drifted inevitably toward the point of view held by their masters." And again, of the average Associated Press correspondent: "A movement in stocks is to him news—big news. Wide-spread industrial misery in a mining camp is scarcely news at all." At a conference at the University of Wisconsin, the editor of the "Madison Democrat" stated that he had been a correspondent of the Associated Press for many years, and had never been asked "to suppress news or to color news in any way whatever." Reply was made by A. M. Simons: "I have had many reporters working under me, and every one of you know that you will not have a reporter on your paper who cannot 'catch policy' in two weeks."
The general manager of the Associated Press makes public boast of the high character of his employes. "Throughout the profession, employment in its service is regarded as an evidence of character and reliability." Such is the glittering generality; but investigate a little, and you find one Associated Press correspondent, Calvin F. Young, of Charleston, West Virginia, engaged in sending strike-news to his organization, and at the same time in the pay of the mine-owners, collecting affidavits against the strikers. You find a second Associated Press correspondent, E. Wentworth Prescott, of Boston, dipping into the slush funds of the New Haven Railroad, and giving an explanation of his services, so lacking in plausibility that Interstate Commerce Commissioner Anderson remarks: "I don't see why they couldn't just as well have hired you to count the telegraph poles on the street!"
The Associated Press is probably the most iron-clad monopoly in America. It was organized originally as a corporation under the laws of Illinois, but the Illinois courts declared it a monopoly, so it moved out of Illinois, and reorganized itself as a "membership corporation," thus evading the law. Today, if you wish to start a morning newspaper in the village of Corn Center, Kansas, you may get an Associated Press franchise; but if you want to start one in any city or town within circulating distance of the big "forty-one-vote"
