disclosed would have been given the widest publicity by the daily press. That the proceedings of this trial were suppressed by the English papers of this city for commercial reasons which appealed to their advertising department is unquestioned. Every newspaper man of my acquaintance to whom I have mentioned the matter has admitted the fact and deplored it.
In the same way, when Wanamaker's was detected violating
the customs laws, only one Philadelphia newspaper reported the
circumstances. There was organized a league for honest advertising,
and you might have thought that such a league would
have appealed to our highly moral newspapers; but when this
league prosecuted a merchant in New York for selling furs
under false names, not one newspaper mentioned the circumstances.
This merchant was convicted, and again not one New
York newspaper mentioned it. In Chicago various firms were
prosecuted for misbranding goods, and the local papers suppressed
the news. In Milwaukee four firms were prosecuted
for selling a potted cheese doped with chemicals, and the newspapers
withheld the names of the firms. Says Will Irwin: "I
have never seen a story of a shop-lifting case in which the
name of the store was mentioned." Also he makes the following
statement concerning the most august of the Brahmin
newspapers of New England:
The "Boston Evening Transcript" published in its issue of April
8th the fact that a workman had fallen from a tree, that an aged
pauper had been found dead in bed, that the Harvard Shooting Club
was about to hold a meet, but not the fact that "Harvard Beer," known
to every consumer of malt liquors in Massachusetts, was in peril of
the law for adulteration. Neither was the fact noted on Monday,
April 10. But on Tuesday, April 11, "Harvard Beer—1,000 pure"
appeared in the pages of the "Transcript"—as a half-page advertisement!
Every newspaper editor feels this pressure—even though he
feels it only in his imagination. A horse that travels in harness
does so, not because he likes to travel, but because he carries
in his subconsciousness the memory of the whip and the bit
which "broke" him in the days of his wild youth. And if, by
any chance, he forgets this whip and bit, he is quickly reminded.
William Winter, a dramatic critic who had served the "New
York Tribune" for forty-four years, was forced to resign
because his reviews of plays injured the advertising business of
the "Tribune." Certain managers were making money out of
producing indecent plays; Mr. Winter rebuked these plays, the
