Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/291

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breach of contract. The "Boston Post" refused to publish the advertisement at all, its manager giving the reason that it was "contrary to public policy"! I have read of many Socialists being sent to jail upon a charge of interfering with the government's war activities, but if the manager of the "Boston Post" was sent to jail, the other newspapers did not report it!

What this amounts to is a censorship of the small and occasional advertisers by the large and permanent ones; this censorship is common, and sometimes it is made to wear the aspect of virtue. The best-paying advertisements are those of automobiles and other leisure-class luxuries; as such advertisers will not publish alongside cheap patent medicine fakes, publications like "Collier's" and the "Outlook" make a boast of censoring their advertisements. But when it comes to protecting their high-priced advertisers, these publications are, as I have shown, every bit as unscrupulous as the sellers of cancer-cures and headache-powders. I, who wish to attack these high-priced advertisers, am forced to publish what I have to say in a paper which can only exist by publishing the advertisements of cancer-cures and headache-powders. This is very humiliating, but what can I do? Stop writing? If I could have my way, of course, I would write for a publication having a large circulation and publishing honest reading matter and honest advertising matter. But no such publication exists; and I have to decide the question, which does the least harm, a publication with honest advertising matter and dishonest reading matter, or a publication with honest reading matter and dishonest advertising matter.

Also, of course, there will be censorship of advertisements containing news. If the newspaper is suppressing certain facts, it will not permit you to make known these facts, even for money. The "Los Angeles Times," although it bitterly opposed single tax, was willing to take my money for an advertisement in favor of single tax; but the "Times" would not take my money for an advertisement reporting a meeting at which the truth about Russia was told. The "Times" would not sell me space to make known that the Socialists of the city had challenged the Superintendent of Schools to debate the truth of certain false statements which he had made about Russia.

In Louisville is the "People's Church," conducted by an independent clergyman in a theatre, and attended by one or two thousand people every Sunday. The "Louisville Courier-