Neither this nor other damaging information concerning the company's conduct got into the columns of the local press. A yellow journal, conspicuous in the fight for cheaper gas by its ferocious onslaughts on the "gas trust," suddenly ceased its attack. Soon it began to carry a full-page "Cook with gas" advertisement. The cow had found the entrance to the sacred fold.
Traction is a "sacred cow." The truth about Cleveland's fight for the three-cent fare has been widely suppressed. For instance, while Mayor Johnson was superintending the removal of the tracks of a defunct street railway, he was served with a court order enjoining him from tearing up the rails. As the injunction was not indorsed, as by law it should be, he thought it was an ordinary communication, and put it in his pocket to examine later. The next day he was summoned to show reason why he should not be found in contempt of court. When the facts came out, he was, of course, discharged. An examination of seven leading dailies of the country shows that a dispatch was sent out from Cleveland stating that Mayor Johnson, after acknowledging service, pocketed the injunction, and ordered his men to proceed with their work. In the newspaper-offices this dispatch was then embroidered. One paper said the mayor told his men to go ahead and ignore the injunction. Another had the mayor intimating in advance that he would not obey an order if one were issued. A third invented a conversation in which the mayor and his superintendent made merry over the injunction. Not one of the seven journals reported the mayor's complete exoneration later.
And the same thing has been done in every city where radicals
of any sort have gained control. Says A. M. Simons,
speaking at a conference of the University of Wisconsin:
The story of the administration of Milwaukee while it was in
Socialist control was a caricature of the truth, so much so that it was
found necessary to establish a weekly bulletin or press service,
scarcely an issue of which did not contain a correction of some news
agency story. Compare the story sent out about Mayor Shank and
the public market in Indianapolis with the almost complete suppression
of the fight against the ice trust by the Socialist interests in
Schenectady.
One of the most incredible instances of news suppression
in the interests of Big Business occurred early in 1914, during
the hearings of the Interstate Commerce Commission. For
three years the newspapers had carried on an elaborate campaign
in favor of a five per cent increase in freight rates.
Fifty million dollars a year was at stake, and the roads were
spending millions in advertising their cause in the newspapers.
The presidents of our biggest railroads appeared before the
Interstate Commerce Commission to tell of the ruin which was
threatened unless the increase were granted. The campaign
was all worked out in advance, the "dope" for the newspapers
