Wilshire has been awarded a gold medal by a chamber of commerce; or that Upton Sinclair has been made a bishop of the Episcopal Church for writing "The Profits of Religion"?
One of the most interesting illustrations of newspaper lying about Socialists occurred during a May-day meeting in Union Square, New York, a few years ago. It is interesting because we may go behind the scenes and watch the wires being pulled. It appears that police arrangements for this meeting were in charge of Chief Inspector Schmittberger, an old-style Tammany clubber; but he could not handle the affair in the usual fashion of the New York police, because the administration of Mayor Mitchel had ordained "free speech." Schmittberger had his clubbers hidden in an excavation of the subway, ready to sally forth when the meeting gave excuse. But the meeting did not give excuse, and some of the policemen grew impatient, and sallied out without orders and started clubbing. My friend Isaac Russell, who was reporting the day's events for the "New York Times," was standing by Schmittberger's side, and heard him shout to these unauthorized clubbers. Says Russell:
I ran beside Schmittberger into the fracas, and he yanked and
pulled cops over backwards to break up the thing. And finally he got
them under control, and then gave them fits for acting without orders.
Russell, being an honest man, went back to the "Times"
office, and wrote a story of how the New York police had been
seized by a panic, and had broken out without orders; and
that story went through. But it happened that up in the editorial
rooms of the "Times" somebody was writing the conventional
"Times" editorial, denouncing the Socialists for their
May-day violence, and praising the police for their heroism.
It never occurred to the editorial writer that the news editors
could be so careless as to pass a story like Isaac Russell's! So
next day here was this comical discrepancy, and an organization
of magazine editors, the "Ragged Edge Club," invited
Isaac Russell to come and explain to them the war between
the news columns and the editorial columns of the "Times"!
Russell was called up before his boss and, as he says, "roasted
to a frazzle" for having written the truth. Arthur Greaves,
city editor of the "Times," told him that he had "got off all
wrong in that situation." But Russell's job was saved—and
how do you think? The police commissioner of New York
