member of an honored profession, having its own standards, its sense of duty to the public? Obviously, the first trouble is that in his economic status the reporter is a sweated wage slave. If reporting is to become a profession, the reporters must organize, and have power to fix, not merely their wage-scale, but also their ethical code. I wrote an article calling for a "reporters' union," and Russell began to agitate among New York newspaper-men for this idea, which has now spread all over the country.
What would be the effect upon news-writing of a reporters' union? What assurance have we that reporters would be better than owners? Well, in the first place, reporters are young men, and owners are nearly always old men; so in the newspaper-world you have what you have in the world of finance, of diplomacy, of politics and government—a "league of the old men," giving orders to the young men, holding the young men down. The old men own most of the property, the young men own little of the property; so control by old men is property control, while control by young men would be control by human beings.
I have met some newspaper reporters who were drunken scoundrels. I have met some who were as cruel and unscrupulous as the interests they served. But the majority of newspaper reporters are decent men, who hate the work they do, and would gladly do better if it were possible. I feel sure that very few of the falsehoods about Helicon Hall would have been published if the reporters who accepted our hospitality had been free to write what they really thought about us. I know that throughout our "Broadway demonstration" a majority of the reporters were on our side. They took us into their confidence about what was going on in their newspaper offices; they went out of their way to give us counsel. Again and again they came to my wife, to plead that our mourning "stunt" was "petering-out," and could we not think up some way to hold the attention of the public? Would not my wife at least rescind her request that they omit descriptions of that white military cape? After the last assault upon the street speakers in Tarrytown, it was a reporter who warned my wife that the situation was getting out of hand; the authorities would not listen to reason, there was going to be violence, and she had better persuade me to withdraw.
