concise exposé on record of the despicable methods which prevail in that organization."
Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he was for seven years a staff correspondent and editor for the Associated Press. He was in charge of its Des Moines bureau at the time I was trying to get out the truth from the Colorado coal strike. One day there came through on the Associated Press wire instructions from the New York office "that henceforth Upton Sinclair must be kept out of the Denver office, and that no relations with him might be had by any employe of the Denver bureau. I remember that my operator copied the message and brought it to me, and that I determined to keep it for possible future reference.
"Within fifteen minutes after the message had been sent the chief operator at Chicago asked the Des Moines operator if he had copied it, and on being informed affirmatively he ordered the copy sent to Chicago. The operator asked me for the message, but I declined to let him have it. I placed it in a locked compartment of my desk, where it remained for several weeks, when one day it turned up missing. I have never been able to ascertain just how it disappeared, but I am quite positive that other keys fitted my desk, and that there was a reason for its disappearance. It wasn't so many months after this occurrence that I was ordered in to the Chicago office, presumably because it was thought I would bear watching. My radical views led finally, in 1916, to my leaving the Associated Press service entirely.
"Perhaps you have not heard that it was because of his efforts to do the square thing by you in the Ammons matter that Rowsey was discharged by Superintendent Cowles upon the orders of Melville E. Stone. Yet that was what was currently reported in inner 'A. P.' circles at the time."
Mr. Costello goes on to tell me that he left the Associated Press with his mind made up as to what was to be his life's work, "the establishment of a press association which would represent the people who work, as against the eight or ten millionaire publishers, who, through the ownership of Associated Press bonds, outvote nearly 2,000 other members of the organization, and absolutely control the channels through which the great public gets its poisoned news."
The "Federated Press" had its inception at a convention of the Labor Party in Chicago, November, 1919. It is a co-operative non-profit-making organization of working class newspapers, and maintains an admirable service of vital news from all over the world. It publishes a weekly four-page bulletin, which it will mail to you for five dollars a year, and which you will find worth the price many times over. The address of the "Federated Press" is 156 West Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois.
