Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/47

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An Adventure with Roosevelt
43

readers that one of their clever correspondents in the capital had achieved this "scoop." Being new to the newspaper game, I was surprised at this, but I have since observed that it is a regular trick of newspapers. When the Socialist revolution took place in Germany, I happened to be in Pasadena, and the "Los Angeles Examiner" called me up to ask what I knew about the personalities in the new government. So next morning the "Examiner" had a full description of Ebert and a detailed dispatch from Copenhagen!

The "New York Times," having put its hand to the plough, went a long way down the furrow. For several days they published my material. I gave them the address of the Bloors, and they sent a reporter to Delaware to interview them, and get the inside story of the commission's experiences in Chicago; this also went on the front page. All these stories the "Times" sold to scores of newspapers all over the country — newspapers which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The "Times," of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the "New York Times"!

Also I had another experience which threw light on the attitude of the great metropolitan newspapers to the subject of money. It is the custom of publishers to sell to newspaper syndicates what are called the "post-publication serial rights" of a book. "The Jungle" having become an international sensation, there was keen bidding for these serial rights, and they were finally sold to the "New York American" for two thousand dollars, of which the author received half. Forth-with the editorial writers of both the Hearst papers in New York, the "American" and the "Evening Journal," began to sing the praises of "The Jungle." You will recall the patronizing tone in which Arthur Brisbane had spoken of my charges against the Chicago packers. But now suddenly Brisbane lost all his distrust of my competence as an authority on stockyards. In the "Evening Journal" for May 29, 1906, there