its methods the subject of discussion at the dinner-tables of many countries; and now I was coming back to Packingtown for the first time since that event. There was a big hall, jammed to the very doors with Stockyards workers. You will pardon me if I say that they made it clear that they were glad to have me come there. And to this uproarious audience I told the story of the "New York Herald" investigation, and what had been discovered. I stood, looking into the faces of these workingmen and women, and said: "You are the people who know about these matters. Are they true?" There was a roar of assent that rocked the building. I said: "I know they are true, and you know they are true. Now tell me this, ought they be made known to the American people? Would you like them to be made known to the American people?" And again there was a roar of assent.
Then I looked over the edge of the platform to a row of tables, where sat the reporters looking up, and I talked to them for a while. I said: "You are newspaper men; you know a story when you see it. Tell me now—tell me straight—is not this a story?" The newspaper men nodded and grinned. They knew it was a "story" all right. "The public would like to read this—the public of Chicago and the public of all the rest of America—would they not?" And again the newspaper men nodded and grinned. "Now," said I, "play fair with me; give me a square deal, so far as you are concerned. Write this story just as I have told it tonight. Write it and turn it in and see what happens. Will you do that?" And they pledged themselves, the audience saw them pledge themselves. And so the test was made, as perfect a test as anyone could conceive. And next morning there was just one newspaper in Chicago which mentioned my speech in the Stockyards district—the "Chicago Socialist." Not one line in any other newspaper, morning or evening, in Chicago!
A little later I happened to be on the Pacific coast, and made the test once more. I was putting on some plays, and it happened that a newspaper had played me a dirty trick that morning. So in my curtain-speech I said what I thought of American newspapers, and told this Chicago story. Just one newspaper in San Francisco published a line about the matter, and that was the "Bulletin," edited by Fremont Older, who happened to be a personal friend, and one of the few independent newspaper editors in America. Excepting for
