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printed on their labels the percentage of alcohol or of morphin or various other poisons which the medicine contains. That was the first success in a fight which the public health authorities have waged in twenty states each year for twenty years. In North Dakota the patent-medicine people conducted the fight with their usual weapons, the ones described above. But the newspapers, be it said to their everlasting credit, refused to fall in line to the threats of the patent-medicine association. And I account for that fact in this way: North Dakota is wholly a "country" community. It has no city of over 20,000, and but one over 5,000. The press of the state, therefore, consists of very small papers, weeklies, in which the ownership and active management all lie with one man. The editorial conscience and the business manager's enterprise lie under one hat. With them the patent-medicine scheme was not so successful as with the more elaborately organized newspapers of older and more populous states.
Just now is the North Dakota editor's time of trial. The law went into effect July 1. The patent-medicine association, at their annual meeting in May, voted to withdraw all their advertising from all the papers in that state. This loss of revenue, they argued self-righteously, would be a warning to the newspapers of other states. Likewise it would be a lesson to the newspapers of North Dakota. At the next session of the legislature they will seek to have the label bill repealed, and they count on the newspapers, chastened by a lean year, to help them. For the independence they have shown in the past, and for the courage they will be called on to show in the future, therefore, let the newspapers of North Dakota know that they have the respect and admiration of all decent people.
"What is to be done about it?" is the question that follows exposure of organized rascality. In few cases is the remedy so plain as here. For the past, the newspapers, in spite of these plain contracts of silence, must be acquitted of any grave complicity. The very existence of the machine that uses and directs them has been a carefully guarded secret. For the future, be it understood that any newspaper which carries a patent-medicine advertisement knows what it is doing. The obligations of the contract are now public property. And one thing more, when next a member of a state legislature arises and states, as I have so often heard: "Gentlemen, this label bill seems right to me, but I can not support it; the united press of my district is opposed to it"—when that happens, let every one understand the wires that have moved "the united press of my district,"
