Fooling the People As A Fine Art

by Robert M. La Follette

A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since Lincoln gave us, in quaint, homely phrase, this moderately comforting assurance:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time and all the people some of the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time."

In those days we had the press of Horace Greely, Henry Raymond, Charles A. Dana, Joseph Medill and Horace Rublee. Those great editors dominated their newspapers. They took orders from no one. Their editorial good will could no more have been purchased by the fat advertising contracts of special interests, than by the dirty money of the tenderloin.

The editorial page was religiously consecrated to the integrity of independent editorial opinion.

Editorial judgment was subject to the errors and limitations of human understanding. But the wide opportunity and intellectual freedom of the editor of that day, offered culture and commanding ability the highest possible call to public service, and gave us the greatest editors in the history of American newspapers.

The press was a potent force in promoting a sound public opinion in the public interest of that time.

The setting up of a new, invisible and all powerful government in this country, within the last twenty years, in open violation of fundamental and statutory law, could not have been accomplished under the steady fire of a free and independent press.

Where public opinion is free and uncontrolled, wealth has a wholesome respect for the law.

Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolldation of business, for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets and prices.

Except for this monstrous crime, 65 per cent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 per cent of all the people. And we might today be industrially and commercially a free people, enjoying the blessings of a real democracy.

To control the American markot is to own America. It is better than that. Control of the market prices of this great country enables those in contral to tax the people through extortionate prices for the necessaries of life, to the limit of their earning power, and yet escape all of the responsibilities of ownership.

When the Morgan and Rockefeller interests harmonized to consummate the great wrong, they well understood that they could not achieve their purpose against a hostile press. Hence they "took over" the newspapers.

This does not necessarily mean the ownership of all newspapers. The perfection of the modern combination is little less than a Fine Art. Here again control is better than outright ownership. And control can be achieved through that community of interests, that interdependence of investment and credits which ties the publisher up to the banks, the advertisers and special interests.

When the newspapers became the sponsors and defenders of combination and trusts, the weekly and monthry magazines became the advocates of the public interest.

Young men trained in journalism were quick to see what had befallen the newspapers of the country. Before them lay the open, unoccupied field—the opportunity to promote human interest.

The periodical, reduced in price, attractive and artistic in dress strode like a young giant into the arena of public service. Ita pages were filled with powerfully written articles on "The Truth About The Trusts, the "Looting of the Railroad(s)," the "Corruption of City, State and National Governments," "The History of Standard Oil," "Frenzied Finance," "The Beef Trust," "The Wall Street System," "Who Owns America," "The Money Power," "Public Ownership of Public Utilities," and other phases of the operations of invisible government.

The free and independent periodical turned its search light on state legislatures, and made plain as the noon day sun the absolute control of the corrupt lobby. It opened the closed door of the secret caucus, the secret committee, the secret conference in Congress and disclosed the betrayal of public interest into the hands of the railroads, the trusts, the tariff mongers and the centralized banking power of the country. It revealed the same influence back of judicial and other appointments. It took the public through the great steel plants and into the homes of the men who toiled twelve hours a day and seven days in the week. And the public heard their despairing cry. It turned its camera on the mills and shops where little children were robbed of every chance of life that nourishes vigorous bodies and sound minds, and the pinched faces and dwarfed figures told their pathetic story on its clean white pages.

These magazines became a power in the country. They were free. Their pages were open to publicists and scholars; and liberty and justice and equal rights found a free press, for the time being, beyond the influence of consolidated business and machine politics.

And then this great invisible power closed in on the independent weeklies and the monthly magazines.

There was no sound or fury. It is too subtle for that. Its iron heel is as noiseless as the foot of time. There were stock transfers, there were consolidations, there was at least one failure caused by the "withdrawal of customary banking accommodations," and there was the strangle-hold on revenues through the centralized control of advertising.

The magazines began to change in tone and color. New writers filled their pages witn brain-rotting fiction. Steffens and Baker and Tarbell and Nock and the others could still write them, oh, certainly; but not about the Shame of the Cities, or the System or the Railroads, or the House of Morgan or Standard Oil, or Taxation, or The Truth about Trusts. Articles on "Mexico," or "Russia" or the "Friendly Road," or Spots on the Moon would be very acceptable.

And so it transpired that the public sources of current information have been brought under a very complete control, a selfish, mercenary, sordid, tyrannical control.

The influence of this mighty power rests as a blighting curse upon our country.

Its scheme of operation is very simple. If it decides to pass a bill, or repeal some law, or control some policy of administration, or discredit some public official who stands in the way of its interests, its well organized agencies are set in motion. If it is to be an extended campaign a corps of writers are employed who prepare editorial "suggestions" and special articles for newspapers and magazines. This material known as "press dope", is supplied to papers and periodicals in form to cover the country and avoid obvious duplication.

Such was the raid upon the Interstate Commerce Commission conducted by the Railroad section of this great organization to force a favorable decision in the 5 per cent rate case three years ago. That campaign was so open, protracted and coarse that it developed into a great public scandal before it was concluded.

Of the same type was the organized newspaper and magazine attack upon the Seamen's Law. It was one of the most extended and relentless assaults ever made upon a measure of great public interest. Perfected in all its details it broke out in every section of the country at once, disclosing the scope of its plan. It raged madly for months following the enactment of the law.

And it failed largely because the President let it be known just before Congress assembled that he would not approve the amendment or repeal of the Seamen's law untii it had been given a fair trial.

Another notable instance of the control of the strumpet press was the malicious and determined attempt to destroy the Secretary of the Navy and force his retirement from office.

The great interests that deal with the Navy Department found in Josephus Daniels a capable, honest public official determired to serve the public interest. He could neither be wheedled, cajoled or bullied into permitting the steel trust or the oil interests to job the Navy Department.

Beginning within a few months after he entered the Cabinet the press of the country and the magazines assailed him with a fury that was little less than appalling. That the ruthless attacks upon him undermined for the time being oublie confidence at least in his fitness for the office he holds, no one can doubt. With grim determination and great fortitude he has held to his course until the enlarged responsibilities of his office in war time and his executive capacity to meet every requirement has at last justified him and given him within a few months a temporary respite from the wicked abuse of the system.

These examples but imperfectly attest the subserviency of the press to the weil organized business interests of the country. They might be multiplied indefinitely.

The whole subject is one that should give us the deepest concern.

It has been well said that:

"An enslaved press is doubly fatal; it not only takes away the true light; for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false light that decoys us to our destruction."

And again:

"The press is a mill which grinds all that is put in the hopper; fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to meal, but there is death in the bread."

To befool and mislead the peope, to falsify public opinion is to pervert and destroy a republican form of government.

Free government is government by public opinion. Upon the soundness and integrity of public opinion depends the destiny of democracy.