that they, or those who employed them, were not entitled to its exclusive use? And is this not equally true, whether the employer be one man, or ten men, or nine hundred men acting in cooperation?
Charges of unfair play have on several occasions been brought against the Associated Press. Oswald Garrison Villard, president of The New York Evening Post, has drawn the following conclusion about these charges:—
I personally have examined one mare's nest after another, only to find that each was due to ignorance of the technique of the profession or of the facts. Most of them would never have been heard of had the suspicious ones gone to headquarters to inspect the records. It is only in the tenth or one hundredth case that I have found that there was a genuine error. And it goes without saying that I have yet to learn of a constructive suggestion as to something better to take the place of the Associated Press.
The Associated Press secured in 1917 a court decision which established the legality of its claims to ownership of its own story of the news. The comparison was made that the product of the organization was like ore which had been mined and refined. To make claims still stronger newspapers which were members of the Associated Press posted a notice on editorial pages to the effect:—
The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for republication of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in this paper and also the local news of spontaneous origin published herein. All rights of republication of all other matter herein are also reserved.
UNITED PRESS
While the present United Press was organized in June, 1907, it really dates back to the breaking up of the old United Press in 1897, though between the two organizations there is no direct connection. At the time, however, that the discontinuance of the service of the old United Press was announced, several of its members were unable to join the Associated Press and others refused to do so. Among the latter was E. W. Scripps, one of the owners of the Scripps-McRae string of newspapers, pub-
