Upton Sinclai - Brass Check; A Study of American Journalism; Evidence and Reasons Behind the Medias Corruption

VlLLENEUVE, SWITZERLAND,

Monday, Oct. 6, 1919.

My Dear Confrere:

I am happy to see you always so burning with energy, but your next book prepares for you some rude combats. It requires a bold courage to dare, when one is alone, to attack the monster, the new Minotaur, to which the entire world renders tribute: the Press.

I return to Paris in a few weeks. Reaction there holds the center of the walk. It speaks already as master, and perhaps it will be master before the end of the winter. The wave of counter-revolution, of counter-liberty, passes over the world. It will drown more than one among us, but it will retire, and our ideas will conquer.

Very cordially I press your hand.

Romain Rolland.

PART I - THE EVIDENCE
INTRODUCTORY
I THE STORY OF THE BRASS CHECK
II THE STORY OF A POET
III OPEN SESAME!
IV THE REAL FIGHT
V THE CONDEMNED MEAT INDUSTRY
VI AN ADVENTURE WITH ROOSEVELT
VII JACKALS AND A CARCASE
VIII THE LAST ACT
IX AIMING AT THE PUBLICS HEART
X A VOICE FROM RUSSIA
XI A VENTURE IN CO-OPERATION
XII THE VILLAGE HORSE-DOCTOR
XIII IN HIGH SOCIETY
XIV THE GREAT PANIC
XV SHREDDED WHEAT BISCUIT
XVI AN INTERVIEW ON MARRIAGE
XVII GAMING ON THE SABBATH
XVIII AN ESSENTIAL MONOGAMIST
XIX IN THE LIONS DEN
XX THE STORY OF A LYNCHING
XXI JOURNALISM AND BURGLARY
XXII A MILLIONAIRE AND AN AUTHOR
XXIII THE HEART WIFE
XXIV THE MOURNING PICKETS
XXV THE CASE OF THE A. P.
XXVI A GOVERNOR AND HIS LIE
XXVII THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AT THE BAR
XXVIII THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND ITS NEWSPAPERS
XXIX THE SCANDAL-BUREAU
XXX THE CONCRETE WALL
XXXI MAKING BOMB-MAKERS
XXXII THE ROOF-GARDEN OF THE WORLD
XXXIII A FOUNTAIN OF POISON
XXXIV THE DAILY CAT-AND-DOG FIGHT
PART II - THE EXPLANATION
XXXV THE CAUSES OF THINGS
XXXVI THE EMPIRE OF BUSINESS
XXXVII THE DREGS OF THE CUP
XXXVIII OWNING THE PRESS
XXXIX THE WAR-MAKERS
XL OWNING THE OWNERS
XLI THE OWNER IN POLITICS
XLII OWNING THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
XLIII THE OWNER AND HIS ADVERTISERS
XLIV THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT
XLV THE ADVERTISING ECSTASY
XLVI THE BRIBE DIRECT
XLVII THE BRIBE WHOLESALE
XLVIII POISON IVY
XLIX THE ELBERT HUBBARD WORM
L THE PRESS AND PUBLIC WELFARE
LI THE PRESS AND THE RADICALS
LII THE PRESS AND THE SOCIALISTS
LIII THE PRESS AND SEX
LIV THE PRESS AND CRIME
LV THE PRESS AND JACK LONDON
LVI THE PRESS AND LABOR
LVII THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND LABOR
LVIII POISONED AT THE SOURCE"
LIX THE PRESS AND THE WAR
LX THE CASE OF RUSSIA
LXI "BOLSHEVISM IN AMERICA
PART III - THE REMEDY
LXII CUTTING THE TIGERS CLAWS
LXIII THE MENTAL MUNITION-FACTORY
LXIV THE PROBLEM OF THE REPORTER
LXV THE PRESS SET FREE
LXVI A FRAME-UP THAT FELL DOWN
CONCLUSION
PUBLISHERS NOTE

The social body to which we belong is at this moment passing through one of the greatest crises of its history, a colossal process which may best be likened to a birth. We have each of us a share in this process, we are to a greater or less extent responsible for its course. To make our judgments, we must have reports from other parts of the social body; we must know what our fellow-men, in all classes of society, in all parts of the world, are suffering, planning, doing. There arise emergencies which require swift decisions, under penalty of frightful waste and suffering. What if the nerves upon which we depend for knowledge of this social body should give us false reports of its condition?

The first half of this book tells a personal story: the story of one mans experiences with American Journalism. This personal feature is not pleasant, but it is unavoidable. If I were taking the witness-chair in a court of justice, the jury would not ask for my general sentiments and philosophic opinions; they would not ask what other people had told me, or what was common report; the thing they would wish to knowthe only thing they would be allowed to knowis what I had personally seen and experienced. So now, taking the witness-stand in the case of the American public versus Journalism, I tell what I have personally seen and experienced. I take the oath of a witness: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. After this pledge, earnestly given and earnestly meant, the reader must either believe me, or he must exclude me from the company of civilized men.

My motive in writing this book is not to defend myself. We live in a time of such concentrated agony and peril that a man who would waste ink and paper on a defense of his own personality would be contemptible. What I tell you is: Look! Here is American Journalism! Here is what it did to one man, systematically, persistently, deliberately, for a period of twenty years. Here are names, places, datessuch a mass of material as you cannot doubt, you cannot evade. Here is the whole thing, inside and out. Here are your sacred names, the very highest of your gods. When you have read this story, you will know our Journalism; you will know the body and soul of it, you will know it in such a way that you will not have to be told what it is doing to the movement for industrial freedom and self-government all over the world.

In the second half of the book you will hear a host of other witnessesseveral score of them, the wisest and truest and best people of our country. They are in every part of our country, in every class and every field of public life; and when you have heard their experiences, told for the most part in their own words, you must grant my claim concerning this bookthat it is a book of facts. There are no mistakes in it, no guesses, no surmises; there are no lapses of memory, no inaccuracies. There are only facts. You must understand that I have had this book in mind for twenty years. For twelve years I have been deliberately collecting the documents and preserving the records, and I have these before me as I write. In a few cases of personal experiences I have relied upon my memory; but that memory is vivid, because the incidents were painful, they were seared into my soul, and now, as I recall them, I see the faces of the people, I hear their very tones. Where there is any doubt or vagueness in my recollection, or where there is hearsay testimony, I state the fact explicitly; otherwise I wish the reader to understand that the incidents happened as I say they happened, and that upon the truth of every statement in this book I pledge my honor as a man and my reputation as a writer.

One final word: In this book I have cast behind me the proprieties usually held sacred; I have spared no one, I have narrated shameful things. I have done this, not because I have any pleasure in scandal; I have not such pleasure, being by nature impersonal. I do not hate one living being. The people I have lashed in this book are to me not individuals, but social forces; I have exposed them, not because they lied about me, but because a new age of fraternity is trying to be born, and they, who ought to be assisting the birth, are strangling the child in the womb.

Once upon a time there was a little boy; a nice little boy, whom you would have liked if you had known himat least, so his mother says. He had been brought up in the traditions of the old South, to which the two most important things in the world were good cooking and good manners. He obeyed his mother and father, and ate his peas with a fork, and never buttered the whole slice of his bread. On Sunday mornings he carefully shined his shoes and brushed his clothes at the window, and got into a pair of tight kid gloves and under a tight little brown derby hat, and walked with his parents to a church on Fifth Avenue. On week-days he studied hard and obeyed his teachers, and in every field of thought and activity he believed what was told him by those in authority. He learned the catechism and thought it was the direct word of God. When he fell sick and the doctor came, he put himself in the doctors hands with a sense of perfect trust and content; the doctor knew what to do, and would do it, and the little boy would get well.