Golden Age, October 27, 1920

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Golden

A - JOUR.NAL OF- FACT

H O P E - AN D' CO N VI CT 1 O H

Oct 27, 1920, Vol. 2, No. 29

Published every other Ii7!l week at 35 Myrtle A renue, \j]P nrrjoklyn. Xeir 1'orA- City

T«a Cent* a Copy—12.00 a Year

Canada and Foreign Countries. $2.50

Volume 3 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27. ISO® Number

CONTENTS oT the GOLDEN AGE

SOCIAL AMD EDUCATIONAL Journalistic Truth Expiring 35 The Aseoeiared 1'rtw

SutMerrienee « Adrerriserw 37 In the .Crip nt Mammon

Oppoeed to All RdKrniHb• -Api Jlmnkato the ^priw®«H A.-wawla* of An Reformara.lS - Neva--------1——u.-.Sl.

LABOR AND ECONOMICS Acbieres’to of Union Labor 42 Paupen at the rlalAh

Might Better Stay Here--*

. POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN Expense^ at U. 8. Gov’t...... 43 Eaxland and Ireland A<aJn44

Courts Under Hr®________43 Scotchman Takes Hand Too 44

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION Mora About Inmrarrce..........45 Current Insurance Startxrlca 44

Other Insurance Item________45 Who Framed the Lie’..

. SCIENCE AND INTENTION Molecules, Atoms, Electrons 47 Sugar From Sawdust______

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY Uses of Dynamite——_____48 An Outdoor Refrigerator 32

HOUSEWIFERY AND HYGIENE Birth of Saxleno Children ....30 Caurra at Small Families

BontituHen Dtacerued Early.,54

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY -engineers for Palestine.......52 Color and Teniperament.. ... 53

Ln Foreign Lande.....

RELIGION .AND PHILOSOPHY Juvenile Bible Study.......... ......

Advanced Studies in the Divine Plan of the *

Rreocnlaeo the Silver Trumpet............................_...

The Golden Age

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New York. Wednesday, October 27, 1920

Journalistic Truth Expiring

The Golden Age does not make a practice of reviewing books, but “The Brass Check, a Study of American Journalism,” by Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, California, contains facts that should be widely known.1

We submitted this review to Mr. Sinclair for preliminary examination, and he wrote us as follows:

“I have your very friendly letter and I certainly appreciate your taking the trouble to send me the review. If I might make a suggestion it would be this: that you introduce a preliminary paragraph quoting from the introduction of ‘The Brass Check1, and explaining my attitude toward my personal experiences with newspapers; that is, I tell about these experiences because they are cases I happen to know beyond dispute; I am offering evidence as if before a jury. Otherwise, you see. the reader will think my book is just a ventilation of my personal grouch, and he may be so repelled at the beginning that he will not read the rest of the review.”

Without referring back to

the preface of “The Brass Check” we now give the review’ just as we prepared it:

From his own personal experiences Sinclair first shows how a New York American reporter stole his first wife’s picture (a feat subsequently duplicated in the theft of a group picture by a Philadelphia reporter) and how the American and its allied papers still use the stolen picture to represent his present companion.

He goes on to show how Collier’s got the first opportunity to publish the expose of the condemned meat industry (which subsequently made Sinclair famous),'but preferred the revenues which flowed to it from advertisements of the packing-house products. '

“TT7TTH the invention of news-v V papersand since journalism has attained full bloom, the good spirit of the people has been forced to retire altogether from public life. For now only opinion rules, and indeed public opinion; it is to be had for money;... whoever takes a newspaper has procured not only the waste paper, but also its opinions; he no longer needs to think or to reflect; what he is to believe of God is already thought out for him in black and white.” '

' —Richard Wagner in his ''Essay on Beethoven”.

How the editor of the Chicago Tribune ostensibly wrote a reply Co that expose, denying its truthfulness, but it was subsequently revealed that the editor’s criticisms were prepared for him by the publicity agent of the-packers themselves.

How the New York Evening Past denounced the charges against the packers as false, but when confronted with the query as to the respects in which they were false was unable to answer, and has never corrected the false impression it conveyed to its readers.

How when Roosevelt had been induced to investigate the packers, the Chicago Tribune made it appear to its readers that he was really investigating Sinclair with a dew to denouncing him.

How that when the report, justifying all the charges against the packers, was ready, the Associated Press refused to have anything to do with it: how it filially got to the world through Sinclair’s persuading the New York Times to publish it. and they, though they made a fortune out of it, never paid him anything for the news.

How, with other writers and teachers, men and women of the highest moral character, he organized sr cooperative home known as Helicon Hall; bnt, because he is a reformer, the New York Sun. New York World, and New York

Journal made it a constant batt of ridicule, writing of it in such a jesting manner as to convey the Impression that it was an immoral place.

How the principal press agencies of'America telegraphed to all' the world a lie which had 'appeared in the Morning Telegraph to the effect that he had hired out as a servant and listened at a keyhole on board the private yacht of an . American millionaire, but that when this was indignantly denied, not a line of correction was sent ou?t. ■ ■ -

How’, when he wrote a polite note to the management of his hotel in San Francisco calling attention to an overcharge, the San Francisco Examiner published a falsehood that he had refftsed to pay his bill and had raised a disturbance in the dining room, which lie was sent out as news to all the world; how that the same paper, two or three days later, falsely accused him of having said he was sorry he was married; and this lie, also, was heralded around the world and never corrected.

How when his first wife left him with another man, and he was reluctantly pressed by a reporter into admitting that he was preparing to bring suit, the New York American published : a full page, malicious, lying burlesque purport-| ing to explain "Why Hungry Mrs. Upton Sinclair Went Home to Mamma”; how that for several years this one lie completely destroyed his earning power as an author.

How that when sued for thirty-eight dollars worth of fertilizer which he had never purchased or received, and for which no bill was rendered until four years after the alleged purchase, the New York Wo rid, which had sought an interview regarding it, so stated the matter as to make it appear that he had himself brought it to the World's attention with a view to securing notoriety.

How when he visited the striking silk-workers at Paterson, to urge that they endeavor to use the ballot to secure a better government, the New York Tinies falsely represented him as having encouraged the strikers to attack the police forcibly.

How that when he had made an ironclad agreement with the managing editor of the New York Evening Journal for the sum of three . hundred dollars to he paid for a conununication " from an unfortunate woman that the Journal was trying in vain to locate, and the Journal had published the gist of the story which it had covenanted its honor not to publish under any consideration, unless it paid the three hundred dollars to the destitute and distracted woman, whom it was at that particular time engaged in persecuting, it subsequently went to unbelievable lengths to evade payment of the money, even going so far as to send false wireless messages, with Sinclairs name signed to them, to two persons that it hoped might be able to locate the poor woman. Moreover, it never paid the three hundred dollars. '

How* the Associated Press sent out a false . statement that his wife had been arrested in New York; resulting in her disinheritance, and nearly causing the death of her mother, and made no correction although their attention was called to the error by a special delivery letter.

How that when a Governor of Colorado had falsely stated to President Wilson that the legislature had arranged for mediation in the coal strike then in-progress in that state, and Sinclair had drawn the attention of the Associated Press to the facts, they failed to carry the news to the rest of the country, and even refused to do it after the facts had been published in one of the Denver papers. . "

How the Denver Post accused him of prevarication when he had told the proven truth about the Governor’s misstatements, and refused him an opportunity to defend himself in their paper by a statement of the facts. .

How the New York Evening Post, its attention having been called to the suppression of this news by the Associated Press, promised to have the matter investigated, but was never able to do anything about it, for the good and sufficient reason that the Associated Press can strangle any newspaper to death over night by the simple act of shutting off its news.

How a representative of the Denver Post undertook, respecting Sinclair, the regul'ar, established policy of Denver papers, which is to blacken the moral reputation of those it wishes to discredit, but backed out of the programme when told in advance by Sinclair that he knew just the game they had in mind.

How the Los Angeles Tinies published such a perverted and unjust account of a dignified and thoughtful address by Sinclair before one of the clubs of that city, that when he spoke before the club again on the succeeding week, the

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members rose from their seats in an ovation, as a mark of protest against the injustice that had been done him.

Subservience to Advertisers

LAYING’ a foundation in these, his personal experiences, Sinclair proceeds to show some of the reasons why the press is in the condition in which ail thoughtful and experienced persons know it to be. One of these reasons is the fear to do anything that would interrupt the revenue which comes from advertising. Only one-third the receipts of a paper come from its subscribers. The other two-thirds come from the advertisers and if the advertisers withdraw their patronage the paper dies.

£ A great amount of the advertising comes from department stores; and nothing unfavorable to these stores ever appears in the local papers. If the stores are closed temporarily and the owners fined for profiteering, the matter does not get into the papers. "When the girls go on strike to better their condition, the papers say nothing, as a matter of course. When a Woman was killed by falling down the elevator shaft of a New York department store, not a paper in the city mentioned the name of the store. When shoplifters are arrested the name of the store is never given.

When an underpaid worker in a New York department store committed suicide, leaving a note to the effect that she could no longer stand twenty-cent dinners, the New York World issued a solemn preachment respecting “some people who make too large demand upon fortune” and [who “measure their requirements by their desires”. .

During the war those patriotic papers, the Boston Herald and Journal and the Boston Post, rejected paid advertisements containing quotations from President Wilson’s speech urging the people to purchase only necessities. Such advertisements would have been offensive to department stores carrying large quantities of advertising with them regularly.

gpWhen one of the Gimbel brothers was ar-flrested in Philadelphia, charged with a vile berime, and cut his throat, not a Philadelphia .'paper mentioned the news, ami when papers pfrom out of town containing the news were Coffered for sale on the Philadelphia streets, the ^police stopped their sale, took away the papers, ?and the Philadelphia papers were silent.

When the vice-president of Gimbel Brother Milwaukee, was indicted for bribing an aide! man, and burned all the evidence before he c be arrested, the Milwaukee papers said nothin of it.

When Wanamaker was detected in custon® violation, only one Philadelphia paper repo the matter. When a New York merchant w convicted for selling furs under false names, riftS mention was made of it. When several Chieagd firms misbranded goods, the papers kept-st about it. When four Milwaukee firms-sol potted cheese doped with chemicals, their name: were withheld.

One of the world’s most prominent edifpS wrote an article (leploring the use of packag^ cereals and the advertising department object that it would cost the paper a hundred thousan dollars a year; when he wrote that stiff hats cause baldness they objected again on behalf of the hat dealers; when he urged the use of square toed shoes he was obliged to throw the article into the waste basket because it would offend th<S shoe dealers; when he wrote an editorial siip^S porting a municipal subway it was objected thara it would not Be .satisfactory to Wanamaker’s.

Criticisms of indecent plays were forced oura of the New York Tribune and the New York Nutw because they offended advertisers of those! plays. But when Arthur Brisbane wrote double column editorial praising a play, the^ Evening Journal, two or three days later,| carried a full-page advertisement of that play.* It works both ways with the paper. If it| offends the advertiser, it loses; if it praises himJ it is rewarded. v affi'

When Everybody’s Magazine published Si^ clair’s “Condemned Meat Industry” it lost manyS pages of advertisements of hams, lard, fertilize ers, soaps and railways. It never forgot this; loss and is unwilling to make any further, emr? tributions of this nature to the public welfare.

Opposed to All Reforms

THE newspapers seldom champion a reforrir until a hoodwinked and outraged people,1 kick over the traces and threaten to- smash1 everything in sight. Their voice is at all times; lifted in support and defense of things as they; are, instead of things as they ought to be. -^-£4 The Seamen’s Law, one of the most construcw ive pieces of legislation ever enacted in -this!

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country, was fought for years by the greatest . newspapers of the land because they were receiving two million dollars a year for shipping advertisements.

- . A bill; was up before Congress in 1919 for government regulation of the packing industry, in the hope that the result might be that in the United States we could have our meat prepared in places clean and sweet and free from odors. : To defeat this bill Swift and Company alone

spent a million dollars a month upon newspaper 9 advertising, effectually closing the channel by 3 which the people should have known the truth.

- A cooperative department store was projected J in Chicago. It would have been a great boon to the people of that city and to all who trade there; but the newspapers and. department ■J stores threw their combined publicity and finan; cial strength against the project and killed it

। The people of Kansas City agitated for

| cheaper meat and the papers took up their fight,

but in a short time packinghouse advertisements appeared iq all the papers and there was no more news about the price of meat for a long interval. -

- The people of Boston sought a lower price j , for gas. Louis Brandeis, now Justice of the

I •. Supreme Court, made an argument in their

\ behalf. The result, as far as the .people were ! concerned, was that the newspapers of the city printed full page advertisements of the gas company, paid for at a dollar a line.

When the New Haven railroad mess began to . smell to heaven, the pious Outlook rushed to their defense, under the inspiration of matter which the New Haven people supplied, and it developed later that the New Haven was paying out four hundred thousand dollars a year for just such purposes.

When, in 1914, the railroad presidents were asking for increased rates, as they are always doing, and when Mr. Thome, State Railroad Commissioner of Iowa, had shown before the Interstate Commerce Commission that in twelve years the capitalization of the railroads had increased ninety-two percent, and their dividends had increased three hundred and fifty-nine percent, and their costs had been padded out of all semblance to the facts, and the railroad presidents had been unable to answer his 7 questions and his charges, the New York World, New York Times, Philadelphia Public Ledger, ■ Baltimore Sun, Cincinnati Enquirer, and Chi

cago Herald found plenty of room for the statements of the railroad presidents, but did not mention in any way the Thome incident which was the pivotal' item of news of the whole occurrence. -

Assassins of AU Reform era.

WHAT the newspapers do to the reforms, they do, as a matter of course, to the spokesmen of reforms. A favorite custom is to destroy their influence by using the pictures of other people, objectionable in appearance, to represent them. Thus the Los Angeles Times used the photograph of Abram Krylenko, a scraggly-looking Russian, to 'represent Robert Smillie, a prominent English labor leader. .

When Robert La Follette, one of the greatest statesmen in America, carried Wisconsin by a vote of 110,064 to 70,813, the principal'newspapers of the country reported that he had been overwhelmingly defeated, and have never corrected the error. This is because La Follette devoted a part of his time and energy to show- . ing up the corruption of the press.

When Gorky visited this country he made the mistake ef signing with the New York Journal, a contract for his writings which was desired by the New York World, whereat the latter paper ruined his life and his cause by misrepresenting him as having brought his mistress with him as his wife.

But when C. W. Post, of Postum fame, a great advertiser, decided to divorce his wife and marry his stenographer, hardly a newspaper in the country mentioned the matter in any way.

When Senator Lodge lost his temper and struck Bannwart, a Boston pacificist in the face, the Boston papers printed columns to the effect-7-that Senator T-odge had been assaulted in his office by a pacifist, and they lauded him as a hero; but after two years Lodge admitted in writing that he struck the first blow.

The Chicago Tribune brought charges against another prominent pacificist, Henry Ford, that • guardsmen employed by him would lose their places and no provision be made for their dependents. But at the trial it was proven that all the Ford workers who were drafted to Mexico had their wages paid to their families while they were away, but that when two hundred and sixty-eight employes of the Chicago Tribune itself were drafted to the World War their pay had been stopped. ’

The Kansas City Star falsely accused Rose Pastor Stokes of having stolen out of Springfield at daybreak, forfeiting the hundred dollar bond of a friend, and as a direct result of this misrepresentation she was arrested by the federal authorities, tried and sentenced to ten years-in prison.

When Jack London quoted a Colorado militia “general”, one Sherman Bell, as having said, “To hell, then, with the Constitution”, the news .went broadcast all over the country that London himself had made the remark, and down went his royalties and out went his books from the public libraries.

When the New York Times came out with an editorial denouncing the socialists for their May-day “violence” in getting their heads broken by the police, and praising the police for their heroism in attacking them, the police commissioner of New York followed with a formal statement in which he denounced the police as having acted contrary to his orders.

' When James H. Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, quoted the State Police as haying said, “Down with the stars and stripes” (which comrades were using in the burial of a striker who had been a veteran in the Spanish-American war) word went out all over the United States that it was Maurer’s own remark, and the expression is still used against him. As a matter of fact the reporters who related this against Maurer were all out getting a drink at the time Maurer delivered the address in which the expression occurred. An interesting side item is that when the novelist, Richard Harding Davis, saw*‘this untruthful report in the New York Times, he became so enraged at Maurer that it brought on- a fit of apoplexy and caused his death.

The Associated Press -

SINCLAIR supplies data to show that the fifteen directors of the Associated Press are connected with huge financial undertakings and that the policy of the Association is to give scant courtesy to movements for constructive legislation in the public interest, to belittle municipal ownership and to keep silence on the successes and to give publicity to the defeats of reformers. Much of the strike news is sent out in the form of propaganda .which has for its, purpose the breaking of the strike rather than the telling of the facts.

When the Associated Press was being investigated by the United States Senate the senators who were conducting the investigation observed that it reported nothing of the adverse • evidence, but only that which was in ita favor. . What confidence can we place in any institution -that possesses this kind of “moral courage’’? Some items involving the Associated Press have , already appeared in this article aud other items follow:

When Debs was sent to prison word was sent out that he had given an interview to* the effect that he would call a general strike. Debs gave no such interview, but his denial has never been given publicity. J

The Associated Press sent out a report that Gaylord Wilshire, had spoken in York, Peimsyl- 3 vania, that in his- speech he had denounced the courts, and that he had" been mobbod by the T citizens. As a matter o.f fact the train connections on "the date he was to have spoken in Yuri: A were broken and he was unable to reach the city at all, but at the hour he was supposed to speak there he was in New England, on his way ■ to Maine.

The Associated Press sent out a dispatch from Centralia, Washington, narrating how L W. W. members had fired from their windows upon an Armistice Day parade of returned soldier boys. Not till long afterward did the truth come to light that the former soldier boys attacked the I. W. W. hall before any shots were fired, and « were battering in the door when the first shots were fired through it.

The Associated Press carried a story from West Virginia as though striking miners had fired upon a passenger train. As a matter of fact <

the train was a special train organized for the 1 express purpose of shooting at the. strikers. It was made up at Charleston and returned to Charleston after it had passed through Holly 5 Grove and fired a gatling gun at the tents in which the miners were living. Robert Estep. ? one of the miners, was killed in this premeditated murder, which began the shooting.

The Her.aldo de Mexico, the Mexican North- s western Railroad, and the former Mexican correspondent of the New York Tribune, have accused the Associated Press of lying with frequency about conditions in Mexico, and those who have read our recent article on “Getting a? the Bottom of Mexico’s Troubles” can well believe the truth of their charges.

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When William C. Bullitt, President Wilson's special commissioner to Russia, submitted to the Senate Committee his report, previously-made to the President, that there was order in Russia, that the Russian people were satisfied with the Soviet regime, that the nationalization of women in Russia was an absurd yarn, that the cause of starvation and misery in^ Russia was the allied blockade, and that Lenine' wanted peace and was willing to do almost anything to ■ get it, the Associated Press; although this was one of the most important items of news in a generation, did not lay it before the American people, and did not even give Bullitt’s verbal testimony except in a fragmentary and unsatisfactory manner.

In sixteen years the dividends of the Calumet and Hecla Company, operating on the Northern Peninsula of Michigan, have never been less than eighty percent annually and sometimes have been as high as four hundred percent. The miners, ill paid, ill treated and badly housed went on strike and the usual gang of thugs and gunmen was provided to preserve “order”.

While.a Labor Day procession was being held at Kearsarge in that district, a hand of these gunmen, without excuse and without occa-• sion, attacked the procession and broke it up, firing about one hundred shots. Margaret Fazekes, not the daughter of a striker, not connected with the strike in any way, was walking along the sidewalk and was killed by’ a bullet from a gunman's revolver, This is the way that the Associated Press reported the matter, but one of scores of similar knavish falsehoods, as was afterward brought out in the Congressional investigation: .

“Calumet. Mich., Sept. 1.—The copper strike situation took a serious aspect today- as a result of the fatal shooting of Margaret Faxakas. aged 15, daughter of a striker, at the North Kearsarge mine, when a picket of strikers and women clashed with deputy sheriffs guarding a mine.”

In the Grip, of Mammon

INCLAIR gives a list of papers and districts that are owned by the copper interests, coal

interests, milling interests, lumber’ interests, railroad interests, etc., that is too heart-rending to a lover of truth even to copy; but in it are the names of most of the great papers of the country, and he tells you some things about these and other papers that make your heart almost stop locating.

The average country editor is an entirely ignorant man, heavily obligated to the financial power of his community, and does not dare to print the truth about labor conditions in his own town for fear of loss of advertising or bank accommodations. Most of his general reading matter is sent to him almost free, already set up in type, and in this “boiler plate”, as it is called, is the hidden poison of the country’s greatest grafters. The city papers are handled individually.

When Collier’s denounced the Ballinger land frauds, the National Association of Manufacturers boycotted the magazine, the banks called its loans and took over its control, the .owner died, and the magazine, at his death, did not dare to mention the greatest service he ever performed in his life—that of the uncovering of those frauds.

When the Indianapolis Sun told how the street - car companies of Indianapolis had boosted the capital stock from three million dollars to fifty-seven million dollars, and how they were having union leaders slugged for helping the workers to organize, the Merchants Association warned Sun advertisers of a boycott, and the paper was ruined.

The Chicage Tribune and Chicago Daily Vejrs hold leases on property which rightfully belongs to the school children of Chicago. For this they pay next to nothing, but it is impossible to recover the property for the school children, because these papers immediately attack and ruin the reputation of any man or men who try to right the wrong.

The St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press, put on their feet by a street-car magnate, and paying taxes on less than fifty-seven thousanddollars for a million dollar property, support this street-car magnate in every tax-dodge, every graft, every strike. They have charged illegal prices for city advertisements, suppressed news of public interest against packers and millers, lied systematically about the farmers’ movements, and refused to publish corrections even in the form of paid advertisements; Like the Chicago Tribune, they urged all employers to continue employes’ wages while in the army, though they themselves failed to do so. .

Because Judge Lindsey, candidate for governor. would not agree to the plans made for. him by the Sneer corporation, the Denver Post

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published false news dispatches respecting him, ' ruining his candidacy and almost causing his 6 expulsion from the state. -

. ’ When the Denver Express published the truth

about the Colorado coal strike, mysterious • gangs of thugs beat up the newsboys carrying these papers and scattered their papers, with no interference from the police, and not a line 4 about the matter in any other Denver paper.

• Years ago the San Francisco Bulletin was on the payroll of the Southern Pacific Bailroad . Company for $125 per month jnst for “friend* liness". • This amount was afterward raised to

5 $250 per month, but when the railroad company

wanted to place a certain man in a certain | office the Bulletin held the corporation up for a . flat amount at one time of $7,500. Of course the public paid the bill in the end.

At one time General Otis, owner of the Repub-4 lican "open-shop Los Angeles Times, was also

owner of the Democratic - closed-shop Los Angeles Herald, so says Sinclair: "Here was Otis .handing out one kind of dope to the Lbs Angeles public with one hand, and handing out the opposite kind of dope to the Los Angeles public with the other hand—and taking in money from the Los Angeles public with both hands’*. • - .

Sinclair calls attention to the fact that the Times repeatedlylies in its headlines, which are so phrased as always to place labor at a disad-’ vantage in the eyes of the public. Moreover, inasmuch as Santa Barbara real estate competes with Los Angeles real estate, it happens always that when there is an earthquake in Los Angeles the Times refers to it as an earthquake in Santa Barbara.

There is a paper in San Francisco which never uses the title of “Mr.” in connection with any other person than the owner of the paper, and never mentions at all any prominent reformer, or any person who refuses to advertise in the paper: yet the minds of the American people, their choicest possession, are in the keeping of such unspeakable contemptibility.

On the Chicago Chronicle it was formerly necessary for a writer in its employ to know by heart the names of all the sixteen corporations in which the owner was interested, and - the names of the men he liked or disliked, and to . treat them accordingly. This is a common practice in newspaper offices all- over America. , In some newspaper offices the list of prominent people that are never to be mentioned in the paper is three feet long..

John Swintoh, editor of the New York Tri* bune, is quoted by Sinclair as having answered to the toast, “An Independent Press", as follows: "There is no such thing in America as an -independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the. paper I am connected with—others of you-are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of yon who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would he out on the streets looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist "is te destroy .the. truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn ai the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his-daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to he toasting an Independent Press’. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks: they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are al! the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. ’ -

We make extracts from sonie of Sinclair’s bitter words of truth that follow—words that shame every person who suppresses or evades or misrepresents the truth: . -

"What u the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelopes every week—you who write and print'and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the marketplace. who lx>tray the virgin hopes of mankind iuto the loathsome brothel of Big Business. The prostitution of the body is a fearful thing; hut what of the mind? Youth cries: ‘Life is beautiful, joyous! Give nie light that I may keep my pathThe answer conics: 'Here is darkness, that you may stumble, and beat your fate, upon the stones!’ Youth criesi ‘Give us Hope’. The answer comes: ‘Here is Cynicism’. Youth cries: ‘Giv.y me understanding, that I.may live in harmony with my fellow-men’. The answer comes:.‘Here are lies about your fellow-men. that you may hate them, that yoii may cheat them, that you may live among them as a wolf among the wolves Y Such is the prostitution of the mind.” •

Remedied Measures

SINCLAIR proposes laws that no newspaper should print an interview without having' it first approved by the person interviewed: that when a newspaper has had its attention called to a false statement it shall publish a correction in the next edition, in the same spot, and with

the same prominence given to the false statement; that the distribution of news to American newspapers should be made a public utility, available for any one who wishes to pay for it, . and that the faking of telegraph or cable dispatches should be forbidden. He also suggests that workers on newspapers in America should do as in Argentina, refuse to set type, or print, or distribute any item which is manifestly . aimed at the interests'of the workers. This has l;een tried on a small scale in Boston and Seattle, and it worked.

. He also proposes a daily paper, fashioned .-.i rer the principles upon which we have tried to ’ uild The Golden Age, a paper that shall really try to find out the truth on all subjects, and to tell it. We feel satisfied that something of the kind must come soon. The present condition is too intolerable to last.

! We concede that we are living in the time . when the “people perish for lack of knowledge” and when “truth is fallen in the streets”, just as the prophets have declared, but we have confidence that this very condition precedes by but a little the day when "there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall not f become known”.

Of the men of wealth and power that are driving civilization on the rocks, and bringing . * ruin upon themselves and millions of others, it

• is very true, as the Psalmist (82:2-5) has declared:

“How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not. neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth [existing order of things] are out of course.” '

Achievements of Union Labor

THE achievements of Union Labor should not A be passed by without pointingout some of the great things in which they have had a leading part. In 1906 six men holding paid-up trade union cards were elected as members to the national House of Representatives. This was Labor’s debut in the national legislature. In 1914 the group had grown to seventeen members in the House and one member in the Senate, A very incomplete list of the legislation enacted at the suggestion of these men. or with their verv active support and cooperation is as follows:

Limiting railroad men’s hours of labor to sixteen in any one day; employers' liability; District of Columbia child labor; self-emptying ashpans on locomotives; Bureau of Mines establishment; requiring railroads to report all accidents; standard equipment of railroads; federal locomotive boiler inspection; white slave act; eight hour naval laws; amendment to Constitution providing for income tax; publicity of campaign contributions; eight hour postal laws; Children’s Bureau establishment; anti-phosphorus match bill; physical valuation of railroads and express, companies; parcel post; seamen’s law; Shipping Board; Department of Labor establishment.

Paupers at the Finish

A CORRESPONDENT sends us some little blue slips which the Government is distributing for the sale of saving’s certificates, calling attention to the fact that whereas one hundred men at the age of twenty-five years are self supporting, with good prospects, forty years later out of the same one hundred men fifty-four are in the poor-house or -totally dependent on others’ charity, thirty-six are dead, six are still working for a living, three are well-to-do and one is rich. Our correspondent says: “This, it seems to me, is self-explanatory of the present ability of men to form a perfect government. If the best government on earth, which we have, can offer real success to only 1- in 100, and if 54 out of that 100 become objects of charity, it looks to me as if the world needed the Kingdom of Christ much more than men realize.”

The most curious thing about the foregoing is the fact that the one man who is rich and the three well-to-do so manipulate public opinion as to persuade the six who are still working and the fifty-four who are in the poor-house, a« they previously persuaded the thirty-six who are worked to death, that it is absolutely impossible to improve upon the plan by which they, the on« rich and the three well-to-do, have absorbed all of the good things of life. If the fifty-four wh<» are in the poor-house or the six who are s^ll working for a living attempt to negotiate e”v close inquiry as to how the one r’ch and the three well-to-do obtained din <jood things of life, they ar" looked u.non fit subjects for S:b»ria or Guam. M’bon the Lord establishes His long-nronv'od Gol-’en Age pH ■this ”•’]! he changed. All the promised signs show that it is at the door.

ExptMH of U. S* Goctrnnuni

1789-1792, George Washington----

1793-1796, George Washington____

__$12,939,006.45

___ 35,634,546.78

• 1797-1800, John Adams----:

____ 40,306,313.88

1801-1804, Thomas Jefferson-------2___ 49,433,001.64

1805-1808, Thomas .Jefferson---------- 56,854,095.57

1809-1812, James Madison----____ 63,068,143.10

t 18134816, James Madison (War)—----166,045,739.54

1817-1820, James Monroe----------121,749,746.02

1821-1824, James Monroe.—------------ 83,979,874.79

, 1825-1828, John Quincy Adams_________ 95,805,446.74

1829-1832, Andrew Jackson__:_______114,024,784.13

1833-1836, Andrew Jackson 97,300,586.53 1937-1840, Martin Van Buren____i_____137,544,127.83

1841.-1844. William Henry Harrison____110,722,063.23

f 1845-1848, James K. Polk___________175,691,666.07

f - 1849-1852. Zachary Taylor 195,352,324.02 . 1853-1856, Franklin Pierce___________268,822,809.53

1857-1860, James Buchanan—__:____314,088,525.88

F 1861-1864, Abraham Lincoln (War)____2,416,451,253.23

1865-1868, Abraham Lincoln (War)—3,762,816,304.37 1869-1872, Ulysses S. Grant—2,399,245,081.76

.' 187.3-1876, Ulysses S. Grant_______1,675,464,506.91

1877-1880, Rutherford B. Hayes____1,080,797,937.00

1881-1884, James A. Garfield_____—1,468,074,009.00

. 1885-1888, Grover Cleveland—__1,435,244,687.00

I 1889-1892, Benjamin Harrison.________1,696,772,170.00

1893-1896. Grover Cleveland______1,925,534,849.00

- , 1897-1900, William McKinley (War)—2,458,842,334.00

• 1901-1904, William McKinley 2,695,626,140.00

f 1905-1908. Theodore Roosevelt_____—3,124,818,977.00

1909-1912, William H. Taft 3,654,951,948.00

1913-1916, Woodrow Wilson___;__- .4,100,142,246.23

> Expenses for 128 years—-.---------$36,034,145,335.23

• 1917-1920, Woodrow Wilson(War) 54,850,167,473.58

I Total Expenses for 132 years___$90,884,312,808.81

* Courts Under Fire

IN JULY the Canadian Government sent a judge two thousand miles by steamer from ’ Ottawa to Hudson Bay to try an Indian who murdered a fellow man to gain his wife. The I object of this long and difficult trip was to , impress upon the native mind a reverence for the law. This is using the power of the law in a proper manner.

* ’ What a pity it is that, while wise men are

trying to uphold the law and make it respectable in the great country to the north of us, America should have such a case on its books as that of 1 ,. the innocent labor leader Tom Mooney, proven ' by dictaphones in the office of District Attorney Fickert, of San Francisco, to be the object of ( one of the most sickening conspiracies of repre

sentatives of the law ever known in history. At last accounts Mooney was still in prison, despite the fact that a snapshot of him showed him a mile away from the crime laid at his door at the -time the crime occurred. • । ;

Neither Great Britain, nor Germany in her palmiest days, ever had such a riot of government by injunction as has been witnessed in the United States within the past year, but the curious thing about these injunctions is that so many of them seem to work against the miners and other workers but in. favor of the profiteers..

- Thus in Pueblo, April fourteenth, the United States Circuit Court issued an injunction against the District-Attorney,' enjoining him from presenting evidence of profiteering collected against thirteen Denver merchants and . three coal companies. This injunction completely broke the spirit of all the men in that section of the country who were trying to insure fair prices for the people. ..

Commenting upon the present condition of the judiciary "in this country Chief Justice Morris A. Soper, of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, said at Atlantic City, June 24:

‘•The courts are under fire. They are justly under fire because for a century, during which: we have paseed from a primitive frontier society to a complex industrial civilization, the instruments for administering justice have remained substantially as they were when first projected. No institution can hold up its head under these conditions, and no body of men can secure respect for an instrument of government so far out of date.” -

Of course the difficulties with reference to the courts are largely those of the legal profession. The American Judicature Society, of Chicago, a body of clean, high-minded men who are anxious to raise the standard of things jndicntU and legal in the United States, is authority for the statement in its Journal of date June, 1920, that •■’more or less legislation will not clean up a profession which has got lousy. There must be a regeneration of both court and bar.”

Our two latest presidents have expressed themselves in the following language respecting the need of improvements in judicial matters in the United States:

"One great crying need in the United States is cheapening the cost of litigation by simplifying procedure and expediting final judgment. Under present conditions the poor man is at a woeful disadvantage in a legal contest with the corporation or tc rich opponent. The^ necessity for reform exists noth in the United States and in all the state courts.”—WtHiam H. Taft.

‘•I do know that the United States, in its judicial procedure, is many decades behind every civilized government in the world; and I say that it is an immediate and an imperative call upon us to rectify that, because the speediness, of justice, the inexpensiveness of justice, the ready access of justice, is the greater part of justice itself.”—Woodrow Wilson.

England and Ireland Again By c. 1. Bobton Mb. Editor: A paragraph in The Golden

Age, written by Robert Whittaker from an intensely vitriolic standpoint, condemns English rule in Ireland as the cause of all the unhappy conditions existing in that distressful country.

Mr. Whittaker may be familiar with English history—as he has taken care to mention in his letter to you—but it is painfully evident that his knowledge of Irish history is a limited quantity. What he seems to know regarding Irish history is based upon what he saw while making a hurried visit to Belfast. And surely he will be honest enough to admit that social conditions, be they what they may, afe no evidence of misgovernment; but rather the result of tarrying too long at the wine cup, and similar causes.

Every reformer and Christian worker, is painfully familiar with facts such as your correspondent has pointed out, and, unfortunately, we have not to travel quite so far as Belfast to find a parallel for what he has written.

I am Irish, lived thirty-five years under feritish rule and have not a fault to find. Nor can I refer to any act of seeming injustice practised by that government.

. I am aware; however, that the Roman Catholic church in Ireland has for centuries endeavored to nullify and make British rule impossible; that the church of the majority has impeded the British government in its efforts to make new laws for the betterment of the people educationally, and otherwise.

The result of Romish disloyalty has been the enactment of laws which were intended as a curb upon that cult, and also to provide an antidote to the vaporings of the church, and for which England has been in no way to blame.

No coercion act has ever been enacted to compel the Protestant inhabitants to observe the law. They are loyal and true to everything • that makes for law and order.

Now Mr. Whittaker might wish to know my authority for entering this controversy. I beg to inform him that I have spent ten years of my life (my best years) working for the uplift of the Irish people. I am a diligent student- of Irish history, the author of three volumes on that subject, and a member of all her principal Historic Societies, North and South.

I will conclude this note by stating as strongly as I know how that the statements of Mr. Whittaker are a gross libel on the British government and I am surprised that they should be permitted to appear in a paper like The Golden-Age, professing, as it does, a character for truth and righteousness.

Scotchman Takes a Hand Too

By Bdward B. Taylor

Mr. Editor: I wish to reply to an article I observed in your valuable paper regarding conditions in Ireland by an Englishman who must have studied his family history much deeper than he did the cause for the condition of affairs in Ireland.

He is like a good many more who saw the poverty as they passed through Ireland from place to place and put the blame on the British Government and the British people, without finding out more about it.

If he had found out about the taxation which the government takes and the fees that the Roman Catholic church exacts from the poor people I think he would change his opinion-about how the British Government serves the Irish people.

I am a Scotchman, born and bred. I have never lived in Ireland but I have had many pleasant trips through it, and, as Mr. Whittaker writes, there are poor in the North of Ireland, but I think that had he investigated he would have found the large majority of the poor were Roman Catholics: and in .cases where Protestants were poor, rum was the root of the evil.

There are thousands of Irish in Scotland and England who come over and never seem to be able to come up to the same standard of living as their fellow-citizens do, and yet they get the same chance under the same government.

This question of home rule and an Irish republic is not a political one, but a purely religious one; and Ireland is an example of what would happen if we were ever to come under such a dominating rule as the Church of Rome.

More About Insurance: By J. h. Fleming

Mr. Editor: I wish to call your attention to a very erroneous and misleading article ' entitled? "Insurance Business Profitable," appearing in your issue of J une 23, page 598. The writer .is evidently ignorant of insurance «• practice and policies or he would never have written such an article.

He gives the impression to his readers that £ the $22,641,383 is clear profit for the insurance companies. He makes no mention of the expenses of operating the companies, or of the amounts paid out on matured endowments, * of the amounts paid as cash values on policies cancelled before maturity, or of the amounts added to the reserve to provide for future pay* ments on such policies.

Every company must lay by in the reserve out of premiums received the amount required to produce the face of the policy at maturity, if an endowment. or at the expectancy of life, if a life contract. For instance, on a Twenty Year Endowment Policy, at age 35, the company must each year put in the reserve $34.17 out of a premium of $42.00, and in like proportion for any other kind of-policy.

’ The cash value of the policy increases each : year by about the amount added to the reserve

and interest, so that if the insured wishes to discontinue at any time, after the third year, this money must'be paid by the company upon request of the insured. •

Carrying the illustration further, the insured pays in twenty years, if he is so fortunate as to 2 live that long, twenty times $42, or $840, and the company must pay $1,000 at death or maturity. ' The statement of ‘'elderly friend” is untrue J and unfair for the reasons given aliove. When all the persons now holding policies in the state of Michigan shall have received the proceeds of 1 rheir policies by death or maturity, they will have received more than was paid by them. Ou • very few policies do the companies pay less than ' was received bv them, and then onlv on life contracts where the insured lives far beyond the expectation of life.

Briefly, then, of the amounts received by the ’ insurance companies. almut three-fifths are paid ‘ out as claims, endowments, cancellations, etc., and about one-fifth is used for the* expenses of , the business, and the remaining one-fifth is added to the reserve to be paid to the policyholders when required.

I happen to be in the insurance business myself, and I know whereof I speak on these matters. I do-not consider it good policy on the part of your paper to publish such articles until you have established the correctness of the facts from reliable sources.- I invite you to prove my figures from any reliable source of information on the subject of insurance.

Other Insurance Items

THERE have been insurance companies in the 'world since the days of Demosthenes when, -for the first time, shippers began to bet that they would not return safely with their cargoes, and the insurance companies bet that they would. There are now insurance companies in which a man can insure against almost any possible loss or accident.

One of the newest insurance specialties in the United States is rain insurance. It can be had in either way, either against.too much wet • weather or-against too much dryness. There are certain businesses, such as picnic grounds, open-air shows, pleasure-boat owners, country and river-side hotels, moving-picture companies and department stores that find it desirable to insure against too much rain on certain davs when they have special events on hand for which good weather is a necessity. It is said to have taken forty men-working several weeks to digest the weather reports and figure out the percentages of risk for various localities., —-

The life insurance business has now become a thoroughly scientific business, based upon carefully collected statistics. When well managed it is a profitable business, as stated in our issue of June 23rd. We did not go into details in that article. Two elements tend to make the insurance business a money maker. One is the fact that, for various reasons, many people cannot go on with their payments and so lose a large part of what they have paid in, and another reason is that the insurance companies have the use of the vast sums of money which have been paid in as premiums, and the profits which are made by the skillful handling of these vast sums in a brief space of time are sometimes most extraordinary.

If the history ever comes to the light as to how the savings of the people, as represented in life insurance payments, have been used to swing the stock market first one way and then the other, as suited the financiers who have control of the life insurance funds, it will make interesting reading. Some of this information did come to light many years ago when the Morgan interests were seizing control of the New York Mutual and Equitable Life Companies.

It was the investigation of these companies by Charles E. Hughes that made him Governor of New York State, Justice of the Supreme Court, and a candidate for President. One of the interesting items he uncovered at that time was that Chauncey M. Depew was receivftig $20,000 per year from one of these companies, and when asked what services he performed, or had ever performed, in return for it, he was unable to offer «ny explanation other than that it was paid him because of his general standing.

Current Insurance Statistics

DURING the year 1919 the two hundred and thirty-seven life insurance companies doing business in the United States received from policyholders $1,209,000,000 and paid out to policyholders $741,507,787, a difference of $457,-492,213. The total income of these companies during the year amounted to $1,555,000,000, exceeding the total outgo of $1,095,000,000 by about $460,000,000. Of this difference the sum of $279, 000,000 was added to assets and about $8,500,000 to surplus.

Reports from California are that the state insurance law which went into effect on January 1, 1914, has proven to be a great success. The original capital provided for this experiment was $100,000, but this amount has never been touched, and' in five years, not counting the dividends paid to policyholders, the average profit per year has been 338 percent. A surplus of $1,038,959 has been accumulated and $1,039,-533.57 have been returned to policyholders in the form of dividends, ranging from fifteen to twenty percent per year. The state transacts its business on twelve percent of its receipts, including the payment of taxes, labor, rent, and all other items of cost incurred in doing an insurance business. This is claimed to be much less than the cost of any other insurance company doing business in the state; it is also claimed that the ratio of loss is lower.

In England and New Zealand employers are. compelled by law to insure their employes, and may either provide the means of insurance themselves or arrange with an insurance company to do it for therm There is state insurance in New Zealand. The state company does only ten percent of the insurance business done in the state, but what it does do tends to regulate the rates.

Ordinary life insurance companies generally decline to take risks on miners’ lives, but in June, 1920, the G. B. Markle Company, of Hazleton, the largest individual coal operators, insured all their underground miners for $500 to $1,000, according to length of service.

In July, 1920, the New York Stock Exchange took out a group policy in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in favor of its seven hundred employes, providing $18 a month benefi t for five years for total disability, and $500 to $2,000 in case of death, according to length of service. The face of the policy was for $1,000,-000. Group insurance is a comparatively new form of insurance, but the Metropolitan Life Insurance has already issued policies amounting to $122,000,000 in this form.

Who Framed The Law?

IT HAS the appearance that judges in this country have an unusual amount of difficulty in placing blame upon a rich man or a rich corporation. This is very singular. The Lever Act was passed to prevent profiteering in clothing. Taking advantage of the shortage in wool, caused by the manufacture of soldiers’ uniforms and blankets during the war, the American-Woolen Company held up the public in 1918 and 1919 to the extent of profits running up to tliree hundred percent and away into the many millions of dollars. Here was obviously one of the principal companies that the Lever Act was intended to hold in check.

Yet when the American Woolen Company and its president, William Wood, wer-» indicted for profiteering in clothing (and there seemed to be no possible question of their having profiteered in cloth) a Massachusetts federal judge quashed the indictment on the ground that woolen cloth is not clothing. This decision narrowed the field of prosecution of profiteers in clothing down to the men of smaller capital and smaller profits who make and sell clothing.

' ■ j.

Molecules, Atoms, Electrons: By e. s. Mummen

THE word molecule is obviously of Latin origin, and means simply a little muss of matter, and is usually defined as the smallest mass of any substance which can exist by itself, or the. smallest mass into.which any substance can be divided by physical processes; that is, by processes that do not change its chemical nature. As to size, these molecules have been calculated to have a diameter of one five hundred millionths of an inch: to illustrate this graphically—if we conceive a sphere of water the size of a pea to be magnified to the size of the earth, each molecule being magnified to the same extent, would appear about the size of lead shot.

The molecules are to the physicist real magnitudes, which are no further removed from our ordinary experiences on one side than are the magnitudes of astronomy on the other.

All matter is huilt up of these isolated particles or molecules, and these invisible molecules are composed of smaller elementary atoms, which are electrically united together to form the molecules. The atoms have long been considered the smallest bodies in nature, and as absolutely solid and everlasting; but recent advances in science have given us evidences that they are neither solid nor everlasting, hut that the atom is made up of yet smaller particles which may lie changed.

Tins idea floes not rest upon pure theory, but upon observed facts. It can Im- proved by direct experiment that particles smaller than atoms do exist. This may seem ridiculous when even the giant niob-cnles are hopelessly beyond the reach of the most powerful microscope, but these ultra-microscopic particles can just as surely be measured and weighed as our own world and its neighboring planets can.

The story of the discovery of the invisible particles, electrons, composing the atoms is an interesting one. It has been known for a long tune that an electric spark will pass more easily through a tube of rarefied air than through the ordinary air at atmospheric pressure.

To demonstrate this take a glass tube or vessel into which are placed two brass rods, one of which is fixed to the base of the vessel, while the other slides through an air-tight bushing at the top. The whole vessel should be air-tight, having at the bottom an outlet to which can be attached an air pump. By connecting the outer

ends of the brass rod to wires coming from an induction coil connected to a battery; electric sparks can be made to pass between the two brass rods within the vessel. ‘ If we gradually separate the ends of the rods in the vessel, the sparking will cease, owing to the intervening air-space causing too much resistance to the electrical discharge. If we pump out a little air the sparking w ill re-commence, showing that the thinner air is a better conductor. As we-continue exhausting the air we observe that the sparking changes into a silent stream of light. As the vacuum increases the whole vessel becomes ;llu-minated with a glow. Then a little later the glow breaks into narrow horizontal discs-or slices. ’ -

If the air becomes too rarefied or the vacuum too great it loses its good conducting qualities and. requires considerable electrical pressure to cause a discharge to pass through this high vacuum. When the exhaustion has reached a certain point all the glow disappears from the interior of the vessel, and all would appear totally dark; hut when this high state of exhaustion is reached the walls of the glass vessel begin to glow xx ith a phosphorescence. This is caused by the shooting off from the-cathode terminal of those invisible bullets of radiant matter which, colliding against the walls of the glass vessel, cause it to phosphoresce. ’ '

This radiant matter may be termed the fourth ; tate bf matter, as the solid, liquid and gaseous states are called the first, second and third states. The physicist has found the flying particles to he very much smaller than the smallest known atom, which is that of hydrogen. These flying particles are called electrons.

These flying electrons are quite invisible in the highly exhausted vacuum tube. It is only the phosphorescence of the glass caused by the bombardment of these invisible bullets against the inner walls of the vessel, that we see. By making the cathode terminal saucer-shaped the electrons can lie focused to one spot. When a magnet is brought near, a deflection of the electrons is noticed. The magnet deflects them much as it does an electric current. These electrons are negatively electrified because they are shot off from the cathode or negative electrode. The velocity of these electrons is calculated at about

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