The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 13, 1918, Page 6

r/// iy, % K %///f/// onpartigin Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week . . Entered as second-class matter September 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR Advertising rates on application. months, $1.50. St. Paul, Minn. n ap Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE 8. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a fayor if any aders will advise us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. DAMNATION BY MISQUOTATION T WAS during a fight between the people of a big city and a public service corporation that was exploiting the city that this incident occurred. Feeling was running high. A repre- sentative of a citizens’ committee opposing the corporation’s de- mands made a public speech. He was quoted in the newspapers as making charges against the corporation head which were palpably untrue and easily disproved. His alleged statement was used as showing the “unfairness and viciousness’” of those who were oppos- ing the public vtility monopoly’s requests of the city. He denied making the statement, but the newspapers continued to charge him with it. The issues of the controversy were forgotten. Friends of the corporation tried to put over a big franchise steal on the sole ground that the leader of the opposition to the company had made this statement, which was untrue. Finally this leader of the people made another speech. He flatly denied having made the statement accredited to him. “I al- ways believed these charges against the corporation president un- true,” he said. A reporter in writing the account of the speech, quoted this statement exactly in writing his story. But this is how it appeared in the paper: “I NOW believe these charges against the corporation president untrue.” The word “always’ was changed to “now” and a little “d” dropped off the end of “believed.” THE PAPER ALTERED THE SENTENCE EVER SO SLIGHTLY, BUT JUST ENOUGH TO MAKE IT APPEAR THAT THE SPEAKER ADMITTED HAVING BELIEVED THE CHARGES IN THE PAST, BUT HAVING CHANGED HIS MIND SINCE. And of ¢ourse that little alteration of a word “proved” the news- paper had not misquoted the speaker in his first speech. This incident is told by the reporter who wrote the account of the second speech. It shows how it is done. The chief stock trick of the cor- rupt press is to damn men by misquoting them. Re- cently there have been two striking instances of this at- tempted damnation of pub- lic men by misquoting them. The Leader tells about them in this issue. Read about the L : Creel canard and the Town- , ley canard on Page Nine. It will give you an insight into press methods and enable you to account for the general misrepresen- tation throughout the country of the great movement of the or- ganized farmers. £ GREEN APPLES Safety commission, went down to Washington, D. C., to demand military law and courts martial to rule the civil- population during the war, President A. C. Townley of the Non- partisan league was the first to protest against McGee’s charges that widespread and serious disloyalty in Minnesota made the abandonment of civil courts and procedure necessary. Mr. Townley wired the senate committee before which McGee testified that it ‘ N J HEN Judge J. F. McGee, member of the Minnesota Public - was not true that the farmers and people of Minnesots generally, - especially the naturalized citizens and those of German and Swed-. ish descent, were disloyal, as indicated by McGee. Mr. Townley’s prompt and vigorous defense of a state that is loyal to the core, that is doing its full duty in war loan subscrip- tions, that is sending its sons freely into the army and that is rais- . PAGE 8IX. - ' L ,,,/Q “ / % éf/[/% //////// /;éll ] 7 @ o s 5% ing record war crops, brought forth a sarcastic attack by the St. Paul Dispatch, one of the anti-farmer, anti-labor papers. The Dispatch said that Mr. Townley was assuming too much ; that when he (Townley) was accused of disloyalty, he didn’t need to assume that the accusation was against the farmers. The Dispatch said: A. C. Townley, the Nonpartisan league president, is determined that the United States shall understand that whenever he eats green apples the farmers of the Northwest promptly have colic. Denounced before the senate committee on military affairs by Judge J. F. McGee, federal fuel administrator for Minnesota, Townley leaps to the telegraph wire to assure Senator Chamberlain, its chair- man, that it is all a lie; that the northwestern farmers are loyal to the core. A French king once remarked that HE was the State. Townley proclaims that HE is the northwestern farmer. In the course of time, however, the northwestern farmer will let Boss Townley understand that when talking is required, he can talk for himself. When the people of Minnesota in one voice rose to protest against the McGee charges, when it became apparent that Gov- ernor Burnquist, pet of the Dispatch, would have to repudiate McGee to satisfy the people, and when union labor demanded the dismissal of McGee on account of his vicious:attack on the whole state, the Dispatch itself had an attack of something akin to green apple colic. The Dispatch hastened to repudiate McGee, although it defended him last winter when the Nonpartisan league and union labor demanded his dismissal then for another reason. A day or two after the editorial saying that Townley had no right to assume that McGee had questioned the loyalty of the farmers, because he had only questioned the loyalty of Townley, the Dispatch said: Commissioner McGee told the senate committee that Minnesota is a hotbed of disloyalty. i % In the same issue the Dispatch alse said that McGee’s views were “in sharp contrast” with those of Governor Burnquist, who believed that “Minnesota is as loyal as any state in the Union, people of Swedish extraction particularly.” ; If Townley’s is a case of green apples, what is the Dispatch suffering from? We should say it was suffering from acute indi- gestion from having to eat its own words. PEDDLING “BUM” DOPE . N ST. PAUL there is a press agency known as the Reliance Publicity service. It has a big slush fund to fight the organ- ized farmers. Its function is to bribe country newspapers into publishing anti-League matter in return for advertising to be placed by the agency with papers that are “right.” For some time* this agency, run by Tom Parker Junkin for secret cli- ents who are putting up the money, attempted to mask as a legitimate advertising and publicity bureau, but after the exposure of its plans it came out in the open and is now not trying to con- ceal its purpose. v The latest effort is an attempt by the agency to get a report from country papers about candidates for the legislature indorsed by the League. A circular to the country editors asks that a blank be filled out on each candidate indorsed by the 3 5 farmers and that anything of a “pro-German” nature about the candidates be reported in de- tail to the agency, as that is highly important. In this circular, among other things, Mr. Junkin says: ' I know positively that in the end the newspaper that has stood up firmly and conscientiously in opposition to the dangerous purposes of Mr. Townley will be regarded by all sane-thinking men as safe and reliable, and their influence will be stronger than ever. Mr. Junkin must be joking. He was editor of a North Dakota daily, the Grand Forks Herald, which fell from the first to the third daily paper in circulation within a year after it undertook, under Junkin’s guidance, to fight the North Dakota farmers. The Herald is now utterly discredited—the laughing stock of the state. 'The leading paper of North Dakota is the Courier-News of Fargo, which jumped from fourth place in circulation to first in the state within a year after it came out in an attitude friendly to the farmers. . Mr. Junkin must be joking. There were 150 out of North Da- kota’s 800 country weeklies which two years ago were fighting the - organized farmers under Mr. Junkin’s leadership as editor of the leading anti-League daily. Only about 50 of the 300 country papers supported the farmers’ program. The rest were neutral.. TODAY s o B} T MR JESISRNE L Ty v o P L ! b & fig > """“‘% A3 -t ol - k] b o ' ] » I S R § 9 3