The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 17, 1918, Page 10

e - The Perverted Press ofMinneapoligs Here’s Why the Journal and Tribune Don’t Conduct Themselves as ; V% THE TONNAGE TAX ' “had forced a reluctant they feared that the -Journal “would again ¢ { = force through this meas- - Public Utilities and Give Their Readers a Square Deal ITHE MINNEAPOLIS JOURNAL.I BY WALTER W. LIGGETT ET us turn from the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press, and consider the Minneapolis Journal. Pioneer Press have a record of unbroken subserviency to big business, but the Journal’s case is a little different. This paper once followed the paths of rec- 4 titude and it was purchased outright through the aid of big business agents before it changed its policy, lost its former reputation and became an- other truckling advocate of special privilege. Prior to 1908 the Minneapolis Journal was owned by Lucien P. Swift. Mr. Swift was a journalist of the rapidly vanishing old school. That means he felt his paper owed a certain duty to the public. His policy was actuated by ethics and he did not keep his conscience locked up in the cash drawer. Editors of this sort are few and far between in these later days of business office management. Under his guidance the Minneapolis Journal gained the reputation of being one of the fairest and ablest papers in the United States. Its columns were clean. It seldom suppressed news and on numer- ous occasions its editor championed popular causes that were bitterly op- : posed by big business. As a consequence it had a tremendous circulation and was easily the most influential paper in the _Northwest. ONCE FAVORED In 1907 the Minneap- olis Journal began an active agitation in favor of a tonnage tax on the iron range. In able and searching articles it showed that the steel trust was not paying its just proportion of taxes and that the interests of the people demanded a heavy import on the ore that was being taken from this state to enrich absentee landlords. Day after day the Journal conducted a fearless fight. It had little dif- - ficulty in exposing the weakness of the argu- ments of big business or- gans and it had so much influence in the country districts that a public sentiment was created which literally forced the legislature to pass this act, despite the desper- ate efforts of the steel trust and big business to block . the bill. . This measure did not become : a law, however, for it - was vetoed by the gov- ernor after it had passed both houses of the leg- islature. This stand on the part of the Journal caused consternation in the ranks of big business. Practically all the other daily papers in the state were thoroughly sub- servient to the steel trust, but unaided, the Journal had brought about an agitation which legislature to act and The Dispatch and_ © - they drugged so that they will Thomas Jefferson once declared that “the man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” If that was true in Jefferson’s day, how much more is it true today in the light of the Leader’s exposures, which are permitted to go unanswered. How im- portant then that the farmers ‘have a paper of their own. ure with so much public sentiment behind it that no governor would dare to veto the bill. Their only recourse was to silence the Journal, or failing in .that, to purchase the paper. Mr. Swift was not a man who could be silenced. All papers have a price, however, and in this case there was so much money at stake that we may well imagine there was not much haggling about the consideration. The Jour- nal was purchased and the price is said to have been $1,200,000. > The Journal was sold by Mr. Swift to Herschel V. Jones. And who is Mr. Jones? Mr. Jones con- ducted a grain brokerage business on the Min- neapolis Chamber of Commerce floor and was gen- erally credited with being the man who handled : —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris The Hun at home is poisoning the well of information. The mission of progress is to bring full en- joyment to an ever larger number of men and wo newspapers the reactionary forces have sidetracked the march of Progress. But the crafty one is hiding himself so skillfully that whatever is seen of hi unassailable as a ghost. Through the poisoned news of the city papers m to believe that we are paying tribute to no one. it has come to pass that many have been Iul ~PAGE men until it reaches all the people. But through the _The enemy is not'in sight. m appears as indistinct and Sps any have been smoothly led = has: been flattered with = the name of ‘Pennsyl- ' ' vania . of = the -West There ‘really is small At the same time we are quietly made to pay it. Thus led into the belief that they are not being .robbed. Will the voters arise in their wrath and smother the exploiters under their ballots; or are . simply keep on paying and paying? \ The Minncapolis Morning Teibune| stock deals for James J. Hill. About a year before he purchased the Journal, the firm with which he was connected was ruined by a slump in the stock of the Hill railroads. Its statement showed that it could not pay its creditors 50 cents on the dollar. This ex-bankrupt is publisher of the paper that makes frequent allusions to the bankruptey of Mr. Townley. INTO THE HANDS OF A GRAIN BROKER : But while H. V. Jones was still in mourning for his busted brokerage business, he was able to get credit for $1,200,000, with which to buy the Min- neapolis Journal. From whom did he get this cash or its equivalent credit?, Rumors were prevalent at the time throughout the state that the United States Steel corporation furnished the wherewithal to purchase the Journal. The Minneapolis Tribune, under the caption of “The Steel Trust in Journal- ism and Politics,” ran the following editorial in its issue of September 2, 1908: “It seems impossible for the Minneapolis Journal to escape from the servile condition of a nonresident ownership. Heretofore alien control has been exer- cised through a benevolent personality that has asked nothing but dividends. “It has been mitigated locally by cautious dis- tribution of smaller stockholders among dif- ferentco-workers of pleasant manners and wide personal .acquaint- ance. Now it appears alien ownership rests in a single unacknowledged agent. “We speak only of cur- rent rumor as it runs. The fundamental control of a public journal with a certain influence on the - politics of the state and business of the city is not a private matter. “Frank dealing with - street rumor about it is the shortest path to more general enlightenment. If it be true that ‘the United States Steel cor- Pporation is in position to dictate the business and editorial policy of one daily paper-in‘each Min- nesota city of the first class that foreign - cor- poration possesses = a power which will be the less harmful the more it is known. e - “We do not know that the exercise of su¢h an present plans. The' per- Tiext legislature should .throw more .light upon ular vote' for governor., Corporation influence can afford to keep hands off the state ticket. Current gossip jumps instinetive- ly to the election of United = States senators in 1910 and 1912. Here hunting, with the tariff question more or less’ . permanently reopened. It vey. the field.© Minnesota Justification for it, in the that representation of- v A Preuy influence is part of its - . Sonality and acts of the that than even the pop- is a game worth the is not too soon to sur- Rt s It ¥ ! ¥ 1 . esbaRagy ad o 3V i ¥ i o ¥ _‘;»;m; ,,,,,.,,.gvs".;_wfi.‘d PRI ¥ 1,