PRESS DECLINING IN INFLUENCE
PRESS DECLINING IN INFLUENCE IT IS becoming; increasingly apparent that newspapers in this country, owned and dominated by wealth and big business, are rapidly losing their political influence...
...In law, politics, finance, education, science, and in industry itself will be found men whose ages are much above the forty, fifty, and even the sixty dead lines who are the real leaders in their fields...
...If the courts, which have in so many cases,been willing to intenn-et the law for the benefit of the big utility interests, cor across again 1 his time, the Federal Power commission mi just as well close its books and quit business...
...Tt/fRS...
...It would literally take away from the jurisdiction of the commission practically all of the power projects in the Eastern part of the country and most of those west of the Mississippi...
...Their outlook, to say the least is none too cheerful...
...In any system of society other than the modern speed-crazed, profit-mad age of machines, the experience, skill, and seasoned judgment of the worker who has devoted years to his work or trade would be recognized and highly valued...
...The injustice and falsity of this modern attitude on the part of industry and big business cannot be demonstrated better than by the compilation of a list of men who are recognized leaders in their fields...
...The news agencies, fearful of the influence*of the Chicago Tribune, dared not circulate them, but they gladly sent out reams of stuff from Mrs...
...McCormick has recently bought into other papers in the state...
...In this fashion did the people of Louisiana repudiate the capital serving press of the state and rallied support of the man whose progressive principles and ideals have won him the support of the farmers, the working men, and the common people...
...rpHE McCORMICK family owns and controls the Chicago 'Tribune and Mrs...
...THE BIG life insurance companies and their salesmen are fond of quoting the statement that at sixty, 90 per cent of all men in the United States are dependent upon charity or the support of others...
...Again, it was disclosed that another check for $10,000 given by Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, to Mrs...
...The odds seem overwhelmingly stacked against the working man that his declining years will be marked by poverty and dependence, no matter how thriftily or determinedly he may strive against them...
...BUSTING ANOTHER COMMISSION It hasn't been a pleasant spectacle during the last decade or more to watch the slow but sure emasculation of the commissions that have been created by the states and by the national government to regulate the big utilities of the nation...
...Back in 1924 when the Columbus Electric and Power company wanted to build its plant on the Chattahoochee river, it was ready and willing to go to the Federal Power commission to get permission for the project...
...McCormick to aid the candidacy of his sister-in-law, Mrs...
...Ordinarily front page news such as that brought out in the last few days of the Illinois hearings of the committee, has been consistently relegated to back pages or not printed at all...
...McCormick's supporters attacking the investigating committee and its work...
...What for them lies beyond the dead lines at forty, at fifty, and where will they be at sixty...
...Every man in industry in this country is moving on to a point when he will be cast out as "too old" because he has passed the arbitrary dead lines of these "efficiency experts...
...The Columbus Electric and Power company, a subsidiary of the Stone and Webster interests of the power trust has in a brief filed with the commission declared that the commission has no jurisdiction over its Chattahpochee dam in Georgia because the dam is not located in a "navigable" part of the stream...
...Only a few power projects in the United States are located on streams at navigable points...
...Physical vigor, not brains or experience or skill, has become the measure of the worth of the workman...
...rpHIS SURPRISING logic and change of front by this repre-sentative of the power trust might be humorous if it were not for the fact that a judicial decision upholding the contention would virtually abolish the authority of the Federal Power commission and enable the power trust to add billions of watered capitalization to its financial structures and thereby extort higher and higher rates ^rom consumers...
...Monopoly and wealth are finding out that controlling the newspapers is not enough to bring about the election of their own pet candidates or to frustrate the voice and will of the people in government...
...At the same time the convention of the United Textile Workers, meeting in another hotel, reaffirmed their long opposition to night work for women and minors...
...But Gov...
...It is more than, mere struggling against a law of averages,—it is an apparently hopeless fight against an economic system that has no respect for human values and recognizes only the dollar...
...Reinicke, one of Mrs...
...McCormick was mysteriously cashed at a suburban bank by a Mrs...
...After much • bickering by their high-priced lawyers, this ¦¦¦wer has brazenly turned around and flouted the commission's thority with a statement that the commission has no juris-tion over its Chattahoochee plant, and therefore has nothing say about the rate base that shall be used by the company, other words, this company thought enough of the commis-•n's authority back in 1924 to get its permission to build its plant, and now that the plant is completed it denies the commission has any authority to regulate it...
...Today, however, skill and experience in industry are counting for less and less...
...McCORMICK admitted spending $252,000 in her eam-paign for the Republican nomination to the United States Senate...
...Can this inexorable law of statistics that dooms 90 per cent at sixty to poverty and dependence be smashed...
...IS THERE no hope for better conditions...
...The wages of the workers and the cost of living do not permit them to lay aside enough to provide adequately for the future...
...McCormick to a "free milk fund" ostensibly to help Chicago baliies, only $170.20 was actually spent for milk and the balance presumably used for campaign purposes...
...To the monopoly interests that have been buying their way into the pre'ss of the nation, this development must be pretty much of a shock...
...We wonder how much is being spent to keep the details of that campaign from the neonle of Illinois and the nation OPPOSE NIGHT WORK FOR WOMEN, MINERS NKW YORK.—The Collon-Textlle Institute, in session here, called for the abolition of night work for women and minors in the cotton mills of this country, effective not later than March i; next yeAr, Sixteen representative mill owners from North and South, who are members of the institute's board of directors, were present when the resolution was adopted...
...Advantage was taken of nearly every means of attack upon Gov...
...Statistical analysis in recent years has proved that these figures are only too true...
...Is the life of the working man of today to be characterized as a road to ruin...
...If the present trend continues, if the managers of industry in this country in a blind striving for what they call "efficiency" continue this policy of putting middle-aged workers in the discard, the place of the older worker in our present economic society will become more and more a subject of grave concern...
...THIS modern age of the machine with big business and industry demanding young men and casting them aside when they have reached middle age, what kind of a future can the working mem of today anticipate for themselves and their families...
...McCormick's candidacy, the Senate committee has been viciously attacked and the charges hurlecl against it have been flagrantly played up on the front pages of the reactionary press of the nation, while the disclosures made by the committee of the use of money and other irregularities in the Illinois primary have been suppressed or ignored in the news...
...UNFAIR JOURNALISM THE SENATE committee on campaign expenditures under the chairmanship of Senator Nye has just announced that it has adjourned its Illinois hearings until after the November election...
...Huey P. Long in the Democratic senatorial primary race...
...Then there are constant economic upheavals and depression that result in unemployment and distress that quickly dissipate what few savings have been spared...
...In its investigation of Mrs...
...This was granted, and the plant was completed in 1926 at a cost, according to the sworn statement of the company, of $7,688,544: Examiners of the Federal Power commission, however, in going over the accounts of the plant, found and protested discrepancies of nearly $650,000, which they said had been included as "water" in the accounts of the jompany...
...Are the big corporations and trusts to be allowed to amass huge profits while nine out of ten working men finish their lives in poverty and dependence...
...Modern industry has become a great human mill that takes, the young, the strong, the vigorous into its maw and after it has squeezed from them the energy of their most productive years, casts them heartlessly onto the junk pile when they begin to slow up a little and replaces them with new fodder from the ranks of the young...
...If this contention were to be upheld by the courts, where it will doubtless be argued in the near future, it would mean that, the Power commission's jurisdiction over most of the hydro-electric plants in the country would suddenly be taken away...
...Long's majority over his reactionary opponent will probably reach 40,000 votes...
...The modern semi-automatic or automatic machines require little or no skill on the part of their tenders or operators...
...A study of the great accomplishments of history leads to the inevitable conclusion that the men responsible for these things were in the main over 55 years of age...
...For example, testimony before the Senate committee brought out the startling fact that of a $5,000 donation given by Mrs...
...Long had fought and won when the powers in the state had tried to impeach him as governor, and in this campaign he squarely met the thrusts of the feed-box press, particularly the big dailies in New Orleans, and won with splendid success...
...And what of their years that follow, on the down grade to sixty ? Is their future to be one of hopelessness and increasing despair...
...Is it just to consider the period of usefulness of these workers who have given the best years of their life to business and industry to be ended...
...For the past few weeks the committee has been delving into the circumstances surrounding the nomination of Ruth Hanna McCormick as Republican candidate to the United States Senate, and during this time the public has had an opportunity to witness one of the most classic examples of false and biased journalism in political history...
...Almost unanimously they stood beside their man, Senator Joseph Ransdell, who for 31 years in congress has been found on the side of special privilege and wealth...
...The committee also found out that a $2,500 check from Mr...
...The present weak and ineffective status of many of these bodies has come as a result of judicial decisions—the courts have been willing in many instances to do the bidding of the big utility interests by handing down technical decisions in keeping, perhaps, with the letter of the law, but utterly opposed to its spirit and intent...
...It must be a blow to these interests that have spent millions in an attempt to control public opinion by getting control of the press, to find their organs falling toward the zero line in political influence...
...Down in Louisiana this week practically the entire state press bitterly opposed the candidacy of Gov...
...Indeed, the trend seems to point the other way—that conditions will grow worse rather than improve...
...McCormick's campaign managers...
...Is it any wonder, then, that men approaching fifty are likely to be hard and ruthless in their dealings in a final determined effort to ward off the disasters that in nine times out of ten come to the man of sixty...
...Only ten per cent, they say, have enough laid by to keep them w'hen they have reached three score years of age...
...McCormick, was "erroneously" reported as being contributed by Mrs...
...Gov...
...Inasmuch as the commission was supposed to allow a "fair return" upon the actual investment, this item was ' ¦ considerable importance...
...A ROAD TO RUIN...
...A young, inexperienced factory hand can step in and replace the seasoned workman who, because the slight physical decline thatv comes with advancing years renders him less "efficient" in the eyes of the big industrialists, is thereupon consigned to the junk pile...
...Reinicke has failed to explain this queer transaction...
...Reinicke's husband...
...increasingly apparent that newspapers in this country, owned and dominated by wealth and big business, are rapidly losing their political influence -with the people and becoming mere money making news carriers...
...AND NOW comes an attempt by a great power combine to smash the last vestige of power and authority remaining to that federal regulatory body, the Power commission...
...With every important election comes the news that the confidence ef the public in this servile press is falling away, and evidence is on every hand that tlie voters are doing their own independent thinking on political issues and questions...
...Is their existence in our economic order unjustifiable after they have reached forty...
...Long by the state press...
...These are only some of the things to lie found in the records of the Senate Committee that have been denied to the public by journalistic suppression...
...If the constant centralization of the wealth of the nation into the hands of a few is not checked, it is difficult to see how the future can be expected to bring relief...
Vol. 1 • September 1930 • No. 43
