People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1895 — THE DEPENDENT DAILIES. [ARTICLE]

THE DEPENDENT DAILIES.

Sometimes Called Independent, but .'.l together a Tool of Money. Let it speak for itself. The following are the words of John Swinton delivered before the New York Press association in response to a toast, “The Independent Press:” “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 dare express an honest opinion. If you express it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $l5O per week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I ’am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper like Othello, before twenty-four hours ’my occupation would be gone. *he man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets hunting for another job. The business of the Nev; York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and race for his daily bread; or fur what is about the same thing, his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an ‘independent press.’ We are tools, and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Gar time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are the property of other men. We are Intellectual prostitutes.” And these papers pretend to lead the thought of an intelligent public