People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1895 — The Rotten Metropolitan Press. [ARTICLE]

The Rotten Metropolitan Press.

Events are constantly occurring to prove! that capitalism is constantly making the public prints a vehicle for the conveyance of plutocratic ideas to the public, and that the metropolitan ! papers are run by hirelings who are paid to write what they do not believe, I whose duty it is to conceal the truth and write what they know is not true. A year or so ago when the Lombard Investment company failed, which was a British company and plastered mortgages over Missouri, Kansas and other states, among the assets accounted for | by the receiver were shares in the Kansas City Times to the amount of $57,- ; 000. This accounted for the tone and ; policy of that paper—one of the most rabid gold-bug sheets in the west. What did the Lombard Investment company want with stock in that paper? The sheet never has paid its owners a legitimate dividend, or dividend on legitimate newspaper business. , That stock —with a great deal more from other sources, perhaps, for the same purpose, was to control the poller of the paper in the interest of capitalism. Here is an instance where we have the direct proof that English capitalists are using our American prints to not only educate American voters in their duties, but browbeat and abuse them for standing in the way of the schemes of these foreign robbers. It is said as a matter of fact that of the seven leading papers in New York city, a majority of the stock of five of them is owned by English capitalists, and yet the American people are sucking their poison from such sources —from the paid hirelings who manage them and, who simply make commerce of their opinions! All over the country as a rule, the papers—democratic and republican, i that carry the Associated Press dis- | patches are owned largely by bankers, i railroads and other corporations, and these investments are not made with | the view or expectation of profit in the j same —as many of them are worthless so far as dividends are concerned, but the investments are made for the purpose of controlling the papers and use them in aiding them in their many schemes of plundering the people. Bankers have mortgages on many plants throughout the country for no 1 other purpose than placing these pa--1 pers under obligations to them, and i thus enabling them to mold the policy ! of the papers particularly regarding the national banking question. You don’t see any metropolitan dailies in the smaller cities saying anything in condemnation of the national banking system, or corporate interests gener--1 ally, do you? The reason is that the" penny-a-liners do not dare to do so. If they did they would lose their job. ! Men employed on the metropolitan : papers do not dare to write their honest convictions, as not a man among them would hold a job an hour, if he should tell the truth, instead of writing what he knew to be a lie.