Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 24, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1901 — Hearst Worse Than Czolgosz. [ARTICLE]

Hearst Worse Than Czolgosz.

The fanatical anarchist, Czolgosz struck down the president because be was possessed by an insane idea that the world would be better off without rulers or governments of any kind. No doubt he was sincere in his murderous belief, and so sincere that he was willing to throw his own life away in carrying it into effect. Execrable as his act was, is he with his weak and 1 ignorant mind more blamable that such foes of humanity as Hearst of :the New York Journal and Chicago American, and his hundreds of ; imitators, great and small, who 'year in and year out preach the gospel of hate in their infernal 1 publications, from no other motives than pure malevolence, or as seems to be the case with Hearst, because that is one of the forms of sensationalism v hich the American people arc fools enough to make him rich for circulating. Hearst knows and has known all along that the slanders he has printed and pictured against the president, were lies, and he has plainly acknowledged they were so, after they have done their share in causing his death, by his articles in commendation of the president now,in which he vir-

tually gives the lie to all his former slanders. In this connection we here republish from the Inter Ocean an open letter to Hearst by Rev. Dr. Jacob Cooper, Professor of Philosophy in Rutger’s College. “To the Editor of the New York Journal (and Chicago American) —Sir: While the world stands aghast at the horror recently enacted at Buffalo, it looks beyond the miscreant who fired the shot at our noble President. It sees in you and those like you, the leaders of a reckless press, the forces which make euch an act possible. Behind the much abused license of printing you have for years been uttering, both by word and by picture, that which you knew to be lies of the most damnable blackness from the vantage ground of your “cowards fort.” This constant hellbroth of vituperatiou and lies, spewed all over the land, has done its legitimate work. It has incited weak men like this ignorant and fanatical Polish anarchist to do a deed in which you the real assassin, gloat in your immortal soul, but from which in your craven terror you crouch like a frightened bare! ‘ Why don’t you, if what you have been saying for years is true, repeat it now? If false, why do you not have the manliness to admit that all your utterances about the President and Vice President were conscious, premeditated lies? All good men and women in this nation denounce you and your like as the real assassin who fired the shot. I denounced you from the pulpit Sunday, and shall do so supplementing your owe concience with the testimony that you, to the full extent of your ability, are the real assassin of President William McKinley. Carry with yourself day and night, while you curse the earth with you presence, the consciousness that all honorable and virtuous men and women in the land who have had the opportunity to know the facts hold you and your like responsible for this awful horror and loathe you, not to the extent your conduct deserves but to the reach of their ability.

JACOB COOPER.