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So the matter stands. The fire-cracker men are desolate. Dickinson has lost thirty of his 250 pounds. Harper has the money. Chicago has the scandal of a lot of unpaid workmen and manufacturers who helped to celebrate the unveiling of the pawing horse and big moustache out on the lake front-the bronze memorial of “Black Jack” Logan, who never did anything but wed a smart woman and hold office and beget a son who married money in Ohio.

. . .

These are the components of the Chicago newspaper trust, of which many people have heard: The Tribune, the Record, the Times-Herald, the Chronicle, the Post, the Journal and the News. The object of the trust is to advance the interests of the proprietors and swell their bank accounts at the expense of individuals and the public in general. It is an offensive alliance against decency and fair play. It is powerful. Such enterprises as it elects to boom are boomed. Such as it elects to destroy are destroyed. Such men as it cares to advance are advanced. Such men as it cares to attack are viciously lampooned day after day and week after week and month after month. It does not lampoon anyone who pays it. In each of these papers the editorial room is utterly and thoroughly dominated by the counting room. It gets its order day by day from the business counter and it obeys them with a slavish servility. The merchant with a display advertisement in their columns is safe from attack, no matter what his crime. From end to end it is one man journalism, and each of the papers is run for the benefit of the one man who is its proprietor. The Tribune is owned by Joe Medill, the Times-Herald and Post are owned by H. H. Kohlsast, the Record and News are owned by Victor Lawson, the Journal is owned by the McRae- Scripps league and the Chronicle is owned by John R. Walsh, a banker.

The effects of the newspaper trust upon the public are so well known that they need not be further enumerated. Its effects upon the individual worker in journalism are damnable.

The Chicago journalist belongs to the man who hires him, or he moves away, or he starves. That is all there is to it. If discharged by one, he cannot be hired by another. He is blacklisted until the man who discharges him chooses to reinstate him. If employed by one paper and does exceptional work, he cannot go to another one at an increase of salary. This is one of the strongest rules of the trust. His only chance to get approximately what his work is worth is to resign and risk being hired elsewhere, and he will be hired elsewhere in Chicago only if his former owner does not object. He can, too, go to another paper at the same wages and take his chance of a raise.

The result of this is not only to peon men, but to pay them merely living wages. There has never been a time in the history of America when the pay of a competent newspaper man was so low as it is in Chicago. Reporters run from $10 to $25 a week, copy readers get $25 on morning papers, telegraph editors about the same, editorial writers and paragraphers are paid from $30 to $35. Wages in other parts of the business “up-stairs” are formed on a like model. These wages are from one-third to one-half of what are paid in New York. There is no newspaper trust in New York. As it is, the list of unemployed newspaper men in Chicago numbers more than 200. Any one of them would be glad to take a place at starvation wages if he could get it.

There is one gleam of hope for the Chicago newspaper man. It is rumored that W. R. Hearst of the New York Journal intends to start a morning paper there. I do not believe that he will, but if he does he will force some of the trust members to publish newspapers or get out of the business. Hearst is called a “yellow journalist,” and what not, and may be he is, but he is a boon to the workers. There can be no manner of doubt about that. Chicago, October 15.