Part 19

print any account of the exposures which were made by several members of the Legislature during the debate of the bill. I wish here to describe their obedience to that other clause of the {088}contract, in living up to which they printed scores of bitterly partisan editorials against the public health bill, and against its authors personally; threatened with political death those members of the Legislature who were disposed to vote in favor of it, and even, in the persons of editors and owners, went up to the State House and lobbied personally against the bill. And since I have already told of Mr. Cheney's author-ship of the scheme, I will here reproduce, as typical of all the others (all the other large patent-medicine concerns sent similar letters and telegrams), the letter which Mr. Cheney himself on the 14th day of February sent to all the newspapers in Massachusetts with which he has lobbying contracts--practically every newspaper in the state: "Toledo, Ohio, Feb. 14, 1905. "Publishers "----- Mass. "Gentlemen: "Should House bills Nos. 829, 30, 607, 724, or Senate bill No. 185 become laws, it will force us to discontinue advertising in your state. Your prompt attention regarding this bill we believe would be of mutual benefit. "We would respectfully refer you to the contract which we have with you. "Respectfully, "Cheney Medicine Company." Now here is the fruit which that letter bore: a strong editorial against the anti-patent-medicine bill, denouncing it and its author in the most vituperative language, a marked copy of which was sent to every member of the Massachusetts Legislature. But this was not all that this one zealous publisher did; he sent telegrams to a number of members, and a personal letter to the representative of his district calling on that member not only to vote, but to use his influence against the bill, on the pain of forfeiting the paper's favor. Now this seems to me a shameful thing--that a Massachusetts newspaper, of apparent dignity and outward high standing, should jump to the cracking of the whip of a nostrum-maker in Ohio; that honest and well-meaning members of the Massachusetts Legislature, whom all the money of Rockefeller could not buy, who obey only the one thing which they look on as the expression of the public opinion of their constituents, the united voice of the press of their district--that these men should unknowingly cast their votes at the dictate of a nostrum-maker in Ohio, who, if he should deliver his command personally and directly, instead of through a newspaper supine enough to let him control it for a hundred dollars a year, would be scorned and flouted. Any self-respecting newspaper must be humiliated by the attitude of the patent-medicine association. They don't ASK the newspapers to do it--they ORDER it done. Read again Mr. Cheney's account of his plan, note the half-contemptuous attitude toward the newspapers. And read again Mr. Cheney's curt letter to the Massachusetts papers; Observe the threat, just sufficiently veiled to make it more of a threat; and the formal order from a superior to a clerk: "We would respectfully refer you to the contract which we have with you." And the threat is not an empty one. The newspaper which refuses to aid the patent-medicine people is marked. Some time ago Dr. V. Mott {089}Pierce of Buffalo was chairman of what is called the "Committee on Legislation" of the Proprietary Association of America. He was giving his annual report to the association. "We are happy to say," said he, "that though over a dozen bills were before the different State Legislatures last winter and spring, yet we have succeeded in defeating all the bills which were prejudicial to proprietary interests without the use of money, and through the vigorous co-operation and aid of the publishers. January 23 your committee sent out letters to the principal publications in New York asking their aid against this measure. It is hardly necessary to state that the publishers of New York responded generously against these harmful measures. The only small exception was the _Evening Star_ of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., the publisher of which, in a very discourteous letter, refused to assist us in any way." Is it to be doubted that Dr. Pierce reported this exception to his fellow patent-medicine men, that they might make note of the offending paper, and bear it in mind when they made their contracts the following year? There are other cases which show what happens to the newspaper which offends the patent-medicine men. I am fortunate enough to be able to describe the following incident in the language of the man who wielded the club, as he told the story with much pride to his fellow patent-medicine men at their annual meeting: "Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Proprietary Association," said Mr. Cooper, "I desire to present to you a situation which I think it is incumbent on manufacturers generally to pay some attention to--namely, the publication of sensational drug news which appears from time to time in the leading papers of the country.... There are, no doubt, many of you in the room, at least a dozen, who are familiar with the sensational articles that appeared in the Cleveland _Press_. Gentlemen, this is a question that appeals to you as a matter of business.... The Cleveland Press indulged in a tirade against the so-called 'drug trust.'... (the 'drug trust' is the same organization of patent-medicine men--including Pierce, Pinkham, Peruna, Kilmer and all the well-known ones--which I have referred to as the patent-medicine association. Its official name is the Proprietary Association of America.) "I sent out the following letter to fifteen manufacturers" (of patent medicines): "'Gentlemen--Inclosed we hand you a copy of matter which is appearing in the Cleveland papers. It is detrimental to the drug business to have this matter agitated in a sensational way. In behalf of the trade we would ask you to use your influence with the papers in Cleveland to discontinue this unnecessary publicity, and if you feel you can do so, we would like to have you wire the business managers of the Cleveland papers to discontinue their sensational drug articles, as it is proving very injurious to your business. Respectfully, E. R. Cooper.' "Because of that letter which we sent out, the Cleveland Press received inside of forty-eight hours telegrams from six manufacturers canceling thousands of dollars' worth of advertising and causing a consequent dearth of sensational matter along drug lines. It resulted in a loss to one paper alone of over eighteen thousand dollars in advertising. Gentlemen, when you touch a man's pocket, you touch him where he lives; that principle {090}is true of the newspaper editor or the retail druggist, and goes through all business." The Trust's Club for Newspapers. That is the account of how the patent-medicine man used his club on the newspaper head, told in the patent-medicine man's own words, as he described it to his fellows. Is it pleasant reading for self-respecting newspaper men--the exultant air of those last sentences, and the worldly wisdom: "When you touch a man's pocket you touch him where he lives; that principle is true of the newspaper editor..."? But the worst of this incident has not yet been told. There remains the account of how the offending newspaper, in the language of the bully, "ate dirt". The Cleveland _Press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers, all under Mr. McRae's ownership--but I will use Mr. Cooper's own words: "We not only reached the Cleveland _Press_ by the movement taken up in that way, but went further, for the Cleveland _Press_ is one of a syndicate of newspapers known as the Scripps-McRae League, from whom this explanation is self-explanatory: "'Office Schipps-McRae Press Association. "'Mr. E. R. Cooper, Cleveland, Ohio: "'Mr. McRae arrived in New York the latter part of last week after a three months' trip to Egypt. I took up the matter of the recent cut-rate articles which appeared in the Cleveland _Press_ with him, and to-day received the following telegram from him from Cincinnati: 'Scripps-McRae papers will contain no more such as Cleveland _Press_ published concerning the medicine trust--M. A. McRae.' "'I am sure that in the future nothing will appear in the Cleveland Press detrimental to your interests. "'Yours truly, "'F. J. Carlisle.'" This incident was told, in the exact words above quoted, at the nineteenth annual meeting of the Proprietary Association of America. I could, if space permitted, quote many other telegrams and letters from the Kilmer's Swamp Root makers, from the Piso's Cure people, from all the large patent-medicine manufacturers. The same thing that happened in Massachusetts happened last year in New Hampshire, in Wisconsin, in Utah, in more than fifteen states. In Wisconsin the response by the newspapers to the command of the patent-medicine people was even more humiliating than in Massachusetts. Not only did individual newspapers work against the formula bill; there is a "Wisconsin Press Association," which includes the owners and editors of most of the newspapers of the state. That association held a meeting and passed resolutions, "that we are opposed to said bill... providing that hereafter all patent medicine sold in this state shall have the formula thereof printed on their labels," and "Resolved, That the association appoint a committee of five publishers to oppose the passage of the measure." And in this same state the larger dailies in the cities took it on themselves to drum up the smaller country papers and get them to write editorials opposed to the formula bill. Nor was even this the measure of their activity in response to the command of the patent medicine association. I am able to give the letter which is here reproduced [see page 86]. {086} It was sent by the publisher of one of the largest daily papers in Wisconsin to the state senator who {091}introduced the bill. In one western state, a board of health officer made a number of analyses of patent medicines, and tried to have the analyses made public, that the people of his state might be warned. "Only one newspaper in the state," he says in a personal letter, "was willing to print results of these analyses, and this paper refused them after two publications in which a list of about ten was published. In New Hampshire--but space forbids. Happily there Is a little silver in the situation. The legislature of North Dakota last year passed, and the governor signed a bill requiring that patent-medicine bottles shall have printed on their labels the percentage of alcohol or of morphin or various other poisons which the medicine contains. That was the first success in a fight which the public health authorities have waged in twenty states each year for twenty years. In North Dakota the patent-medicine people conducted the fight with their usual weapons, the ones described above. But the newspapers, be it said to their everlasting credit, refused to fall in line to the threats of the patent-medicine association. And I account for that fact in this way: North Dakota is wholly a "country" community. It has no city of over 20,000, and but one over 5,000. The press of the state, therefore, consists of very small papers, weeklies, in which the ownership and active management all lie with one man. The editorial conscience and the business manager's enterprise lie under one hat. With them the patent-medicine scheme was not so successful as with the more elaborately organized newspapers of older and more populous states. Just now is the North Dakota editor's time of trial. The law went into effect July 1. The patent-medicine association, at their annual m