The Brass Check

The Brass Check carries the subtitle A Study of American Journalism. A letter dated Villeneuve, Switzerland, Monday, Oct 6, 1919, says it requires a bold courage to dare, when one is alone, to attack the monster, the new Minotaur, to which the entire world renders tribute: the Press. The text says it appears that during one hundred and thirteen days of a great strike the Associated Press considered it necessary to send only two brief items, with not one line about the causes of the strike.

The text cites the affidavit of Thomas Cairns, president of the United Mine Workers’ West Virginia district, stating that during these sixteen months not once did the correspondent of the Associated Press come to him for information about the strike. The text says it was shown that the great public utility interests of the Middle West had maintained a publicity bureau to send out material against municipal ownership, and that the high tariff interests had been maintaining a Washington bureau.