The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-03-01
THE FREE COUNTRY PRESS.

THE FREE COUNTRY PRESS.
Bozeman Chronicles: More and more
the voice of public protest is raised
against the corruption and slavery OF
the press of the state by millionaire
individuals and corporate wealth.
1t has long been known by the we'll
informed public that nearly all OF our
great daily papers have passed into
such ownership, and in consequence
their influence has vanished. Now r.
A. Heinze is to have a new daily
paper in Butte to serve his own spe-
cial purposes in that city and the
state. No doubt he has quite as much
right to run a daily newspaper to
serve his own private and selfish ends
as has the Amalgamated Copper COM
pany to pursue the same policy.
It seems to the Chronicle, however,
that both these great mining corpora
lions, the Amalgamated Copper COM
pany and the Montana Ore Purchas-
ing company, will find in the long
run that their newspaper investments
are among the very poorest that they
ever made. These corporation owned
| sheets have no power to help thel
owners. Every statement they make
with reference to anairs supposed to
remotely or directly affect their own
ership is discounted by their readers
in advance, by the knowledge of that
ownership. When they tell the truth
even it is doubted. Logic and fact
lose their potency when they come
from the lips of the hired attorney in
some degree. On the other hand the
fact that these expensive newspapers
are daily en%croaching more and more
on the field of the local newspapers in
the smaller towns and cities, which
furnish the sole remaining portion OF
the Montana press which has any in
dependence of action or expression OF
opinion left, is rousing a natural re-
sentiment and opposition from those
newspapers and from their supporters,
who realize the necessity and value of
a free press in any state or commun-
ity. The big dailies which are spend
ing money so lavishly from the deep
pockets of such corporations Or pri-
vate millionaires are quite impotent to
help their owners in any way, but
they are efficient agents in hurting
and hindering the very ends for
which they are maintained.
The Chronicle has never been
among those newspapers that have
made themselves conspicuous in de-
%nouncing capital honestly acquired
and honestly employed in the develop
ment of the natural OF the
state. 1t welcomes such investors
and hopes to see more of them come
to Montana. 1t is confident that the
people of the state are intelligent
enough to know that by according
such investors just and even generous
treatment and protecting them in ev
cry legitimate interest they are not
only doing what is right, but serving
the interests of the state and them
selves also. 1t is not necessary to
sink vast sums of money in maintain
ing newspapers to accomplish this
end in the first place and it is not
possible to accomplish it by such
means i'm the second place. The last
special session of the Legislature
I showed plainly THAI the people OF
Montana were not disposed to infict
any injustice on invested capital, OF
suffer it to be inflicted, in Montana.
The Amalgamated Copper company
has recently announced that it is go
ing out of the company store business
Let it also go out of the newspaper
business. The same advice is equally
good for the Montana Ore Purchasing
company and Senator W. A. Clark
The advice of the Chronicle in this
respect has not been solicited. On
the other hand it does not cost the
parties concerned anything. We will
only add that it is our firm conviction
that if followed out it would be worth
a vast sum to those concerned in dol
lars and cents, and benefit them politi
cally as well as financially.
Their newspapers are powerless tt