Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1906-10-03
BRYAN TO PRESS
Some Plain Talk at Newspaper
Mems Dinner I'm New York

1t was getting to close to midnight
when Mr.. Bryan arrived at Healy's
restaurant in New York, says the
Brooklyn Eagle, where the newspaper
men who had invited him to dinner
awaited him. There was something
transcendlng mere courtesy in the
greeting extended to Mr.. Bryan by
the newspaper men; it was fraternal
welcome, for there were among the
Nebraskan's hosts men who had
known him as newspaper man.
The newspaper mems dinner, in ac-
cordanee with the desire of Mr.. Bryan,
was arranged with as little formality
as possible. Mr.. Bryan, in accepting
the invitation, had said that he would
'just like to sit down with the boys
to an old fashioned American dinner" "
but he didn't get there in time for
that. He bad to content himself with
giving them a good old fashioned,
frank talk, in which he didn't hesitate
to scold them little.
1t was the earnest Bryan, not the
"good fellow' known in past years
to Washington correspondents, who
talked to the newspaper men. He
called on the editors to use their ut
most endeavors to stem the tide of cor
ruption in many of the channels OF
business and public life and told them
that they were to a great degree re-
sponsible for much of the corruption
existing in the country, the inference,
of course, being that the editors re-
sponsibility lay not in sins of commits
sion, but in the sin of emitting to do
what they could have done to expose
the rotten things in public life long
ago.
Mr.. Bryan condemned the editors
"who sell their brains for dollars.o He
called on such editors to rise up to a
realization of the duty they owed to
mankind, and not to prostitute them
selves to predatory wealth. Mr.. Bryan
was willing to offer himself as an ex-
ample of what an honest newspaper
man had come to in life. He said that
he started out as poor man, but now
he has all the money he needs.
In scolding the editors, Mr. Bryan
said that they should be honest and
not sell their ideals. He had the
graciousness to say that he believed
no one of his hosts had sold his ideals,
"a hod
them.
Many of the editors, he said, knew
five years ago about much of the cor
ruption recently exposed. Why didn't
the newspapers expose this corruption
five years ago? Mr.. Bryan wanted TO
know.
Hitting at the publishers of news
papers, Mr.. Bryan said it was time fol
the newspaper men to rise up and nc
longer be hired men of people who are
trying to accumulate wealth at the
public expense, but who have not the
brains to do it themselves.
~ think the time has come to say
these things, so | have said them.
Here am I, just plain farmer from
Nebraska, trying to get back to my
farm, and here in New York, because
there was no easy way toget around it,
here am | telling these things to you
editors who may have it in your power
to consign me forever to my farm"
This last was in Mr.. Bryan's finest
sarcasm. He had just told the news
paper men that their influence didn't
count at all in some cases.
"You all know of cases where every
newspaper was against candidate and
yet the people rose up and elected that
candidate" he said.
He told the editors to be independent
and to refuse to write anything they
did not believe.
"The surest way to stop corruption, y
he said, sis to stop the selling of con-
science in the editorial ROOM