The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1912-01-12
THE NEWSPAPERS
ARE HELD Up

In these days of graft and easy
money we hear a lot of the favoritC
stunts of the get-rich-quick gentry
We read day after day Of their do
ings and wonder at the boldness and
craftiness which enables them to get
away with t. We hear of this boodleI
and that CRATER and rejoice at the
luck and chance that exposed him to
the naked eye, and when he gets his
Just deserts we chortle and chuchle
and lift a limping voice to cry out n
paen of praise ito the fine hand that
brought the scamp to book.
The hot polli and the dear public,
the preacher and the publican. the
pharisee and the hayseed. all join in
the chorus when the CRATER is exposed
and the country is saved.
But the biggest lot of graft in this
country is read about every day and
none outside Of the newspaper shops
know it. Day after day the newspa-
pers carry indisputable evidence of
hold-ups that are the real and gen
uine tAing and yet there is none to
raise a hand or let out one little nay"
Of protest The hold-ups are not of
the bloody and scintillating Dick Tur-
pin kind They are prosaie and with
out flourish But they get there just
the same. Nor would you guess it in
a month unless you happen to be the
holp-up or the held-up. For it is the
newspapers that the held up. Every
man, woman and child in the average
community feels glad that it is their
proud privilege, a right guaranteed
them by custom more binding than
any written constitution or unwrit-
ten law, to work the newspapers to the
last limit of endurance. They will put
up any kind of a tale, employ any
threat or tel lany amazing yarn that
occurs to them to graft space in
newspaper and count themselves
smart when they succeed and howl
their wrath from the house tops when
they fall down. The fact that news
paper has done an individual or
class a thousand favors does not save
il when it is compelled to deny some
outlandish and outrageous effort to
hold it up beyond the limit of endur-
ance. No one knows so well as the
man who makes a newspaper that
gratitude is a lively sense of favor to
come. No man has survived six
months in the game without finding
tnis out to his sorrow Nor is there
any limit to the pristine and goreous
gall of those who try day in and day
out to work the papers and graft
space which they should pay for. Nor
is any class immune from the practice.
Not one in thousand cares two raps
for the newspapers it tries to work.
Not one in ten thousand stops to think
that newspaper is rather an expen-
sive institution to operate and has to
depend for revenue on the space it
can sell for legitimate advertising,
A man who would scorn to beg a
dollar from II stranger in the street
will march into newspaper office and
seek to get dollars worth of adver-
tising free gratis and for nothing,
and when he is politely told to chase
himself down stairs and do business
in business way. he viii fog himself
up in high dudgeon and howl about
the indignity that has been offered
him. Big people and little people, wise
people and fools all try the game and
the gall of one is only matched by the
gall of the other But when It comes
to paying the bill for the creating of
the newspaper they try so hard to
bunko they fade away like the gas
meter when the bill lis overdue.
The street car company demands its
fare before you ride, the gas man gets
his money or the stove refuses to
smoke up, the electric lige man must |
be paid or one may repent his fal in
the dark, th. butcher, the baker and |
the candle stick maker all tell you
frankly that they are not in business
for their health's sake but for the
to advise some innocenty
grating citizen that it costs real
money to produce newspaper is to
set that individual on the trail of vim
dictive and reyengeful nemesis who
makes Rome howl.
Funny, isn't, how many people think
hey own newspaper because they
borrow one from a neighbor now and
hen to find out what the world is do
ng.
Congress of Hygiene.