Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-07-19
Acts Regarding Advertisement
of Machine to Manufacture
Poisonous Shells.
LETTERS OF SECRETARY
APPROVED BY PRESIDENT
Publishers of the American Ma.
chinist and Manager of Factory
Censured by Cabinet Officer.

Singing rebuke today was admin
istered by Secretary Redfeld of the De-
partment of Commerce to the Cleveland
Automatic Machinery Company of Cieve-
land and the American Machinist. a
trade magazine of New York city. for
their part in publishing an ADVERTISE
ment for the purpose of selling a ma
chine to manufacture poisonous shells.
The shells were described as being such
as to cause those struck by them to die
in horrible agony.
President Wilson has given his approval
to the two letters, one to each Of the
principals. They were sent to him at the
summer White House at Cornish. N. H.
To J. P. Brophy, vice president and
general manager of the Cleveland concern,
cult for me to understand how any one
who was not callous in a high degree
could have drafted such statement for
the public with view to selling his own
wares, much less how such one could
have insisted upon it's publication after he
knew that objection was made thereto,
Human Misery Depicted.
IF, as has been suggested, your
thought was to horrify people with the
war, no suggestion of such a purpose
appears in the advertisement itself. On
the contrary, you urge the cruel and
agonizing nature of the death caused
by certain missiles as an evidence of
their effectiveness and suggest this as
the basis of sale of the machines
which makes those hfdeous things. At
time when every instinct of patriot
ism calls for calm and self-restraint.
when sobriety Of statement fs almost
supreme duty, you, as you admit, to
gain notice to an advertisement draw
picture of human misery as means
of earning a profit through the sale or
machines to produce 1t.
II learn that you have suffered 1ncon-
venience or worse by reason Of the adj
vertisement. This is not strange, for the
normal man instinctively resents the
course you saw fit to take. I shall regret
it if the business of innocent stockholders
suffers through this serious fault, and
venture to hope that in their behalf as
well as from your own sense of patriot
ism similar statements will not be used
again."
Letter to Publishing House.
In his letter to the Hill Publishing
Company, publishers of the American
Machinist, the Secretary said that sit
cannot be denied that If there were
any So cruel as to employ such am
munition that employment would be
promoted by their hnd1nS IN your COL
umns the apparatus for the manufac-
ture of these horrible missiles. 1t does
not relieve you from responsibility to
say that similar or the same state
ments appear in the press. What others
have done Is not the measure of what
you were called upon to do.
THE time is one of particular ex-
element, with half the world on fire,
and we alone of the great nations are
outside of the conflict. At such a time,
when restraint and calm is the duty
of every citizen. your columns were
opened to statements calculated to
arouse wrath and kindle excitement, as
the result has shown.
"I regret, therefore, having to say
that the American machinist' seems to
me in this case to have made a serious
error, verging. to say the least, upon
unpatriotic conduct. I trust the Of
tense against humanity and against
that self-control which is now a patri-
otto duty may not be repeated"
The investigation of the disputed adj
vertisement by the Department of Com
merce developed that the Cleveland
concern had for sale a machine, which
was not primarily designed to turn out
poison acid shells, but which could be
used for that purpose.