The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-04-22

of time. the thing for which he had
been engaged naturally transpired.
and he collected his fee-that is. he
got half of it. Some hitch devel-
oped, and it was his frenzied ef-
forts to get the rest that brought
the transaction to the attention Of
a few people, at least.
There is a well-remembered case
of a newspaperman in WASHINGTON
who abused the condolences and
privileges which all of them enjoy.
Naturally, a great many newspa-
permen in Washington often are
! the possessors of Information in
confidence which would be of great
value to certain corporations il
they could learn it in advance Of
general publication. A congress
sionaI investigation brought out
this mans connections. He was
drawing down, in retaining fees
from big corporations, a sum in the
neighborhood of $4,000 a year, an
excellent income for any newspa-
perman.
Publicity Ruined His Job.
Naturally, throwing the light OF
publicity on this mans efforts made
| him of no further use to these cor
porations, at least in the same Ca
pacity, and the newspaper with
which he had been connected soon
let him go. But in the meantime
he had accumulated a nice little
nest egg, enough to permit him TO
start perfectly honest business in
which he is reported to be doing
nicely
To return to Latin-America the
incident related a few paragraphs
above was trif1ing compared to the
"clean up" made by another man
in Washington N much the same
way. A certain one of the Ameri-
can republics was anXiously await
ing formal and favorable action by
the state department on an impor-
tant matter concerning that re-
public. Quite by chance, this man
learned that the state department
had fully made up its mind to this
course, but that action would not
be immediate. Accordingly, this
man got in touch with the presi-
dent of the Latin-American repub-
lie through the proper channels,
and made a deal with that govern
ment whereby he would get a con-
siderable sum of moHAy-it was
said to be 500, 000-for influencing
the American administration to
take the desired action. Then this
man sat tight, sending occasional
cablegrams to give the impression
of doing something, and waited IN
til this large plum dropped into
his lap, which it did in a few weeks
after the arrangement was com
pleted.
Another trick which has been
turned from time to time in Wash
ington is done by outsiders, men
whose names are high in the bus
mess and financial world. That is
planting false news" to influence
the stock market, and cleaning up
on the consequent depression or in
fiation of particular stocks. Once
it was done in this way; One Of
the members of the staff Of the
Washington bureau of one of the
press associations was sent for,
and the information given him that
the oil wells in a certain rich field
would be exhausted. and yielding
nothing but salt water in a short
time. This was the confidential re-
port of experts who had examined
the field, the reporter was told. He
was also told that under no cir
cumstances was he TO divulge the
source of his information. The man
who gave out this information is
nationally known and generally re
spected-
The reporter didn't like the sound
of the tale, and while he was de-
batting with himself in the hotel
lobby, he saw one of his Confreres
from a metropolitan daily entering
the hotel He found out this man
had gone straight to the man he
had just left. Evidently it was by
appointment He became more sus-
picious. An hour later another
newspaperman came, evidently to
keep an appointment with the same
man.
The consequence was that the
wise young man from the press as
ISOLATION refused to handle the
story. However, one or both OF
the other men used it, the stock
was depressed considerably by the
rumor-Wa1 street is highly sus-
ceptible to rumors-and presuma-
bly, the crowd on the ''inside" who
had gone short of this stock made
a killing.