Montana labor news., 1938-07-21
A new DEAL COVER
NOR BEFORE HIS Time
FEDERATED PRESS REVIEW
By CARL HAESSLER

GAhoAG OANoOl LIN Int Lille
of John Peter Altgeld, by Harry
Barnard; Bobbs-M Merrill Co, Indian
apolis and New York, S4.
Altgeld, reform governor of Illi-
nois from 1893 to 1897, was in many
ways a New Deal governor, elected
before his time. His acts and words
in time of strike make one think of
Murphy of Michigan. His denuncia-
tons of the U. S. Supreme Court
for its r%eactionary and unjust de-
cisions point to Pres. Roosevelt 40
years later. His triumphs in spite
of the furious and slanderous oppo-
sion of almost every daily paper in
the land foreshadow New Deal vic
tories to be won later in the teeth of
the plutocratic press.
All this becomes clear in reading
Eagle Forgotten by Harry Bar
nard, for a number of years Fed
Grated Press correspondent in Chi
cago. In an objective absorbing vol
ume Barnard brings to life again the
dauntless governor who pardoned
the Haymarket 8-hour day agitators
those whom the bankers and mer-
chant princes of Chicago had not
been able to hang; who denounced
Grover Cleveland's invasion of I'LL
nois with federal troops to help the
railroads win the Pullman dispute
against Eugene V. Deb's union; who
unsparingly denounced the supreme
courts support of government by
injunction.
Barnard also reveals the seamy
side of Altgeld's career. Altgeld
made a fortune as a real estate shark
and yet could write piously a book
let ON The Cost of Something Fol-
Nothing. He knew and practiced q
great many politicians tricks, in
Guiding the doublecross.
A blazing light is thrown by the
book on universal classifying by the
newspapers of that time of the Hay
market bomb explosion and of the
Pullman strike. 1t is shown that the
two men most responsible for the
hanging Of Parsons and his fellow
labor agitators were Marshall Field
the merchant prince who controlled
Chicago papers through his depart.
ment store advertising, and Melville
E. Stone, editor of the Daily News
and later the revered bigshot of the
Associated Press. When Altgeld's
pardon message, demonstrating thai
defendants had in no regard had {
fair trial, was published there was
a tremendous howl of rage from the
American press, including the N. Y
Times. He was painted as himself
an anarchist.
Similar Misrepresentation greeted
his unfolding of the constitution
against Cleveland's strikebreaking
for Pullman in 1894. But worst OF
all was the press cutlery against him
when he assailed the U. S. Supreme
Court for declaring a federal income
tax law invalid. He sneered at the
justices in their large black gowns
saying:
"Now, as these gowns are not very
thick, and as some people might be
able to see through them and be
unpatriotic enough to question the
justice of having to bear the bur
dens of government while the rich
escape, and as there is danger that
some of these men may doubt the
infallibility of the court, would il
not be well to have each judge wear
two gowns for a while, until the
storm blows over?"
1t is natural that the American
press should first smear and then
bury a peoples champion like Alt
geld. 1t is also natural that now, sc
years after his death, that same press
should render tribute to his mem
DRY in reviewing Barnard's book.
The height of smugness in this en-