Chomsky folks...
Sorry for my delay on my promised citation, but for a conspiracy of forgetful-
ness and the beginning of a new semester I've been slack. Sorry.
As I recall, the issue was the Swinton quote on the media.
In a book called *Labor's Untold Story*, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais
, publisher United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY,
1955/1979,
"The elegant James Russell Lowell, lateminister to the Court of St. James and o
ne-time traducer of the government, had not been tamed, as became apparent in
1884 when he declared that 'Socialism is the practical application of
Christianity and has in it the secret of orderly and benign reconstruction."
The aristocrat Wendell Phillips, among the greatest of Abolitionists, who died
in the year of Lowell's declaration, was demanding the abolition of capitalism
and championing of labor with almost his last breath.
"Among this number of unreconstructed Abolitionists was the large and
Falstaffian John Swinton, whose life and words illuninate better than most the
quality of that brutal decade that was the eighties. He was chief editorial
writer of the New York Times from 1860 to 1870 and later managing editor of
Dana's Sun. A reporter for Brooklyn's Daily Union described Swinton's "large
framed full-faced healthy complexion, big dark brown eyes" and "sandy gray
mustache". "His head was bald", said the reporter, except for "a rim of gray
on the outlying county of an immense cranium." He was described as a "man who
gives expression with rapidity of utterance and eloquence, now and then
illustrating his points with a story, an allusion to history or some passage
in the classics.
"One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the pre-eminent New York
journalist, was the guest of honor at a banquet given him by the leaders of
his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to
the Independent Press. Swinton outraged his collegues by replying:
'There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is
in the small towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you
who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know before
hand that they would never appear in print...The business of the NY
journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to
vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his
country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what
folly is this to be toasting an "Independent Press". Ware are the
tools and vassals of rich mend behind the scenes. We are the jumping-
jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possi-
bilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are
intellectual prostitutes."
His collegues should not have been surprised. Even while respectably employed
Swinton had strained that employment to the utmost by speaking truth as he
saw it even though not allowed to write it. His entire history should have
warned them that he was not a concentional guest of honor. When less than
twenty he had risked his life in South Carolina where he subjected himself to
the possibility of a prison sentence by teaching Negro slaves to read and
write...." etc.
Labor's Untold story, pages 80-81.
Boyer is credited with two other books: Magician of the Law; The Dark Ship
Morais four: The Struggle for American Freedom; Deism in 18th Century America;
Gene Debs: the story of a fighting American; The History of
the Negro in Medicine.
While the appendix contains extensive listings of sources used, these sources
are not footnoted per quote or fact used. Thus, the reader cannot look up
the source of the author. This is problematic to say the least. I suggest
checking the scholarship of the other books to see if they are up to par and
that might allow one to estimate the authenticity of this quote.
Paul
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