son owned a large and influential daily at Seattle, Burke had barrels of money, and Poindexter, then virtually unknown, had naught except that Progressive Republican label.
Before the primaries, an “agreement”—remember that word, for it may have been the turning point in the campaign—was reached whereby Wilson withdrew from the race and threw his support to Burke. Every paper in the state, with a few weak exceptions, was turned into the Burke column. Reportorially and editorially, newspaper readers were reminded daily and weekly that Burke would sweep the state as it never had been swept before and that a vote cast for the humble Poindexter was so much chaff in the wind. It was shown, apparently beyond all question of doubt, that Burke was the overwhelming choice of rich and poor, of organized and unorganized labor. But the people did not stampede with the newspapers in the direction of Burke, but against the newspapers in the direction of Poindexter, who carried the primaries by one of the most preponderant majorities ever given a candidate.
PEOPLE'S SLAP DESERVED
Here was a typical example of that potent phrase, "just newspaper talk," forcefully at work in the mind of the voters. I have frequently tried to analyze that election in an effort to apologize to myself, as a newspaper man, for the rebuke therein administered to the newspapers, but the unyielding conclusion has always subtended itself on my consciousness that the success of Poindexter was a well-deserved slap at a press which had become wholly and questionably unrepresentative.
Let's follow this trend of a growing independent public mind and a shrinking party-muzzled press into the national election of 1912. Here we shall find the Burke-Poindexter episode duplicated and enlarged.
It is not necessary to go into the three- cornered fight between Wilson, Roosevelt and Taft to prove my point, so I shall deal only with the issue which was raised between Taft and Roosevelt.
FEW PAPERS FOR ROOSEVELT
Roosevelt, it will be recalled, occupied with the national press, at that time, a position similar to that negligently filled by Poindexter with respect to the press of Washington state. Taft, on the other hand, was vociferously favored by the wealthy Republican press of the nation. A Roosevelt newspaper, of importance, was like the bleat of a lamb separated from the rest of the flock.
Straw votes were taken in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and other large cities of the East and were paraded in the Republican press as reflective of the existent sentiment. many of these so-called test votes Roosevelt was not represented at all. Taft led every count, and the people were told, through the weighty Taft press, that Taft would be reelected president. But again, as in the Poindexter case, the voters did not stampede with the papers toward Taft, but against the papers toward Roosevelt. With seven-eighths of the Republican newspapers of the nation bitterly against him, Roosevelt had walloped "the stuffed prophet of standpatism," as he had been playfully called.
"NEWSPAPER TALK" AGAIN
Psychology, unidentified, elusive, but intangibly strong, had been at work in each of these instances, and had triumphed with the tacitly understood catch-phrase, "just newspaper talk." Even though is seem trite, I cannot help but venture the assertion that in each of these cases, as perhaps in matters of morals and conscience, the people had been guided by something from within, which pointed to the apparently right road, as against something from without, which may have led into dangerous trails.
In order that I may not appear pedestaled in "a holier-than-thou" attitude, I
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