How the press serves big business.

• Author: La Follette, Robert M.
• Position: 1918 - Brief article

The setting up of a new, invisible, and all-powerful government in this country, within the last twenty years, in open violation of fundamental and statutory law, could not have been accomplished under the steady fire of a free and independent press.

Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolidation of business for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets, and prices.

Except for this monstrous crime, 65 percent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 percent of all the people. And we might today be industrially and commercially a free people, enjoying the blessings of a real democracy.

When the Morgan and Rockefeller interests harmonized...