CHAPTER XIII

THE GENERAL STRIKE


Of course Ernest was elected to Congress in the great socialist
landslide that took place in the fall of 1912. One great factor that
helped to swell the socialist vote was the destruction of Hearst.*
This the Plutocracy found an easy task. It cost Hearst eighteen million
dollars a year to run his various papers, and this sum, and more, he got
back from the middle class in payment for advertising. The source of his
financial strength lay wholly in the middle class. The trusts did not
advertise.** To destroy Hearst, all that was necessary was to take away
from him his advertising.

* William Randolph Hearst--a young California millionaire
who became the most powerful newspaper owner in the country.
His newspapers were published in all the large cities, and
they appealed to the perishing middle class and to the
proletariat. So large was his following that he managed to
take possession of the empty shell of the old Democratic
Party. He occupied an anomalous position, preaching an
emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript sort of
petty bourgeois capitalism. It was oil and water, and there
was no hope for him, though for a short period he was a
source of serious apprehension to the Plutocrats.