Oscar Callaway

Oscar Callaway   (Politician)
Born	October 2, 1872 Rusk County, Texas
Died	January 31, 1947 (Age 74) Comanche, Texas
Nationality	American
Interests	• J. P. Morgan • CCM
Party	Democrat
US politician who said that J. P. Morgan and others were buying up newspapers.

Francis Oscar Callaway was a three-term U.S. Representative from Texas twelfth district from 1911 to 1917.

U.S. Representative, 1911-1917

Callaway came to national attention in 1916 with his opposition to the naval appropriation bill. He believed that a civilian army could repel any invasion, that battleships had been made obsolete by submarines, and that the military expenditures called for by the Preparedness Movement unduly favored munition makers. Some of his strong words against other congressmen on the subject were expunged from the Congressional Record.

In 1917 he charged that leading business interests were purchasing newspapers to advance the preparedness campaign, which led his colleague J. Hampton Moore to call for an investigation. Callaway entered the following in the Congressional Record:

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, ship building and powder interests and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States.

“These 12 men worked the problems out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.

“This contract is in existence at the present time, and it accounts for the news columns of the daily press of the country being filled with all sorts of preparedness arguments and misrepresentations as to the present condition of the United States Army and Navy, and the possibility and probability of the United States being attacked by foreign foes.

“This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served. The effectiveness of this scheme has been conclusively demonstrated by the character of the stuff carried in the daily press throughout the country since March, 1915. They have resorted to anything necessary to commercialize public sentiment and sandbag the National Congress into making extravagant and wasteful appropriations for the Army and Navy under false pretense that it was necessary. Their stock argument is that it is ‘patriotism.’ They are playing on every prejudice and passion of the American people.

 

A Document by Oscar Callaway

Title	Document type	Publication date
File:Callaway - US Congressional Record 9th February 1917 - page 2947 - unverified copy.pdf	Text	9 February 1917

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