# Westbrook Pegler: Libertarian Journalist **URL:** **By** Dennis J. Chase **Published:** June 1, 1971 --- “Objective history has not been served by the manner in which this important journalist has been treated. There is a libertarian tradition, and Pegler was part of it.” Libertarianism, like psychology, has a long past but a short history. Its influence has been so inadequately covered that there is virtually no tradition to which a serious student can refer. The strains of free-market principles in Mark Twain or H. L. Mencken are buried in the mass of their work and are especially difficult to uncover during a period when libertarianism is still maturing. What this means is that there are pockets of ignorance about which libertarians must do their own research — from the foundation on up. One such pocket is journalism, where there exists a libertarian tradition that is buried but occassionally smolders. When Murray Rothbard provided some interesting revisionist history about Mencken's work1 he revealed the tip of an immense iceberg. Libertarian principles are as prevalent in journalism history as they are prevalent in American history and economic history. The difficulty is getting to the man or event in time to save it for libertarian tradition, before it is snatched away — as Mencken was snatched by the liberals — and irretrievably lost. It may be too late for Westbrook Pegler. At one time America's most controversial journalist, Pegler's name has been pretty much expropriated by conservatives, with whom Pegler aligned himself.2 In addition, his writings deteriorated in later years to a point where libertarians could no longer associate themselves with Pegler. But one point is certain: the evidence is overwhelming that the dominant strain in Pegler's work is libertarian. Mencken even acknowledged a certain affinity for Pegler, calling him a “distinguished linguist”, no light comment coming from Mencken.3 There are hints of libertarianism in Pegler's background: he was a self-made journalist who abhorred all formalities that stood in the way of his driving passion for the truth. Frequently Pegler's columns received the kind of treatment usually reserved for today's politicians. In 1943, he was accused of promoting disunity between the fighting men overseas and the people back “home”. He called those in the merchant marine “riff raff getting fantastic pay” and they surrounded the New York World Telegram with pickets. For two hours they chanted: “We're out to win the war. What the hell is Pegler for?” A group entered the building and marched to the office of Lee B. Wood, executive editor. “You'd better watch out,” one said. “If you don't remove this guy you'll have more than picket lines around this office.”4 Here is a career to which libertarians can retreat for the excitement and glamour of non-sacrificial individualism and the rational search for truth. Pegler began work at sixteen for the United Press news service. His rise was fast, and soon after he was shifted to St. Louis with the title of bureau manager. In 1916, at twenty-one years of age, Pegler rode the crest of a United Press youth movement to a job as war correspondent, and he sailed to London. It was in London that Pegler's controversial future was foreshadowed. First, in Queenstown, Pelger refused to tip his hat to the King and Queen.5 He filed stories about the jealousy of the British toward the easy way American naval officers spent their money on women. Finally, he wrote an account of the first sinking of a German submarine by an American, which turned out to be a planted false story served by the United States Navy. Pegler was called back from London and United Press, after talks with naval officers, decided to send Pegler to France.6 Pegler's attitude in France is described by Oliver Pilat in “Pegler: Angry Man of the Press”: > Censorship bothered all the correspondents but particularly Pegler...Most of the correspondents realized that there were fifteen thousand newspapermen back home eligible to replace them if they talked themselves out of a job. Pegler, at twenty-three the youngest and most insecure of the Neufchateau aristocrats, showed least caution.7 Angered by what he considered the lying of United States Navy officers, Pegler sent a letter to the head of his news agency Roy Howard exposing the inadequate army supply and inspection system, and documenting the hardships suffered by the soldiers — “leaky barns, porous shoes and inadequate supplies of underwear.”8 Soon afterward, Pegler was replaced. After a stint in the navy, Pegler began writing sports for United News, a branch of United Press. In a stunning success story, Pegler rose from a $125-a-week reporter to a $250-a-week writer for the Chicago Tribune News Syndicate which hired him away. Pegler's ability as a sports writer has never been disputed, and even here he blazed new trails. He once stated that his purpose was to “deglamorize sports in rebuke to grubby box-office mercenaries.”9 A boxing contest was described as one “in which it ought to be possible to stir up the wildest possible disinterest.”10 His diverse subject matter, and novel treatment of an activity ridden with cliches and myths, are now considered a “new” trend among sportswriters. But in his day Pegler stood alone while he “launched a morally indignant one-man crusade against the fakery of fight managers, wrestling promoters, and the slobbering praise handed out by sportswriters.”11 Grantland Rice, long-time dean of the sportswriting community, has listed Pegler as part of the “finest group to grace American journalism.”12 In 1932, one year before he went to work for Scripps-Howard, Pegler wrote about his impressions of Washington when a Gridiron Club dinner failed to yield anything newsworthy.13 It was so impressive that Pegler was asked to do more. From that point, he was off. Starting in 1932 and continuing non-stop through World War II, Pegler scored point after point on targets that other columnists ignored. He criticized the income-tax evasion of public officials, saw the law changed and won a “Headliner's Club” award.14 He criticized labour unions and won a Pulitzer Prize — the first awarded to a journalist — for helping to send two labour union racketeers to jail. As a war correspondent, he wrote eloquent anti-Fascist copy that pleased both liberals and conservatives alike. He created a fictional character named George Spelvin, who represented Pegler's Everyman. Spelvin was constantly harassed by union organizers, government tax collectors, and his boss Mr. Nilly. None of these columns, incidentally, are examples of textbook libertarianism, but Pegler's targets were the right ones and reveal a concern over the one issue about which libertarians are concerned: freedom vs. force. No other columnist writing in that period was as anti-coercion as Pegler. Pegler's later career, starting in the late 1950's was a letdown, and this is where most of his critics get their ammunition. He lost a libel suit to Quentin Reynolds, a magazine writer and former war correspondent, whom Pegler called “yellow” and “pro-Communist” in a 1949 column. Pegler quit the Hearst-owned King Syndicate in 1962 over “censorship” charges. He quit working for the “American Opinion” magazine, a John Birch Society quarterly, over the same charges.15 Pegler's philosophy about column writing is confusing. At one point, he writes that there are too many “deep-thinking, hair-trigger” columnists,16 and yet another time congratulates himself for being a “Sears Roebuck thinker, which is to say that I think in enormous volume on an amazing variety of subjects.”17 He writes: “My hates have always occupied my mind much more actively and have given me greater spiritual satisfactions than my friendships...The wish to favour a friend is not as active as the instinct to annoy some person or institution I detest.”18 The strains of libertarianism were always prevalent in Pegler's career, and caused a major break with the Left. He broke with the liberals ostensibly over their advocacy of compulsory unionism, but in fact over their statism and anti-individualism as he makes clear in “Evolution of the Liberal”: > The day came when liberals who had fiercely hated the goose-step, goose-stepped in a sort of prisoners'-march before premises struck by minority vote to revile individual men, stone them and beat them, for their refusal to submit to regimentation and discipline.19 To recall Pegler's positions on issues is to reveal a profound anti-government attitude. It was more than skepticism; it was a distrust of power and a deep hatred of those who would not allow people to walk separately. He challenged J. Edgar Hoover — “a night-club fly-cop”20 — and the Central Intelligence Agency — “A mysterious American gestapo (engaged in) dirty work”21 — long before these became fashionable targets. He wrote admiringly of Lucille Miller, sentenced to one year in prison for encouraging draft evasion.22 Pegler predicted that, if basic problems were not resolved, public opinion would “boil up in mass anger over basic grievances” and there would be “violent revolution...either bloody or political.”23 Pegler often stood alone in defending individual rights. In 1957, when police arrested Frank Costello, an alleged racketeer, then rifled his pockets and found secret memos indicating gambling deals, Pegler defended the Constitutional rights of Costello and criticized the police.24 In his own way, Pegler presaged Women's Lib by questioning the double sexual standard. In a column about unemployment, he wrote: > We somehow do not think of women at all in considering the down-and-outers. They are scarce in the breadlines, they rarely are seen begging in the streets. And they are not recognizable in crowds by the same plain signs which identify busted men...25 Pegler's anti-traditionalism was evident even when it was not libertarian-oriented. During a period when persons under twenty-one were treated like (in Pegler's words) “imbeciles, felons, and foreigners,” Pegler proposed that eighteen-year-olds be permitted to vote, and he did it with a fervor not equalled in his day — a time of benign neglect for youth. On this point, he is eloquently quotable: > Youth can hang for murder, for there is no law which says that a boy of 19 or 20 is too young to pay off when he is taken in the crime of homicide. And in time of war he can carry a rifle or fly a plane, but he is too young to be trusted with the solemn responsibility of voting against the war. This seems to bring me to point of suggesting that when they are smart enough they are old enough to vote and that many a man and woman arrives at three-score-years-and-ten without reaching the age of citizenship.26 Perhaps the biggest misconception about Pegler is that he was anti-union because of a Communist-paranoia. Consequently, Pegler's comments about unions are usually treated as the “red herring” variety. The truth, however, is that Pegler was simply anti-coercion, and against the “goose-step” that required union membership for employment. This is substantiated at every turn: > The record of labor trouble in this country shows that many labor leaders are parasites who, living by their union racketeering, have much in common with the most brutal employers. It is bad when the workman is spied upon and denied his human rights by agents of a soulless corporation. But it is worse when he is robbed of his earnings and coerced into strikes by men who cleverly appear to be acting in his own interest.27 And again: > I have proposed that violence and terrorism of other kinds by union pickets and goons be forbidden by law in the same way that employers are forbidden to employ anti-union spies and thugs... Pegler has said he had no “war” against unionism, but rather a “war against exploiters of unionism and enemies of labor.”29 He criticized the Supreme Court for agreeing that union representatives had a “legal right to commit criminal acts” by enforcing union membership as part of job requirements.30 Nothing more need be said about Pegler's stand on unions, except this: he never backed down. To those, like Pilat, who charged that Pegler was a “company man,” he demanded evidence, and wrote to one: “You great big gorgeous pious friend of the workingman, under what bridge at what time of night did what enemies of labor pay me how much to smear the movement?”31 And he was consistent, refusing to endorse any union “because they all believe in coercion and force and are subject to no restraining laws.”32 No other journalist opposed coercion as Pegler did. In a time of burgeoning trade unionism, Pegler broke with the American Newspaper Guild, saying: “I am pro-labor, but anti-racketeer...”33 When all critics of labor were looked on with suspicion, Pegler uncovered an old, unserved prison sentence of one Hollywood labor leader, and wrote that the head of a building service employees' union had stolen union funds, and saw both imprisoned. For the latter, Pegler was awarded a now-forgotten Pulitzer Prize. So much for the “red herring.” Pegler's view of foreign affairs was close to libertarianism. He opposed America's entry into World War I (“What if the Kaiser had won? Would his government been any worse than what we've seen in Europe since?”34). He wrote highly critical columns about German Nazism and Italian Fascism during the period of America's pre-World War II (while most commentators avoided the subject). “The other writers were very well aware of what was going on,” he explained later. “They became wildly anti-fascist — but not anti-dictator. I've been anti-dictator all along.”35 Businessmen, too, did not excape Pegler's wrath. He accused them of robbing their stockholders: “The executive pension racket has become so greedy,” he wrote, “that something will have to be done to control or stop it lest the corporate officials, who are, in theory, the employees of the stockholders, walk off with all the profits and assets.”36 Pegler's style was hard, bombastic, often unfair. He was anti-philosophy and admitted it. His inconsistency, uneven praise for dictatorships, wild rhetoric, homespun ethics and propensity to libel are all well-documented, but he also had the ability to spot a principle at one hundred yards and head straight for it. For example: During the famous Chicago 7 “conspiracy” trial the defendants were found guilty of crossing State lines with intent to incite riots, and of various contempt-of-court violations. The local Black Panthers cranked out an angry denunciation of the treatment accorded to Black Panther Bobby Seale, who was gagged and bound to his chair by Judge Julius Hoffman. “The chain of fascist events at the hands of a blatant racist echoes the terror of Hitler's gas chambers and prison camps,” they wrote. “Everyman (sic) and woman in this nation is entitled to an attorney of his or her choice and to deny this is a direct violation of the so-called Constitution...”37 Back in 1957 Pegler was saying the same things — but in better prose — when he criticized the process that was repeated in the Chicago courthouse: > I keep asking my lawyer why I can't have some kind of trial before an impartial tribunal when I callsome judge a bum and he belts me for contempt of court. The judge actually means that I insulted his own majesty and that is the case too, because the bum is a bum. > > ...What is a court anyway? Why is a court sacred? It is a room where people commit perjury and lawyers outsmart one another at the expense of individual chumps who get pinched or sued... > > It is mighty darn strange to me that when a bum on the bench gets his nose out of joint at some citizen and cites him for “contempt”, the judge becomes complaining witness, aggrieved party, prosecutor and judge, all in one. > > I contend that the defendant should be able to transfer into some other court, draw a jury, and say: “Yes, I called the bum a bum because he is a bum and I am going to prove it to you.”38 In an uncomplimentary obituary, writers for _Newsweek_ magazine noted: “Pegler excoriated his victims with epithets that today rarely appear outside the underground press.” It is to the underground press that Pegler, if alive and practicing today, would have to retreat if he continued to exercise his name-calling: Vice-President Henry A. Wallace was “Old Bubblehead”; Eleanor Roosevelt was “La Boca Grande”, “the Gab”, or “the widow”; the mayor of New York City Fiorello LaGuardia was a “bulldozing four-flusher (who will) tin-can it and back away, squealing like a pig under a gate if you carry it right to him and never let go...” But Pegler's targets were almost always government officials (a fact not usually noted by his detractors) and his criticisms were usually based on the principle that a man who lives off of or controls another's income is a looter. A favorite target was Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes: > I don't wish I was running for President, but I tell you one thing — if I were I couldn't ask for sweeter luck than to have them send Ickes after me. Inside of a week you would read that Mr. Ickes had been compelled to drop out of the campaign and put himself away in the U.S. Naval Hospital in Washington, his favorite rest cure, at $3.25 a day. > > I wouldn't keep reminding the citizens that Mr. Ickes is so cheap that when he gets sick or wants a rest he muscles into the Naval Hospital, where he has no legal right to put himself, not merely because he considers himself too good and precious to take a chance in the regular civilian hospitals in Washington, as the taxpayers must, but because the service is practically free.39 Pegler is simply more than he is portrayed. He fought censorship, “brutal employers”, corrupt labour leaders (“parasites”), communism, fascism and nazism (“all the common enemy of democracy, all alike....”). It is now unfortunately necessary to go over all this ground for libertarians, because here is a friend whose reputation is based on misrepresentations. Pegler's critics dwelt on his name-calling, but only when the epithets were directed at “safe” targets, as _Time_ magazine reports: > Columnist Pegler's standing with the double-dome Babbits has shifted often. They have never forgiven him for an early column in which he indirectly justified lynchings in San Jose, California. But two years ago when he went to Europe and wrote a series of searing attacks on Hitler and Mussolini, his standing was ace high. They deplored his sneers at “Mahatma Sinclair” and his “Brainstorm Trust”, reveled in his fury at Huey Long, and cooled off again when he began taunting the New Deal about the “Second Louisiana Purchase”. Today “Old Peg” is in bad odor among the intellectuals because of his attacks on the C.I.O., his open red-baiting, his disrespect for Franklin Roosevelt — “mama's boy.”40 Few of the critics mention Pegler's heroes, but they were usually men of achievement whose accomplishments were often ignored by other columnists. For example, it was not Lou Gehrig's batting average that Pegler praised, but the fact that Gehrig “was a simple soul, with no affectations, who didn't have to work at being good and kind.”41 Walt Disney scored points with Pegler because Disney “has created more hours of complete, detached happiness than all the rest, and apparently not with grim intent to spread joy, but only because that is the sort of man he is.”42 the rest. In 1962, Pegler was fired by King Feature Syndicate, a Hearst corporation, after arguments in Pegler's copy. Liberal columnist Murray Kempton, an admirer of Pegler, wrote that Pegler ended his career as he lived it, by “(cursing) the Hearsts in public for defiling the product.” Who else, Kempton would ask later, ever attacked his publisher? Kempton is the only reviewer who has ever captured the essence of Pegler's career. In his review of Pilat's book, Kempton writes: > Mr. Pilat tells us a sad story, one often distracted, confused and lonely; but the dignity of its subject endures because there was in this life not one act of real betrayal. Pegler damaged himself, he wasted himself on the irrelevant, but he never told a lie that he had told himself first. > > I used to be depressed when radicals talked about Pegler and said how they wished they had him on their side. If the radical impulse is some dubious but lovely notion from one's youth and the radical faith a struggle to preserve it, chipped but whole, against every distraction of maturity, then Westbrook Pegler WAS on their side.43 Objective history has not been served by the manner in which this important journalist has been treated. There is a libertarian tradition, and Pegler was part of it. It is a tradition of individual liberty, distrust of government, isolationist foreign policy, and an uncompromising hatred of any system that enslaves its constituents. Following Pegler's death, Bob Considine wrote: “At his best, he was the most skillful handler of the English language we had — leading you through an 80-word sentence and you would never lose your way. But in later years you wondered where he was leading you.”44 To libertarianism, Considine. Straight to libertarianism. ## FOOTNOTES 1. Murray Rothbard, _New Individualist Review_, Vol. 2, No. 2 Summer, 1962. (“H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian”). 2. “Westbrook Pegler, RIP” _National Review_, July 15, 1969. 3. _Aspects of American English_, edited by Elizabeth M. Kerr and Ralph M. Aderman, pg. 93-94 (“The Birth of New Verbs” by H. L. Mencken). 4. _Time_, August 30, 1943, pg. 19. 5. Oliver Pilat, _Pegler: Angry Man of the Press_ (Boston, Beacon Press, 1963) pg. 71. 6. _Ibid._ pg. 75. 7. _Ibid._ pg. 77. 8. _Ibid._ pg. 80. 9. _Ibid._ pg. 99. 10. _Ibid._ pg. 101. 11. _Reader's Digest_, September, 1941. J. P. McEvoy, “Pegler Throws the Book”, pg. 21. 12. Grantland Rice, _The Best of Grantland Rice_ (New York, Franklin Watts, Inc), edited by Dave Canerer, pg. 286. 13. _Saturday Review_, June 26, 1937. George Britt, “Redheaded Reporter,” pg. 11. 14. _The Associated Press Biographical Service_, No. 3714, issued January 1, 1952. Ed Creagh, “Westbrook Pegler”, sheet 2. 15. _Ibid._ Update. October 1, 1966. 16. Westbrook Pegler, _The Dissenting Opinions of Mister Westbrook Pegler_ (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), pg. 1. 17. Westbrook Pegler, _George Spelvin, American, and Fireside Chats_ (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), pg. 39. 18. Pilat, _op. cit._, pg. 121. 19. George Spelvin, _op. cit._, pg. 24. 20. Pilat, _op. cit._, pg. 2. 21. _Ibid._, pg. 242. 22. _Ibid,_, pg. 243. 23. _Ibid._, pg. 244. 24. _Ibid._, pg. 255. 25. _National Review_, July 15, 1969. Donald Phelps, “A Vote of No Confidence”, pg. 697. 26. Westbrook Pegler, _T Aint Right_ (New York, Doubleday, Doran \& Co., 1936) pg. 251. 27. _Reader's Digest_, July, 1937, pg. 57-58. 28. _Ladies' Home Journal_, October, 1943, pg. 129 (“Is Pegler Fair to Labor?”). 29. _Ibid._ 30. _Ibid._ 31. _Reader's Digest_, September, 1941, _op. cit._ 32. _American Mercury_, February, 1948. John McCarten, “Pegler — Tough-Guy Columnist”, pg. 174-182. 33. _Associated Press_, op. cit. 34. _The Reporter_, March 28, 1950. Robert K. Bingham, “A Talk With Westbrook Pegler”, pg. 22. 35. _Ibid._, pg. 22. 36. _American Mercury_, “Pegler Turns on Business”, date unknown. 37. _The Black Panther_, 1970, “Press Statement”, pg. 3. 38. Jack Mabley, _Chicago Today_, February 19, 1970, pg. 4. 39. George Spelvin, _op. cit._ 40. _Time_, October 8, 1942. 41. _Time_, June 16, 1941, pg. 63. 42. _Dissenting Opinions, op. cit._, pg. 10. 43. _New Republic_, June 8, 1963. Murray Kempton, “The Man Who Hates Publishers”, pg. 23. 44. _Newsweek_, July 7, 1969. _Dennis J. Chase is a former journalist for Chicago Today and other newspapers, a free lance writer with articles appearing in Midwest, Reason, and Chicago Journalism Review. He is a long-time student of Objectivism._