A CHICAGO EDITOR BANISHED.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 October 1917, Page 2

A CHICAGO EDITOR BANISHED.

■ i m "Marching orders" were given to William Stocker, a cement contractor, of Chicago, because he was circulating the "Windy City" a weekly newspaper attaking President Wilson. The execrable sheet had the backing of Chicago's Mayor William Hale Thompson, who earned unenviable notoriety recently by refusing to offer a civic reception to the British and French War Missions, on the ridiculous plea that Chicago professed to ba largely German in population! Boiling over with rage, the Chicago City Council and Chamber of Commerce went to the rescue, with the result that when the Allied Mission entered Chicago the residents of. the city went wild with enthusiasm, and almost mobbed the allied diplomats in their paroxysm of joy. Stocker, who had backed the stand of the disloyal Mayor, was visited alt his hotel by 50 business men, headed by a citizen's committee, who included James M'Credie, State Grand Warden of the Masonic Order. Stocker, seeing resistance futile, promised to leave Ohicagoi immediately and to cease publication of his objection able paper. He admitted circulating it owing to his friendship for Mayor Thompson. In delivering ;thc people's ultimatum Air. M'Credie said: "We have eent many of our boys to fight for their country, and we are going to protect our cities while they are gone. The paper you have been circulating is not an American paper, and we do not want it in Chicago." Indignation was particularly by one paragraph in the paper, which read: "All you have to do is to get Congress to declare war, hogtie the newspapers, muzzle the people, conscript an army, make the President one of these 'pooh.bans,' and then it will be 'King Woodrow.'" Stoker's banishment was quickly concluded, and the hastily collected his chattels and precipitately flew Chicago and his irate fellowresidents.