“The Hidden Woman of Monticello: A Study of Yellow Journalism”, New York Call, August 9, 1914.
THE HIDDEN WOMAN OF MONTICELLO
A Study of Yellow Journalism
by Upton Sinclair
There exists in America a phenomenon known as "Hearst. It happens that the writer and his wife have recently had a personal experience of its methods, a view of its inside workings. It is an extraordinary adventure, discounting in its sensational elements the most lurid detective story -- discounting anything which is in the Hearst newspapers themselves. The experience was a painful one, but that aspect of the matter is here set to one side.
It is proposed to recite here a story relative thereto, not by way of revenge, but to supply a document by which students of our institutions may be helped to make up their minds concerning the Hearst newspapers. Their founder has at various times been a candidate for high offices in America, and has been able to exert much influence upon the course of the Democratic party -- in New York, in Illinois, and even throughout the nation. What are the Hearst newspapers, how are they made, and what is the character of the men who are making them?
The story began last Christmas. In the New York papers there one day appeared an account of the death of a lawyer named Couch, in the little town of Monticello, N. Y. This man was nearly 60 years of age, a cripple and eccentric, who lived most of the time in his office in the village, going once a week to the home upon the weekend where lived his wife and family. The news of his death in the middle of the night was brought to a physician by a strange, distracted woman, who was afterwards missing, but next day was discovered by Mr. Couch’s widow and daughter cowering in an inner partition of his office, which had been partitioned off to make a separate room.
Investigation was made, and an extraordinary set of circumstances disclosed. The man and woman had been lovers for fifteen years, and for the last three years the woman had spent her entire time in this walled-off room, never going outside, never even daring to go near the window in the daytime. This sacrifice she had made for the sake of the old man, because she had been necessary to his life, and there was no other way of keeping secret a situation which would have ruined him.
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