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VERIFICATION OF
SYSTEMS AND CIRCUITS
USING LOTOS, PETRI
NETS, AND CCS
BY
Michael Yoeli and Rakefet Kol
Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa, Israel
VERIFICATION OF
SYSTEMS AND CIRCUITS
USING LOTOS, PETRI
NETS, AND CCS
VERIFICATION OF
SYSTEMS AND CIRCUITS
USING LOTOS, PETRI
NETS, AND CCS
BY
Michael Yoeli and Rakefet Kol
Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
Haifa, Israel
Copyright # 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.


Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as
permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior
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the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax
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be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken,
NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts
in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or
completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales
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For general information on our other products and services please contact our Customer Care
Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U. S. at 317-572-3993 or fax 317-572-4002.

Wiley also publishes it books in variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print,
however, may not be available in electronic format.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:


Yoeli, Michael, 1917-
Verification of systems and circuits using LOTOS, Petri Nets, and CCS / Michael Yoeli & Rakefet Kol.
p. cm. — (Wiley series on parallel and distributed computing)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-471-70449-2 (cloth)
1. Integrated circuits—Verification. 2. Computer software—Verification.
3. LOTOS (Computer program language) 4. Petri nets. I. Kol, Rakefet. II. Title.
TK7874.58.Y64 2008
621.38150 48—dc22
2007033487

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my spouse Nehama, with thanks for her persistent and
helpful encouragement.
Michael

To my family, with endless love.


Rakefet
& CONTENTS

1. Introduction 1
1.1 Event-Based Approach 2
1.2 Event-Based Systems 2
1.3 Types of Verification 2
1.4 Toolsets Used 3
1.5 Level-Based Approach 3
1.6 Overview of the Book 3
1.7 References 5

2. Processes 7
2.1 Introduction 7
2.2 Examples of Processes and Basic Concepts 7
2.3 About Prefixing 10
2.4 Process Graphs 10
2.5 Choice Operator 11
2.6 Another Process Example 13
2.7 Equivalences 13
2.7.1 Strong Equivalence 13
2.7.2 Observation Equivalence 14
2.7.3 Some Additional Laws 15
2.8 Labeled Transition Systems (LTSs) 15
2.9 Parallel Operators 16
2.9.1 Parallel Composition 16
2.9.2 Synchronization Operator k (Blot Version) 16
2.9.3 Examples of Parallel Compositions 17
2.9.4 More Laws 17

vii
viii CONTENTS

2.9.5 Sample Proof 18


2.9.6 Interleaving Operator kj 18
2.10 Sequential Composition 18
2.11 Further Reading 19
2.12 Selected Solutions 20
2.13 References 21

3. From Digital Hardware to Processes 23


3.1 The C-Element 23
3.1.1 The 2-Input CEL-Circuit 23
3.1.2 The 3-Input CEL-Circuit 25
3.1.3 The 4-Input CEL-Circuit 26
3.2 The XOR-Gate 26
3.2.1 The 2-Input XOR-Gate 26
3.2.2 The 3-Input XOR-Gate 27
3.3 TOGGLES 29
3.4 Modulo-N Transition Counters 30
3.4.1 Modulo-N Transition Counter Specification 30
3.4.2 Modulo-N Transition Counter Implementations 30
3.4.2.1 The Cases N ¼ 3 and N ¼ 4 31
3.4.2.2 The N . 4 Case 31
3.5 Modular Networks 31
3.6 Propositional Logic: A Review of Known Concepts 33
3.6.1 Logical Operators 34
3.6.2 Proving Logical Equivalences 35
3.6.3 Tautologies and the EQUIV Operator 36
3.7 Selected Solutions 36
3.8 References 37

4. Introducing LOTOS 39
4.1 From Blot to Basic LOTOS 39
4.1.1 Recursion 40
4.2 Some Semantics 41
4.3 From LTS to LOTOS 42
4.4 Comparing Parallel Operators 43
4.5 Sequential Composition 44
4.6 Hiding 44
4.7 Equivalences and Preorders 44
4.8 About CADP 45
4.8.1 Getting Started with CADP 45
4.8.2 Verifying Equivalences and Preorders Using CADP 46
CONTENTS ix

4.8.2.1 Verifying Equivalences Using CADP 46


4.8.2.2 Verifying Preorders Using CADP 47
4.8.3 Generating LTS of Choice Using CADP 47
4.8.4 Generating LTS of Recursion Using CADP 48
4.9 Full LOTOS—An Introduction 49
4.9.1 The Full-LOTOS NOT-Gate Example 49
4.9.1.1 The Full LOTOS NOT-File 49
4.9.1.2 Applying CADP to Derive LTS
for the NOT-Gate 50
4.9.2 The Non-Terminating NOT-Gate 51
4.9.3 The Max Specifications 52
4.9.3.1 Max2 Specification 52
4.9.3.2 Max3 Specification 52
4.10 The Regular Mu-Calculus (RMC) 53
4.10.1 Introducing RMC by Examples 53
4.11 Further Reading 55
4.12 Selected Solutions 56
4.13 References 57

5. Introducing Petri Nets 59


5.1 About Petri Nets 59
5.1.1 Petri Graphs and Petri Nets 59
5.1.2 Enabling and Firing 60
5.1.3 Another Definition of Petri Nets 61
5.2 About Languages 61
5.3 About PETRIFY 62
5.4 Illustrating Petri Nets 64
5.5 Labeled Nets 66
5.6 Bounded Nets 68
5.7 Observation Equivalence of LPNs 70
5.8 From Blot to Petri Nets 70
5.9 Liveness and Persistence 72
5.10 Simple Reduction Rules 72
5.11 Marked Graphs 74
5.12 A Simple Net Algebra 75
5.12.1 The Prefix Operator 75
5.12.2 The Choice Operator 77
5.12.3 The Star Operator 77
5.12.4 Parallel Compositions 79
5.12.4.1 The Basic Approach 79
5.12.4.2 The Multiple-Labeled Case 79
x CONTENTS

5.13 Arc-Weighted Nets 80


5.13.1 Enabling and Firing in Arc-Weighted Nets 80
5.13.2 Arc-Weighted Versus Non-Labeled Nets 82
5.14 Readers – Writers System 83
5.14.1 A Readers – Writers System Net Representation 83
5.14.2 Verification of a Readers – Writers System 84
5.15 Inhibitor Nets 85
5.15.1 Introduction to Inhibitor Nets 85
5.15.2 The Expressive Power of Inhibitor Nets 85
5.16 True Concurrency 86
5.16.1 The Pi-Language 87
5.16.2 Pi-Equivalence 87
5.16.3 Concurrency-Preserving Synthesis 88
5.17 Further Reading 89
5.18 Selected Solutions 89
5.19 References 93

6. Introducing CCS 95
6.1 About CCS 95
6.2 Operators ‘Prefix’ and ‘Sum’ 95
6.2.1 Semantics 96
6.3 Recursion 97
6.3.1 Semantics 97
6.4 Concurrency Operator 97
6.5 Equivalences 98
6.6 Restriction 98
6.7 CTL 99
6.7.1 Introducing CTL 99
6.8 The Concurrency Workbench (CWB) 100
6.8.1 The ‘sim’ and ‘compile’ Commands 100
6.8.2 Checking Equivalences 102
6.8.3 Checking Restrictions 103
6.8.4 HML Formulas 103
6.8.5 Equivalences—Counterexamples 104
6.8.6 More Equivalence Checking 105
6.8.7 Using the mu-Calculus 106
6.8.8 Using CTL 107
6.9 CCS and CWB Application Examples 109
6.9.1 The CCS XCEL-Circuit Example 109
CONTENTS xi

6.9.1.1 The CCS Approach 109


6.9.1.2 Comparing the CCS Approach with
the LOTOS Approach 111
6.9.2 The CCS CEL3-Circuit Example 112
6.10 Further Reading 113
6.11 Selected Solutions 114
6.12 References 115

7. Verification of Modular Asynchronous Circuits 117


7.1 About Asynchronous Circuits 117
7.1.1 Modular Asynchronous Circuits 117
7.1.2 Edge-Based (Dynamic) Versus Level-Based
Behavior 118
7.2 XOR-Gates 118
7.2.1 LOTOS Representation of XOR-Gate 118
7.2.2 Petri Net Representation of XOR-Gate 119
7.2.3 CCS Representation of XOR-Gate 119
7.3 CEL-Circuit 119
7.3.1 LOTOS Representation of CEL-Circuit 120
7.3.2 Petri Net Representation of CEL-Circuit 120
7.3.3 CCS Representation of CEL-Circuit 120
7.4 Other Modules 121
7.4.1 Inverter 121
7.4.2 ICEL-Element 121
7.4.3 TOGGLE 122
7.4.4 CALL 122
7.5 Module Extensions 123
7.5.1 XORk (k . 2) Modules 123
7.5.2 CELk (k . 2) Modules 123
7.5.3 TOGk (k . 2) 124
7.6 Modular Networks 124
7.7 Realizations 125
7.7.1 Introduction to Realization 125
7.7.2 Type-A Realization 125
7.7.2.1 Type-A1 Realization 126
7.7.3 Type-B Realization 126
7.7.4 Type-C Realization 128
7.7.5 Type-D Realization 130
7.7.5.1 Extended Type-D Realizations 131
7.7.6 DI Realization 131
xii CONTENTS

7.8 Verification of Extended Modules 131


7.8.1 Verification of XORk (k . 2) Modules 132
7.8.1.1 Implementation of XORk 132
7.8.1.2 Verification of XORk Using Petri Nets
and PETRIFY 132
7.8.1.3 Verification of XORk Using LOTOS
and CADP 134
7.8.1.4 Verification of XORk Using CCS
and CWB-NC 135
7.8.2 Verification of CELk (k . 2) Modules 135
7.8.2.1 Implementation of CELk 135
7.8.2.2 Verification of CELk Using Petri Nets
and PETRIFY 135
7.8.2.3 Verification of CELk Using
LOTOS and CADP 136
7.8.2.4 Verification of CELk Using CCS
and CWB-NC 136
7.8.3 Verification of TOGk (k . 2) Modules 137
7.9 Verification of Parallel Control Structures 137
7.10 Further Reading 140
7.11 Selected Solutions 140
7.12 References 146

8. Verification of Communication Protocols 147


8.1 Introduction 147
8.2 Two Simple Communication Protocols 147
8.2.1 Simple Communication Protocol SCP 148
8.2.2 Simple Communication Protocol SCP1 148
8.3 The Alternating Bit (AB) Protocol 149
8.3.1 Introduction 149
8.3.2 The Reliable Channel Case 149
8.3.2.1 A LOTOS Description of the
Reliable Channel Case 150
8.3.3 The Unreliable Channel Case 151
8.3.3.1 A LOTOS Verification of the
Unreliable Channel Case 151
8.3.3.2 A CCS Verification of the
Unreliable Channel Case 154
8.4 Further Reading 156
8.5 Selected Solutions 156
8.6 References 157
CONTENTS xiii

9. Verification of Arbiters 159


9.1 Introduction 159
9.2 A Random Arbiter (RGDA) 159
9.2.1 Verifying RGDA Using LOTOS 160
9.2.1.1 Blot and LOTOS Representation of RGDA 160
9.2.1.2 Verification of RGDA Using LOTOS 161
9.2.1.2.1 Verifying Mutual Exclusion 161
9.2.1.2.2 Verifying Grant Only on Request 163
9.2.1.2.3 Verifying Fairness 163
9.2.2 Verifying RGDA Using Petri Nets 163
9.2.2.1 Petri Net Representation of RGDA 163
9.2.2.2 Verification of RGDA Using Petri Net 164
9.2.2.2.1 Verifying Mutual Exclusion 164
9.2.2.2.2 Verifying Grant Only on Request 165
9.2.2.2.3 Verifying Fairness 165
9.2.3 Verifying RGDA Using CCS 165
9.3 A Token-Ring Arbiter 167
9.3.1 A Petri Net Representation of a Token-Ring Arbiter 167
9.3.2 Verification of a Token-Ring Arbiter Using Petri Net 168
9.4 Further Reading 168
9.5 Selected Solutions 169
9.6 References 171

10. More Verification Case Studies 173


10.1 Verification of Combinational Logic 173
10.1.1 The AND Gate 173
10.1.2 Composite Gates 175
10.2 Verification of Asynchronous Pipeline Controllers 177
10.2.1 Introduction 177
10.2.1.1 Transition Signaling 178
10.2.1.2 The Bundled Data Interface 178
10.2.2 Latch Control Unit 178
10.2.2.1 A Blot Specification of LCU 178
10.2.2.2 A LOTOS Specification of LCU 179
10.2.2.3 A LOTOS Implementation of LCU 179
10.2.2.4 Latch Problems 180
10.2.3 Phase Converters 181
10.2.3.1 2-Phase to 4-Phase Converter (PC24) 181
10.2.3.2 4-Phase to 2-Phase Converter (PC42) 182
xiv CONTENTS

10.3 Verification of Producer– Consumer Systems 183


10.3.1 Introduction 183
10.3.2 Verifying Producer– Consumer Systems
Using Petri Nets 183
10.3.3 Occurrence Counts 184
10.3.4 Verifying the Producer– Consumer System Using
Occurrence Counts 184
10.3.4.1 Verifying Liveness 184
10.3.4.2 Verifying Boundedness 185
10.3.4.3 Verifying Overflow/Underflow 185
10.3.5 Verifying Producer– Consumer Systems
Using LOTOS 185
10.3.6 Verification of Multiple-Producer
Multiple-Consumer Systems 186
10.3.6.1 A 2-Producer– 2-Consumer System
with Priority 186
10.4 Verification Based on Design Approaches 188
10.4.1 Synthesis Approach #1 188
10.4.1.1 Realization 188
10.4.1.2 Formal Verification of the CXC-Circuit
Example 188
10.4.1.3 Another Synthesis Verification Example 189
10.4.2 Synthesis Approach #2 189
10.4.3 Extending the Synthesis Method by Adding
XOR Modules 190
10.4.4 A Decomposition Approach 191
10.5 Verification of Toggles and Transition Counters 193
10.5.1 Verification of k-Toggles 193
10.5.2 Verification of Counters without Outputs 194
10.5.2.1 Direct Verification of udcount 194
10.5.2.2 Verification of udcount Using
Petri Net 195
10.5.3 Verification of Up – Down Counters with Output 196
10.5.4 Verification of Modulo-N Transition Counters 196
10.5.4.1 Specification of Modulo-N
Transition Counter 197
10.5.4.2 Decompositions of Modulo-N Counters 197
10.5.4.3 Verifying a Modulo-3 Counter 197
10.5.4.4 Verifying a Modulo-12 Counter 198
10.6 Vending Machines Verification—Revisited 199
10.6.1 Verifying Vending Machines VeMa Using CCS 199
10.6.2 Verifying Vending Machines VeMa Using LOTOS 200
CONTENTS xv

10.7 Pi-Realizations 201


10.7.1 More on Modular Networks 202
10.7.2 Introducing Circuits 203
10.7.3 Concurrent Behavior of Circuits 204
10.7.4 Pi-Specifications of Circuits 205
10.7.4.1 Pi-Processes 205
10.7.4.2 Specifying Circuits by Pi-Processes 205
10.7.5 Simple Verification Examples 206
10.7.6 Applying Net Algebra 206
10.7.7 Another Verification Example 207
10.7.8 Some Pi Propositions 209
10.8 A Comparison of Equivalence Relations 210
10.8.1 An Equivalence Theorem 210
10.8.2 An Application of the Equivalence Theorem 211
10.9 Selected Solutions 211
10.10 References 223

11. Guide to Further Studies 225


11.1 Verification of Telecommunication Systems 225
11.1.1 Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) 225
11.1.2 Advanced Telephone Systems 226
11.1.3 ISDN Telephony 226
11.2 Verification Using Colored Petri Nets 226
11.3 Verification of Traffic Signal Control Systems 226
11.4 References 227

Index 229
&CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Many present-day industrial hardware systems are of considerable


complexity. Great efforts are required to produce such systems correctly at
reasonable cost and within an acceptable time limit.
To achieve the above goals, it is important to detect design errors at an
early stage, and particularly prior to the production process. The correction
of design errors that have infiltrated the production process is very expensive
and time-consuming.
In view of the above considerations, “formal verification” plays an import-
ant role. The purpose of formal verification is to ensure that the intended hard-
ware design (the implementation) indeed meets the requirements of a given
functional specification. Throughout this book, relevant concepts of formal
verification will be discussed and made precise.
A number of publications have provided an introduction to some
important aspects of formal verification. In particular, we refer the reader to
References 1 –5.
This book presents yet another approach to hardware verification. It deals
with the verification of a wide selection of systems and circuits, and applies
powerful toolsets for this purpose (see Section 1.4). It originates from the
earlier work of Yoeli (6), who provided a step-by-step introduction to
digital circuit verification. This book offers an introduction to the formal ver-
ification of combinational, iterative, synchronous, and asynchronous circuits.
It also presents some valuable insight into approaching basic theorem-
proving, the high-level specification language LOTOS (language of temporal
ordering specifications), and the elements of Petri nets and the related soft-
ware tool PETRIFY.
Throughout the book, you will be challenged with questions and exercises
for self practicing. Solutions to selected problems are provided in a section
preceding the Reference section.

Verification of Systems and Circuits Using LOTOS, Petri Nets, and CCS, by
Michael Yoeli and Rakefet Kol
Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
1
2 INTRODUCTION

The book is unique in that it combines a number of powerful theory-based


toolsets with an approach to hardware specifications and implementations
founded on an “event-based” approach.

1.1 EVENT-BASED APPROACH

The greater part of this text deals with system specifications and descriptions
using an event-based approach, rather than a level-based approach. Here
“event” refers to an action of the system or its environment, which may be
considered to be instantaneous; that is, its duration is negligible. In the case
of actions that take some time, we consider the event of starting the action
and the event of terminating the action.
In the event-based approach, circuits and systems are specified and
described by means of instantaneous events, which could be inputs,
outputs, or internal (non-observable) events.

1.2 EVENT-BASED SYSTEMS

In this book we will discuss several systems that are preferably specified and
described using the event-based approach. Examples of such circuits and
systems include:

(1) Asynchronous circuits, i.e., sequential circuits without global clock


control. Typical relevant events are the up- and down-transitions of
inputs and outputs. For details, see Chapter 7.
(2) Communication protocols. Of interest are the instantaneous actions
“put”, “get”, “send”, and “receive”, related to the handling of messages
in such protocols. For details, see Chapter 8.
(3) Arbiters. Typical events are the requesting and granting of access to a
shared resource. For details, see Chapter 9.

Obviously, there are other examples of circuits and systems that are not
covered in this text; these include “synchronous” circuits (i.e., sequential cir-
cuits controlled by a global clock) and arithmetic units (e.g., adders and mul-
tipliers). These examples are well covered elsewhere as, for example, in (3).

1.3 TYPES OF VERIFICATION

We distinguish between two major types of verification. The first type, which
we refer to as “realization”, is concerned with relating behavioral
1.6 OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK 3

specifications to the actual implementation of the relevant system or circuit.


For details, see, e.g., Section 7.9, where various concepts of realization are
discussed. The second type of verification, which we refer to as “properties
verification”, is intended to show that a given system satisfies certain essential
properties. For example, we verify that a particular arbiter design never
enables the simultaneous access of two processes to a shared resource
(see Chapter 9). As another example, consider communications over unreli-
able communication channels. In Chapter 8 we verify that properly designed
protocols are capable of transmitting reliable messages over unreliable
channels, assuming suitable conditions.

1.4 TOOLSETS USED

One outstanding feature of this text is the extensive use of three different
theories of communicating and concurrent processes, namely LOTOS and
its associated toolset CADP (see Chapter 4), Petri nets and their related
toolset PETRIFY (see Chapter 5), and CCS (Calculus of Communication
Systems) and its toolset CWB (Concurrency Workbench) (see Chapter 6).
Suitable introductions to the relevant theories and their related toolsets are
provided in Chapters 4 –6. Chapter 4 deals both with Basic LOTOS, restricted
to control aspects only, and with Full LOTOS, which also deals with the
handling of data.

1.5 LEVEL-BASED APPROACH

Whereas the major part of this book deals with the above event-based
approach, a small part nevertheless illustrates a level-based approach. The
well-known level-based approach is widely used in connection with
the specification and description of combinational circuits, synchronous
(i.e., clock-controlled) circuits, logic–arithmetic units, and many others.
In this book we are mainly concerned with the specification and
analysis of combinational circuits (i.e., digital circuits without memory),
such as AND-gates and OR-gates. Their inputs and outputs are assumed to
be two-valued, either logic-0 and logic-1, or (alternatively) FALSE and
TRUE. For details, see Sections 3.6, 4.9, and 10.1.

1.6 OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

In Section 1.4 we reviewed the contents of Chapters 4– 6. The following is a


short review of Chapters 2, 3, and 7–11.
4 INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 2 we introduce the concept of “process”, which plays a funda-


mental role in connection with event-based systems. Stated informally, the
important feature of a (non-trivial) process is its capability to perform some
(instantaneous) action and consequently evolve into some other process.
We are interested in methods of composing processes from simpler ones, as
well as in the comparison of different processes.
In Chapter 3 we use the material of Chapter 2 to provide some insight into
formal verification of systems and circuits, prior to the presentation of relevant
theories and related toolsets (as described in Section 1.4). Section 3.6 sum-
marizes concepts of propositional logic, with which the reader is assumed
to be familiar, in preparation for a study of logic gates in Chapters 4 and
10 (as explained in Section 1.5).
In Chapter 7 we apply the toolsets introduced in Chapters 4– 6 to the
formal, precisely defined verification of asynchronous circuits, i.e., sequential
circuits that operate without a global clock. The concept of “realization” plays
an important role. We say that a hardware design (an “implementation”)
“realizes” a given behavior specification if the design indeed “behaves” as
specified. Various approaches to this concept of “realization” are formalized
and illustrated, using the toolsets of Chapters 4–6.
In Chapter 8 we are concerned with the verification of communication
protocols. As mentioned in Section 1.3, the type of communication proto-
cols that we consider are intended to provide reliable point-to-point com-
munication over channels that may be unreliable. Starting with simple
protocols over reliable channels, we discuss variants of the “alternating-
bit protocol” and provide suitable proofs that these protocols are
capable of “overcoming” the problems of a large class of unreliable chan-
nels. This chapter makes extensive use of the material of Chapter 4
(LOTOS/CADP).
In Chapter 9 we deal with the verification of arbiters. Arbiters are
intended to regulate the access of two or more processes to a single,
shared resource, ensuring that at any time only one of the competing pro-
cesses may gain access to the shared resource. Various strategies are dis-
cussed and proven correct, using each of the three toolsets introduced in
Chapters 4 – 6.
In Chapter 10 we discuss a number of additional verification case studies,
illustrating again the application of the verification tools of Chapters 4– 6. In
particular, we discuss pipeline controllers (Section 10.2), producer –consumer
systems (Section 10.3), transition counters (Section 10.5), and advanced
vending machines (Section 10.6). In Section 10.1 we continue the discussion
of logic gates that was started in Section 4.9.
1.7 REFERENCES 5

In Chapter 11 we provide recommendations for further studies, including a


powerful extension of the concept of Petri nets, and examples of large
systems, such as telecommunication systems, that can be verified using the
methods described in this book.

1.7 REFERENCES

1. Gupta A. Formal hardware verification methods: a survey. J Formal Meth Syst


Design 1992;1:151 – 238.
2. Kern C, Greenstreet MR. Formal verification in hardware design: a survey. ACM
Trans Design Autom Electron Syst 1999;4(2):123 – 93.
3. Kropf T. Introduction to formal hardware verification. Springer, 1999.
4. Melham T. Higher order logic and hardware verification. Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
5. Yoeli M, editor. Formal verification of hardware design. IEEE Computer Society
Press, 1990.
6. Yoeli M. Introduction to digital circuit verification. Computer Science Department
Technical Report CS-2001-10, Technion, Israel, March 2001. Available at http://
www.cs.technion.ac.il/tech-reports/.
&CHAPTER 2

Processes

2.1 INTRODUCTION

In this text we are mainly interested in the specification and description of


systems such as communication protocols, asynchronous circuits, pipeline con-
trollers, vending machines, and others that are suitably described using the
“event-based” approach (see Chapter 1). We will use the notion of process
for the purpose of modeling the behavior of such event-based systems. Most
processes described in this chapter are related to systems with inputs and
outputs. In the next section we relate processes to behavior patterns and
discuss some examples of processes as well as some basic concepts.

2.2 EXAMPLES OF PROCESSES AND BASIC CONCEPTS

Example 2.1 (VM1) This example deals with a coffee-vending machine


VM1 (1) that will accept a coin, dispense a cup of coffee, and will then do
nothing further. Its behavior pattern consists of two events occurring sequen-
tially (one after the other). The first event, named ‘coin’, refers to “inserting a
coin into the coffee-vending machine.” The second event is named ‘coffee’,
and refers to “getting a cup of coffee.” The behavior pattern we have in mind
(denoted VM1) may be specified as follows:

VM1 : = coin;(coffee; $)

Here we use the symbol ‘:5’ to mean “is defined by.” The symbol ‘$’ denotes
the trivial behavior of doing nothing. Following LOTOS (see Chapter 4), we
will refer to the symbol ‘;’ as a prefix operator. An expression such as X;Y is
admissible only if X is an event and Y is a behavior pattern. If this is the case,
then X;Y is to be interpreted as the behavior pattern “event X, followed

Verification of Systems and Circuits Using LOTOS, Petri Nets, and CCS, by
Michael Yoeli and Rakefet Kol
Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
7
8 PROCESSES

immediately by the behavior pattern Y.” Thus, coffee;$ should be understood


as the event coffee (which we defined as getting a cup of coffee), followed by
the behavior pattern $, which means doing nothing. coin;(coffee;$) should be
understood as the event coin (which we defined as inserting a coin into
the coffee-vending machine) followed by the behavior pattern coffee;$,
described above.
Henceforth we prefer to use the term ‘process’ to refer to a behavior
pattern, properly specified by the means discussed in this chapter.
If P and Q are processes, and b is some event, the statement P:5b;Q thus
means that P is a process that starts with the event b, followed by the behavior
specified by process Q. If a is another event, the process a;P can be written as
a;(b;Q) We will write (by convention) a;b;Q instead of a;(b;Q). Using the
above convention, we may now replace the above definition of VM1 by

VM1 : = coin;coffee;$

Recall that ‘$’ denotes a process and not an event!


Let us now define the following process (which is a subprocess of VM1, in
the evident sense):
VM1a : = coffee; $
The following equation evidently follows from the above definitions:
VM1 = coin;VM1a
Note the use of the ‘=’ symbol in the above equation. Thus, it is an equation,
and not a definition.
Given a process P, we wish to distinguish between events of P, which are
observable by an outside observer, and events that are internal, i.e., are not
observable from outside the process P. We denote the set of observable
actions/events, which the process P will eventually engage in, by Act(P).
For example, Act(VM1) 5 {coin,coffee}. Note that in the examples discussed
in Sections 2.2– 2.6 below, all the process events are observable. Internal
events will play a role starting in Section 2.7.
For more information about the prefix operator, see Section 2.3. For
additional representations of vending machines, see Section 2.6, as well as
Section 1.1 of Reference 1.

Example 2.2 (clock) As an example of a simple never-ending process, we


consider an (old-fashioned) clock that ticks forever (and this is all we are con-
cerned with). This process may be defined informally as follows:

clock := tick;tick;tick;…
2.2 EXAMPLES OF PROCESSES AND BASIC CONCEPTS 9

The above informal three-dot notation (…) may be replaced by the following
recursive definition:

clock := tick;clock
Now consider the equation
X = tick;X
where tick is an event and X is an unknown process. This equation can be
solved for the unknown process X. Hoare (1) teaches how to treat such
equations. It can be proven that the above equation X 5 tick;X has a
unique solution, which corresponds informally to the above definitions for
clock. For details, see Section 2.8 of Reference 1.
Consider now a recursive definition proc :5 seq;proc, where proc is a
process name and seq is a finite sequence of events. It is frequently con-
venient to replace such a recursive definition by the following “star-notation”:
proc :5*[seq], where the star symbol is to be interpreted as “repeat forever.”
Thus, the process clock may alternatively be defined by

clock := *[tick]

Example 2.3 (PBL) We now turn to a process specifying a never-ending


input–output system.
Consider a light that is controlled (switched on and off) by means of a push
button. Let push? denote the activation of the push button, let on! denote the
changing of the light from ‘off’ to ‘on’, and let off! denote its changing back
to ‘off’. The ‘?’ symbol is not part of the name of the event, but rather a suffix
that may optionally be used to emphasize that an event is an input event.
Similarly the ‘!’ suffix is used to indicate an action (output event) produced
by the process under consideration. If we assume that this button –light
system never fails, and that it starts with the light being off, its behavior
may be described by the process PBL, with the input event push? and the
output events on! and off!.
This process PBL may be specified informally by the following infinite
repetitive sequence of events, where the three dots … (as in Example 2.2)
indicate “repeat forever ”:

PBL := push?;on!;push?;off!;push?;on!;push?;off!;…

Formally, this process may be specified by the following recursive definition:

PBL : = push?;on!;push?;off!;PBL
10 PROCESSES

Or as

PBL : = push;on;push;off;PBL

This definition is based on the fact that after the first occurrence of the
sequence push?;on!;push?;off!; the system returns to its initial state.
Alternatively, we may use the star-notation (as in Example 2.2), and define
PBL as
PBL := *[push?; on!; push?; off!]

The notation introduced in this chapter, which we will refer to as Blot, is a


simplified version of the standard notation of Basic LOTOS, which will be
introduced in Chapter 4.

2.3 ABOUT PREFIXING

We have already introduced (in Section 2.2) the prefix operator ‘;’.
Note that P = a;Q implies that a is the one and only event that P is capable
of engaging in. Note furthermore that P 5a;Q implies that P is uniquely
determined, given Q and a.
This is summarized in the following law, wherein we informally use the
equals symbol ‘5’, to mean “specify the same event or behavior.” A more
formal definition is presented in Section 2.7.

Law 2.1: a;P 5 b;Q iff a 5 b and P 5 Q

The following law is rather evident:

Law 2.2: *[a;b] = a;*[b;a]

This law also holds if a and b are replaced by finite sequences of events.

2.4 PROCESS GRAPHS

Processes may also be represented by so-called process graphs. They are


similar to state graphs representing finite automata. Both state graphs and
process graphs are directed graphs, the arcs of which are labeled by events.
However, whereas the nodes of state graphs represent states, the nodes of a
process graph PG, representing the process P, represent the processes
2.5 CHOICE OPERATOR 11

Figure 2.1 Process graph of the process a;b;c;$.

Figure 2.2 Process graph of the process PBL.

reachable from P by a sequence of actions. The graph PG is rooted and its


root represents the process P itself. A labeled arc of a process graph from a
node v1 to a node v2 represents a feasible transition from process P1 to
process P2, where process Pj is represented by node vj.
For example, the process a;b;c;$ is represented by the process graph of
Fig. 2.1. Figure 2.1 can also be viewed as a state graph representing a finite
automaton. The states in this state graph have unconventional labels: the
root node is labeled a;b;c;$, the following state is labeled b;c;$, and so on.
The process graph representing the process PBL from Section 2.2 is shown
in Fig. 2.2, in which the processes are defined as PBL:5push;Q, Q :5on;R,
R:5push;S, and S :5 off;PBL.

2.5 CHOICE OPERATOR

Using only the operators ‘;’ and ‘*’, introduced so far, we are restricted to
behaviors that can be represented by a single sequence (finite or infinite) of
events. However, we are frequently interested in behaviors represented by a
choice between different event sequences. Hence we now introduce the
choice operator ‘[ ]’.
To illustrate the usage of the choice operator, consider a vending machine
VM2 that, once a coin is inserted, lets you choose between receiving coffee
and receiving tea. Specifically, this vending machine has a “coffee” button
and a “tea” button. After you insert the coin, you should press one of these
12 PROCESSES

two buttons, and the machine will output the corresponding drink. Vending
machine VM2 may be specified by the following behavior expression:

VM2 : = coin;CM2
CM2 : = coffee;$ [ ] tea;$
coffee : = press_coffee_button;get_coffee_drink
tea : = press_tea_button; get_tea_drink

where ‘[ ]’ is the above choice operator. Similar to VM1, this machine also
functions only once.
Alternatively, this vending machine can be represented by the process graph
of Fig. 2.3. For simplicity, we have omitted the details of the compound events
coffee and tea in this figure, and we view them as a single (compound) event.
The notation P[a > Q will be used to indicate that a is one of the events P is
capable of performing, and that, after engaging in the event a, the process
P behaves as specified by process Q. Thus, in the above example,
CM2[coffee > $ and CM2[tea > $. This means that process CM2 may
engage in the (compound) event coffee, or it may engage in the compound
event tea. In both cases it will reach the null process $.
Stated generally, let P1 and P2 be processes. Their choice P1 [ ] P2 defines
the process P, which may behave either as P1 or as P2. Thus, P may be
defined as follows:

1. If P1[x > R1, then P1 [ ] P2[x > R1


2. If P2[y > R2, then P1 [ ] P2[y > R2

Note If P1[x > R1 and P2[x > R2, then P1 [ ] P2[x > R1 as well as P1 [ ] P2
[x > R2.

Figure 2.3 Process graph of VM2.


2.7 EQUIVALENCES 13

We emphasize that the choice operator [ ] applies to processes, and not to


events! Therefore the construct (a [ ] b);$ is not admissible, but a;$ [ ] b;$ is.

2.6 ANOTHER PROCESS EXAMPLE

Vending machines have been used extensively by Hoare (1) to illustrate pro-
cesses. Our process examples introduced so far are modified versions of
Hoare’s machines.

Example 2.4 (VM3) This is another modification of one of Hoare’s


vending machines, proposed by Milner (2):
Act(VM3) = {in1p, in2p, big, little, collect}
VM3 : = in2p;big;collect;VM3 [ ] in1p;little;collect;VM3
Here the customer may either insert a 2p coin, order and collect a big
chocolate, or insert a 1p coin, then order and collect a little chocolate.

2.7 EQUIVALENCES

Recall the distinction between events that are observable by an outside observer
and events that are not observable (introduced in Section 2.2). Following Basic
LOTOS (which is discussed in Chapter 4), we shall be concerned with a unique
non-observable event, denoted ‘i’. We wish to clarify under which conditions
two processes may appear equivalent to an outside observer, although they may
differ, as far as internal events are concerned. It is convenient to use process
graphs for the formal definitions of process equivalences.

2.7.1 Strong Equivalence


First we define strong equivalence. Two processes are strongly equivalent iff
every event (observable or not) of one process can be matched by the same
event in the other process, such that the outcomes are again strongly equivalent.
Stated more formally, let GP and GQ be process graphs, corresponding to pro-
cesses P and Q, respectively. A relation R between the node sets of GP and GQ is
a strong equivalence between P and Q if the following conditions are satisfied:

(i) The roots of GP and GQ are R-related.


(ii) If pRq and p[a . p’ in GP (i.e., there exists an arc in GP from p to p’
labeled by ‘a’), then there exists a node q’ in GQ, such that q[a . q’
and p’Rq’.
14 PROCESSES

(iii) If pRq and q[a . q’ in GQ, then there exists a node p’ in GP, such
that p[a . p’ and p’Rq’.

Note If in the above definition, condition (iii) is omitted, we say that process P
is a strong preorder of process Q, or process Q is a strong cover of process P.

It is noteworthy that the above concept of “strong cover” of processes cor-


responds to the concept of “weak homomorphism” between automata, as
defined in References 3 and 4.
We use the equality symbol ‘5’ to denote strong equivalence.
The following is an example illustrating strong equivalence:

a;b;$ = a;(b; $ [ ] b;$)


Note that we have already used ‘5’ to indicate that two processes have the
same behavior, which may now be formalized to mean “are strongly
equivalent.”

2.7.2 Observation Equivalence


We now turn to the definition of observation equivalence (cf. Milner (2)). Let
a be any observable event of some process. We call an extension of a any
sequence in i*ai*, where i* is any finite sequence of zero or more i’s.
Two processes are called observation-equivalent if any extension of an
observable event in one process can be matched by some extension of the
same observable event in the other process, and the outcomes are again
observation-equivalent. Furthermore, if two processes are observation-
equivalent, they should remain so after an ‘i’ event occurs in one of them.
This “definition” of observation equivalence can easily be stated formally,
following our above formal definition of strong equivalence. Furthermore, the
preceding definitions of “strong preorder” and “strong cover” are related to
“observational preorder” and “observational cover” in a rather evident way.

Example 2.5 The processes i;a;i;i;b;$ and a;i;b;$ are observation-


equivalent, but are not strongly equivalent.

Example 2.6 Let P1 5 a;(b;$ [ ] c;$) and P2 5 a;b;$ [ ] a;c;$. It is import-


ant to realize that the two processes are not observation-equivalent. Namely, if
both processes perform the action a, P1 changes into b;$ [ ] c;$, whereas
P2 becomes either b;$ or c;$. Thus, the outcomes are no longer obser-
vation-equivalent. On the other hand, the two processes coincide with
respect to their feasible event sequences, which are a, ab, and ac.
Therefore the two processes are trace-equivalent.
2.8 LABELED TRANSITION SYSTEMS (LTSs) 15

Example 2.7 Let P1 5 a;$ [ ] b;$ and P2 5 i;a;$ [ ] b;$. Here P2 may
perform the internal action i, and become a;$. No corresponding action
is possible in P1. In view of the last sentence of our above definition of
observation-equivalence, the two processes are not observation-equivalent.
However, the two processes are again trace-equivalent.

For closely related definitions of observation equivalence, see References 2 and 5.

2.7.3 Some Additional Laws


The following laws “evidently” apply to the choice operator; we use ‘¼’ to
indicate strong equivalence:

Law 2.3: P[]P5P


Law 2.4: P[]Q5Q[]P
Law 2.5: (P [ ] Q) [ ] R 5 P [ ] (Q [ ] R)

2.8 LABELED TRANSITION SYSTEMS (LTSS)

In this section we introduce labeled transition systems (cf. Milner (2)) and
show how they are related to finite state machines as well as to processes.
A Labeled Transition System is a 4-tuple S ¼ (Q,A,T,q0), where

† Q is a finite, nonempty set of states


† A is a finite, nonempty set of labels (denoting actions)
† T (the transition relation) is a subset of Q  A  Q
† q0 is the initial state

A finite, non-deterministic state machine is defined similarly, but there, A is


the set of inputs and outputs.
We now point out our way of describing LTSs. In conformity with CADP
(see Chapter 4), we let Q ¼ {0, 1, . . . , k} and q0 ¼ 0. We will specify an LTS
by listing all elements of its transition relation. Figure 2.4 shows two
examples of LTS specifications.
The above definitions of strong and observation equivalence also apply to
LTSs in the evident sense, with “process” replaced by “state”. We may also
define equivalences between an LTS and a process, as illustrated below.
The LTS2.1 in Fig. 2.4 may be viewed as strongly equivalent to the process
a;b;$. Similarly, we consider the LTS2.2 from Fig. 2.4 to be strongly equiv-
alent to the process a;b;$ [ ] a;c;$. Here state 3 corresponds to $, state 1 to the
process b;$, and state 2 to the process c;$.
16 PROCESSES

Figure 2.4 Labeled transition systems LTS2.1 and LTS2.2.

2.9 PARALLEL OPERATORS

2.9.1 Parallel Composition


There are several ways to compose processes to form a larger process. One
important method is that of parallel composition.
As a simple example, consider the two processes (specifying event
sequences) P 5 a;b;c;$ and Q 5 d;b;e;$. In their parallel composition,
denoted P || Q (using Blot notation), they synchronize (i.e., they
perform simultaneously) on any observable action shared by the two
processes. In the above example, the only shared observable action is
evidently b. Hence the two processes P and Q will perform action b con-
currently, provided both processes are ready to do so. Actions not shared
by the two processes will be performed in P || Q as specified by each
process separately. Thus

P || Q = a;d;b;c;e;$[ ]a;d;b;e;c;$[ ]d;a;b;c;e;$[ ]d;a;b;e;c;$

Note that in the parallel composition of processes, the processes do not


synchronize on the non-observable action i; e.g., a;i;b;$ || i;a;i;b;$ 5
i;a;i;i;b;$. In the next section we provide a formal definition of the Blot
version of the parallel composition operator.

2.9.2 Synchronization Operator || (Blot Version)


Let P and Q be processes and let L denote all the observable events that the two
processes have in common. We define their parallel composition P || Q as follows:

(1) If P[a . P’ and a is not in L, then P k Q[a . P’ k Q.


(2) If Q[b . Q’ and b is not in L, then P k Q[b . P k Q’.
(3) If P[c . P’ and Q[c . Q’, where c is in L (i.e., the event c is observa-
ble and common), then P k Q[c . P’ k Q’.
(4) If P[i . P’, then P k Q[i . P’ k Q.
(5) If Q[i . Q’, then P k Q[i . P k Q’.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
She came back to Kansas City, and a “Star” reporter was sent to
interview her; she asked him to deny this Springfield story, and he
turned in a denial, but not a word of it was published. As a direct
result of this newspaper misrepresentation, Mrs. Stokes was arrested
by the Federal authorities and sentenced to ten years in jail. She tells
me how this trial and sentence were reported, and points out the
obvious motive of the falsifications:
Anything to frighten people away from Socialist meetings! If you want to see
this motive running through the capitalist press of the entire country as a single
thread, come and read the hundreds of editorials on my ten-year sentence. Every
state and every important industrial community is represented. The wording is
almost as if one man, let alone one spirit, had dictated them all.
And here is Judson King, writing to members of Congress:
For your information permit me to state that at the meeting at Poli’s Theatre
Sunday afternoon at which I presided there was no advocacy of anarchy or
violence, no attack upon the American form of government, and no propaganda
that Bolshevism be adopted in our country. The well-nigh unanimous sentiment of
audience and speakers was that American troops be withdrawn and Russia be
permitted to settle her own fate in her own way.
The article in Monday’s “Washington Post” headed, “Urge Red America,” is an
absurd perversion of the truth and a gross violation of journalistic ethics.
Discussions in Congress regarding this meeting, based apparently upon this article,
have proceeded under a misapprehension of facts. Whether any attempt was made
to verify the truth of the article I do not know. No inquiry was made of me.
Mr. King goes on to state that the address of Albert Rhys
Williams at this meeting was read from a typewritten text, and a
carbon copy handed by him to a reporter of the “Washington Post.”
The falsification of Williams’ remarks by the “Post” was therefore
deliberate.
At this same time Max Eastman was touring the country,
addressing enormous meetings. The meeting in Los Angeles was
reported by the “Examiner” as follows:
RADICAL’S TALK BRINGS POLICE

Max Eastman Stops Address When Disgusted Auditors Leave and Officers Arrive
Cutting his lecture short, when many of his auditors left Trinity Auditorium in
disgusted anger, probably saved Max Eastman, editor of a radical Socialist
publication, from a police intervention last night.
Before the speaker had entered far upon his subject, “Hands Off Russia,” his
remarks were deemed so unpatriotic and his unwarranted attack upon the
administration so vitriolic that scores left the auditorium and telephoned the
Federal authorities and the police, denouncing Eastman and demanding his arrest.
Apparently scenting trouble, Eastman effected a sudden diminuendo, his anti-
climax coming when he left the rostrum to conduct a canvassing of his audience for
prospective subscribers to his magazine and purchasers of stock in same. When the
police officers appeared on the scene, nothing of treasonable nor anarchistic
nature was heard.
Eastman’s address contained many statements so preposterous that even the
most gullible refused to believe them. He demanded that Eugene Debs, Thomas J.
Mooney and all I. W. W.’s in jail should be freed and advised his hearers to emulate
the Russian Bolsheviks and rise in revolution.
Only a scant audience heard the address.
As it happens, I do not have to ask the reader to take either my
word or Eastman’s about this meeting. Here is part of a letter written
to Max Ihmsen, managing editor of the “Los Angeles Examiner,” by
Rob Wagner, artist and author of “Film Folk.”
Mar. 2, 1919.
Dear Max Ihmsen:

The other night Mrs. Wagner, Charlie Chaplin and I, seeking light on darkest
Russia, went to hear Max Eastman’s lecture. During what we thought was a very
thoughtful and unimpassioned address, he made the statement that the press of
the country was in a deliberate conspiracy to withhold or color all news from that
country.
We all felt that he was unfair in including all the papers with those notorious
offenders, such as the “Times,” from which one could expect nothing else. But the
next morning we read an account of the lecture in the “Examiner” that was false
from the headline to the final sentence, which said: “Only a scant audience heard
the address.”
The lecture was not broken up by the police; in fact if there were any police
present no one even saw them. The chairman announced that Mr. Eastman would
speak on Russia; then Mr. McBride would tell them about their magazine; and
then at the end Mr. Eastman would answer questions. The program was finished
exactly that way, without the slightest interruption, and to the very sympathetic
applause of some twenty-five hundred auditors.
Nor did Mr. Eastman insult the President. In urging the withdrawal of
American troops from Russia—a policy vigorously urged by Hearst papers—he
simply stated that there was a striking inconsistency between President Wilson’s
words and his deeds; for when the President addressed his memorandum on the
Marmora conference he assured the delegates that America had absolutely no
interest in the internal affairs of Russia, and would not take sides; while at that
moment he was commander-in-chief of an army that was at war with the Russians
on two fronts.
Rob Wagner went on to explain that he wrote this protest “in the
kindliest spirit”; and Mr. Ihmsen in reply expressed his regret, and
promised to investigate the matter. You remember how it was with
the express companies in the old days; they would lose your package,
and promise to “investigate”—which meant that they filed your
complaint away with five hundred thousand others of the same sort.
Six months later I am preparing the manuscript of this book, and I
write to Mr. Ihmsen that I desire to verify every charge I bring
against American Journalism. Will he inform me if he has ever
published a correction of this falsehood? Mr. Ihmsen replies that he
has unfortunately overlooked the matter, but will be glad to publish a
correction now. He does—the very next day! I wonder if this will
seem as funny to the reader as it seems to me. Mr. Ihmsen brands
Max Eastman in the public mind as a coward and a blatherskite, and
for six months he lets that brand remain, though he knows it is
undeserved. But then suddenly he learns that he himself is to be
branded as a character-assassin; and so he makes a quick jump. But
even so, he cannot be really fair. He gave the original story half a
column; he gives the correction two inches of space, in a corner so
remote that I, who read the “Examiner” every morning, do not see it
until he sends me a marked copy!
A month or two after Max Eastman’s lecture came Louise
Bryant, freshly returned from Russia, and gave one of the most
interesting talks I have ever heard; and next morning not a line in
any Los Angeles newspaper! The following evening she spoke again,
and I came upon the platform, and called the attention of the
audience to this case of newspaper suppression, and asked for funds
to get the truth to the people of Los Angeles. Before I had finished
speaking, money began to shower upon the stage, and the total
collection amounted to twelve hundred and forty dollars. I
interviewed the assistant managing editor of the “Los Angeles
Examiner,” and he agreed to publish a report of the meeting, and
allowed me to dictate a column to a reporter—of which he published
two inches! A committee called upon the managing editor of the “Los
Angeles Times,” and this gentleman not only refused to publish a
line, but refused to accept a paid advertisement giving the news;
incidentally he flew into a rage and insulted the ladies of the
committee. The money collected at the meeting was expended upon
an edition of fifty thousand copies of a local radical paper, the “New
Justice,” containing an account of the whole affair; and when an
attempt was made to distribute these papers among the shipyard
workers in the harbor, the distributors were arrested, and the judge
declared that he wished he could get the editors of the paper.
In connection with this meeting, there was a humorous incident
which ought to be mentioned. Among the statements made by Miss
Bryant was that the Bolsheviki had taken Odessa because the French
troops had refused to fight them; several companies had gone over to
the enemy. This statement was published in the “New Justice,” and
was among those which the Los Angeles newspapers refused to
admit to their columns. Louise Bryant had travelled all over the
country making the statement, and almost everywhere the capitalist
press refused to print it. But two months later came an Associated
Press despatch from Paris; the Odessa incident had become the
subject of interpellations in the French parliament—so at last the
news was out that French troops had mutinied when ordered to fight
the Bolsheviki!
Now comest the joke of the matter. To the Associated Press
despatch, the “New York Times” added the following comment:
The account of the mutiny of the seamen on the French Black Sea Fleet, given
by M. Goude in the French Chamber, rationally explains for the first time the
extraordinary events which took place at Odessa on April 8, the day the city was
evacuated by the Allies and by all the population who could get away.
Don’t you think those words, “for the first time,” are funny?
Almost as funny as the story of “Tom Muni” from Petrograd!
And then President Wilson comes to Los Angeles, and there is
held in the largest music auditorium in the city a mass meeting of
two thousand citizens, which unanimously submits to the President a
request for amnesty for political prisoners. The “Los Angeles Times”
gave this meeting not one word. I am invited to address the City Club
of Los Angeles, and I tell them of this failure of the “Times” to report
the news. Whereupon the “Times” starts a campaign to have me put
in jail! I quote its first editorial; they have followed it up, every other
day for a couple of weeks—they are quite determined that I shall go
to jail!
Get the I. W. W. Seditionists! And lock them up. Tight! Right! But why let
Upton Sinclair roam at large? He spits more poison than the cheap skate. It is
villainy to promote anarchy in these ticklish times. Blood will be on the heads of
some of the civic club managers, male and female. It is a crime for them to invite
disloyal speakers to spout for them; just for amusement. The City Club and some of
the women’s clubs have boosted the Red cause. Bolshevism is no toy to play with,
ladies and gentlemen. An “open forum” should not be open to mobocracy and
treason.
As I have said, I know several of the men and women who help
to edit the newspaper in which the above murderous raving is
published. These men and women will read this book, and I now
request the general public to step outside for a few moments, while I
address these editors privately. I speak, not in my own voice, but in
that of an old-time journalist, venerated in his day, John Swinton,
editor of the “New York Tribune.” He is answering, at a banquet of
his fellow-editors, the toast: “An Independent Press”:
There is no such thing In America as an independent press, unless it is in the
country towns.
You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his
honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in
print.
I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest
opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar
salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his
honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright,
to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his
country for his daily bread.
You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an
“Independent Press.”
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the
jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities
and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
PART III
THE REMEDY
CHAPTER LXII
CUTTING THE TIGER’S CLAWS

Every day the chasm between the classes in America grows


wider; every day the class struggle grows more intense. Both sides
become more conscious, more determined—and so the dishonesty of
American Journalism becomes more deliberate, more systematic.
And what is to be done? It must be evident to any sensible man that
the conditions portrayed in this book are intolerable. Mankind will
not consent to be lied to indefinitely.
William Marion Reedy discussed the question ten years ago, and
his solution was pamphleteering. We must return to the custom of
the eighteenth century, printing and circulating large numbers of
leaflets, pamphlets and books. And for the past ten years we have
been doing this; the Socialist party, for example, is a machine for the
circulating of pamphlets and leaflets, and the holding of public
meetings to counteract the knaveries of the capitalist press. There are
innumerable other organizations which serve the same purpose: the
“People’s Council,” the “Civil Liberties Bureau,” the “International
Workers’ Defense League,” the I. W. W. groups, “The Rand School,”
the “People’s College,” the “Young People’s Socialist League,” the
“Intercollegiate Socialist Society.” But, obviously, this can only be a
temporary solution. The workers of the country are in the condition
of a frontier settlement besieged by savage Indians. They defend
themselves with such weapons as they find at hand; but sooner or
later, it is evident, they will organize a regular force, and invade the
woods, and be done with those Indians once for all.
Take the Moyer-Haywood case, the Mooney case, the Ludlow
massacre, the Bisbee deportations; and consider what happens. For
days, for weeks, perhaps for years, the Associated Press and its
thousand newspapers prepare a carefully constructed set of
falsehoods, and twenty or thirty million copies per day of these
falsehoods are sold to the public. Whereupon men and women of
conscience all over the country are driven to protest. They call mass-
meetings, they organize a new league and raise defense funds, print
leaflets and pamphlets and devise a system of house-to-house
distribution, call big strikes and parades of protest; by this
prodigious mass of effort they succeed in conveying some small
portion of the truth to some small portions of the population. Is it
not obvious that society cannot continue indefinitely to get its news
by this wasteful method? One large section of the community
organized to circulate lies, and another large section of the
community organized to refute the lies! We might as well send a
million men out into the desert to dig holes, and then send another
million to fill up the holes. To say that William Marion Reedy, after a
study of our journalistic dishonesty, could find no better solution of
the problem than pamphleteering, is merely to say that bourgeois
thought is bankrupt.
The first remedy to which every good American takes resort is
the law. We pass fifty thousand new laws in America every year, but
still we cling to the faith that the next thousand will “do the
business.” Let us have laws to punish the lying of the press!
I, as a good American, have thought of laws that I would like to
see passed. For instance, a law providing that newspapers shall not
publish an interview with anyone until they have submitted the
interview and had it O.K.’d; or unless they have obtained written
permission to quote the person without such O.K.
Also, a law providing that when any newspaper has made any
false statement concerning an individual, and has had its attention
called to the falsity of this statement, it shall publish a correction of
the statement in the next edition of the publication, and in the same
spot and with the same prominence given to the false statement.
For example, the press sends out a report that the Rev.
Washington Gladden is about to resign his pulpit. His mail is full of
letters from people all over the country, expressing regret. Says Dr.
Gladden:
The trouble with such a report is that you can never get it corrected. I have
done my best to get such correction, but in this I have signally failed. Anything
which discredits a man is “good stuff,” which most newspapers are ready to print,
provided it is not actionable; any correction which is made of such a report is not
so apt to find a place on the wires, and is pretty sure to be blue-pencilled by the
telegraph editors.
It happens, while I am preparing this book for the printer, that I
visit a friend, and mention what I am doing; he says: “There was one
newspaper story which almost caused me to despise you. I wonder
how much truth there was in it.” He explains that he was in Chicago
in the early days of the war, attending a conference of the People’s
Council, and in a Chicago newspaper he read that I had denounced
Emma Goldman to the government, and had turned over some of her
private letters to the government.
I tell my friend what happened. An insane man had threatened
my life, and I had applied to the Los Angeles police department for
permission to carry a revolver. They promised to keep secret my
application, but within half an hour there were two newspaper
reporters after me. I refused to talk about the matter; so, as usual,
they made up a story. It happened that I had given to the chief of
detectives what information I had as to the insane man’s past
conduct; among other things, that he had caused a disturbance at a
meeting of Emma Goldman’s. That was the way her name came in,
and the only way. I barely know Emma Goldman, having met her
twice at public meetings; I knew nothing whatever about her
activities at this time, and had no letters from her in my possession. I
now have one, for immediately I wrote to her to say that the
published story was false, and she replied that I need not have
worried; she had known it was false.
Now, I sent a denial of that story to every newspaper in Los
Angeles, and also to the Associated Press; but my denial went into
the waste-basket. And why? At this time the capitalist press was
engaged in hounding Emma Goldman to prison; the lie was useful to
the hounders, so it stood, in spite of all my protests.
Obviously enough, here is a gross injustice. Common sense
dictates a law that any newspaper which prints a false statement
shall be required to give equal prominence to a correction. The law
should provide that upon publication of any false report, and failure
to correct it immediately upon receipt of notice, the injured party
should have the right to collect a fixed sum from the newspaper—five
or ten thousand dollars at least. At present, you understand, the sum
has to be fixed by the jury, and the damages have to be proven. If the
“Los Angeles Times” calls Upton Sinclair an “Anarchist writer,” if the
“Chicago Tribune” calls Henry Ford an “Anarchist,” it is up to the
plaintiffs to prove just how and to what extent they have been
damaged. The newspaper has the right to question their character
and reputation, to examine them about every detail of their lives and
opinions. Was Upton Sinclair justified in divorcing his wife? Does
Henry Ford know how to read? If not, then it is all right to call them
“Anarchists.”
Also there is the problem of the Associated Press, the most
powerful and most sinister monopoly in America. Certainly there will
be no freedom in America, neither journalistic freedom nor political
freedom nor industrial freedom, until the monopoly of the
Associated Press is broken; until the distributing of the news to
American newspapers is declared a public utility, under public
control; until anyone who wishes to publish a newspaper in any
American city or town may receive the Associated Press service
without any formality whatever, save the filing of an application and
the payment of a fee to cover the cost of the service. Proceedings to
establish this principle were begun a year ago by Hearst before the
Federal Trade Commission. Hearst had been barred from getting the
“A. P.” franchise in certain cities, and I venture to guess that his
purpose was to frighten his enemies into letting him have what he
wanted. At any rate, he found himself suddenly able to buy the
franchises, so he dropped his proceedings against the “A. P.” The
attorney in this case was Samuel Untermyer, who writes me about
the issue as follows:
If the prevailing opinion is right, the monopoly of the Associated Press over
the news of the world is complete. Unless the courts will hold, as I think they will,
when the question comes before them, that news is a public utility; that the
Associated Press is engaged in interstate commerce, using the cables, telegraph
lines and telephones and that it is, therefore, bound to furnish its service on equal
terms to all who choose to pay for it. If that is not the law, it should be the law, and
can readily be made the law by Federal legislation. Until this is done, the monopoly
of the Associated Press will continue intolerable.
I have fought it for years and thus far in vain, but I shall continue to fight until
it is broken. The little clique that controls the Associated Press is in turn under the
complete domination of a few of the most narrow-minded and reactionary of the
great capitalists of the country. If our Government fails to stand the strain of these
terrible times and if revolution and bloodshed follow—which God forbid!—the
responsibility will rest at the doors of men like Gary and lawbreakers like the U. S.
Steel Company who lack all vision and sense of justice.
Also there should be a law forbidding any newspaper to fake
telegraph or cable dispatches. At present, this is a universal custom
in newspaper offices; the most respectable papers do it continually.
They clip an item from some other newspaper, rewrite it, and put it
under a “telegraphic headline.” They will take the contents of some
letter that comes to the office, and write it up under a “London date-
line.” They will write their own political propaganda, and represent it
as having come by telegraph from a special correspondent in
Washington or New York. In “Harper’s Weekly” for October 9, 1915,
there was published an article, “At the Front with Willie Hearst.” Mr.
Hearst’s “Universal News Bureau” was shown to be selling news all
over the country, purporting to come from “more than eighty
correspondents, many of them of world-wide fame.” Every day, if you
read this “Universal Service,” you became familiar with the names of
Hearst correspondents in London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin,
Petrograd. All these correspondents were imaginary persons; all this
news was written in the Hearst offices in New York, being a re-hash
for American afternoon papers of the news of the London morning
papers. This is obvious fraud, and the law should bar it, precisely as
it bars misbranded maple syrup and olive oil and strawberry jam.
Such laws would help; and I could suggest others that would
help; nevertheless, the urging of such laws is not the purpose of this
book. It is a problem of cutting the claws of a tiger. The first thing
you have to do is to catch your tiger; and when I undertake the hard
and dangerous job of invading a jungle and catching a tiger and
chaining him down, am I going to be content with cutting off the
sharpest points of the beast’s claws, and maybe pulling one or two of
his teeth? I am not!
CHAPTER LXIII
THE MENTAL MUNITION-FACTORY

A solution that comes at once to mind is state-owned or


municipal-owned newspapers. This is the orthodox Socialist
solution, and is also being advocated by William Jennings Bryan.
Fortunately, we do not have to take his theories, or anyone’s
theories; we have facts—the experience of Los Angeles with its public
paper, the “Municipal News,” which was an entire success. I inquire
of the editor of the paper, Frank E. Wolfe, and he writes:
The “Municipal News”? There’s a rich story buried there. It was established by
an initiative ordinance, and had an ample appropriation. It was launched in the
stream with engines going full steam ahead. Its success was instantaneous. Free
distribution; immense circulation; choked with high-class, high-rate advertising;
well edited, and it was clean and immensely popular.
Otis said: “Every dollar that damned socialistic thing gets is a dollar out of the
Times’ till.” Every publisher in the city re-echoed, and the fight was on. The chief
thing that rankled, however, was the outgrowth of a clause in the ordinance which
gave to each political party polling a three per cent vote a column in each issue for
whatsoever purpose it might be used. The Socialist Labor Party nosed out the
Prohibitionists by a fluke. The Socialists had a big margin in the preceding
elections, so the Reds had two columns, and they were quick to seize the
opportunity for propaganda. The Goo-goos, who had always stoutly denied they
were a political party, came forward and claimed space, and the merry war was on.
Those two columns for Socialist propaganda were the real cause for the daily
onslaught of the painted ladies of Broadway (newspaper district of Los Angeles).
There were three morning and three evening papers. Six times a day they whined,
barked, yelped and snapped at the heels of the “Municipal News.” Never were more
lies poured out from the mouths of these mothers of falsehood. The little, weakly
whelps of the pornographic press took up the hue and cry, and Blanche,
Sweetheart and Tray were on the trail. Advertisers were cajoled, browbeaten and
blackmailed, until nearly all left the paper. The “News” was manned by a picked
staff of the best newspaper men on the coast. It was clean, well edited, and gave
both sides to all controversies—using the parallel column system. It covered the
news of the municipality better than any paper had ever covered it. It was weak
and ineffective editorially, for the policy was to print a newspaper. We did not
indulge in a clothes-line quarrel—did not fight back.
The “News” died under the axe one year from its birth. They used the initiative
to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we foresaw the end.
The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world.
Everywhere I have gone I have been asked about it, by people who never dreamed I
had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for reaction, but its effect
will not die. Some day the idea will prevail. Then I might want to go back into the
“game.”
City-owned newspapers are part of the solution, but not the
whole part. As a Socialist, I advocate public ownership of the
instruments and means of production; but I do not rely entirely upon
that method where intellectual matters are concerned. I would have
the state make all the steel and coal and oil, the shoes and matches
and sugar; I would have it do the distributing of newspapers, and
perhaps even the printing; but for the editing of the newspapers I
cast about for a method of control that allows free play to the
development of initiative and the expression of personality.
In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many
groups and associations, publishing their own papers, and if you do
not like the papers which these groups give you, you can form a
group of your own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor,
you will have plenty of money, and will be surrounded by other free
and independent individuals, also receiving the full product of their
labor, and accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas.
The difference is that today the world’s resources are in the hands of
a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The
problem of transferring such power to the people must be studied as
the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the
press.
Fortunately there are parts of America in which the people have
kept at least a part of their economic independence, and have gone
ahead to solve the problem of the “kept” press in true American
fashion—that is, by organizing and starting honest newspapers for
themselves. The editor of the “Nonpartisan Leader,” Oliver S. Morris,
has kindly written for me an account of the experiences of the
Nonpartisan League, which I summarize as follows:
The League commenced organization work early in 1915 in
North Dakota. By the summer of the next year it had forty thousand
members, yet no newspaper in the state had given, even as news, a
fair account of the League’s purposes. Every daily paper in the state
was filled with “gross misinformation and absurd lies.” So the League
started a little weekly paper of its own. With this single weekly,
against the entire daily press of the state, it swept the primaries in
June, 1916.
Then the League decided to have a daily paper. The “Courier-
News” of Fargo had been for sale, but the owners would not sell to
the League. The League went ahead to start a new paper, actually
buying machinery and taking subscriptions; then the “Courier-News”
decided to sell, and its circulation under League ownership now
exceeds the total population of Fargo.
The League at present has weekly papers in seven states, with a
total circulation of two hundred thousand, and another weekly, the
“Nonpartisan Leader,” published in St. Paul, with a circulation of two
hundred and fifty thousand. It is starting co-operative country
weekly papers, supervising their editorial policy and furnishing them
news and editorial service; over one hundred of these weekly papers
are already going. There is another League daily in Grand Forks,
North Dakota, and one at Nampa, Idaho. Finally, the League is going
ahead on its biggest venture, the establishment of a daily in
Minneapolis. This paper is to be capitalized at a million dollars, and
the stock is being sold to farmer and labor organizations throughout
the state. Says Mr. Morris: “Many wealthy professional and business
men, disgusted with the controlled press, have purchased stock, and
are warm boosters for the League publications.” Also he says:
One of the chief results of the establishment of a League press is a different
attitude on the part of many existing papers. With competition in the field, many
publishers who have hitherto been biased and unfair have been forced to change
their tactics. Few of these papers have gone over to the League side of political and
economic questions, but they have been forced at least to print fair news reports on
both sides of the question in their news columns, reserving their opposition to the
movement for their editorial columns. That, of course, is fair enough. The menace
of the controlled press in America is due to the fact that as a rule this press does
not confine its arguments and opposition to the editorial columns, but uses the
news columns for propaganda, and, failing to print the news, printing only a part
of it, distorting it or actually lying, sways opinion through the news columns.
Such is the procedure in places where Americans are free. But
what about our crowded cities, with their slum populations, speaking
forty different languages, illiterate, unorganized, and dumb? Even in
these cities there have been efforts made to start newspapers in the
interest of the people. I know few more heroic stories than the
twenty-year struggle to establish and maintain the “New York Call.”
It began as a weekly, “The Worker.” Even that took endless
campaigns of begging, and night labor of devoted men and women
who earned their livings by day-time labor under the cruel capitalist
grind. At last they managed to raise funds to start a daily, and then
for ten years it was an endless struggle with debt and starvation. It
was a lucky week when the “New York Call” had money enough to
pay its printing force; the reporters and editors would sometimes
have to wait for months. A good part of the space in the paper had to
be devoted to ingenious begging.
The same attempt was made in Chicago, and there bad
management and factional quarrels brought a disastrous failure. At
the time of writing, there are Socialist dailies in Butte, in Seattle, and
in Milwaukee, also a few foreign-language Socialist dailies. There are
numerous weeklies and monthlies; but these, of course, do not take
the place of newspapers, they are merely a way of pamphleteering.
The people read falsehoods all week or all month, and then at last
they get what portion of the truth the “Appeal to Reason” or the
“Nation” or the “Liberator” or “Pearson’s” can find room for. In the
meantime the average newspaper reader has had his whole
psychology made of lies, so that he cannot believe the truth when he
sees it.
There are a few millionaires in America who have liberal
tendencies. They have been willing to finance reform campaigns, and
in great emergencies to give the facts to the people; they have been
willing now and then to back radical magazines, and even to publish
them. But—I state the fact, without trying to explain it—there has not
yet appeared in America a millionaire willing to found and maintain
a fighting daily paper for the abolition of exploitation. I have myself
put the proposition before several rich men. I have even known of
cases where promises were made, and plans drawn up. My friend
Gaylord Wilshire intended to do it with the proceeds of his gold-
mine, but the gold-mine has taken long to develop. I had hopes that
Henry Ford would do it, when I read of his purchase of the
“Dearborn Independent.” I urged the matter upon him with all the
eloquence I could muster; he said he meant to do it, but I have my
fears. The trouble is his ignorance; he really does not know about the
world in which he finds himself, and so far the intellectual value of
the “Dearborn Independent” has been close to zero.
So our slum proletariat is left to feed upon the garbage of yellow
journalism. Year by year the cost of living increases, and wages, if
they move at all, move laggingly, and after desperate and embittered
strife. In the midst of this strife the proletariat learns its lessons; it
learns to know the clubs of policemen and the bayonets and
machine-guns of soldiers; it learns to know capitalist politicians and
capitalist judges; also it learns to know Capitalist Journalism!
Wherever in America the workers organize and strike for a small
portion of their rights, they come out of the experience with a bitter
and abiding hatred of the press. I have shown you what happened in
Colorado; in West Virginia; in Paterson, New Jersey; in Calumet,
Michigan; in Bisbee, Arizona; in Seattle, Washington. I could show
you the same thing happening in every industrial center in America.
The workers have come to realize the part which the newspapers
play; they have come to know the newspapers as the crux of the
argument, the key to the treasure-chamber. A modern newspaper,
seen from the point of view of the workers, is a gigantic munition-
factory, in which the propertied class manufactures mental bombs
and gas-shells for the annihilation of its enemies. And just as in war
sometimes the strategy is determined by the location of great
munition-factories and depots, so the class-struggle comes to center
about newspaper offices. In every great city of Europe where the
revolution took place, the first move of the rebels was to seize these
offices, and the first move of the reactionaries was to get them back.
We saw machine-guns mounted in the windows of newspaper-
offices, sharp-shooters firing from the roofs, soldiers in the streets
replying with shrapnel. It is worth noting that wherever the
revolutionists were able to take and hold the newspapers, they
maintained their revolution; where the newspapers were retaken by
the reactionaries, the revolution failed.
In Petrograd the “Little Gazette,” organ of the “Black Hundreds,”
became the “Red Gazette,” and has remained the “Red Gazette.” The
official military organ, the “Army and Fleet,” became the “Red Army
and Fleet.” The “Will of Russia,” organ of Protopopov, last premier of
the Tsar, became the “Pravda,” which means “Truth.” In Berlin, on
the other hand, the “Kreuz-Zeitung,” organ of black magic and
reaction, became for a few days “Die Rothe Fahne,” the “Red Flag”;
but, alas, it went back to the “Kreuz-Zeitung” again!
Will it come this way in America? Shall we see mobs storming
the offices of the “New York Times” and “World,” the “Chicago
Tribune,” the “Los Angeles Times”? It depends entirely upon the
extent to which these capitalist newspapers continue to infuriate the
workers, and to suppress working-class propaganda with the help of
subservient government officials. I personally am not calling for
violent revolution; I still hope for the survival of the American
system of government. But I point out to the owners and managers of
our great capitalist news-organs the peril in which they place
themselves, by their system of organized lying about the radical
movement. It is not only the fury of resentment they awaken in the
hearts of class-conscious workingmen and women; it is the condition
of unstable equilibrium which they set up in society, by the mass of
truth they suppress. Today every class-conscious workingman carries
about with him as his leading thought, that if only he and his fellows
could get possession of the means of news-distribution, could take
the printing-offices and hold them for ten days, they could end
forever the power of Capitalism, they could make safe the Co-
operative Commonwealth in America.
I say ten days, and I do not speak loosely. Just imagine if the
newspapers of America were to print the truth for ten days! The truth
about poverty, and the causes of poverty; the truth about corruption
in politics and in all branches of government, in Journalism, and
throughout the business world; the truth about profiteering and
exploitation, about the banking graft, the plundering of the railroads,
the colossal gains of the Beef Trust and the Steel Trust and the Oil
Trust and their hundreds of subsidiary organizations; the truth about
conditions in industry, the suppression of labor-revolts and the
corrupting of labor movements; above all, the truth about the
possibilities of production by modern machinery, the fact that, by
abolishing production for profit and substituting production for use,
it would be possible to provide abundance for all by two or three
hours’ work a day! I say that if all this legitimate truth could be
placed before the American people for ten successive days, instead of
the mess of triviality, scandal, crime and sensation, doctored news
and political dope, prejudiced editorials and sordid and vulgar
advertisements upon which the American people are now fed—I say
that the world would be transformed, and Industrial Democracy
would be safe. Most of our newspaper proprietors know this as well
as I do; so, when they read of the seizing of newspaper offices in
Europe, they experience cold chills, and one great newspaper in
Chicago has already purchased half a dozen machine-guns and
stored them away in its cellar!
For twenty years I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of
industrial America; pleading for kindness to our laboring-classes,
pleading for common honesty and truth-telling, so that we might
choose our path wisely, and move by peaceful steps into the new
industrial order. I have seen my pleas ignored and my influence
destroyed, and now I see the stubborn pride and insane avarice of
our money-masters driving us straight to the precipice of revolution.
What shall I do? What can I do—save to cry out one last warning in
this last fateful hour? The time is almost here—and ignorance,
falsehood, cruelty, greed and lust of power were never stronger in the
hearts of any ruling class in history than they are in those who
constitute the Invisible Government of America today.
CHAPTER LXIV
THE PROBLEM OF THE REPORTER

One important line of attack upon Capitalist Journalism


occurred to me some five years ago, after the Colorado coal-strike. I
have saved this story, because it points so clearly the method I wish
to advocate. You will find the story in “Harper’s Weekly” for July 25,
1914; “Hearst-Made War News,” by Isaac Russell.
You remember how Hearst “made” the war with Spain. Sixteen
years later, in 1914, Hearst was busy “making” another war, this time
with Mexico. President Wilson, trying to avoid war, had arranged for
arbitration of the difficulty between Mexico and the United States by
delegates from Argentine, Brazil and Chile. This was the Niagara
Conference, and to it the “New York American” sent an honest
reporter. It did this, not through oversight, but because the usual run
of Hearst reporters had found themselves unable to get any
information whatever. One Mexican delegate had taken the card of a
Hearst reporter, torn it to pieces, and thrown the pieces into the
reporter’s face. The delegates for the United States refused to talk to
the Hearst representatives, the other newspaper-men refused to have
anything to do with them. So the managing editor of the “New York
American” selected Mr. Roscoe Conklin Mitchell, a man known to be
honest.
Mr. Mitchell came to Niagara, and got the news—to the effect
that all was going well at the conference. He sent a dispatch to that
effect, and the “New York American” did not publish this dispatch.
Day by day Mr. Mitchell sent dispatches, describing how all was
going well at the conference; and the “American,” which was
determined that the Conference should fail, doctored these
dispatches and wrote in false matter. Mr. Mitchell had to explain to
the delegates and to the other reporters how he was being treated by
his home office. On two occasions Mr. Mitchell forced the
“American” to send up another man to write the kind of poisoned
falsehoods it wanted; and on each occasion these men were forced to
leave, because no one would have anything to do with them, they
could get no information. Finally, in the midst of Mr. Mitchell’s
dispatches, the “New York American” inserted a grand and
wonderful “scoop”: “President Carranza’s Confidential Message
to the Mediators.” Mr. Mitchell had sent no such dispatch, and
upon inquiry he learned that the document was a fake; no such
“confidential message” had been received from President Carranza.
So Mr. Mitchell wired his resignation to the “New York American.”
The managing editor of the “American” protested. “Please be
good soldier and good boy,” he telegraphed. Again he telegraphed:
“Come home comfortably, be philosophical. Good soldiers are
patient, even if superior officers make mistakes. Be resigned without
resigning.” When the news of Mitchell’s resignation reached the
other reporters, they formed an impromptu committee and rushed in
automobiles to his hotel to congratulate him. The American
delegates to the convention held a reception, during which the head
of the delegation made to Mr. Mitchell a speech of congratulation.
Summing up the story, Isaac Russell puts this question to you, the
reader: Will you leave it to the men on the firing line, the reporters,
to fight out alone the question of whether you are to receive accurate
information concerning what is going on in the world? Or will you
help to find means whereby both you and your agent, the reporter,
may be less at the mercy of the unscrupulous publisher, who finds
that lying and misrepresentation serve his personal ends?
Isaac Russell, you recall, was the reporter for the “New York
Times” who had stood by me through the struggle over the Colorado
coal-strike. This struggle was just over, and both Russell and I were
sick and sore. Russell was fighting with his editors day by day—they
objected to his having written this “Hearst-made War News,” by the
way, and took the first opportunity thereafter to get rid of him.
Russell had word of an impending break between Amos Pinchot and
Theodore Roosevelt, and wrote it up. Gifford Pinchot, brother of
Amos, made a furious denial, whereupon the “Times” fired Russell.
But very soon afterwards Amos Pinchot broke with Theodore
Roosevelt!
Russell and I talked over the problem of the reporter and the
truth. Must a reporter be a cringing wretch, or else a man of honor in
search of a job? Might not a reporter be a member of an honored
profession, having its own standards, its sense of duty to the public?
Obviously, the first trouble is that in his economic status the reporter
is a sweated wage slave. If reporting is to become a profession, the
reporters must organize, and have power to fix, not merely their
wage-scale, but also their ethical code. I wrote an article calling for a
“reporters’ union,” and Russell began to agitate among New York
newspaper-men for this idea, which has now spread all over the
country.
What would be the effect upon news-writing of a reporters’
union? What assurance have we that reporters would be better than
owners? Well, in the first place, reporters are young men, and
owners are nearly always old men; so in the newspaper-world you
have what you have in the world of finance, of diplomacy, of politics
and government—a “league of the old men,” giving orders to the
young men, holding the young men down. The old men own most of
the property, the young men own little of the property; so control by
old men is property control, while control by young men would be
control by human beings.
I have met some newspaper reporters who were drunken
scoundrels. I have met some who were as cruel and unscrupulous as
the interests they served. But the majority of newspaper reporters
are decent men, who hate the work they do, and would gladly do
better if it were possible. I feel sure that very few of the falsehoods
about Helicon Hall would have been published if the reporters who
accepted our hospitality had been free to write what they really
thought about us. I know that throughout our “Broadway
demonstration” a majority of the reporters were on our side. They
took us into their confidence about what was going on in their
newspaper offices; they went out of their way to give us counsel.
Again and again they came to my wife, to plead that our mourning
“stunt” was “petering-out,” and could we not think up some way to
hold the attention of the public? Would not my wife at least rescind
her request that they omit descriptions of that white military cape?
After the last assault upon the street speakers in Tarrytown, it was a
reporter who warned my wife that the situation was getting out of
hand; the authorities would not listen to reason, there was going to
be violence, and she had better persuade me to withdraw.
I have before me a letter from C. E. S. Wood, poet and lawyer:
You doubtless know more newspaper men than I do, but I know a great many
—fine fellows personally; themselves writhing in the detestable position of moral
bandits, the disgrace of which they feel as keenly as any, and yet economic
determinism keeps them there. They are in a trap. They are behind the bars, and as
the thief said to Talleyrand, or some minister of France, “One must live.” I know of
no other profession that deliberately trains its neophytes to lying and dishonor,
which makes it a part of the professional obligation to ruin man or woman by
deliberate lies; which never honestly confesses a mistake, and never has the
chivalry to praise an adversary.
And again, William Marion Reedy:
To one who has lived all his life in cities, to one who has spent most of his days
and nights with the men who write the great daily papers of the cities, it is perfectly
evident that ninety out of one hundred editorial writers on the press today are men
who are in intellectual and sympathetic revolt against present-day conditions. You
will find the average editorial writer a Socialist, and as for the reporter, he is most
likely to be an Anarchist. The reason of this is plain enough. The men who make
the newspapers are behind the scenes—they see the workings of the wires—they
note the demagogy of politicians, they are familiar with the ramifications by which
the public service corporations control the old parties down to the smallest offices,
and even at times finance reform movements, which always stop at the election of
some respectable figurehead or dummy, but never proceed to any attack upon the
fundamental evils of our social and economic system. It is my firm belief that were
it not for the capitalists at the head of the great daily newspapers, if it were possible
for the men who write the news and the editorials of all the newspapers in the
United States, to take absolute charge of their publications and print the news
exactly as they see it, and write their views exactly as they feel them, for a space of
three days, there would be such a revolution in the United States of America as
would put that of France to shame. The only possible reason why this might not
occur is that the editorial writers and reporters actually believe in nothing—not
even in the various remedies, rational or wild-eyed, which occasionally, in private,
they proclaim.
And here is another letter, written by Ralph Bayes, for many
years city editor of the “Los Angeles Record,” and now laid up in a
sanitarium with tuberculosis.
I wonder as you gallop gaily along the way, throwing rocks in gypsy-like
abandon at the starched and frilled little children of privilege—I wonder whether
you will give your readers just one glimpse of the tragedies that are the lives of the
men hired by the system to do the work you condemn. It isn’t merely that we
journalists must prostitute our own minds and bodies in answer to the call of that
inexorable tyrant, our collective belly. Every man who toils and sweats for a wage is
perforce doing the same thing. The bitterness of our portion is this precisely: that
we are hired poisoners, whose lot it is to kill the things we love most. To kill them,
not as bold buccaneers in a stand-up fight, but to slay them artfully, insidiously,
with a half-true headline or a part suppression of fact. In my ten years of
experience on various sheets as reporter, editor and Associated Press
representative, I have come to know the masses with whom I had to deal. Their
intellects were the pawns with which I must learn to play the editorial game. I
knew for instance, sitting at my desk, just how many extra papers I could sell with
a scare-line on a police scandal. I knew to how many men on the street the filthy
details of some married woman’s shame would prove a lure to buy. And as I
watched the circulation rise or fall, day by day, like a huge beating pulse, I became
familiar, somewhat, with the mental processes of the average human animal. It
was my tragedy, as it is the tragedy of the majority of my fellows, that this
knowledge, acquired always at a tremendous cost of our life’s energies, must be
used not for the uplift, but for the further enslavement, the drugging of the minds
of men. How many times have I sat at my desk, and in apparently heartless
fashion, cut the big truth out of the stuff that honest reporters wrote. Sometimes
there were other moments in my life, as in the lives of the rest of my kind, when
there were opportunities for sly sabotage—when we thought by the ridiculous
speciousness of our alleged facts, to make the pseudo-truths which we pretended
to propound stand forth in their gaunt shamelessness for the things they actually
were. Do you remember Harwood, of the “Los Angeles Times”? If I were only with
you now, I could point out to you in that daily concatenation of lies, a few truths
about things, peering covertly through the mass of corruption, and seeming almost
to be holding their figurative noses in disgust. How we used to chuckle when he
would succeed in passing a sly sentence—a word—over the sleepy night editor at
the desk! Poor intellectual Pierrots that we were! Literary Pantaloons!
But out of the tragedy of my own experience, and out of the tragedies of the
experiences of the fellows I have known, I can glimpse a great light ahead. For I’m
an optimist, you see. I was talking the other day to the editor of one of the sheets
which poison public opinion in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a thoroughly fine, and
likable chap, but I had always known him for an ultra-conservative—a kept man
entirely. The conversation drifted to Russia, and to my utter astonishment he quite
frankly, but confidentially, told me that he didn’t believe a word of the dispatches
put forth by the Associated Press—the Associated Press which hitherto had been
Almighty God to him. I glanced at him curiously, and then: “You’re not a radical?”
I said, dubiously. “I don’t know what I am,” he replied. “I’ve lost my perspective
and I haven’t anchored to any economic philosophy as yet, but sometimes my
thoughts are so bitter that I’m afraid of them. I’ve just seen a man sent to jail for
twenty days,” he continued. “He had been in town but half an hour, and his only
crime was that he couldn’t obtain work and that he had run out of money. God,” he
said, “some day I may be that man. I feel his feelings now, and I must hide them or
lose my job.” Poor fellow, his wife is dying of tuberculosis, and he is almost
distracted with the burden of his financial troubles.
It was just another journalistic tragedy I had seen, but joy burst in upon me as
I listened to him talk. “Things aren’t so bad after all,” I thought, “for the press, at
least, isn’t any more rotten or venal than the rest of the system.” In the editorial
rooms of the country there are good fellows and true, sheer tired of the daily
assassination in which they participate. Their fine delusions are spent. Their faith
in the old is waning. And when the big day comes, I think you will find the press
full ripe—riper perhaps than most of our institutions—for the change.
On page 149 I stated that the publisher of the “New York Times”
gave a dinner to his staff, and my friend, Isaac Russell, corrected me,
saying: “WE REPORTERS PAID FOR THAT DINNER.” Now let me
give you another glimpse into a reporter’s soul:
I can understand it now. We were trying to get together in an association, but
the big bosses always got in, and Mr. Ochs always came TO OUR DINNER, and
always made the principal speech, and always dismissed the gathering after
vaudeville stunts by “old vets.” I remember that at that dinner I PAID, but sat away
at the foot of a horseshoe table, and the BIG GUNS of the “Times” all sat around
the center of the horseshoe, and the big guns thundered and sent us away—me
boiling, that we writers had to sit mute and dumb at our own dinner, and could
never talk over our affairs—the bosses rushed so to every gathering we planned.
I wish you could print the menu card for that dinner—the illustration on the
cover. I kept it as the most humiliating example I ever saw of the status of the
news-writer.... The illustration showed Adolph S. Ochs as a man with his coat off
wielding a big sledgehammer. He was knocking one of those machines where you
send the ball away up in the air, and get a cigar if the bell rings at the top of the
column. Well, a little figure stood behind the redoubtable plutocratic owner of the
“Times.” This little figure was labeled “THE STAFF.”

“STAFF” WAS FLUNKEYING IT FOR OCHS—holding the great man’s hat and
coat, if you will—while he hit the circulation ball a wallop!
CHAPTER LXV
THE PRESS SET FREE

Some years ago Allan Benson told me of his troubles as an


honest journalist; I asked him to repeat them for this book, and he
answered:
I doubt if my experiences as a daily newspaper editor would serve your
purpose. When I was a daily editor I edited. I printed what I pleased. If I could not
do so, I resigned. I didn’t resign with a bank account to fall back upon—I resigned
broke.
I am sorry that I struck my friend Benson in an
uncommunicative mood. It doesn’t in the least interfere with my
thesis to learn that some editors resign; it is plain enough to the
dullest mind that it doesn’t help the public when an honest man
resigns, and a rogue or a lickspittle takes his place.
I am not one of those narrow radicals who believe that the
pocket-nerve of the workers is the only nerve, or even the principal
nerve, by which they will be moved to action. I know that the
conscience of newspaper men is struggling all the time. Now and
then I come on a case of truth-telling in a capitalist newspaper,
which cannot be explained by any selfish, competitive motive. What
does it mean? If you could go inside that office, you would find some
man risking the bread that goes into his children’s mouths, the shoes
that go onto their feet, in order that the knavery of Capitalist
Journalism may be a little less knavish; going to his boss and laying
down the law: “I won’t stand for that. If that goes in, I go out.” As a
rule, alas, he goes out—and this reduces the inclination of others to
fight for honesty in the news.
One purpose of this book is to advocate a union of newspaper
workers, so that they may make their demands as an organization,
and not as helpless individuals. Events move fast these days; while I
write, I learn that there is already a “News-Writers’ Union” in
Boston, and one in New Haven; there is one being formed in Omaha,
one in Louisville, one in Seattle, one in San Francisco. In Louisville
the “Courier-Journal” and “Times” served notice on their staff that
joining the union would automatically constitute resignation. In San
Francisco, I am told by an editor of that city, the movement “was
carried through swiftly and silently at the start, the evening papers
being one hundred per cent organized, the morning papers about
fifty per cent.” Then the publishers got wind of it, and held a secret
meeting in the St. Francis Hotel. “That fearless backer of organized
labor and the rights of the working classes, to wit: William Randolph
Hearst, preferred to carry out his great program of betterment
without consulting his handmaidens and bondmen.” The
“Chronicle,” the paper of “Mike” De Young, took the same stand; so—
Upon the morning after the meeting every man on both papers who had
signed the charter roll of the proposed association was told to recant with bended
knee, or to go forth and earn his bread with a pick and shovel. Some did and some
did not—all honor to the latter.... It is certain that the publishers of the morning
papers will fight to the last ditch.
My informant goes on to tell about his own position. You
remember the immortal utterance of President Eliot of Harvard, that
the true “American hero” of our time is the “scab.” How does this
true “American hero” feel about himself? Listen:
And I? Well, old man, I somewhat shamefully admit that I am at present
guarding my bread and butter, and looking to the future with one eye on the boss’s
and my own opportunities, and in my heart damning the conditions that make me
an undoubted renegade. I am drawing a little better than forty per, am in the best
of standing, being now —— and with the possibility of being its head shortly, and
with certain advancement coming in both pay and rating. Now what the deuce?
Shall I tell Polly to support us and get in on the big game, or shall I eat my bitter
bread?...
I do know this, that there is going to be no present big success of the union
movement, that whoever joins it too prominently is going to fight the owners for
the rest of his life, and that the union can do me myself no good at all from any
standpoint.
You will remember that in my story of the “Los Angeles Times” I
mentioned a young reporter, Bob Harwood, who had told me of the
“Times” knaveries. Harwood is now in San Francisco, where you may
have another glimpse of him.
Bob told ’em all to go to hell, and is now organizing actively. There is an
addition coming to the Harwood family shortly. Why comment further?
And then, let us see what is happening on the other side of the
continent. In New Haven the “News-Writers’ Union” goes on strike,
and while they are on strike, they publish a paper of their own! In
Boston the “News-Writers’ Union” declares a strike, and wins all
demands. Incidentally they learn—if they do not know it already—
that the newspapers of Boston do not publish the news! They do not
publish the news about the News-Writers’ strike; when the strike is
settled, on the basis of recognition of the union, not a single Boston
newspaper publishes the terms of the settlement!
In every union there is always a little group of radicals, occupied
with pointing out to the men the social significance of their labor, the
duty they owe to the working-class, and to society as a whole. So
before long we shall see the News-Writers’ Union of Boston taking up
the task of forcing the Boston newspapers to print the truth. We shall
see the News-Writers’ Union taking up the question: Shall the
“Boston Evening Transcript” permit its news-columns to be edited by
the gas company, and by “Harvard Beer, 1,000 Pure”? We shall see
the union at least bringing these facts to public attention, so that the
“Transcript” can no longer pose as a respectable newspaper.
I quote one paragraph more from my San Francisco letter:
All three evening papers, I am told, are one hundred per cent organized; a
charter is on the way from the I. T. U. and the movement has the full backing—or is
promised the full backing—of the A. F. of L. and the local labor organizations. Just
what that is worth is yet to be learned.
This man, you see, is groping his way. He doesn’t know what the
backing of organized labor is worth. But the newspaper-men of
Boston found out; they won because the type-setters and the
pressmen stood by them. And the New York actors won because the
musicians and the stage-hands stood by them. And this is the biggest
thing about the whole movement—the fact that workers of hand and
brain are uniting and preparing to take possession of the world. One
purpose of this book is to urge a hand-and-brain union in the
newspaper field; to urge that the news-writers shall combine with the
pressmen and type-setters and the truckmen—one organization of all
men and women who write, print and distribute news, to take control
of their own labor, and see to it that the newspapers serve public
interests and not private interests.
What I ask at the very outset is a representative of the News-
Writers’ Union, acting as one of the copy-readers of every
newspaper. This man will say, in the name of his organization: “That
is a lie; it shall not go in. This news-item is colored to favor the
railroad interests; it must be rewritten. Tonight there is a mass-
meeting of labor to protest against intervention in Russia. That
meeting is worth a column.” Such demands of the copy-reader will, if
challenged, be brought before a committee of the workers of the
paper—the workers both of hand and brain. If any demand is not
complied with, the paper will not appear next day. Do you think that
lying about the labor movement would continue under such
conditions?
I recognize the rights of the general public in the determining of
news. I should wish to see a government representative sitting in all
councils where newspaper policy is laid down. The owner should be
represented, so long as his ownership exists; but unless I mis-read
the signs of the times, the days of the owner as owner are numbered
in our industry. The owner may best be attended to by a government
price-fixing board, which will set wages for newspaper work and
prices of newspapers to the public at a point where interest,
dividends and profits are wiped out. So the owner will become a
worker like other workers; if he is competent and honest, he will stay
as managing director; if he is incompetent and dishonest, he will go
to digging ditches, under the eye of a thoroughly efficient boss.
Little by little the workers of all industrial nations are acquiring
class-consciousness, and preparing themselves for the control of
industry. In America they seem backward, but that is because
America is a new country, and the vast majority of the workers have
no idea how the cards are stacked against them. I have just been
reading an account of the general strike in Seattle, the most
significant labor revolt in our history, and I observe how painfully
chivalrous the Seattle strikers were. Because they did not permit the
capitalist papers of their city to be published, therefore they
refrained from publishing their own paper! This was magnificent,
but it was not war, and I venture to guess that since the Seattle
strikers have had the capitalist newspapers, not merely of their city,
but of all the rest of the world telling lies about them, they will be
more practical next time—as practical as those they are opposing.
How all this works out, you may learn from the Syndicalist
movement of Italy—only, of course, Capitalist Journalism has not
allowed you to know anything about the Syndicalist movement of
Italy! The glass-workers were beaten in a terrific strike, and they
realized that they had to find a new weapon; they contributed their
funds and bought a glass-factory, which they started upon a co-
operative basis. When this factory had its product ready for sale,
strikes were called on the other factories. By applying this method
again and again, the union broke its rivals, and bought them out at a
low price, and so before the war practically the entire glass-industry
of Italy was in the hands of co-operative unions, and the glass-
workers were getting the full value of their product.
The same thing was being done before the war by the
agricultural workers in Sicily. The strikers had been shot down by the
soldiery, their own brothers and sons; they bought several estates
and worked them co-operatively, and when harvest-time came there
was labor for the co-operative estates, and there were strikes against
the absentee landlords, who were spending their time in Paris and on
the Riviera. So the landlords made haste to sell out, and the
agricultural unions were rapidly taking possession of the land of
Sicily.
The same methods were recently tried out in the newspaper field
by strikers in the Argentine Republic; I quote from an account in the
“Christian Science Monitor,” a Boston newspaper which gives fair
accounts of radical happenings abroad, and which may some day
give fair accounts of radical happenings in America. The “Christian
Science Monitor” is interviewing a United States embassy official,
just returned from Buenos Aires:
An incident of the latter strike shows the unique control, as Mr. Barrett puts it,
that they exercise over the newspapers. During the seventy-three days the port was
closed, the only goods handled were shipments of newsprint. The newspapers
represent the workers. If a paper dares to send to its composing-room an item
opposed to the interest of the labor element, the compositors probably will refuse
to put it in type. If they do set it up and it appears, the paper can expect no more
newsprint from the docks.
I hear the reader says: “These strikers don’t represent the public;
they represent themselves. You are only substituting one kind of
class-interest for another.” Ah, yes—dear reader of capitalist opinion!
This at least you admit; the class represented by the strikers is
vastly larger than that represented by the owners; we are that much
nearer to democracy. But you demand one hundred per cent pure
democracy—dear reader of capitalist opinion!
Well, the workers offer you the way; they cheerfully permit all
owners to become workers—either of hand or brain—and to receive
their full share with all other workers of hand or brain; whereas, in
the nature of the case, the owners do not welcome the workers as
owners, and are doing all in their power to make sure that no one
shall be owners but themselves. This is the fundamental and all-
determining fact about the class struggle, and the reason why he who
serves the interest of the workers is serving the interest of all society,
and of the Co-operative Commonwealth which is to be. To the
argument that the taking of power by the workers is the substitution
of one kind of class tyranny by another kind of class tyranny, the
answer, complete and final, is that there is no need of the capitalist
class as a class and that the world will be a happier place for all men
when the members of that class have become workers, either of hand
or brain. When that has been done, there will be no classes, therefore
no class tyranny, and no incentive to class lying. Thus, and thus only,
shall we break the power of the capitalist press—by breaking the
power of capitalism. And so it is that I, an advocate of pure
democracy, am interested in this story from the Argentine Republic,
and tempted to cry to the American dockers, the American
typographers, the American news-writers: “Help! Help against the
lying, kept press!”
And as I am reading the final proofs of this book, I hear the
answer to my cry. I read the following in the “New York Times”:
Boston, Oct. 28.—Pressmen employed by the Chapple Publishing Company,
Ltd., on discovering in a cartoon in “Life” which is being printed here during the
New York strike, what they considered a reflection on organized labor, suspended
work and refused to return until the objectionable cartoon was taken out. The
cartoon was eliminated, and the men returned to work.
The drawing depicts a room apparently meant to typify conditions existing in
a city tenement district. The artist portrays a man beating his wife over the head
with the leg of a chair. The woman is shown lying on the floor; the man has one
knee on her body and one hand clutching her throat. A child about two years old is
shown in bed watching the scene. Its face is expressive of horror. Another child,
evidently a little older, is stretched on the floor, face downward. At the door is
standing a patrolman in full uniform. He is talking with a captain of police, who

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