The article focuses on the report of Friedrich Sorge, corresponding secretary of the North American Central Committee of the International Workingmen's Association, about a civil disturbance which had occurred in New York City in July, 1871. According to the report the riot had been fomented and invited by the inflammatory articles of the mercenary, black-mailing unscrupulous press of this city and precipitated by the blunders and crimes of the city and state authorities. The accuracy of this report is supported by the coverage of the disturbance which appeared in both the leading newspapers, The New York Times and the New York Tribune, with the sole exception of the casualty figures. The crowd's actions had been provocative and violent, but such a response still seemed indiscriminate and out of order. But the press, softening the tragic overtones of the incident, found that though the troops acted hastily and ill-advisedly, they were not to be condemned for they checked the belligerent tendency of the mob.