posterous claims of the patent-medicine fakirs, who injure the health and drain the pocketbooks of the guileless. So we are exposed to the plausible suggestions of the swindlers, feasted with glowing prospectuses of mines that will never yield a dividend, or eulogistic descriptions of house lots to be sacrificed at a price that is really double their worth. In a recent postal raid the financial frauds exposed had fleeced the public of nearly eighty million dollars, about a third of which had been spent in advertising.

The most serious aspect of this matter is the foolish silence of the papers with reference to anything that might injure the business of their advertisers; because of this, many wrongs are hushed up and many reforms blocked. The papers are muzzled because they cannot afford to tell the truth when it will offend those who supply their revenue.

(3) Less harmful, but more superficially conspicuous, is the tendency toward the fabrication of imaginary news, to attract attention and sell the paper. Huge headlines announce some exciting event, which below is inconspicuously acknowledged to be but a rumor. It will be denied the next day in an obscure corner, while the front page is devoted to some new sensation. This "yellow journalism" is very irritating to one who cares more for facts than for thrills; and the more reputable newspapers have stood out against this disgraceful habit of their less scrupulous rivals. Mr. Pulitzer, the son of the famous editor of the New York "World," in an address at the opening of the Columbia University School of Journalism, spoke vehemently against this evil: "The newspaper which sells the public deliberate fakes instead of facts is selling adulterated goods just as surely as does the rascal who puts salicylic acid in canned meats or arsenical coloring in preserves; and it ought to be subject to the same penalties for adulteration as are these other adulterators. The fakir is a liar. . . . If he is guilty

of a fake that injures people, he is not only a vicious liar but often a moral assassin as well; but in either event he is a liar, and it is only by treating him uncompromisingly as such that he may be corrected if he is not yet a confirmed fakir, or rooted out if he is an inveterate fakir."

There is surely enough, for those who have eyes to see, that is dramatic and exciting in actual life without depending upon fictitious news. Chesterton berates the contemporary press for failing to give us the thrill of reality. It "offends as being not sensational or violent enough; does not merely fail to exaggerate life it positively underrates it. With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. . . . Something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers"1

(4) Another danger of our irresponsible journalism lies in pandering to prejudices and antipathies, in stirring up class hatred or national jingoism. Evil motives are attributed to foreign powers; the British are scheming to control our merchant marine; the Japanese are preparing to invade our Pacific Coast. Insignificant words of individuals are headlined and treated as portentous; foreign peoples are caricatured; our national "honor" is held to be in danger daily. Or the capitalists are pictured as universally fat and greedy and unscrupulous; anarchism is encouraged as in the case of the murderer of McKinley, who was directly incited to his deed by the violent diatribes of a contemporary newspaper. Such demagoguery might flourish even with strict regard for truthfulness; but it becomes far worse when, as usual, in its appeal to popular prejudices, it exaggerates and invents and suppresses facts.

(5) The notorious emphasis upon crime and scandal may

1 "The Mildness of the Yellow Press," chap. VIII of Heretics.

be included in our summary of journalistic evils. Every unpleasant fact that ought, from kindness to those concerned and from regard to the morals of the readers, to be ignored or passed lightly over, is instead dragged out into the light. The delight in besmirching supposedly respectable citizens, the brutal intrusion into private unhappiness, the detailed description of domestic tragedy, is nothing short of outrageous. Pictures of adulterers and murderers, of the instruments and scenes of crimes, precise instructions to the uninitiated for their commission, explanations of the success of burglary or train-wreckers, help marvelously to sell a paper, but do not help the morals of the younger generation. No one can estimate the amount of sexual stimulation, of suggestion to sin and vice, for which our newspapers are responsible.

(6) In conclusion, we may mention a trivial matter which, however, brings our newspapers into deserved disrepute their self-laudation and boasting. How many "greatest American newspapers" are there? There are even, in this country alone, more than one "World's greatest newspaper!" From this principle of conceit there are all gradations down to the humblest village paper that lies about its circulation and extols itself as the necessary adjunct of every home. These overstatements are pernicious in their influence upon public standards of accuracy and honesty.

The newspaper is potentially an instrument of incalculable good. No other influence upon the minds and morals of the people is so continuous and universal. Through the newspapers knowledge is disseminated, judgment and outlook upon life are crystallized, political and social beliefs are shaped. They might be the means of great social and moral reforms. But so long as they are subject to the

struggle for existence which necessitates their truckling to parties, to advertisers, and to public prejudices and passions, so long their influence will be largely unwholesome, and they will be almost wholly the organs of the possessing classes. If public opinion cannot force them to a higher moral level in their present status as sources of private profit, they must be published by the State or by trustees of an endowment fund. Municipally owned papers are liable to partisanship and corruption, in their way, and endowed papers to an undue regard for the interests of the class to which the majority of the trustees may belong. But this danger can be averted by allotting a certain amount of space in each day's paper to each political party or important economic organization, to use as it deems best, without censorship. In this way a paper can be omni-partisan, and give its readers an honest view of the varieties of current opinion, as well as an account of the facts that a partisan paper might omit. When municipal government in this country is finally ordered in a sensible way, the municipal newspaper (run after the "city manager" plan, perhaps) will probably become universal.

F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. III, chap. XI. L. Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. v, sec. iv. C. F. Dole, Ethics of Progress, pt. VII, chaps. I, II. E. L. Cabot, Everyday Ethics, chaps. XIX, xx. T. K. Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, Appendix 1. Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, chap. IV. E. Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, chap. xxxI. K. F. Gerould, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 454.

Ethics of Journalism: H. Holt, Commercialism and Journalism. H. George, Jr., The Menace of Privilege, bk. vII, chap. 1. W. E. Weyl, The New Democracy, chap. IX. Educational Review, vol. 36, p. 121. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 102, p. 441; vol. 105, p. 303; vol. 106, p. 40; vol. 113, p. 289. Forum, vol. 51, p. 565. E. A. Ross, Changing America, chap. VII. North American Review, vol. 190, p. 587. J. E. Rogers, The American Newspaper. W. Lippmann, Liberty and the News. O. G. Villard, Press Tendencies and Dangers. D. Dibblee, The Newspaper. Above all, every one should read Upton Sinclair's The Brass Check.

CHAPTER XX

CULTURE AND ART

THE function of the newspaper, which we have been discussing, is, to a considerable extent, to widen our horizon, to give us new ideas and sympathies, to enrich and brighten our lives; in greater degree, that is the rôle of the fine arts, and of that wide conversance with beauty and truth that we call culture. Man is not a mere worker, and efficiency is not the only test of value; the pursuit of truth and beauty for its own sake is a legitimate human ideal. But beauty, as we have seen, brings temptations; and even the search for truth may lure a man away from his duty. We must consider, then, how far culture, and its outward expression in art, may rightly claim the time and energies of man.

What is the value of culture and art?

(1) Culture, according to Matthew Arnold,1 is “the disinterested endeavor after man's perfection. It is in endless additions to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal." This wisdom, this beauty that culture offers us, does not need extrinsic justification; it is, as Emerson so happily said, its own excuse for being; it is a fragment of the ideal; and it means that life has in so far been solved, its goal attained. It is in itself a great addition to the worth, the richness and joy, of life, and it is a pledge to the heart of the possibility of the ideal, a realization of that perfection for which we long and strive.

1 Culture and Anarchy, Preface, and chap. I.