ily without a better excuse than that he feels it to be a higher duty to provide for the public at large than for those whom God has specially entrusted to his care. Suppose we have a poor journalist, and we do not have to go far to find an actual bona fide example, who has been brought up to that profession and that he knows no other by which he can eke out a bare support for his family who are daily depending upon him ? Each day of his life he brings home the scanty proceeds of his toil, which is barely sufficient to procure bread and raiment for his wife and little ones? An exciting local controversy springs up, and his patrons come to daggers points with each other. It may be a question in some degree, however great, affecting the material interests of his town, precinct, or county. Take a local election for instance, with two popular candidates in the field for the same office. The poor publisher may feel that it would be to the interest of all of his patrons that his favorite should be elected and he may further be of the opinion that the election of the other would be quite detrimental to the public welfare. If he espouse the cause of his favorite and advocate his election through the columns of his paper, the friends of the other are certain to withdraw their patronage from his paper. not subsist without it. He is now called upon to make the choice to either be silent upon the subject in so far as the columns of his papers are concerned, or remit the care and support of his household to the cold charity of an unfriendly world. Now, which course ought he to pursue in view of the position and unmistakable teachings of holy writ as above quoted?

His family can

There are times in every one of our lives when silence is not only excusable, but a posttive virtue, and that, too, when the very impulses of our nature would lead us to rebuke what we conceive to be error and folly. The aphorism that "all truths should not be told at all times," applies with peculiar

force to the press. The laws themselves would not permit such a thing. No newspaper can lawfully publish the truth when it is destructive of private character unless such truth is a matter in which the public is in some way interested or concerned. But while I am a great advocate of silence under severely trying circumstances and surroundings, I shall not go so far as to say that the same circumstances or surroundings would justify the promulgation of a falsehood or the perpetration of a wrong, that any consideration ought to prevail with a journalist to traffic in his editorial columns. While such commercial transactions can not be punished as bribery, it sustains nearly the same relation to bribery as false swearing does to perjury. It is morally and socially wrong, and ought to be condemned by that portion of the press of the country which has not suffered such pollution. The idea of influencing a man's opinion with gold is an absurdity. Opinions are not made from such stuff, and the expression of such spurious opinion through the columns of the press or any other medium of communication is a cheat and a counterfeit and the very essence of the worst kind of hypocrisy.

But there is another class of newspapers that I desire to discuss, and that is the great money-making institutions known as the dailies, which are usually published by corporate capital. A dozen or perhaps a hundred or more individuals living in different sections of the country, and each perhaps of his own peculiar views upon leading political questions, organize themselves into a corporation for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a great daily paper in some favorable locality.

The stock is divided out and put upon the market just as is the case in other enterprises of a similar character. Officers and directors are elected from among the incorporators; editors, reporters, and business managers are employed, and

it is not to be expected otherwise than that such officers should strive to make the enterprise a financial success. If they do not, they are very apt to be relieved of their positions at the very earliest, practicable moment. The exclusive object of the original investment may not be to coin money but the stock soon shifts around and gets into the hands of those who are disposed to make every dollar in sight out of their investment. The advice to the editor and manager will generally, if not invariably, be similar to that of the old man to his son when he started him out into the world: "My son, my advice to you is to make money; make it honestly if you can, but, my son, make money," The editor and all of his assistants are impersonals. Their names do not appear at the head of any of the columns of such papers. The truth seems to be that the paper is edited by everybody in general and no body in particular; and as a corporation is notorious for having no soul and no responsibility can be fixed upon any one connected with the enterprise for the unconscionable falsehoods it may choose to promulgate: "for revenue only."

The whole concern is operated on a blind tiger system by which an uninterrupted tissue of falsehoods and absurdities are rolled out upon the public, and nobody is able to find out who operates the internal machinery. Great corporations make very poor martyrs. When you start out to look for a victim to be immolated upon the altar of an unpopular movement, however righteous it may be when fully understood and appreciated, you need not fool away your time with "soulless corporations." They have no suicidal inclinations whatever, nor have they any principles upon which they are inclined to sacrifice their material interests, or for the maintenance of which they are likely to hazzard any portion of their annual dividends. With all due respect to such papers, and they are indispensable in the transmission and distribution of the current news, for which they have every facility, I am constrained

to make the suggestion that their editorial columns ought to be abolished by law. It may be put down as a practical certainty that as long as they have editorial space it will be at the service of the highest bidder, and no body is responsible for the moral depravity of the bargain. But before passing from this branch of the subject I desire to say that these seeming reflections upon the integrity of that portion of the daily press as is conducted by corporations has no reference to any particular paper, much less to any individual connected with its management. How could I reflect upon the character and personal integrity of the man who manipulates the "blind tiger" in the unlawful dispensation of the elements of death and social depravity unless I could know "judicially" or otherwise who the manipulator is? How could I reflect upon the personal honor and unimpeachable veracity of the man who writes lies and false arguments for a daily paper when I have not the least idea who that propagator of falsehoood and error is?

What I have said is intended to have general application. It is intended to take in every "corporation daily" in the United States and Canada. In their capacity as a medium for the dissemination of news and general intelligence they are indespensible to the welfare and progress of society. As moulders and leaders of public opinion they are totally unreliable, and the masses of the people ought to know better than to accept their mercenary opinions, if opinions they can be called.

But while this is the case with the editorial columns of that particular class of newspapers, it is not so with the great body of the country press. Nearly all of these papers are published by individual capital and labor. The average country editor is not only his own publisher, but his own compositor and his own "printer's devil." The responsibility of every department of the weekly paper of the country usually devolves

upon a single person, who has no one to share with him the great volume of abuse and other incidental vexations of personal journalism. If the mechanical department does not come up to the standard he is denounced as a botch workman; if the local and general news items are sparse and of no interest; if the editorials are not sufficiently equivocal and uncertain to cover all sides of the question, he is cursed and bemeaned as a traitor to his country and the best interests of society. Truly the way of the average country editor and publisher is hard and especially so if he is not financially above the whims of his patrons, which is rarely the case. I have been a country editor myself and am prepared to speak from experience as well as from observation. There are many things that come up within the sphere of the circulation of his paper which circumstances prevent him from ventilating through its columns, although they would gratify a spirit of animosity and revenge in a large class of his readers, and who think he ought to notice them specially for their own personal benefit and satisfaction. He is constantly between two fires, and there is no safe way to escape.

When editing a paper at one time I conceived it to be my duty as the friend of a certain candidate for office, to show up the political waywardness and inconsistency of some of his opponents, and,upon the advice of my colleague I wrote a whole column of personal history which had been furnished me, as I thought, by unquestionably reliable authority. The same day of the publication of the issue containing this scrap of history so interesting to those who were on my own side of the question, the party to whom it referred demanded an immediate personal interview. It so happened that I was in no particular mood for personal interviews at the time. However anxious I may have been at other times to be interviewed by parties desiring my political opinions for the benefit of the public, this was one of the times when I wished especially to