Why do journalists want to separate themselves from the evils of advertising?

Last week, on Rush's show he spent quite a lot of time talking about how journalists view their industry as being above advertising; that they do not need to make a profit. They should be able to lose money in perpetuity and never face cutbacks.

There is an answer to why this mindset exists. In short, journalists view advertising as a hallmark of "yellow journalism". Delos F. Wilcox, Ph. D. gives us the answer we need on page 91 of a book he wrote titled "The American Newspaper: A Study in Social Psychology". Published in 1900, originally in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (I bring this up because of it's seemingly odd page numbering) there are 18 pages (out of 36) that contain the word "advertisements", that's practically 50% of the book. Starting on page 90:

Newspaper competition is, as we have seen, most severe in the largest cities, and there also the need of a new development of social consciousness is most pressing. Weekly and monthly journals appeal to a more widely scattered constituency, and for that reason do not supply to the city man even imperfect summaries of city news and municipal doings. For such summaries he must depend on himself or on municipal reports. Annual reports for free distribution are usually published by the large cities. Two American cities, New York and Boston, publish a daily or weekly "City Record," containing an account of all municipal business. These two cities also have instituted statistical bureaus for the collection and distribution of what we may call general municipal news. In Cleveland, at least, bulletins of important events are posted daily in the public library. In another direction also government is encroaching upon the field of the newspaper. In the establishment of public employment bureaus under state authority in Chicago and some other cities, we see an entrenchment upon the ''want ad'' columns of the daily newspaper. Is it at all unlikely that, following out these lines of activity, government, particularly in cities, will sooner or later put into the field newspapers to cover at least the news of local business and politics and be available for use in the public schools, the public libraries, the city offices, and elsewhere? If such journals could be kept free from factional control and from the debauching influence of irresponsible newspaper competition, they would be of great service in the education of the "public'' and in the control of private journals. But let no one imagine that government operation is here prescribed as a panacea for the evils of irresponsible journalism. Mr. Hearst has worked like a hero to make the New York Journal the yellowest and most successful journal in the United States. Practically, he "endowed" yellow journalism. The endowment scheme for newspaper reform is not generally accepted as practicable. There is a feeling that journalism should be a business, and that news-gathering and distribution should pay for itself. Those who object to the endowment plan should, however, reflect upon the question whether or not the public has not already been "endowed" by someone when a newspaper can be bought regularly for less than the cost of the paper on which it is printed. Possibly the secret of many newspaper evils lies in the fact that the advertisers and the readers can be played off against each other. In order to get a large circulation with which to catch advertisements, the price of the paper is reduced, its size increased, its headlines made sensational, and illustrations introduced to stimulate the flagging senses of the reader. Then, as advertisements flow in at increased rates, the price of the paper can be further reduced and its attractions multiplied. Under these circumstances advertisements of doubtful character are accepted as a matter of course. Ought not the advertising sheet and the newspaper be separated so that each would have to pay for itself? Advertisements that are really of general interest to the public should, on such a theory, be published as news. At any rate, the chief argument against the endowment of a newspaper seems to rest on a misconception of present conditions, and there is no apparently satisfactory reason why some of our surplus millionaires should not emulate the example of Mr. Hearst, with this difference, that they devote their money, their brains, and their energy to the promotion of public intelligence instead of the stimulation of public passion. In the meantime it may be possible to work toward a better journalism by introducing or strengthening the legal responsibility of newspapers for publishing only reliable news.

It is readily apparent that part of the reason why the author disdains advertising is due to how William Randolph Hearst ran his newspapers, but I'll get to that another day. But here is the answer. The endowment of yellow journalism is advertising. That is, running it like a business. There is a very interesting graph on page 77 which illustrates this:

Notice how he puts nearly all advertisements into the "yellow journalism" category? Despite this book being written in 1900, 113 years ago, I am confident that this view is still widely held. Perhaps even more widespread today than it was back then.

What else does this writer believe which will shed light upon this view? See page 89:

If we blame the "public" solely, there is no apparent remedy; for the newspapers themselves are coming more and more to be the principal organs through which public tastes are formed and appeals to public intelligence made. The tool is master of the man, and, too late, we blame the man. It is certainly probable that a newspaper directly responsible to an intelligent and conscientious public would have to be a good journal in order to succeed. In a perfect democracy the newspaper business would regulate itself. But, unfortunately, the "public" is not altogether intelligent and conscientious, and for that reason the newspaper becomes an organ of dynamic education. It would be treachery to social ideals for schoolteachers to choose and pursue their profession simply as a money-getting enterprise. The same is true of journalism. Responsibility must attach to this public function.

Do you find it interesting how seemingly all of these old progressive-era writings consider the newspaper as a way to control the masses? I know I do.

page 90:

If the people trusted their chosen governors and were themselves united in their support of the public welfare, they would undoubtedly be willing to put the newspaper business, like education, into government hands, though not as a monopoly. In fact, however, we as a people still regard government as a necessary evil. It is my belief that the salvation of our cities depends on the displacement of this view by the view that government, the co-operative organization of all for the benefit of all, is a necessary good.

This writer does not like the fact that most Americans(in 1900) viewed government as a necessary evil, he would prefer people to love government. But I think this one speaks the loudest, page 86:

The newspaper, which is preeminently a public and not a private institution, the principal organ of society for distributing what we may call working information, ought not to be controlled by irresponsible individuality.

That really sums it all up. First, "irresponsible individuality", that's all progressivism. They're largely collectivists. But further, is this faulty idea that newspapers are public institutions.

All disagreements with the author aside, this is what they believe as journalists. Institutionally, journalism is an activist profession.

http://tinyurl.com/kvhcnhg

A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism - the perfect commune

In "Sociology for the South: or, The failure of free society", George Fitzhugh writes the following: (pages 244-246)

Domestic slavery in the Southern States has produced the same results in elevating the character of the master that it did in Greece and Rome. He is lofty and independent in his sentiments, generous, affectionate, brave and eloquent; he is superior to the Northerner in every thing but the arts of thrift. History proves this. A Yankee sometimes gets hold of the reins of State, attempts Apollo, but acts Phaeton. Scipio and Aristides, Calhoun and Washington, are the noble results of domestic slavery. Like Egyptian obelisks 'mid the waste of time - simple, severe, sublime, - they point ever heavenward, and lift the soul by their examples. Adams and Van Buren, cunning, complex and tortuous, are fit exponents of the selfish system of universal liberty. Coriolanus, marching to the gates of Rome with dire hate and deadly indignation, is grand and noble in his revenge. Adams and Van Buren, insidiously striking with reptile fangs at the South, excite in all bosoms hatred and contempt; but we will not indulge in sweeping denunciation. In public and in private life, the North has many noble and generous souls. Men who, like Webster and Cass, Dickinson and Winthrop, can soar in lofty eloquence beyond the narrow prejudices of time and place, see man in all his relations, and contemn the narrow morality which makes the performance of one duty the excuse for a thousand crimes. We speak only of the usual and common effects of slavery and of equality. The Turk, half civilized as he is, exhibits the manly, noble and generous traits of character peculiar to the slave owner; he is hospitable, generous, truthful, brave, and strictly honest. In many respects, he is the finest specimen of humanity to be found in the world.

But the chief and far most important enquiry is, how does slavery affect the condition of the slave? One of the wildest sects of Communists in France proposes not only to hold all property in common, but to divide the profits, not according to each man's in-put and labor, but according to each man's wants. Now this is precisely the system of domestic slavery with us. We provide for each slave, in old age and in infancy, in sickness and in health, not according to his labor, but according to his wants. The master's wants are more costly and refined, and he therefore gets a larger share of the profits. A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave consumes more than the master, of the coarse products, and is far happier, because although the concern may fail, he is always sure of a support; he is only transferred to another master to participate in the profits of another concern; he marries when he pleases, because he knows he will have to work no more with a family than without one, and whether he live or die, that family will he taken care of; he exhibits all the pride of ownership, despises a partner in a smaller concern, "a poor man's negro," boasts of "our crops, horses, fields and cattle;", and is as happy as a human being can be. And why should he not? -he enjoys as much of the fruits of the farm as he is capable of doing, and the wealthiest can do no more. Great wealth brings many additional cares, but few additional enjoyments. Our stomachs do not increase in capacity with our fortunes. We want no more clothing to keep us warm. We may create new wants, but we cannot create new pleasures. The intellectual enjoyments which wealth affords are probably balanced by the new cares it brings along with it.

There is no rivalry, no competition to get employment among slaves, as among free laborers. Nor is there a war between master and slave. The master's interest prevents his reducing the slave's allowance or wages in infancy or sickness, for he might lose the slave by so doing. His feeling for his slave never permits him to stint him in old age.

This drivel goes on and on.(If you read past what I quoted) All the positive traits of being a dictator, and a continual assault on individual liberty.The line about "the selfish system of universal liberty" is interesting, because that's exactly what modern progressives today believe.

But in citing this, I would also like to direct everybody's attention to a fantastic article on Breitbart, which is where I found some of these quotes. Titled "'The Very Best Form of Socialism': The Pro-Slavery Roots of the Modern Left"

One of the reasons I find this article to be incredibly important is because it helps offset something I have said repeatedly: That Progressives have imported a lot of ideology from foreign intellectuals. Germanic ideologues, Fabians, and others. But as I have also written, Progressivism has a distinct/unique American component, both must be kept within view to understand what they believe. That is, these are people who grew up and lived in individual liberty and sovereignty, and they came to wholly reject it. That's why they sought out foreign inspiration, as people are much better at tyranny overseas. One place to get a good idea about progressive inspiration at home is to read up about Edward Bellamy, this is one of my prior posts about him, I have several others. In short, one of Bellamy's most notable contributions is that he took the word "socialism" off of the package, put "nationalism" on it(despite it being the exact same thing) and that's how the American people were first exposed to socialism in a major way.

Now, it doesn't surprise me in the least that southern slaveholders of old would view their plantations to be the perfect communes.

Josef Stalin was a slaveholder.

Adolph Hitler was a slaveholder.

Che Guevara was a slaveholder.

Pol Pot was a slaveholder.

Chairman Mao was a slaveholder.

King George III was a slaveholder. That is, until we declared independence.

I could probably list a thousand well known tyrants and/or those favoring central planning(Or actually running centrally planned states, such as the ones I mentioned), but that isn't the point. The point is this:

Look at the language Fitzhugh uses. It's easy to point to the line where he calls a southern plantation the perfect vision of communism, but notice the next line. It's a joint concern. Notice what words he puts into the mouth of unnamed slaves: "our crops". This is collectivism. This has credibility not because you and I would say it does, that all tyrants are by definition slaveholders, but because when he writes about the concern failing, yet the slave still gets support, what is that? Welfare! Fitzhugh even uses the line of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". That's wealth redistribution, right from Marx himself(Fitzhugh uses the words "profit" and "want"). Even if the crops failed, the slaves had wealth redistributed to them so that they could live their meager lives of serfdom. All the puzzle pieces are here to point out that this is not just some line of hyperbole.

George Fitzhugh was a collectivist. That's how all of the world's major slaughters begin, at least in modern times where we have a little bit better view of history. That's the foundation, collectivism. Collectivism is the root of all evil, because on top of that foundation you have the second foundation, centralized planning. Don't tell me that a slave holder didn't centrally plan the entire life of the slaves in his southern commune. That's exactly what happened there, the masters planned the lives of their subjects. From those two foundations is where all forms of collectivization form, be it nationalism or communism or fascism, fabianism, nazism, progressivism, or any of the others. Sometimes it's good for the collective for the collective to take the life of the individual. That's where collectivism becomes mass murdering.

Now it would be true for anybody to point out that Fitzhugh heavily criticized socialism. But so what? All socialists rebuke socialism when it fails as being "not true socialism". That's a trait that virtually all masterminds share. Only their vision of utopia is the true grand plan that will work, all others' failures were fake because none of them were as masterful. Read the book Philip Dru, Administrator, written by an American progressive, Edward House. It's dripping with this sort of thinking. Fitzhugh was no different than any other statist, except that his "state" was the plantation and not centralized government.

Also note the part about no competition. No true progressive can ever support competition, because virtually all dictators are unitary. You think Hitler wanted to rule the world? You think Stalin wanted to rule the world? That they didn't achieve the heights of their grand design doesn't change the nature of said grand designs. What makes the progressive the most dangerous of all the forms of centralized planning that I know of, is that any progressive at any given moment would love to rule all by themselves, but they will gladly sacrifice in the name of "progress" to see that the next progressive in line may achieve the final goal: abolition of individual liberty. I'm not kidding about this, let's get back to the Breitbart article. The authors cite one Charles Merriam, who served(advisory) under progressive presidents William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Merriam would write in one of his books the following:

The individualistic ideas of the "natural right" school of political theory, endorsed in the Revolution, are discredited and repudiated.

Page 307 of his book "A History of American Political Theories". Merriam, as the author points out, was highly influenced by Fitzhugh. Merriam hated individual rights, as did Fitzhugh, as did every tyrant who has ever lived. If you are an individual who recognizes your individuality and is willing to fight for - and even die for - your individual sovereignty, then you're a threat to the mastermind because you inhibit his grandiose vision of a god given right to rule.

In short, it should surprise no one that where slavery remained triumphant in the south, its leaders became attracted to communism - no matter how superficially - because the simple fact is that wherever communism and socialism reign supreme there are slaves being held. In light of progressivism though, what might be the most significant contribution is the one that's unspoken. The Breitbart article says that in southern slavery, we can see "the intellectual seed for the later Progressive movement". I don't know if I would say the seed, but there's certainly a seed to be recognized here.

What was the system of slavery that our Founders tried to get rid of, but the King would not let them? It was de-centralized tyranny. This is also what progressivism is, de-centralized tyranny. Hillsdale calls progressivism "bureaucratic despotism", which is a strikingly accurate description both in what it directly says and what it implies. Progressivism is not monarchism. You do not have one lone sole dictator, progressives instead work through the bureaucracies. So it is true to say that progressivism is a form of authoritarianism, but it's in pieces:

Progressives dictate to you environmentally, via the EPA.

Progressives dictate to you educationally, via the Department of Education.

Progressives dictate to you judicially, via corrupt statist judges.

Progressives dictate to you economically, via the Federal Reserve and subsequent banking etc. regulations. Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, and many, many others.

Progressives can now dictate to you under the banner of health, via Obamacare.

And that's not including the IRS and now the NSA's spying on all of us. These bureaucracies are the control layers which generally disguise themselves as being "good for you", "in your best interest", wheras the NSA are the ears, eyes, and nose, and the IRS is the teeth(backed by a steel jaw). If you don't comply, they'll see you, hear you, and sniff you out like a bloodhound. If you persist, you get bit.

Using their myriad of ABC bureaucracies; the department of this, the department of that, and the other; they have established piecemeal tyranny. It's distributed totalitarianism. Having thousands of these bureaucracies enables total dictatorial control.

Welcome to your plantation.

http://tinyurl.com/kew7e4d

Old "distributive justice" vs the new "distributive justice", and the abuse of the English language by progressives

The interesting thing about history is that there is very little that's new under the sun. This is also true for the term "distributive justice". I asked the question "Is "distributive justice" yet another idea that progressives imported from Germany?" to which the answer is yes. American Progressives did import it from Germany, all you have to do is check the progressives' footnotes. But that is not where this ends, because the German Socialists originally got the term from somewhere else. In short, there's two places: St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle - but these need to be explained because it gets a little convoluted.

As to St. Thomas Aquinas, he does specifically use the phrase "distributive justice", but what he is referring to has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of redistribution of wealth. That is, government stealing from one and giving to another.

As to Aristotle, he does not specifically use the phrase(that I know of) but he is talking about wealth redistribution.

First, let's get to the original sources. St. Thomas Aquinas writes of "distributive justice" in his book titled "Summa Theologica", Volume 3 (Part II, Second Section). Because there is a lot here I am only going to clip small portions:

Article 2. Whether the mean is to be observed in the same way in distributive as in commutative justice?

Objection 1. It would seem that the mean in distributive justice is to be observed in the same way as in commutative justice. For each of these is a kind of particular justice, as stated above (Article 1). Now the mean is taken in the same way in all the parts of temperance or fortitude. Therefore the mean should also be observed in the same way in both distributive and commutative justice.

After listing some objections, he writes:

I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), in distributive justice something is given to a private individual, in so far as what belongs to the whole is due to the part, and in a quantity that is proportionate to the importance of the position of that part in respect of the whole. Consequently in distributive justice a person receives all the more of the common goods, according as he holds a more prominent position in the community. This prominence in an aristocratic community is gauged according to virtue, in an oligarchy according to wealth, in a democracy according to liberty, and in various ways according to various forms of community. Hence in distributive justice the mean is observed, not according to equality between thing and thing, but according to proportion between things and persons: in such a way that even as one person surpasses another, so that which is given to one person surpasses that which is allotted to another. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 3,4) that the mean in the latter case follows “geometrical proportion,” wherein equality depends not on quantity but on proportion. For example we say that 6 is to 4 as 3 is to 2, because in either case the proportion equals 1-1/2; since the greater number is the sum of the lesser plus its half: whereas the equality of excess is not one of quantity, because 6 exceeds 4 by 2, while 3 exceeds 2 by 1.

The old "distributive justice" is about justice distributed properly. That is, if you are a more productive person, then it is just that you should earn more. It's very "just" that you should earn more if you work harder. I know I'm probably being a little over-simplistic in the previous sentence, but it's clear that he is not talking about governmental theft of property to give to another person.

Now, on to Aristotle. Aristotle writes about wealth distribution as a function of "justice" in his book Politics. This is from Book 2:

There is another point: Should not the amount of property be defined in some way which differs from this by being clearer? For Socrates says that a man should have so much property as will enable him to live temperately, which is only a way of saying 'to live well'; this is too general a conception. Further, a man may live temperately and yet miserably. A better definition would be that a man must have so much property as will enable him to live not only temperately but liberally; if the two are parted, liberally will combine with luxury; temperance will be associated with toil. For liberality and temperance are the only eligible qualities which have to do with the use of property. A man cannot use property with mildness or courage, but temperately and liberally he may; and therefore the practice of these virtues is inseparable from property. There is an inconsistency, too, in too, in equalizing the property and not regulating the number of the citizens; the population is to remain unlimited, and he thinks that it will be sufficiently equalized by a certain number of marriages being unfruitful, however many are born to others, because he finds this to be the case in existing states. But greater care will be required than now; for among ourselves, whatever may be the number of citizens, the property is always distributed among them, and therefore no one is in want; but, if the property were incapable of division as in the Laws, the supernumeraries, whether few or many, would get nothing. One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

There are several places in his book Politics where he talks about wealth redistribution, and the distribution of other things, such as power, but nowhere does he use the specific phrase "distributive justice".(That I have seen) I cite Aristotle because that's at least one of the sources that the German Socialists used in their models for "distributive justice".

The point is this: As I opened, there is very little which is new under the sun. This is especially true for governments which engage in theft. Benjamin Franklin wrote:

Hence as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever.

This carries the point home very well in two ways. Wealth redistribution is not only a very old concept, but it's a function of dictatorships. This is the exact opposite of what modern progressives preach. They always preach that they want "new ideas", but if these "new ideas" were ever properly examined, you would find that progressivism relies upon ideas which are all much older than any ideas of liberty. Reagan once said:

This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

When progressives successfully cast tyrannical ideas as "justice", you have a big problem on your hands. It's one thing to say that you lived in the year 35xBC, then you have an excuse. In Aristotle's day, tyranny was all they had. But as it's shown by both Ben Franklin as well as St. Thomas Aquinas, wealth redistribution is a very dangerous concept, and "distributive justice" was originally about the proper functions of law, not wealth redistribution.

http://tinyurl.com/m2bc8fa

Character Sketch: W. Randolph Hearst, By William Thomas Stead (1908)

W. Randolph Hearst

This is the highest and most profitable knowledge, truly to know and to despise ourselves. To have no opinion of ourselves and to think always well and highly of others, is great wisdom and perfection. If thou shouldest see another sin openly or commit some grievous crime, yet thou oughtest not to esteem thyself better; because thou knowest not how long thou mayest be able to remain in a good state. We are all frail; but as to thee, do not think they are more frail than thyself. - Thomas a Kempis, Book I. Ch. I.

I.- AN INTRODUCTORY HOMILY.

THE hero of the month is unquestionably Mr. William Randolph Hearst. When Mr. Hearst was campaigning two years ago for the Governorship of New York State, in a village beyond Albany Mr. Hearst's automobile met a coal wagon. The driver, a big, burly fellow, with his hands as black as his face, leaned over and gripped Mr. Hearst's fingers and shouted, " Good boy ! To hell with the Coal Trust, Willie!"

" To-Hell-with-the-Trusts-Willie!" is a name that may yet become as famous in history as that of the famous Praise-God-Barebones of the English Commonwealth. For last month Willie Hearst has indeed - to borrow the picturesque but profane vocabulary of the West - been giving the Trusts hell all round. And not the Trusts only. The politicians who have blackmailed the Trusts, and the political leaders who became the hirelings of the Trusts, have all received their medicine. Republican and Democrat alike have had it meted out to them fiery hot, while all the world has wondered, and not a few of its denizens have lifted up holy hands of unctuous righteousness and have thanked God they were not sinners like other men, and especially not like these (re)publicans across the Atlantic.

Now if the saints of all creeds may be believed, there is no sin so dangerous and deadly as self-righteousness. The harlot precedes the Pharisee into the kingdom of heaven. And therefore before entering upon the description of Mr. Hearst's remarkable personality, let me administer to John Bull a little salutary physic in order that he may attain to what Thomas a Kempis calls " the highest and most profitable knowledge truly to know and to despise ourselves."

By a providential good fortune, if we look at it from the point of view of Thomas a Kempis, in the same week that Mr. Hearst began to explode his bombshells in the headquarters of the Republicans and the Democrats of the United States, the Director of Public Prosecutions unfolded in the Thames Police Court a story of corruption - on a small scale, it is true - which in its way is quite as bad as anything Mr. Hearst has brought to light in America. As Poplar is to the United States, so is the dishonesty unveiled at the Thames Police Court to the revelations of Mr. Hearst. The case is not yet decided, and it is impossible to discuss the truth or falsehood of the charges against the individuals who have been placed in the dock, from which everyone hopes they may issue " without a stain upon their characters." But the main outlines of the story, told by the chief offender, who has turned King's evidence, can be stated without offence. This man, " a builder named Calcutt," accuses himself of having secured a series of contracts, chiefly for work done on the Blackwall Branch Asylum, covering the years 1903-6, by the simple process of bribing eight members of the Board of Managers, who gave him a series of fat jobs, amounting in all to about £3,000. The law requiring that all contracts exceeding £50 should be let by public tender was ingeniously evaded by splitting a contract for one building into a series of separate contracts for each room. The official prosecutor said it was impossible to explain what this Board did in any other way than according to the story of Calcutt. It was a story of bribery and corruption, of gifts of clothes, coals, presents, drinks, and work.

The case of Calcutt was but one of many others. When a tea contract was to be disposed of, one of the members exclaimed, " If he gets that contract, I want £10." He got that £10. When public money was spent on these lines, it is not surprising that the expenditure of this particular Board went up by leaps and bounds. In 1901 it was £35,000 a year; in 1906 it had risen to £62,000. A public outcry having been made, the expenditure has since been reduced by £10,000. It is, perhaps, not altogether without justification if we take it that this single local board, elected from and by two local Boards of Guardians in one East End district, entailed upon the ratepayers an expenditure of £10,000 a year as a result of the methods of jobbery exposed at the Thames Police Court. If this Board stood alone we might think less of it. But does it stand alone? If a searching probe were applied to all our local governing bodies, as it has been applied in Poplar, how many would escape scatheless ? Only a month or two ago, after a long and exhaustive trial, a batch of East End guardians were sent to gaol as criminals for similar malpractices. "Think ye that those upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all the rest of the Galileans? I tell you nay." So I quote these instances of corruption in the East End to point the moral and illustrate the warning of Thomas a Kempis : "If thou shouldest see another sin openly or commit some grievous crime, yet thou oughtest not to esteem thyself better, because thou knowest not how long thou mayest be able to remain in a good state."

It will be replied that the misdeeds of the East End may be set off against the misdeeds of Tammany Hall and the corrupt City Governments of America. But the exposures made by Mr. Hearst are much more serious, inasmuch as they impugn the honour of the leaders of the parties to which are entrusted the government of tie nation. Granted. But this compels me to point to another skeleton in our closet. The charges of Mr. Hearst, reduced to their essence, amount to this, that both parties when elections came round levied contributions from the Trusts. He supplemented this by imputing specific acts of corruption in the purchase of individual members of the legislature, but these may be ignored for the present. The chief charge, the only one which indirectly affects Mr. Roosevelt, is the fact that the party managers on the eve of an election levied contributions for campaign funds from the great business combinations' called Trusts. In return for such contributions they hoped to be insured against interference, or, in their own phrase, they were "guaranteed a Conservative Administration."

This, of course, is scandalous and worthy of all reprobation. But those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. If we had a Mr. Hearst in this country, and our law of libel was as elastic as that of America, does anyone think that the world would not be scandalised by revelations as to corruption in high places in Westminster as well as in Washington? The English variety of corruption differs from that which flourishes across the Atlantic as a monarchy differs from a republic. It has often been cynically declared that the one permanent advantage a monarchy possesses over a republic is that under one you can bribe respectably with honours, whereas under the other you must pay down in hard cash.

I do not want to bring railing accusations against either of our political parties, for both are equally guilty or equally innocent. But if anyone imagines that the electoral expenses fund of either Liberal or Conservative party is not constantly replenished by what in blunt Saxon may be called the sale of honours and titles, he must be a very innocent. It is all done "on the sly." No price list is exhibited in the windows of the Government whip: "Knighthoods cheap to-day, guaranteed at £5,000. Baronetcies from £25,000 and upwards. Peerages £50,000 down," because that would create a scandal. But if any wealthy man wishes to secure a handle to his name, he will soon discover that there is no surer and shorter road to the fount of honour than by a liberal subscription to the party funds. If this be not so, why should there be so insurmountable an objection on both sides to enacting that whenever any title or rank is conferred by the Crown, a message should be sent to Parliament stating for what cause the King delighteth to honour these particular lieges ? Those anxious to investigate this obscure subject will do well to make application to Mr. Henniker Heaton, the incorruptible one who twice refused a baronetcy offered him in recognition of his services to the State, on the ground that he did not care to accept a title which was usually bestowed in return for cash down.

All of which is a homily to my British readers not to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think, and when reading the story of W. Randolph Hearst and his revelations let them remember the parable of the mote and the beam, and take to heart with all humility the warning, Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

II.- W. RANDOLPH HEARST.

When I returned from my last visit to America in 1907 I wrote in the REVIEW OF REVIEWS for December, "For tie last ten years I have never varied in stating that from my own personal knowledge of the man, insight into his character, and knowledge of his capacity, Mr. Hearst has it in him to be the great personal power in America for the next twenty years. He may wreck everything, but on the other hand, he may be in the future, as he ha been already in the past, a force making for progress and for the diminution of many abuses. Mr. Hearst may be a good man or he may be a bad man - that is a question of comparison as to which side the balance lies in a strangely complex character - but that he is a great man, and with a great strain of goodness in him, I have no doubt whatever."

In a previous number of this magazine I expressed my conviction "that the character Mr. Hearst is the unknown x in the future of American politics. The owner of the New York American and half-a-dozen other journals is for weal or for woe the factor which will exercise more influence on the history of the United States for the next twenty years than any other, not even excepting Mr. Roosevelt himself. No mistake can be greater than to imagine that he is un quantite negligeable. Not twelve months have passed since this was published, and already everyone is in amaze at the way in which Mr. Hearst has in a single week succeeded in dominating the political situation in America on the eve of a Presidential election.

Who is this "To Hell-with-the-Trusts Willie Hearst"?

The facts of his meteoric career are soon told. He is the son of the great millionaire mineowner, of California, Senator Hearst, whose wife, Phoebe, still survives. He was born in 1864. He was sent up to Harvard by his parents, and he was sent down from Harvard by the University authorities. After returning to San Francisco he fell in love with a well-known and beautiful actress of a good Californian family, but his people, regarding it as a mesalliance, prevented the marriage. Thereupon young Hearst, following the Byronic example, sought to find in many what he had failed to find in one, and set about painting the town red in approved libertine fashion. From that dates the period of his career, which was brought to an end half-a-dozen years ago by his marriage. In the midst of his scandalous debauchery he suddenly surprised his father by announcing a desire to go into journalism. " Don't be a mere tag on a money-bag," said a friend to the young Hearst. Old Senator Hearst sniffed a bit at the idea of Willie making out as an editor, but he made over to him the San Francisco Examiner.

To the amazement of his parents and the dismay of his friends, it was soon discovered that when they had started Willie Hearst in journalism they had let loose an earthquake on the Pacific Coast. Mr. Sydney Brooks, who wrote a very well-informed article on " The Significance of Mr. Hearst" in the Fortnightly Review last December, says:-

He determined to be the Pulitzer of the Pacific Coast, and to conduct the Examiner with the keyhole for a point of view, sensationalism for a policy, crime, scandal, and personalities for a speciality, all vested interests for a punching bag, cartoons, illustrations, and comic supplements for embellishments, and circulation for an object. He entirely succeeded. His father bore the initial expenses, and in return had the gratification of finding the Examiner turned loose among the businesses, characters, and private lives of his friends and associates. Hardly a prominent family escaped; the corporations were flayed, the plutocracy mercilessly ridiculed, and the social life of San Francisco, and especially of its wealthier citizens, was flooded with all the publicity that huge and flaming headlines and cohorts of reportorial eavesdroppers could give it. San Francisco was horrified, but it bought the Examiner; Senator Hearst remonstrated with his son, and to the last never quite reconciled himself to the "new journalism," but he did not withhold supplies, and in a very few years the enterprise was beyond need of his assistance and earning a handsome profit.

When he was turned thirty he conceived the idea of duplicating in New York the success he had achieved in San Francisco. Mr. Pulitzer, of the New York World, was in possession of the field. But Mr. Hearst had received a million sterling from his mother, to whom Senator Hearst had left his fortune, and he flung himself into the combat with the fine frenzy of a journalistic genius who had money to burn and a whole continent as a battlefield. He bought up Pulitzer's best men, and when they did not stay bought, but went back to Pulitzer at increased salaries, Mr. Hearst bought them a second time at prices with which even Mr. Pulitzer could not compete. In a very few years, by lavish expenditure, audacious enterprise, and unstinted sensationalism he had secured for the New York Journal the first place in circulation in the United States.

It was just when Mr. Hearst had succeeded in achieving his ambition to secure circulation that I made his acquaintance. It was in the fall of 1897. I had crossed the Atlantic with another remarkable product of American life - Richard Croker, of Tammany Hall - and I was most anxious to make the acquaintance of Mr. Hearst. I went down to his office shortly before midnight. I found the young millionaire in his shirt-sleeves busily engaged in preparing next day's paper. As soon as he was through the press of his work he sat down, and I had one of the most memorable conversations of my life. It takes rank with my interview with Cecil Rhodes when he told me he wished to make me his heir, and my interview with Alexander III. when I discovered him to be the Peace-keeper of Europe, as among those which are indelibly impressed on my memory. Mr. Hearst looked at me somewhat quizzically as he sat down and bade me welcome.

Plunging at once in medias res, I said:-

" Mr. Hearst, I am very glad to see you. I have been very curious to see you for some time, ever since I saw how you were handling the Journal. But do you know why I want to see you?"

Mr. Hearst smiled and said he thought it was a great compliment.

"Not at all," I went on. " I want to see you because I want to find out if you have got a soul. Listen to me," I said; "I have been long on the look out for a man to appear who will carry out my ideal of government by journalism. I am certain that such a man will come to the front some day, and I wonder if you are to be that man. You have many of the qualities such a man must possess. You have youth, energy, great journalistic flaire, adequate capital, boundless ambition - yes, you have all these. But - but, I am not sure you have got a soul, and if you have not a soul all the other things are as nothing."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hearst. "What do you mean by having a soul?"

"Have you ever read Lowell's 'Biglow Papers'? Do you remember ever having read the prose preface to 'The Pious Editor's Creed'?"

"Promise me," I said, "that you will hunt out the book and read it before you go to bed this night. I read it before I was twenty, and it has dominated ever since my conception of journalism. Read it and you will see what I mean by asking whether you have got a soul. Lowell's conception of journalism-"

"Oh," said Mr. Hearst with a sneer, "journalism is only a business, like everything else!"

"There's just where you make your mistake," I retorted vehemently. " Journalism is not a business just like everything else, and it is because you think it is so, and act on your belief, that I doubted whether you had found your soul. Journalism," I went on, "is the heir of all "the theocracies, monarchies, aristocracies, hierarchies, plutocracies. In a democracy the journalist is the one man whose voice is heard day by day by all the people. He has all the opportunities, all the responsibilities. It is his mission, as Lowell said, to be the Moses of Humanity, leading each generation across that wilderness of sin called the Progress of Civilisation."

"It's all very well for you to talk like that," said Mr. Hearst, "because you have made your mark and you have a right to be heard. But if I were to start on to the prophet business, why, people would say, 'Who is this young fellow who's talking to us like that? Guess he's pretty considerable swell-headed!'"

"My dear Mr. Hearst," I answered, "if I had waited till I had made my mark before starting in the prophet business I never should have made my mark. Do you know," I asked, "what the New York Journal looks like to me every time I take it up?"

"No," he replied. " I'm rather interested to hear."

"This," said I. "It seems to me exactly like a first-class Atlantic liner, fitted up with the latest improvements, with the best machinery, a first-class crew, a crowded complement of passengers, which, when it has got out of sight of land, is discovered to have neither pilot, nor chart, nor compass on board. So it goes steaming ahead, now this way, now that, without an aim, without an object, except only to show her speed."

"Well," said Mr. Hearst, "there is something in that, I admit. But what would you have me do with it? Where should I sail to?"

"If you do not know yourself what is the best course to steer, then consult the best Americans who think about the public welfare. Cecil Rhodes used to say that there were not more men in England who were worth consulting about the Empire than you can count on the fingers of two hands. That was too low an estimate. Suppose we say that there are twenty-five such on an average in every State in the Union. That gives you 1,000 men whose judgment is the best. Make it your business to know the whole 1,000, and condense from the total mass of their contributions what you find to be the common denominator of their ideas. Make that your message. Use your paper to give more power to the elbow of all the best and wisest citizens. Be their organ, their mouthpiece, make your paper their sceptre. And if you do, there is no man living in the United States who will have such an influence for good for so many years as you will have. Presidents last eight years at the most. You will never go out of office. But it all depends," I said, "whether you've got a soul, and that is why I've come here to-night to find out."

"It's very interesting what you say," replied Mr. Hearst. " It never occurred to me in that light before."

"Don't think it will be an easy road," I went on. "It is not a path of roses by any means. It may land you in gaol, or it may lead you to the scaffold; but a man with a soul within him counts these things as but trifles compared with the opportunity of wielding such influence over millions of his fellow-men."

We had a good deal more talk, but the above was the gist of it. I left after midnight, marvelling a little at the unwonted liberty of utterance which had been given to me with this total stranger, and wondering not a little as to what impression my unceremonious discourse had made upon the mind of Mr. Hearst.

After I returned home and was settling down to work I was startled by receiving every now and then from Mr. Hearst cablegrams addressed to his London correspondent asking him to obtain and to telegraph what I thought upon what the Journal was doing in this, that, or the other direction. I do not for a moment argue post hoc propter hoc, but it was almost immediately after that midnight talk that Mr. Hearst began to realise the ideal of a journalism that does things. He took up the question of municipal ownership. He engaged Arthur Brisbane, the son of Brisbane the Fourierist, to write editorials. He began the battle against the Trusts; he made the Spanish-American war. For weal or for woe Mr. Hearst had found his soul; for weal or for woe he had discovered his chart and engaged his pilot, and from that day to this he has steered a straight course, with no more tackings than were necessary to avoid the fury of the storm. Some years afterwards I met Mr. Hearst in Paris. He recalled our first conversation, and said, " I never had a talk with anyone which made so deep a dint in life."

The acquaintance thus begun has continued unbroken down to the present time. I am afraid I incurred no small amount of odium by contributing to the Journal in its early days, and last year when I was asked to describe the Peace Conference for the American (the Journal was rechristened American after a few years), I was warned by my friends that nothing would so hopelessly discredit me as to figure in the pages of that "Yellow Journal." Mr. Roosevelt's opinion of Mr. Hearst, as he delivered it to one of Mr. Hearst's own interviewers, and repeated it to me, was quite unfit for publication - anyhow, it was not published. But what was to be done? In 1899, when the first Peace Conference met at the Hague, it was Mr. Hearst and Mr. Hearst's syndicated papers which alone were willing to pay for cabling 2,000 words every Sunday of what had been done at the Hague the previous seven days. Last year they undertook to do the same, but as public interest waned they did not continue their publication.

I saw Mr. Hearst last year just before I left New York, the day after he had published a scathing attack upon the Democratic party organisation, in which the curious will find a foreshadowing of the smashing blow which last month drove Mr. Bryan to get rid of the Treasurer of his party. We had quite a long talk. I have probably talked with as many varieties of notable men as any of my contemporaries. I put Mr. Hearst very high in my graded categories of remarkable men. A cooler hand and a steadier head few men have. He discussed with almost Olympian impartiality the probabilities of American politics, the characters of American public men. He seemed to be singularly free from bitterness. He said he thought the Republicans could not help carrying the next Presidential Election even if they tried. Roosevelt's influence would be sufficient to carry any ticket. As to Mr. Bryan's chances, he spoke kindly of Mr. Bryan, but he utterly despaired of the Democratic party machine being capable of grappling with the Trusts. It had chopped and changed too much to command the confidence of the country, and the personnel of its organisation was utterly bad.

I asked him why he had not adhered to the career which, ten years before, I had said would lead him to a position in the Republic much more influential than that of President. "Oh," he replied, "I was tired of telling people what they ought to do: I wanted to see if I could not do things myself. But that is over now. I am not, going to stand again for Presidency."

"But," I objected, "you stood for the Mayoralty of New York and then for the Governorship of the State."

"I did not want to stand for either," he replied. "The boys fairly forced me into the Mayoral contest. They said that it was no use my rallying them to the fight if I would not do my share in the battle. I refused and refused, and it was only when it was quite clear that the whole party would be ruined if I did not give in that I consented to stand."

"And were not elected?"

"Oh, I was elected right enough. Legally and rightfully I am Mayor of New York at this moment. But they deliberately falsified the election returns. If we could have had an honest count of all the ballots cast I should have been in the City Hall at this moment."

"But the Governorship?"

"Oh, that was a corollary of the cheating that seated the candidate of the minority in the Mayor's chair. Our fellows were mad at that scandalous swindle, and they nominated me for Governor."

"Out of which you were kept by Mr. Root's letter from Roosevelt?"

"Oh, no ; not at all. I don't think that letter materially affected the result. What did affect the election was the fact that as the Republicans had usurped the mayoralty, they were able to swing the whole of the civic employees' votes for Mr. Hughes. If they had not been in possession of the mayoralty, or if they had remained neutral, most of these employees would have voted for me, as they did when I stood for Mayor."

Mr. Hearst spoke without acrimony, with a good deal of philosophical cynicism. But it was quite clear to me that he could not be counted upon as a factor to secure the success of Mr. Bryan.

My own impression of Mr. Hearst has never varied. He is one of the ablest men in America, the keenest and most capable journalist in the world. Whatever his past may have been in the days when he was Madcap Hal, he has put away the vices of his hot youth and is now, like Henry V., the very opposite of his former self. The danger of course is that there may be a taint, a certain moral deterioration born of the period of his libertine youth which may deaden the moral instinct of the maturer man. As I used to say of Rhodes that his ethical education had been neglected, I would say of Mr. Hearst that his ethical perception may have been dulled by the riotous life of his earlier manhood.

The fine sense that instinctively recoils from anything that is not chivalrous or noble seldom survives a prolonged mud-bath in which the man wallows together with the dragons of the primeval slime. Hence certain things in his journals which make his friends uneasy and cause his enemies to blaspheme. There is a certain coarseness of invective, more worthy of a bargee than of a gentleman, in which Mr. Hearst occasionally revels. But when all deductions are made and all discounts allowed for, Mr. Hearst is to-day probably the most typical American of the new generation.

If you want to know the kind of man Mr. Hearst is, it is absurd to go ransacking Roman history to find his prototype. To some he is a reincarnation of the famous brothers Gracchi, to others he is the modern Catiline. It is much simpler, and the ordinary reader will understand much better what he is if I say that he is Alfred Harmsworth and W. T. Stead rolled into one and reincarnated in the body of an American of the Pacific Coast. He has the qualities of both the editors of the Daily Mail and of the Review of Reviews - although it is probable that the proportion of Stead is less than the proportion of Northcliffe. But he is like me in being a propagandist and a hot gospeller, which Lord Northcliffe is not, and never can be. It is not in him. But he has all Lord Northcliffe's qualities - his journalistic flaire, his skill in choosing willing slaves, his insatiable ambition, and his great business capacity.

His appearance has been recently described by two close observers. Mr. Arthur Brisbane says:-

He is a big man. He is more than six feet two in height, very broad, with big hands and big feet, a strong neck that will stand up for a long time under a heavy load. His hair is light in colour, and his eyes blue-gray, with a singular capacity for concentration. His dress of late has been the usual uniform of American statesmanship, combining the long-tailed frock coat and the cowboy's soft slouch hat.

Here is a companion picture by Mr. Sydney Brooks:-

In dress, appearance, and manner he is impeccably quiet, measured, and decorous. He struck me as a man of power and a man of sense, with a certain dry wit about him, and a pleasantly detached and impersonal way of speaking. He stands six feet two in height, is broad-shouldered, deep of chest, huge-fisted, deliberate, but assured in all his movements. But for an excess of paleness and smoothness in his skin one might take him for an athlete. He does not look his forty-four years. The face has indubitable strength. The long and powerful jaw and the lines round his firmly clenched mouth tell of a capacity for long concentration, and the eyes, large, steady, and luminously blue, emphasise by their directness the effect of resolution. In more ways than his quiet voice and unhurried, considering air, Mr. Hearst is somewhat of a surprise. He neither smokes nor drinks; he never speculates; he sold the racehorses he inherited from his father, and is never seen on a race track; yachting, dancing, cards, the Newport life, have not the smallest attraction for him; for a multi-millionaire he has scarcely any friends among the rich, and to "Society" he is wholly indifferent; he lives in an unpretentious house in an unfashionable quarter, and outside his family, his politics, and his papers, appears to have no interests whatever.

Many people used to say that Mr. Hearst was a cypher, that he would be nothing without Mr. Brisbane, etc. The fact is, Mr. Hearst is anything but a cypher. In the expressive Americanism it is Mr. Hearst who is "it," and no one else but Mr. Hearst. He has not a resonant voice, but he is an effective speaker. He is as slashing a writer as any of those wielding a pen on the American Press.

The question of questions that is asked me always about Mr. Hearst is this: "Is he sincere?" If I were put in the witness stand and made to answer that question on my oath I should say, "To the best of my knowledge and belief he is." That he is absolutely free from self-seeking I do not for a moment contend. He is no Pharisee. He is a man avid of success, measured by increase of circulation and increase of influence; an ambitious man as Napoleon was ambitious, and with something perhaps of the unscrupulosity of the great little Corsican. But in the inmost soul of him - and he has a soul and has found it - there is a desire to serve the common people. He is a Jeffersonian Democrat, a natural demagogue, and a man who is proud of being the tribune of the people.

It may be said if Mr. Hearst be so, why then this and that? Mr. Hearst is a man of action, a journalist engineer to whom nothing is sacred, a man whose balance-wheel of moral principle is not dominant, a kind of American Jesuit to whom the end justifies the means. But this brings me to my next chapter.

III.- THE HEARST NEWSPAPERS.

Mr. Hearst is the owner of nine distinct newspapers published in five cities in the United States and three widely circulated magazines, all of which pay. To quote Mr. Brisbane:-

He has built his newspapers up to a daily circulation of two millions. And that circulation is increasing constantly. Every day Hearst is able to talk with two million American families scattered everywhere in this country. His newspapers arc published in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. And they will soon be published in many other cities. His voice reaches farther than the voice of any other man in the country. There has never before been assembled in this world an audience such as that which Hearst commands, and therefore it is safe to say that there has never been a man possessing his peculiar influence and power for good.

According to Mr. Creelman, Mr. Hearst, up to 1906, had invested £2,400,000 in his newspaper business, and every year he spends £3,000,000 in producing his various publications. This daily outlay of £8,000 purchases 400 tons of white paper, which are converted into two million newspapers varying from eight to thirty or forty pages, pays the wages of 4,000 regular employees, and the lineage of 15,000 correspondents writing in space. He bought the New York Journal for £30,000, and has now sunk £1,600,000 in that property.

All of his papers are papers that appeal to the million. They are printed for the million and are read by the million. They are sensational and abusive, but not, so far as I have been able to discover, obscene or filthy. Mr. Hearst, indeed, gibbeted James Gordon Bennett for publishing indecent advertisements in the Herald, and obtained a judgment against him. He was accused by President Roosevelt of having incited by his violent attacks the assassination of President McKinley, and there is no variety of abusive epithet that has not been heaped upon him and his paper. But it takes all sorts of people to make a world, and it takes all sorts of papers to minister to the tastes of all sorts of people. Full reports of murder cases are not always edifying reading, but with the memory of the Luard murder and suicide still fresh in our memory it does not do for English journalists to give themselves airs. That Mr. Hearst plays to his gallery is true, and he would not deny it, for it is by the support of his readers he lives. That he would, other things being equal, prefer to produce more respectable papers I believe, but he caters to his public, as do many more pharisaic journalists who happen to have a less cosmopolitan public than that to which Mr. Hearst appeals.

Mr. Hearst talked good sound peace talk when I was last in New York, and the editorials in the American would have delighted the heart of Dr. Darby of the Peace Society. But if any man made the war with Spain inevitable it was Mr. Hearst, just as it was Lord Northcliffe who largely contributed to bring about the war with the Boers. Appealing as he does largely to the Russian Jews of the Ghetto, to the Germans, to the Irish, and to the non-English conglomerate, he is constantly under the temptation to twist the lion's tail. His late outburst in the Times exhibited him at his worst. I have a great belief in Mr. Hearst, and a great affection for him, but I am afraid I must admit that the influence of his papers would not tend toward peace and sweet reasonableness in the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.

Mr. Brisbane boldly claims for Mr. Hearst that -

he has made dishonest wealth disreputable throughout the nation. He is the greatest awakener and director of public opinion and public anger against injustice that the country has seen for many years.

Hearst has made innumerable fights in the interest of the people at his own expense, with great expenditure of money and of personal energy. Various trusts have been fought by him through the courts and up to the Supreme Court. He certainly has the honour of being hated more deeply by the public enemies of this country than any other man in it. A mere enumeration of the lawsuits that he has begun and prosecuted on behalf of the public welfare fills out a considerable pamphlet.

A more impartial witness, writing in Collier's Weekly, says:-

It is due to Mr. Hearst, more than to any other one man, that the Central and Union Pacific Railroads paid the £24,000,000 they owed the Government. Mr. Hearst secured a model Children's Hospital for San Francisco, and he built the Greek Theatre of the University of California - one of the most successful classic reproductions in America. Eight years ago, and again this year, his energetic campaigns did a large part of the work of keeping the Ice Trust within bounds in New York. His industrious Law Department put some fetters on the Coal Trust. He did much of the work of defeating the Ramapo plot, by which New York would have been saddled with a charge of £40,000,000 for water. To the industry and pertinacity of his lawyers New Yorkers owe their ability to get gas for eighty cents a thousand feet, as the law directs, instead of a dollar. In maintaining a legal department, which plunges into the limelight with injunctions and mandamuses when corporations are caught trying to sneak under or around a law, he has rendered a service which has been worth millions of dollars to the public.

Verily a newspaper man, who uses his newspapers to do things.

One of the things which weigh most in Mr. Hearst's favour is the extent to which he commands the devoted service of some of the ablest journalists in America. It is true he pays them well. Mr. Brisbane receives £10,000, the salary of the President of America; the next best-paid member of his staff receives £8,000; the third, £6,000. Five assistants receive £5,000 each. But no salary, however high, could command the unstinted enthusiasm with which Mr. Brisbane serves Mr. Hearst. He declares:-

Hearst represents unselfishness in public life. In need of nothing personally, he is not satisfied while others fail to thrive as they should in a country such as this. He is ambitious, without personal conceit. He is extremely tenacious. He is absolutely temperate, free from fondness for dissipation of any kind.

The following are the names of the leading members of his staff as they were given by Mr. Creelman two years ago:-

Solomon Solis Carvalho, general manager of all the Hearst newspapers; a highly trained journalist and shrewd business man of Portuguese descent.

Arthur Brisbane, editor of the New York Evening Journal and writer of its remarkable editorials. He is the son of Albert Brisbane, disciple of Fourier, the French socialist.

Samuel S. Chamberlain, managing editor of the New York American and supervising editor of all the Hearst newspapers, was for many years the friend and secretary of James Gordon Bennett.

Morrill Goddard, editor of the New York American Sunday Magazine.

Max F. Ihmsen, Mr. Hearst's political manager; once a member of the New York Herald's staff.

Clarence Shearn, Mr. Hearst's lawyer and the thinker-out of his costly injunction suits and other litigations against corporations and "oppressors of the common people."

Mr. Hearst is a millionaire, a multi-millionaire. Besides his newspapers he owns a million acres of land. But as it was with Rhodes, money is to him only a means to power. He spends money like water in the political education of the people. He was reputed to have spent £200,000 on the gubernatorial election in 1906, but even if he only spent the £51,274, which he returned in compliance with the election law, it was a large sum. He does not need to bleed the Standard Oil for his campaign funds; he bleeds himself.

When Mr. Hearst was in London five years ago he was interviewed upon his conception of journalism. He replied in terms which sound something like a far-away echo of the harangue I hurled at him six years before in his New York office.

"'Yellow journalism,'" said Mr. Hearst, "is active journalism. It is the journalism which is not content with merely printing news, not content with merely securing an audience, but which seeks rather to educate and influence its audience, and through it to accomplish something for the benefit of the community and the whole country. My particular form of yellow journalism attacks special privilege and class distinction, and all things that I believe to be undemocratic and un-American. A journalism which employs the power of its vast audience to accomplish beneficial results for all the people is the Journalism of the Future. Better still, I think it is the Journalism of the Present. I cannot imagine why anyone should want to print a newspaper except for that purpose. I myself don't find any satisfaction in sensational news, comic supplements, dress patterns, and other features of journalism, except as they serve to attract an audience to whom the editorials in my newspapers are addressed. You must first get your congregation before you can preach to it, and educate it to an appreciation and practice of the higher ideals of life."

There was some talk once of Mr. Hearst, after stringing newspapers across the Western Continent, establishing a Hearst organ in London. He made soundings, but he abandoned the project.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," he replied dryly, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, "I fear that the law of libel in the old country is too strict to allow legitimate scope for newspaper enterprise."

IV.- HIS DISCLOSURES.

Mr. Hearst at one time was a Democrat who took the stump for the Democratic party. He was elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket, but made no mark in the legislature. He is a personal friend and has been a staunch supporter of Mr. Bryan, but he has just dealt him, through his organisation, one of the hardest of knocks. At one time he believed that the Democratic party could be used against the Trusts. He has always been opposed to the Republicans for the cause succinctly stated by him in his early Democratic days:-

I do sincerely believe that the Republican party as a political institution is so much indebted to the Trusts, is under so many obligations to the Trusts, that it will never legislate against the Trusts, nor even enforce against them the laws which already exist.

The Trusts have received so many privileges from the Republican party, and the Republican party in return has received so many favours from the Trusts, that a bond has grown between them, uniting them like the Siamese twins, and you cannot stick a pin in the Trusts without hearing a shriek from the Republican party ; and you cannot stick a pin in the Republican party without hearing a roar from the Trusts.

Now, you can't expect one Siamese twin to turn against his Siamese brother, and you cannot expect the Republican party to turn against the Trusts. The Republicans may say they will - they frequently do say they will. But they never do it.

In his campaign two years ago for the Governorship of New York State he made things hum by the aid of gramophones, pyrotechnics, picture posters, choral societies. An observer describing the election said:-

All last week there were constant Hearst processions, with red fire, sky-rockets, and illuminated banners, in every town and village in the State. Thousands of phonographs were utilised in this campaign of vituperation, and every town was fully supplied with machine-made oratory.

Tens of thousands of copies of the Hearst newspapers were distributed free nightly picturing Mr. Hughes and other prominent Republicans as rats and other loathsome animals.

The Hearst posters showed babies poisoned by bad milk, mothers freezing to death on Christmas Day at the door of a trust millionaire, with dead children at their feet; corporation magnates laughing, with their heels in working men's faces; and others murdering the "common people" with tramcars and motor-cars.

The vicissitudes of the "common people," represented by a meek little dwarf, and the antics of the steel, ice, coal, railway, and other trusts, represented by men of unusual size, have furnished much amusement in the east side slums, where pictures are more valuable as vote winners than speeches.

His intervention in this Presidential Election reminds me somewhat of the sensation produced in London in 1885 by the publication by the Pall Mall Gazette of "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon." Everyone knew that these horrors had existed. But no one knew exactly how or by whom the hateful traffic was organised. When the Pall Mall began its revelations there was for a time a sickening sense of terror among the more highly-placed roues, for no one knew whose names might be revealed before the publication ceased. The Pall Mall Gazette, however, held its hand. Its object being to pass a new law, and not to pillory individuals, there was no need to mention names. But Mr. Hearst has mentioned names. Everyone knew that both parties blackmailed the trusts and were in turn subservient to them; but to know that criminality exists is one thing, to be able to pin it down to the counter is another. Mr, Hearst has nailed it down to the counter.

There is no need to enter into the disclosures in detail. The main outlines are all that non-American readers care for. What Mr. Hearst did was to publish letters - presumably stolen - which, in the opinion of the American public, from Mr. Roosevelt downwards, proved that certain notable political chiefs had been tampered with by the Trusts. Senator Foraker was the chief Republican victim. He is a senator whose position in the Republican party somewhat resembled that of Mr. Chamberlain under Mr. Gladstone - that is to say, he is a great political personality, often insubordinate and sometimes hostile to the Administration, whom it was, nevertheless, very necessary to keep in line for the Presidential campaign. Mr. Hearst published his incriminating letters, and Senator Foraker dropped like a shot pheasant. Mr. Haskell, Governor of Oklahoma, Mr. Bryan's friend and the trusted treasurer of the party, was the chief Democratic victim. He made a show of fight, but Mr. Bryan had to fling him overboard like another Jonah. Poor Mr. Haskell, the Poet Laureate of the Anti-Trust campaign, had written campaign songs for his party breathing vengeance against the Trusts.

And now, like Actaeon, he was torn to pieces by his own dogs. There were others of less note. There is a letter from Mr. Sibley advising the Standard Oil Trust to invest £200 in a loan to a senator " who is one who could do anything in the world that is right for his friends if needed." Senator McLaurin, a Democrat, is shown to have been in close business relations with the Standard Oil people, and so forth.

But President Roosevelt himself does not come off scot free. In 1904, it is alleged, Mr. Cornelius Bliss, treasurer of the Republican National party, acting for Mr. Cortelyou, chairman of the Republican National Committee, levied a contribution of £20,000 upon Mr. Henry Rogers and Mr. John Archbold, representing the Standard Oil Company.

In return Mr. Rogers and Mr. Archbold, who have complained that President Roosevelt has been acting harshly towards the Standard Oil Company, were to receive what is called a "Conservative Administration," which, being interpreted, means a Government that will not make things unduly warm for the Standard Oil Company.

On hearing of this Mr. Roosevelt wrote a violent letter to Mr. Cortelyou, denouncing the Standard Oil Company, and directing the return of the £20,000, but - and this is most important - the contributors allege that the money was not returned, and not one cent was paid back.

Not only was it not paid back, but a little later an additional sum of £50,000 was requested from the Standard Oil Company.

Mr. Rogers declined to give any more money, and recalled the fact that the President's instructions to return the first contribution had not been complied with, and that Mr. Roosevelt must have known all along that the £20,000, which he repudiates, had not been only accepted but used.

In view of this fact, Mr. Rogers declined to accede to the request for a further £50,000, and denounced Mr. Roosevelt for seemingly trying, on the one hand, to secure contributions from the Standard Oil Company, and, on the other hand, to make political capital by denouncing the company.

Senator Dupont of Delaware, who is head of the Powder Trust, had to resign from the Chairmanship of the Speaker's Bureau of the Republican National Committee. How many more resignations there will be no one knows. The Standard Oil Company, which Mr. Rockefeller regards with such unfeigned admiration, is not merely a gigantic tnist. Mr. Rockefeller and his partners, the Standard Oil Crowd, control capital many times larger than the national debt. According to Mr. Lewis Emery, who stood for Governor in Pennsylvania, the Standard Oil group, of which Mr. Rockefeller is the head and Mr. Rogers the right hand, hold a controlling interest in the following concerns:-

Insurance companies ............ £280,000,000

Railroads ............................. £500,000,000

Industrial ............................. £360,000,000

Traction and transportation ..... £32,000,000

Gas, electric light, and power ... £22,000,000

Mining companies ................... £39,000,000

Banks and trust companies ...... £36,000,000

Telegraph and telephone ......... £36,000,000

Navigation ............................... £8,000,000

Safe deposits ............................. £120,000

________________________________________________

Total ................................ £1,313,120,000

Here there is an Imperium in imperio, a power within the Republic which Mr. Hearst has now revealed as directly aiming at the control of the Government of the Republic by the use of the money power.

This article appears in Stead's Review, page 327.

The Lippmann School of Journalism

I've made it through the entirety of Walter Lippmann's book "Public Opinion", and I initially missed it. Walter Lippmann gives up the entire journalistic game right in the very first paragraph. Though, it is easy to miss given how the book is structured. I'm almost done with the full audiobook, but in doing some reviewing, I re-read this portion and it hit me. Right here at the outset Walter Lippmann sets the tone for his book very, very well.

This is the very first paragraph of the book, on page 1:

There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies.

What is Lippmann saying here? Because the newspaper only arrived in two month increments, the media held the narrative hostage for sixty days.

Whatever the headlines say, the people believe. This is not commentary upon the readers. We as readers are supposed to be able to trust journalists. It's the journalists who have abused their authority and made their positions into political positions. That's really what this book "Public Opinion" is all about, in so many words. A how-to manual for controlling the people through the use of headlines, stereotypes, omission, and more.

http://tinyurl.com/lwkcjx8

U.S. NEWSCAST IDEA ASSAILED

There's an interesting news article, that Google Newspapers has cached:

U.S. NEWSCAST IDEA ASSAILED

NEW YORK, Jan. 14. (AP) - Announcement was made today that the board of directors of the Associated Press at a recent meeting held "that government can not engage in newscasting without creating the fear of propaganda which necessarily would reflect upon the objectivity of the news services from which such newscasts are prepared." The text:

"The Associated Press stands committed to the principle of freedom of access to the news and to the free flow of news throughtout the world.

It holds that news thus disseminated by nongovernmental news agencies is essential to the highest development of mankind and to the perpetuation of peace between nations. It recognized the possibility of useful purpose served by governments in the maintenance throughout the world of official libraries of information. It applauds the vigorous manner in which the present national administration has advanced in the doctrine of press freedom. It holds however that government can not engage in newscasting without creating the fear of propaganda which necessarily would reflect upon the objectivity of the news services from which such newscasts are prepared."

First, this is an announcement(press release), so it shouldn't be in copyright. That and the whole article amounts to three whopping paragraphs. Articles that small I see get copied all the time, as long as proper ownership is recognized. This was published in The Spokesman-Review, January 15, 1946.

Those who read this should hold a healthy skepticism as they do. It is not a coincidence that both Woodrow Wilson's CPI as well as FDR's OWI employed journalists in their daily propaganda operations. That's not an accident. This press release is AP's way of pushing back against government. Here's what they are saying:

"Propaganda is our turf. Government, back off."

AP is clearly saying that if government is involved with the news, objectivity across the board would disappear. Problem is, objectivity was gone long beforehand when journalists decided that the government was their friend. Around this time period, the Smith-Mundt act of 1948 would be passed.(over the earlier 1946 Bloom Bill, see this for a general overview) Interestingly enough, a few decades later the journalists had already forgotten. NPR as well as PBS were introduced in the 70's.

All of this is important, as the Federal Government gets ready to introduce even more propaganda outlets into the mainstream.

Progressivism is a puzzle. You're supposed to put the pieces together and connect the dots.

In "The New Democracy", by Walter Weyl, he writes the following: (page 166)

Nor do all these revolutionists comprehend that they are allies. One group in the community strives to end the exploitation of child labor. Other groups seek to extend and improve education, to combat tuberculosis, to reform housing conditions, to secure direct primaries, to obtain the referendum, to punish force and fraud at the polls, to secure governmental inspection of foods, to regulate railroad rates, to limit the issue of stocks and bonds of corporations doing an interstate business, to change the character and incidence of taxation, to protect and recreate our forests, to reserve and conserve our mines, to improve the lot of the farmer, to build up trade-unions among workingmen, to Americanize incoming immigrants, to humanize prisons and penal laws, to protect the community against penury caused by old age, accident, sickness, and invalidity, to prevent congestion in cities, to divert to the public a larger share of the unearned increment, to accomplish a thousand other results for the general welfare. Every day new projects are launched for political, industrial, and social amelioration, and below the level of the present lie the greater projects of the future. Reform is piecemeal and yet rapid. It is carried along divergent lines by people holding separate interests, and yet it moves towards a common end. It combines into a general movement toward a new democracy.

Walter Lippmann shows us how this is done.(in his day) This is the first three paragraphs of chapter 3, in Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion:

While censorship and privacy intercept much information at its source, a very much larger body of fact never reaches the whole public at all, or only very slowly. For there are very distinct limits upon the circulation of ideas.

A rough estimate of the effort it takes to reach "everybody" can be had by considering the Government's propaganda during the war. Remembering that the war had run over two years and a half before America entered it, that millions upon millions of printed pages had been circulated and untold speeches had been delivered, let us turn to Mr. Creel's account of his fight "for the minds of men, for the conquest of their convictions" in order that "the gospel of Americanism might be carried to every corner of the globe."1

Mr. Creel had to assemble machinery which included a Division of News that issued, he tells us, more than six thousand releases, had to enlist seventy-five thousand Four Minute Men who delivered at least seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, one hundred and ninety speeches to an aggregate of over three hundred million people. Boy scouts delivered annotated copies of President Wilson's addresses to the householders of America. Fortnightly periodicals were sent to six hundred thousand teachers. Two hundred thousand lantern slides were furnished for illustrated lectures. Fourteen hundred and thirty-eight different designs were turned out for posters, window cards, newspaper advertisements, cartoons, seals and buttons. The chambers of commerce, the churches, fraternal societies, schools, were used as channels of distribution. Yet Mr. Creel's effort, to which I have not begun to do justice, did not include Mr. McAdoo's stupendous organization for the Liberty Loans, nor Mr. Hoover's far reaching propaganda about food, nor the campaigns of the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., Salvation Army, Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, not to mention the independent work of patriotic societies, like the League to Enforce Peace, the League of Free Nations Association, the National Security League, nor the activity of the publicity bureaus of the Allies and of the submerged nationalities.

Wow, look at that. Disparate and seemingly "unconnected" groups, all working for a common end. Just like Weyl said they would. What these progressives have achieved is (unfortunately) brilliant. Through their use of "disconnected" groups, they have successfully turned non-progressive people into people working for progressive change. In modern times, the AARP is a great example of this. The key is to make sure people don't figure the game out, as Weyl states:(still page 166)

This revolution, in the very midst of which we are, while believing that we stand firm on a firm earth, is a revolution not of blood and iron, but of votes, judicial decisions, and points of view. It does not smell of gunpowder or the bodies of slain men. It does not involve anything sudden, violent, cataclysmic. Like other revolutions, it is simply a quicker turn of the wheel in the direction in which the wheel is already turning. It is a revolution at once magnificent and commonplace. It is a revolution brought about by and through the common run of men, who abjure heroics, who sleep soundly and make merry, who "talk" politics and prize-fights, who obey alarm clocks, time-tables and a thousand petty but revered social conventions. They do not know that they are revolutionists.

What's dangerous about this is that it takes the term "useful idiot" and abolishes the word "idiot". A lot of the things people end up doing, particularly at many of these non-profit organizations, is hardly idiotic. Brandon Darby's story is a good example of this, because what he was doing down in New Orleans was handing out food and water to people who needed it. It was a relief organization. Where Darby differs from most is that because he was a member of leadership, he got to see the maluse of funds and the more hard-core ideological leanings of the organization. The average person who would only take the water bottles off the truck and hand out the water to people who need it would never have the opportunity to see these things, and would thus never question the organization. They would instead ask questions like this: "Why would anybody demonize an organization that gives water to people who are dehydrated at best, to coming close to dying from thirst at the worst?", not realizing that the organization they are working for is completely corrupt. This is the problem we face, and it demonstrates the "brilliance" of the progressives plots.

They have connected organizations which are seemingly unconnected on the surface. So why shouldn't conservatives connect the unconnected as well? The problem is, they're not unconnected. And any time someone dares to connect them, they get smeared as a conspiracy theorist. Watch what happens any time someone dares to point out what Soros does. As far as anybody is concerned, Soros is a pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow philanthropist. Here he is, the puppetmaster himself, largely re-iterating what Walter Weyl wrote 100 years ago:

When you try to, let’s see, improve society you affect different people and different interests differently and they are not actually commensurate. So you very often have all kinds of unintended adverse consequences. So I had to experiment. And it was a learning process. The first part was this subversive activity, disrupting repressive regimes. That was a lot of fun and that’s actually what got me hooked on this whole enterprise. Seeing what worked in one country, trying it in the other country. It was kind of what developed a matrix in fact that we had, national foundations, and then we had certain specialized activities

It's a matrix(his word), they're not disconnected. I've known this for quite some time as a matter of gut instinct, but back when I wrote this detailing how this coalition of non-profits and other progressive organizations form a sort of invisible government, I hadn't yet found Weyl's writing.

Now, lest someone call me a conspiracy theorist for daring to connect the writings of Weyl and Lippmann, I should probably remind everybody that Lippmann co-founded The New Republic with Herbert Croly, and Walter Weyl was TNR's first Editor in Chief. They are connected.

So there you have it. More corrupt progressivism put on display, right from the original sources, from their own history. These are their founding fathers. This is why modern progressives do not want to discuss their own history, and it's why their history is one of the best tools we have at our disposal to push back against them.

http://tinyurl.com/krh6pb6