he universal millions. What agency,
then, is there, that will prepare the democracy of the present and the
future for its tremendous responsibilities?

Some may say, the newspaper press: and I would rejoice if we could
accept that reply. For the press is an educating power that might
transform the civilization of the world as swiftly in mind and morals as
steam and electricity have transformed its material aspects. There is
nothing conceivable in the way of light and leading for mankind which a
conscientious and cultivated newspaper press might not do within a
single generation. But a press of that character and that effect seems
possible only under circumstances of disinterestedness which are not
likely to exist. The publication of a newspaper may sometimes be
undertaken as a duty, but not often. As a rule it is a business, like
any other, with the mercenary objects of business; and as a rule, too,
the gain sought is more readily and more certainly found by pandering to
popular ignorance than by striving against it. A few newspapers can
secure a clientage which they please best by dignity, by cleanness, by
sober truthfulness, and by thoughtful intelligence, in their columns;
but the many are tempted always, not merely to stoop to low tastes and
vulgar sentiments, but to cultivate them; because there is gravitation
in the moral as well as the physical world, and culture in the downward
way is easier than the upward.

The vulgarizing of the news press has been a late and rapid process,
nearly coincident in cause and event with the evolution of this modern
democracy which it makes more problematical. We need not be very old to
have seen the beginnings: the first skimming of the rich daily news of
the world for the scum and froth of it; the first invention of that
disgusting brew, from public sewers and private drains, with which the
popular newspapers of the day feed morbid appetites. We can recall the
very routes by which it was carried from city to city, and taken up by
journal after journal, as they discovered a latent, un-developed taste
for such ferments of literature in the communities around them. The
taste was latent, potential; it did not exist as a fact; it was not
conscious of itself; it made no demands. The newspapers deliberately
sought it out, delved for it, brought it to the surface, fed it,
stimulated it, made it what it is to-day, an appetite as diseased and as
shamefully pandered to as the appetite for