in boots or hats, there is "copy" ready to
your hand. All things and all men must be reduced to a dead level of
imbecility. The Yellow Press is not obscene--it has not the courage for
that. Its proud boast is that it never prints a line that a father might
not read to his daughter. It is merely personal and impertinent. No
one's life is secure from its spies. No privacy is sacred. Mr Stead's
famous ideal of an ear at every keyhole is magnificently realised in
America. A hundred reporters are ready, at a moment's notice, to invade
houses, to uncover secrets, to molest honest citizens with indiscreet
questions. And if their victims are unwilling to respond, they pay for
it with public insult and malicious invention. Those who will not bow to
the common tyrant of the Press cannot complain if words are ascribed
to them which they never uttered, if they are held guilty of deeds from
which they would shrink in horror. Law and custom are alike powerless
to fight this tyranny, which is the most ingenious and irksome form of
blackmail yet invented.

The perfect newspaper, if such were possible, would present to its
readers a succinct history of each day as it passes. It would weigh with
a scrupulous hand the relative importance of events. It would give to
each department of human activity no more than its just space. It would
reduce scandal within the narrow limits which ought to confine it. Under
its wise auspices murder, burglary, and suicide would be deposed from
the eminence upon which an idle curiosity has placed them. Those strange
beings known as public men would be famous not for what their wives wear
at somebody else's "At Home," but for their own virtues and attainments.
The foolish actors and actresses, who now believe themselves the masters
of the world, would slink away into _entrefilets_ on a back page. The
perfect newspaper, in brief, would resemble a Palace of Truth, in
which deceit was impossible and vanity ridiculous. It would crush the
hankerers after false reputations, it would hurl the foolish from the
mighty seats which they try to fill, and it would present an invaluable
record to future generations.

What picture of its world does the Yellow Press present? A picture of
colossal folly and unpardonable indiscretion. If there be a museum which
preserves these screaming sheets, this is the sort of stuff which in
two thousand years will puzzle the scholars: "Mrs Jones won't admit
Wedding," "Millionaires Bet