ndacity, undue expansion of all manner
of scandal, amplification of every detail and kind of crime, and every
phase of covert innuendo or open attack upon official doing and
private character--the whole infernal mass procured, and stimulated
and broadcast among the people by the "business end of it," with the
one and only intent of securing and holding circulation.

Take a representative and pertinent example. Eight years ago there
were in New York ten or eleven standard newspapers, as ably and
inclusively edited and as energetically and successfully conducted,
business-wise, as they are now. Even at their worst they were decently
mindful of life's proprieties and moralities and they throve by
legitimate sale of the most and best news and the best possible
elucidation and discussion thereof. The father could bring the paper
of his choice to his breakfast table with no fear that his own moral
sense and self-respect might be outraged, or that the face of his wife
might be crimsoned and the minds of his children befouled. But there
came from out of the West new men and new forces, quick to see the
larger opportunity opened in the very center of five millions of
people, and almost in a night came the metamorphosis of the old World
into the new. It was deftly given out that existing conditions were
inadequate to the better deserts of the Knickerbocker, the Jersey-man,
and the Yankee, and that a new purveyor of more highly seasoned news
and a more doughty champion of their rights and interests was hither
from the land of life and movement--at two cents per copy. There was a
panic in New York newspaper counting rooms, and prices tumbled in two
days from the three and four cents of fair profit to the two and three
cents of bare cost or less. The new factors in demoralization cared
nothing for competition in prices or legitimate goods, for they had
other ideas of coddling the dear people. Ready to their purpose lay
disintegrated Liberty, waiting for a rock upon which to plant her feet
and raise her torch, and the new combination between the world, the
flesh and the devil, waiting and ready for access to the pockets of
the public, was only too ready to set up Liberty and itself at one
stroke, if only the joint operation could be done without expense to
itself. The people said, "What wonderful enterprise!" "What a generous
spirit!" The combination, with tongue in cheek and finger laid
alongside nose, said to itself as it saw its c