edatory
interests are using the newspapers and even some magazines for the
defense of commercial iniquity and for the purpose of attacking those
who lift their voices against favoritism and privilege. A financial
magnate interested in the exploitation of the public secures control
of a paper; he employs business managers, managing editors, and a
reportorial staff. He does not act openly or in the daylight but
through a group of employes who are the visible but not the real
directors. The reporters are instructed to bring in the kind of news
which will advance the enterprises owned by the man who stands
back of the paper, and if the news brought in is not entirely
satisfactory it is doctored in the office. The columns of the paper
are filled with matter, written not for the purpose of presenting
facts as they exist, but for the purpose of distorting facts and
misleading the public. The editorial writers, whose names are
generally unknown to the public, are told what to say and what
subjects to avoid. They are instructed to extol the merits of those
who are subservient to the interests represented by the paper, and to
misrepresent and traduce those who dare to criticize or oppose the
plans of those who hide behind the paper. Such journalists are
members of a kind of "Blackhand society"; they are assassins, hiding
in ambush and striking in the dark; and the worst of it is that the
readers have no way of knowing when a change takes place in the
ownership of such a paper. Editorial poison, like other poisons, can
be administered more successfully if the victim is in ignorance as to
who administers it.

There are degrees of culpability and some are disposed to hold an
editorial writer guiltless even when they visit condemnation upon
the secret director of the paper's policy. I present to you a
different--and I believe higher--ideal of journalism. If we are going
to make any progress in morals we must abandon the idea that morals
are defined by the statutes; we must recognize that there is a wide
margin between that which the law prohibits and that which an
enlightened conscience can approve. We do not legislate against
the man who uses the printed page for the purpose of deception
but, viewed from the standpoint of morals, the man who, whether
voluntarily or under instructions, writes what he knows to be
untrue or purposely misleads his readers as to the character of a
proposition upon which they have to act, is as guilty o