ng firm which is an exception to this rule
in that it sometimes attempts to influence the reviews of its books by
means of its patronage.

But with the small book-houses this happy relationship does not always
exist. It would surprise you to know how many of them badger and
threaten us. Some, I understand, have a rule not to advertise where
their books are not indiscriminately puffed. It is a poor Maxim,
however, that won't shoot both ways; for I am sorry to report that some
papers adopt the equally bad rule of not reviewing the books of these
firms who do not keep an advertising account with them.

I once dined at a public banquet where the guests were both whites and
negroes, and made some harmless and well-meaning remarks. A
Philadelphia advertiser subsequently said he would never do business
with a paper that employed such an editor.

Last year an insurance company withdrew its advertising from the
columns of a great weekly because it repeated a disagreeable truth
about one of its directors.

Recently San Francisco has gone through one of the most important
struggles for civic betterment ever waged in an American city. The
whole nation stood at attention. The issue was clear and unequivocal.
The story of how San Francisco was redeeming her fair name, as every
newspaper man knows, was sensational enough to be featured day by day
on the front pages of every great paper in the land. The Eastern
dailies started in bravely enough, but soon cut down their reports
until they became so meagre and inadequate as to cause people in the
East to surmise that some influence hostile to the prosecution had
poisoned the sources of their information.

The Archbold letters, given to the press by Mr. Hearst in the late
campaign, are further examples of commercialism in journalism. How the
Standard Oil Company sent its certificates of deposit and giant
subscriptions to sundry editors and public-opinion promoters, and how a
member of Congress from the great state of Pennsylvania actually
suggested to Mr. Archbold that it might be a good plan to obtain "a
permanent and healthy control" of that very fountain-head of
publicity,--the Associated Press,--these sinister transactions and
suggestions have been so fully discussed as to need no further comment
from me.

From the standpoint of journalistic ethics, the only thing more
reprehensible than selling your opinions is offering them for sale.
This is editorial prostitution. The mere