has been transferred from the dailies to
the monthlies and weeklies. The monthlies and weeklies have also the
advantage of being national in circulation instead of local, and
therefore less subject to local and personal influence. They are also
preserved, bound or unbound, and not thrown away on the day of
publication like the daily paper. At all events, the weeklies and
monthlies have been the pioneers and prime movers in the great moral
renaissance now dawning in America. Moral strife always brings out
moral leaders. Where will you find in the daily press to-day twenty
editors to compare with Richard Watson Gilder and Robert Underwood
Johnson, of "The Century," Henry M. Alden and George Harvey, of
"Harper's," Ray Stannard Baker and Ida M. Tarbell, of "The American,"
Lyman Abbott and Theodore Roosevelt, of "The Outlook," Walter Page, of
"The World's Work," Albert Shaw, of the "Review of Reviews," Paul E.
More, of "The Nation," S. S. McClure, of "McClure's," Erman Ridgway, of
"Everybody's," Bliss Perry, of "The Atlantic Monthly," Norman Hapgood,
of "Collier's," Edward Bok, of "The Ladies' Home Journal," George H.
Lorimer, of the "Saturday Evening Post," Robert M. La Follette, of "La
Follette's," William J. Bryan, of "The Commoner," or Shailer Matthews,
of "The World To-day"? These are the men--and there are more, too, I
might name--who came forward with their touch upon the pulse of the
nation when the day of the daily newspaper as a leader of enlightened
public opinion had waned. As a Philadelphia daily has admitted, "A
vacuum had been created. They filled it."

Let me quote from a recent editorial,[3] which seems to sum up this
transformation most clearly:--

"The modern American magazines have now fallen heir to the power
exerted formerly by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and
daily newspapers in the moulding of public opinion, the development
of new issues, and dissemination of information bearing on current
questions. The newspapers, while they have become more efficient as
newspapers, that is, more timely, more comprehensive, more
even-handed, more detailed, and, on the whole, more accurate, have
relinquished, or at least subordinated, the purpose of their
founders, which was generally to make people think with the editor
and do what he wanted them to do. The editorials, once the most
important feature of a daily paper, are rarely so now. They have
become in