see what is said about them. All the American
press is not founded upon this system of virtual blackmail. There are
respectable papers, conservative and honorable; but I believe I am not
overstating it when I say that every large city has at least one paper
where the secrets of a family and its most sacred traditions are treated
as lawful game.

The actual heads of papers have often been men of high standing, as
Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond, E. L. Godkin, Henry Watterson, the
late Charles A. Dana, James Gordon Bennett, and William Cullen Bryant.
But in the modern newspaper the man in control is a managing editor,
whose tenure of office depends upon his keeping ahead of all others.
The press, then, with its telegraphic connection with the world, with
its thousands of readers, is a power, and in the hands of a man of small
mind becomes a menace to civilization and easily drifts into blackmail.
This is displayed in a thousand ways, especially in politics. The editor
desires to obtain "influence," the power to secure places for his
favorites, and, if he is slighted, he intimates to the men in power,
"Appoint my candidate or I will attack you." This is a virtual threat.
In this way the editor intimidates the office-holder. I was informed by
a good authority of two journals of standing in America which he knew
were started as "blackmailing sheets"; and certainly the license of the
press is in every way diabolical, a result of the American dogma of free
speech. When one arrives in America he is met with dozens of
representatives of the press, who ask a thousand and one personal and
impertinent questions, which, if one does not answer, one is attacked in
some insidious way. One man I know refused to listen to a very
importunate newspaper man, and was congratulating himself on his escape,
when on the following day an article appeared in the paper giving
several libelous pictures of him, the object being to show that he had
nothing to say because he was mentally deficient. He appealed to the
editor, but was told that his only recourse was to sue. As one walks
down the gangplank of a ship he may become the mark for ten or fifteen
cameras, which photograph him without permission, and whose owners will
"poke fun" at his resistance.

As a news-collecting medium the press of the United States is a
magnificent organization. At breakfast you receive the news of the
whole world--social, diplomatic, criminal, and religious. Meetings