through this, here and there, are people really learning, really
increasing and accumulating knowledge, really thinking and
conversing--the active mind-cells, as it were, of the world. Their
ideas are conveyed into the mass much as impulses are conveyed into an
imperfectly innervated tissue, they are conveyed by books and
pamphlets, by lecturing, by magazine articles and newspaper articles,
by the agency of the pulpit, by organized propaganda, by political
display and campaigns. The gross effect is considerable, but it is
just as well that the Socialist should look a little closely at the
economic processes that underlie these intellectual activities at the
present time. Except for the universities and much of the public
educational organization, except for a few pulpits endowed for good
under conditions that limit freedom of thought and expression, except
for certain needy and impecunious propagandas, the whole of this
apparatus of public thought and discussion to-day has been created and
is sustained by commercial necessity.

For example, consider what is I suppose by far the most important
vehicle of ideas at the present time, which for a huge majority of
adults is the sole vehicle of ideas, the newspaper. It is universal
because it is cheap, and it is cheap because the cost of production is
paid for by the advertisements of private enterprise. The newspaper is
to a very large extent parasitic upon competition; its criticism, its
discussion, its correspondence, are, from the business point of view,
written on the backs of puffs of competing tobaccos, soaps, medicines
and the like. No newspaper could pay upon its sales alone, and the
same thing is true of most popular magazines and weekly publications.
It is highly probable that whatever checks public advertisement in
other directions, the prohibition of bill-posting upon hoardings, for
example, the protection of scenery, railway carriages and architecture
from the advertiser, stimulates the production of attractive
literature. Necessarily what is published in newspapers and magazines
must be acceptable to advertising businesses and not too openly
contrary to their interests. With that limitation the newspapers
provide a singularly free and various arena for discussion at the
present time. It must, however, be obvious that to advance towards
Socialism is, if not to undermine the newspaper altogether, at least
to change very profoundly this material vehicle of popular