Excerpt from Morals in Trade and Commerce: A Lecture

Never before has it been so hard to know the facts as it is to - day. If we must give credit to the press for the diffusion of knowledge so also must we recognize its equal power to diffuse prejudice and bias. The newspaper and the magazine ofoto - day are vast and intricate machines that supply the great majority of us with prae tically all the data upon which we base our judgments. The public mind and the popular press act and react upon one another, the press setting its sails to catch every wind of public interest and the public upon its part demanding to be supplied with all those departments of news to which at the moment it is specially attracted. Commercialism and competition have barred a large part of the press from its rightful office as leader and molder of Opinion and have reduced it to the position of a clamorous applicant for public favor. The press, like everything else, is ruled by majorities, and in order to live it must cater to the weaknesses of popular majorities, it must reflect their prejudices, it must sustain their ill-formed judgments, and it must so sift and Winnow the news of the day that the whims and the passions of the day shall be sustained. There are some newspapers and magazines that are honorably willing to represent only ripe thought and unbiased judgments, but they are not in the majority.

What verdict would the historian of the future pass upon the civilization of to-day if he were restricted to the files of our news papers for his material. It must be confessed that we of to-day, in the hurry and tension of modern life, are hardly in a better position. Whatever we may suppose to be our attitude toward the press, with whatever scorn we may regard its baser features, it has an effect upon our minds far greater than we suppose. Itis the steady drip of the water upon the stone that wears it away. It is the steady presentation of one aspect of human life, and that the lowest, that slowly jaundices our view and that produces either a rank pessimism or else an indignation against evil so strong as to efface judgment and to paralyze reason. Day after day we see human nature presented in its worst aspects and only in its worst aspects. We see fraud, cupidity, tyranny, and violence paraded before us as being almost the only activities worth reporting. Dishonesty is offered to us as the prevailing rule of life, and we are asked to believe that the spirit of commercial oppression has allied itself with the machinery of government for the op pression of a nation. It is a dreary picture, a picture that, if faithfully drawn, would justify almost any remedial measures within human power, a picture that by the skill of its presentation arrests attention and almost compels belief.

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