cial standpoint the papers have become primarily advertising sheets, with the news function as a subsidiary incident. If the postal laws admitted free papers to the mails, the price, which has generally gone down to a penny, might be removed altogether. The papers must have circulation in order to get advertising, and so they must make themselves acceptable or necessary to the people. They are already so necessary, as practically the sole source of information which the people have with regard to current events and the men and measures of the time, that if the newspaper monopoly were complete and secure it would hardly need to cater to the good will of the public at all. Monopoly is not yet complete, but a very large proportion of the leading dailies are owned or controlled by men whose interests prompt them to suppress or distort the truth in regard to certain matters which vitally concern the people. Sometimes public officials are abused and robbed of the popular support without which they cannot succeed, because they will not take orders from the proprietors of powerful journals. Sometimes progressive measures are denied publicity and progressive men are misrepresented or ignored because certain newspapers have secretly become organs of those who are opposed to progress. While there is still considerable competition among newspapers and while there are many journals that appear to be independent and fearless on most public questions, there is beyond doubt a perilous dominance of personal and selfish interests in the control of the press to-day.

The reactionaries who hate the radical press for its interference with the quiet enjoyment of their special

privileges and for its attacks on complaisant public officials, join with the progressives who fear the obstructive power of the subsidized press, in questioning the effect of Majority Rule upon the power and responsibility of the newspapers. If already they are a mighty instrument of government, driving legislatures to do what they would not and preventing them from doing what they would, lording it over mayors of cities and governors of states, nominating candidates for public office and forcing men they do not like into political retirement, what limits can be placed upon their usurpations under Majority Rule? Then will they not be supreme? Through them the passions of the omnipotent majority may be fanned into a flame, its prejudices aroused, its intelligence cunningly perverted. Then, it is said, irresponsible government by newspaper will prove to be more unbearable than the worst tyrannies of representative assemblies and the most maddening obstructions of out-of-date judges. Can it be that Majority Rule, clothed in all the habiliments of popular freedom, will prove to be a mere plaything in the hands of the publicity trust?

We cannot deny that the dangers of newspaper domination deserve to be seriously considered, but there are two factors in the situation which tend to relieve our fears. In the first place, the normal use of all means of communication is to convey truth, not to conceal it. Language, the printed page, the report, are for truth-telling. Unless a person's mind has actually become perverted, he will lapse into truthfulness even against his will. A newspaper filled with falsehoods is a prodigy. No one cares to read mere lies. They are

not interesting. The newspaper has a great power over its readers. By constant iteration, unless the readers drop off, it can finally induce them to accept as true what they originally knew to be false. But a newspaper that does not play an honest game has hard work to get itself read. Its good repute is a very delicate thing, and cannot long survive the poison of secret control. The hunger of the readers for truth and their keen sense for detecting the spirit of double-dealing in the papers they read have a strong reciprocal influence upon the papers themselves. The pressure of truth to be told is hard to resist. With all its apparently irresponsible power, with the dominance of the business office over the editorial policy acknowledged, with its actual ownership by the greediest of special interests conceded, the newspaper finds itself paralyzed as a power for evil. Like a lazy beast, it may lie down in the path and refuse to carry its master farther in the right direction, but it cannot carry him far the wrong way. The master knows the way. If he cannot ride, he will plod on afoot. The newspaper is the natural organ of democracy. It deals in intelligence and sells its wares cheap. If it refuses to function, it dies.

Moreover, democracy is not absolutely dependent on the newspaper for publicity. Under Majority Rule the state itself may issue publicity literature and send it to every voter, thus enabling him to dispense with the newspaper so far as actual knowledge of the issues before the people is concerned. If necessary, the state itself can publish an official gazette devoted to public affairs. This possibility will tend to hold the newspapers in check and to make them accept, even though

it should be against their will, the function of democracy's publicity agents. As a matter of fact, the more they address themselves to this function under Majority Rule, the more they will prosper. So long as they keep to their true function of truth-telling, no matter how great their influence on politics, it will be only for good. Through them democracy will be expressing itself, and to speak of government by newspaper will be only another way of saying self-government.

CHAPTER XXXIV

FIRST GENERAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF MAJORITY RULE THAT IT WOULD SIMPLIFY POLITICAL ISSUES

EVEN under the parliamentary system as it exists in Great Britain, which is especially designed to keep the government in harmony with public sentiment, the appeal to the people is sometimes so confusing as to leave grave doubt as to the meaning of the people's reply. Some of the electors are trying to say no to tariff reform, while others are trying to say yes to Irish home rule, and still others are voting to curb the power of the House of Lords. It is a curious anomaly that the Referendum should have been made an issue in England by the Tory party, but it is explained by the fact that in the form proposed it would have given an appeal to the electorate to stop radical legislation but would not have given an appeal to prevent reactionary legislation. This incident of recent British politics is illustrative of the tactics of privilege-holders everywhere. In their perennial struggle with the democracy they consent to the use of any political device, no matter how democratic its form, when they think it can be turned to their own advantage. They are strict opportunists. They do not stand on mere political theories. Time and again in America we find the political machine accepting under pressure some new