Chapter 6 - Page 2

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 of Congress and stories of private life are alike all served up, fully illustrated with pictures of the people and events. A corner is devoted to children, another to women, another to religious Americans, and a little sermon is preached. Then there are suggestive pictures for the man about town, recipes for the cook, weather reports for the traveler, a story for the romancer, perhaps a poem, and an editorial page, where ideas and theories are promulgated and opinions manufactured on all subjects, ready made for adoption by the reader, who in many instances has his thinking done for him. I made a test of this, and asked a number of men for their opinion on a certain subject, and then guessed the name of their favorite paper, and in most instances was correct. They all claimed that they took the paper because it agreed with their political ideas; but I am confident that the reverse is true, the paper having insidiously trained them to adopt its view. Here we see where the power of one man or editor comes in, and worse yet, a nation which acquires this "newspaper habit," this having some one to think for it by machinery, as it were, will lose its mental power, its facility in analysis. I made bold to suggest this to a prominent man, but he merely laughed. As a whole, the American newspapers are valuable; they are the real educators of the people, and have a vast influence. For this reason there should be some restriction imposed on them.