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The Palladium of Our Liberties: Is It Cracked?

By DON C. SEITZ

This is the first of a series of trenchant articles on the amazing
developments in the field of journalism

NOR the century and a half since

F

the clash at Concord and Lexing

ton the press has been aeclaimed, largely in its own columns, as the Palladium of Our Liberties. Before it came into being the statue of Pallas Athene, erected in public places, was considered the special guardian of these precious entities. They were wholly taken over when the new Constitution guaranteed the freedom of the printed word by the able editors, to whose credit it must be Isaid that most of them were faithful to their trust. That they were bitter, partisan, and unfair can be readily admitted. But, like the watch-dog, they had an honest bark and did not sleep on duty.

It may be stated, however, that a wellfed watch-dog is less apt to be vigilant than one with an unsatisfied appetite, and profound observation leads to the conclusion that this rule applies to editors. The old vigilantes were not overfat. Their occupation was hazardous, their support small, and their friends. few. Fighting party issues with savage zeal, they were only too frequently not supported by the party. Yet each stood by his colors and grew lean in purse and person for the cause.

PURS

URSE and person have become plump in the profession to a degree unimagined so late as a decade ago. The self-constituted Palladium is groggy, and there are cracks in its pedestal. One of the many discoveries that came with war-time inflation was that profit-making could be made the rule and not the exception in journalism. The discovery came first in London, where the amazing Harmsworth success, following upon the creation of a halfpenny paper for people who had just learned to read, had made it possible for that astute publisher to capitalize his property and unload a great share upon the public without disturbing his control. This gave him real millions.

Millions made millions. Soon the Harmsworths, Alfred and Harold, were magnates. The war made other men rich, and these saw in London newspapers a great source of income from investment, with the result that colossal

Don C. Seitz

FOR many years Don C.

Seitz has played a leading part in American journalism. As the business manager of an outstanding metropolitan daily during the period of its greatest success, as a student of American history and a fearless critic of American life, he has made for himself an international reputation.

For twenty-five years his hat has been hanging on a peg in the office of the New York "World." With the beginning of the new year he transfers his hat and himself to The Outlook office. He joins The Outlook as a member of its Board of Directors and of its staff.

The Outlook Company rejoices in the addition of this notable voice to its editorial council. His vigor, his forthrightness, and his knowledge of men and affairs will mean much to readers of The Outlook during the coming months.

capitalization followed, in which were bulked all the publications of consequence except the "Times" and the Labor Party's "Herald," with the public holding the bag. The "Times" was taken from the Harmsworth interests by the lusty purse of the American-bred Astor family, and still thunders in solitary grandeur. The others are pocket pieces, profitable, unimpressive, and of no sort of public use. Noble lords preside over their boards, just as they do at directorates of soap and rubber companies.

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E have not yet reached this stage in America, but seem to be on the way. Traditional newspaper poverty has kept the public out of the newspaper field. Frank A. Munsey once floated a bond issue covering his magazines, but none are outstanding. Bernarr Macfadden, of physical culture fame, advertised a stock issue a year ago to float his "Evening Graphic." The rush to subscribe did not upset Wall Street. William R. Hearst recently mortgaged a batch of his publications to the amount of $12,000,000 in bonds, but how far the citizenry invested is not revealed. Readers of Mr. Arthur Brisbane's "To-Day" column get the impression that he bought most of them out of his salary as editor of the "Evening Journal." Mr. Hearst, is, however, something of a syndicate himself, owning twenty-six daily newspapers and a halfscore of magazines. He will be in a good position to capitalize as soon as he can secure a chartered accountant's certificate that he is making money-which is the British method of pocket-picking.

Beyond this, American newspapers are the properties of individuals, estates, partnerships, and close corporations. Few are longer owned by their editors. The work is done by hired men, some of whom are paid nearly as well as the union compositors, though working under a less certain tenure of employment and a more shifting scale.

Wages have more than doubled in mechanical departments, but have enjoyed little hoisting in the brainery, save to those favored beings who can have their output syndicated. These pets of

the press are egregiously overpaid, but cost their employers nothing. Their lucubrations are distributed at a profit over the land, and aid in keeping down the earnings of other men. Mr. Hearst is extremely liberal in this respect. Besides the gilded Brisbane, who illuminates eighty-five papers each day with his scintillations, a score of artists and writers are richly rewarded at the expense of competing sheets in the rural districts, in many of which the parent publication is on sale before the syndicated matter gets to press. Mr. Hearst thus has his cake and eats it, while there is more frost than frosting on the article supplied the local editor.

This system of syndicating is a large factor in destroying individuality in our newspapers, besides shutting the door of opportunity in the face of talent. It adds to the number of mute, inglorious Miltons and suppressed Hampdens of the countryside. Few realize the enormous extent upon which the press in general relies upon canned goods for filling. Numerous syndicates exist profitably through the supply of features, and all large dailies maintain syndicate departments. The sale of their by-products runs up to a pretty penny, permitting, as already noted, the payment of large salaries to specialists, comic artists, and even poets. The incomes of Edgar A. Guest and Walt Mason, for example, would make Tennyson and Longfellow feel like pikers. The creator of "Mutt and Jeff" has been at it for a quarter of a century, and can almost be suspected of using stencils. He has become rich enough to maintain a racing stable. H. T. Webster and Maurice Ketten would hardly care to change places with many bank presidents. George McManus is a plutocrat, and Tom Powers deserves to be.

These cases are cited, not in a carping spirit, but to show how small a part individualism has in making the common garden variety of newspaper, and also to explain how the exclusion of latent talent from the field tends to make the sheets commonplace and uninfluential.

Syndicated editorials are also sent out from a central plant, and are used to a considerable extent. Thus newspapers become standardized, like Ford cars, whose parts are said to be available at five-and-ten-cent stores, and have the flat flavor of cold buckwheat cakes.

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Howe are some Kansas specimens. Both have become appanages of syndicates have become appanages of syndicates and punky. Whoever hears anything any more from a Cincinnati, Louisville, or Springfield, Massachusetts, newspaper? Yet once the exchange editors followed with eager shears the leaders of Murat Halstead, Colonel Henry Watterson, and Samuel Bowles. Their papers still exist, but life is gone from them. The Field Marshal rides no more, and the StarEyed Goddess of Kentucky sleeps with the daisies. The Springfield "Republican" lives on, but not up to its reputation. What has happened? Are the communities less intelligent, or are the editors.

The fault, perhaps, lies with both. We recall the Athenian jester who held up a dried fish by the tail and so caused an audience to turn away from the oratory of Anaximines. "See," he cried in triumph, “a dried fish is more interesting than Anaximines." To meet dried-fish competition editors have been swept off their feet and have followed the false gods to their own moral destruction. Their business managers are of the sort who are able to only sell circulation, and not results. The buying power of the mass has become the fetish of the advertiser,

land, and what "your Uncle Dudley" says is supposed to "go." But it is always what "Uncle Dudley" says, not the "Globe," which escapes responsibility -and power!

For, much as the critic may cry out against the anonymity of the press, that is the source of its might. The opinion of a great newspaper represents a consensus of the courage, the learning, the wisdom, and the judgment of the men who make it. An editorial signed John Smith is John Smith's opinion, and nothing more. There are plenty of John Smiths, but mighty few New York "Worlds" or Manchester "Guardians." Their words weigh accordingly.

"But," says the critic, "we should know who it is that attempts to influence us. Why should this writer who assails be allowed to hide behind the name of his newspaper?" For the good reason cited above, and for the further reason that the newspaper does not hide. It is the only force in the world that performs all its acts in the open. It needs more than the insight of an individual's view to stand guard over affairs of public concern. We look out for the locomotive, not the engineer.

and not the buying power of the individ-W

ual.

Yet where will you find two more successful newspapers than the New York "Times" or the Boston "Transcript," both of which have sturdily refused to be swept from off their feet?

The ready apology for this sort of recalcitrance is that "people are no longer influenced by editorials," which is not true. The editorials are no longer influential because they have no force behind them, no potential purpose, no punch. The study is how to mix milk and water rather than blood and iron. The greater a newspaper's circulation, the weaker its editorial policy is certain to be, perhaps on the theory that there are just so many more people whose feelings must not be injured. The management seems deliberately to strive in a colorless indirection, instead of glorying in its strength.

THAT accomplished and successful

publisher, General Charles H. Taylor, of the Boston "Globe," kept his paper tame by an ingenious device. He had too much conscience to ignore matters that deserved public attention, but was too canny to involve the paper's strength in conveying the message of dissent or opposition. He therefore adopted the system of having his leading editorial signed "Uncle Dudley." Now "Uncle Dudley" is the titular "wise guy" of New Eng

OULD it not seem the first of all impulses on the part of the owner of a widely circulated publication to exert himself in the interest of his subscribers? Apparently it is not. The greater the circulation, the less appears to be the unselfish impulse. Eager minds do not develop with financial success, and money is notoriously timid. The monks who took vows of celibacy and poverty were on the right track. They know that singleness of purpose could not be maintained in any other way. Perhaps some time we shall see such a dedication to editorial duty, but it is not likely to appear in the daily field. The costs of operation are too great, the energy required can only be generated by industrial effort. Asceticism can have no place from now on in great establishments beyond the reportorial staffs. The boys. are, and probably will be, kept lean and hungry, like the pigs that hunt truffles under the oak trees in Picardy.

Thus the newspaper has come to make itself more of a convenience than an influence. It prints the department-store bargains and gives radio programs each day. It also chronicles with much detail the doings of the movie heroes and heroines, their hectic lives and complicated marital affairs. It also reveals in pages of agate the incomes of our fellow-citizens. Some news is printed if it happens early enough in the day to get in. Most news

declines to hurry for this purpose, and the bulk of it gets into "replate" editions that nobody reads, but which perfect the scores of the editors. This passion for early publication is responsible for much newspaper weakness, bad writing, and misinformation. It also leads to much forecasting which is not always correct in outcome, but which curtails the value of events in the editorial mind when the thing really comes to a conclusion. The last-minute morning paper no longer exists, except in the rural regions where people go to bed early and nothing happens. There they do get the Associated Press stuff in all editions. It sometimes takes a great metropolitan journal two days to catch up with the review of a play. The show does not get under way until the "morning paper" has gone to press. The editions thus issued are sent to unlucky mail subscribers and sold in the subways, where their first-page headlines are glanced at in the dim light by returning theater-goers and then are trampled underfoot. Much of the matter is railroaded and bristles with errors. To get a decent account of anything hap

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pening after eight o'clock at night in New York is well-nigh impossible. If it gets in at all, it is usually telephoned from some booth uptown by a "kid" reporter and mangled by a "rewrite" man in the office.

This same "rewrite" man is a great offender. He all too frequently puts the reporter in a false position with the source of his information and makes him appear untrustworthy; all too frequently he affects a "style" that has no reflex in what the reporter himself would have written if properly trained and allowed to do his own work. Thus the reporter degenerates into "legs" and steadily increases in inefficiency. He does not learn his business and loses his individuality. So does the paper he works for.

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day and a pillar of fire by night to guide people who are helpless without it on the right roads of life? What right has it to be a mere medium of amusement, a three-ringed circus exhibiting only the antics of clowns? It was awarded low postal rates by the wise fathers that it might fulfill its true mission. Justly enough, the Government is slowly cramping the privilege. It sees no reason why car-loads of "Mutt and Jeff," "Potash and Perlmutter," or "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" should swamp the mails in the interest of pocket-filling and to the moral detriment of the Nation. Let clowns do the amusing in their proper field, inside the sawdust circles.

The country shivers at the thought of an invasion of "Reds." It will not "recognize" Russia as being a land of blood. It fears longer to receive immigrants unless morally vaccinated. Is it, perhaps, aware that it has sapped its own mental strength to an anæmic point by accepting the kind of things that have come to rule in American journalism and takes to the defensive by crawling into a hole?

Yelping Alumni

The Matter with College Football

HENEVER two or more football-minded men meet nowadays the subject of "Red" Grange is almost sure to come up for discussion. Is Grange a menace to college football? Or is he a downright blessing? I take the latter view most emphatically. For Halfback Grange has turned the glaring sunlight on the gross commercialism of college football. Sunlight is good for every ill of man or beast. It will be most beneficial for college football as well.

A most astute and successful football coach was quoted in the press recently somewhat as follows:

"The biggest menace to college football to-day is the yelping alumni. A team must win. A coach must turn out a winning team or the Roman mob turns thumbs down and off comes his head. The more idealistic things of football, such as manhood, character, and ability to stand punishment, are almost lost sight of in the everlasting cry of 'our team must win.""

Where does Grange come in on this? Simply by furnishing good, hot copy for

THE author of this article graduated fourteen years ago. He was identified with athletics while in college and has always been a close student of football. His interest in the game is as keen as it was in his undergraduate days. As a true friend of college football he advances a few theories which should serve as a basis for some intelligent discussion—and, perhaps, reform.

the newspapers, so that all who read must know that Grange is exchanging his football ability into coin of the realm. Money, money, money! Football, football, football! (These two words are being linked together in such an emphatic way that the "yelping alumni" must surely give pause and consider a few basic principles of college athletic As

far as the yelping alumni are concerned, to win or not to win is not the question. Not by a whole car-load of diplomas! To win is the only question!

Why the Team Must Win CAN any one conversant with college

sports deny that college football has been perverted? Can any one learn of the salaries paid to coaches, trainers, and other staff officers without wondering where the money comes from and why? What's a few thousand dollars spent on equipment, special Pullman cars, or anything else believed necessary for the ease and comfort of the football squad? What's mere money, anyway, when the yelping alumni, aided and abetted by rabid undergraduates, must be satisfied? The team must win, mustn't it?

The faculty, usually headed by some man whose chief job is to secure funds, stands by in helpless amazement as college football continues to overshadow other college activities, including the oldfashioned one of imparting learning to the students. Many among the faculty

are openly in favor of the yin-at-anyprice policy. Those who are not keep their own counsel lest curses be heaped upon their heads. To be sure, several notable exceptions to this statement are matters of record, but no concerted faculty war has ever been waged against the perversion of college football.

Halfback Grange is a quite natural evolution of the college football system. He is simply the forerunner of other star players who will join professional teams. A star football player is glorified, deified, and his true importance on the campus magnified until all sense of values is lost. Why not? The team must win, musn't it? Then is the star player to be blamed for carrying on his good work after leaving school?

Playing professional football is not dishonorable, and if Grange's college training best fitted him for carrying a pigskin before the admiring eyes of his fellow-students why should he not keep on carrying the pigskin before the equally admiring eyes of those who never attended a college? Is the money paid in at the ticket window by college students and alumni any less negotiable than money paid in by those who never shouted themselves hoarse for good old Alma Mater?

If those who condemn Halfback Grange, a clean exponent of the game, for entering professional ranks will intelligently consider all aspects of presentday college football, they surely must place the blame upon the system now prevailing in college athletics rather than upon the pupil and product of that system.

L

That Ambitious Youngster

he is told, along with many others, to
turn in his suit. But he is still filled
with ambition to play football, and
makes a protest.

"Why can't I stay on the squad?" he
asks.

"We have enough material without you players who made reputations with. high school teams. We must spend our time developing them for next year's varsity." That's the answer he gets.

If he protests some more, he is given a highly beneficial lecture on how to be a freshman and how he should be glad to submerge his own identity in the major effort of turning out a winning team. So his football career is ended unless he cares to play on class teams in a hit-ormiss fashion without proper training or supervision. And only in a few colleges are class teams available for him to play with.

Generally speaking, his football playing ends at the moment he is told to turn in his suit so that the coaching staff can concentrate on the potential stars.

Do you see what I am driving at? The boys who actually need the coaching and the physical and mental development don't get it! The stalwarts who need it least get all of it! That's why I say that football in colleges has been perverted.

Give Them All a Chance

WHAT'S the remedy? Well, that

recent meeting of college repre-
sentatives at Middletown, Connecticut,
came near the solution when they
adopted resolutions favoring a four-game
schedule with neighboring colleges of
similar prowess at the game. But I
should go even further than that. I
should recommend that the coaching
staff organize as many campus teams as
possible at the beginning of each season,
without regard to the previous year's
varsity. Games between these teams
should be played as often as playing-
field facilities would permit.
coaches supervise these games, arranging
the teams so that they will be evenly
matched. Give every boy who wants to
play the benefit of coaching and train-
ing. Keep these campus teams playing
until the first of November. Keep out
in front the idealistic things about foot-

Let the

ET us take the case of a youngster entering a big college. He is filled with ambition to play football. Let us assume he came from a high school where he had played a fairly good game with his school team. He reports for the freshman squad along with fifty other boys. The coaches look over the squad, and learn that many of the boys came from preparatory and high schools which boast of winning teams. Some have been especially urged to come to this particular college because they were considered excellent high school players. The play-ball-the courage it takes to lose as well ers who possess good reputations are quickly singled out for the attention of the coaching staff. Our boy from the non-winning high school is shunted aside with the majority of others who are not considered worthy of much, if any, attention. In a few days after practice begins

as to win. Let the game develop man-
hood and character, as it so easily can.

Around the first of November let the
head coach make his selections for the
varsity, which would thus be a varsity in
fact as well as in name. Those students
not selected for the varsity squad should

be urged to continue playing on the campus teams. But even though the campus teams be disbanded, every student will have had his chance to play the game whether he is good enough for the varsity or not-and will be a better man because of this chance. Those selected for the varsity squad would be given final drills and welded into a team-not a highly polished machine whose only object is to win and advertise the college, but a team which will play for the game's sake, regardless of how many thousand spectators have paid money to see the stars perform.

My fanciful team is now ready to play two or three games on successive Saturdays in November. Let these games be played with natural rivals only! Each college has its own dearest enemy. Let the final game be between these bestloved rivals. Play these few games only on campus fields. Stop once and for all the ceaseless grind of training and the long trips. Stop making Roman holidays for the mob and the mob's golden tribute

Keep scholastic requirements high for those finally chosen for the varsity. Put football back into its original place in the scheme of college things. Show the public that colleges are institutions of learning, after all, and that athletics are conducted not for the sole benefit of a few stalwart students who can win, but, on the contrary, for all students who stand in need of intelligent coaching, training, and physical and mental development.

J

Let's Kill a Custom

UST one thing more. Now that Walter Camp has passed on, let's stop this nonsense of choosing "All-American" teams, or any other kind of "All" teams. Walter Camp and All-American teams were synonymous. There is no one to take his place, as the 1925 selections so readily demonstrated. Even the gifted Walter Camp, during the last ten years of his life, must have realized that picking All-American teams was a superhuman task, and that his selections did not meet with favor everywhere. let's be reasonable and stop this peculiarly American brand of nonsense.

So

I hope this criticism of the greatest college game ever devised will provoke discussion. For by free discussion the friends of the game can help along the good work started by Halfback Grange. The yelping alumni need not fear professionalism if college football will cleanse itself.

Let's get back to normalcy!

T

Staff Correspondence from Washington by DIXON MERRITT

HE robin roosting in a cedar

thicket does not know that Walter G. Campbell protects him from sudden death at the hands of the pot hunter. The cow, taking a long trip by train, does not know that Campbell is responsible for her getting off the train at least once in twenty-eight hours, eating, drinking, and having room to move around for the space of five hours. And the woman putting the roast to parboil on the gas range in the ninth floor back of a city tenement-house or on the first floor of a city palace, for that matterdoes not know that Campbell has guaranteed, with the United States Government back of the guaranty, the wholesomeness of the meat she is preparing to feed to her family. In short, about ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons in the United States never heard the name of this Campbell, know nothing about him.

But there are some who do know. The food or drug manufacturer, for instance, jolly well knows that it is Walter G. Campbell who will land him in jail and confiscate his goods if he puts out an impure article or brands his product as anything it is not. The speculator, dreaming of a million to be made in cotton futures in Wall Street, knows it is Campbell who will get him if he trades unfairly.

Let me introduce Mr. Walter G. Campbell. He is a Government worker of about middling rank. In his own Department-that of Agriculture-there are two men who outrank him and four who rank with him. His title is Director of Regulatory Work. He enforces forty-four Federal laws. I think the number is forty-four. It was the last time I checked up on it, but enforcement jobs are loaded on Campbell's shoulders with such frequency that even if I checked up to-day I could not guarantee the accuracy of the figures when this article is printed. And those laws are of such importance that, I believe, every family is affected by one or another of them every day.

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ers. By starting with Campbell, instead of Jardine, I hope I have challenged the most stupendous of all misconceptions in the American mind concerning the American Government.

Despite a pretty general notion clear to the contrary, the Department of Agri

sentatives who cover the country or large sections of it. Not all of them are regularly paid employees, but, none the less, their work tends to put all the people of the United States in touch with the Department of Agriculture.

culture is probably the most powerful W

department in Washington, the one that
can do the most good when it goes right,
the one that could do the most harm if
it ever should go wrong. Certainly it is
the one closest in touch with the greatest

(C) Underwood

W. M. Jardine, Secretary of Agriculture

number of people not farmers and farm families merely, but all classes of people, for not an inch more than half its work has to do directly with agriculture.

That last statement may require proof. The proof lies in a question-How big is a community? Of course, there is no answer. No two are the same size. But suppose we say that the average community would be four miles square would contain sixteen square miles. On that basis there would be 225,000 communities in the United States. And the number of Department of Agriculture workers scattered throughout the country is sufficient to place one of them in cach of these communities, with some 10,000 left over for roving commissions. This hypothetical situation does not differ greatly from the actual situation. differ greatly from the actual situation. Practically, there is a representative of the Department of Agriculture in every community, both rural and urban, with some odd thousands of traveling repre

HO are they, this force that almost doubles our standing army, and how do they affect other than purely agricultural communities?

We may pass over as pure ruralites the thousands of crop reporters, though the effect of their work is felt on every board of trade. But we cannot thus handle the other thousands of weather observers, for they are as likely to have their rain gauges on top of city sky-scrapers as on barns. We may pass over the farm demonstration agents, who instruct the farmer in his fields, but we may not pass over the home demonstration agents, for they help the woman in the closetkitchen of the city apartment equally with the woman in the spacious kitchen of the farm. And there are whole classes of employees who are entirely city dwellers. There are the inspectors on duty in all of the meat-packing plants whose products go into inter-State commerce. There are market inspectors of various kinds, cotton classers, grain graders, port inspectors. No place in the United States is so completely urban as to have in it no official agricultural workers, and no place is so remote or so rugged as to be without them. Those parts of the Rocky Mountains where no crops are grown and where no cities are-forest rangers tramp their rugged ridges every day. Those little spits of sand and those sinuous bars far off the coasts, barren and awash with salt waves-birds are there whose carcasses or plumage is coveted, and so the pot hunter is there, and so, also, is the game warden whose duty it is to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Those long border reaches where nothing grows but almost impenetrable thickets of chaparral-but a greaser may choose that as the place for slipping into the United States, a pillow of unginned cotton under his arm and larvæ of the pink boll-worm in the cottonseed. And so a plant quarantine officer is there to meet him.

There is no place in the United States where the workers of the Department of Agriculture do not go. But we need not follow them in their important, often romantic, not infrequently hazardous, occupations. Having shown that their

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