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the ablest and best known citizens can accept these high offices, decide upon the best available trained experts to call in to carry on the various functions of government, without themselves having to devote their time to becoming expert in those manifold duties. We can thus have specialization of function, and expert service, combined with quick responsiveness, through the elective Council or Executive, to the popular will.

Coupled with this mechanism of indirect government and concentrated responsibility, we should elaborate a plan for a greater participation of the people in public discussion. These open forums should not be party affairs, or confined to occupational groups, because we should then have a parti pris, a one-sided point of view. We do not want more meetings to defend a party dogma, to whip people into line with a platform. We want meetings of people with varying views, for the purpose of mutual understanding, the clarification of ideas, and their integration, through reciprocal suggestion, into something more nearly representing a Common Will. Neighborhood units, not so large as to be unwieldy, but large enough to bring together men and women of diverse convictions and experiences, and to evoke leadership, make the best political groups. Such groups, meeting periodically for discussion of public questions, would produce a public opinion in far greater degree than now independent of the manipulated party-opinion and the manipulated newspaperopinion now so overwhelmingly dominant.

Perhaps eventually we shall use such Neighborhood Groups as electoral units, and send a representative from each one-some one who is personally

known and approved by the group, and has shown the qualities of leadership therein-to our elective Council. At any rate, we must not be afraid of trying new methods. Our politics have got into a rut. The system perhaps once adequate needs revision in the light of contemporary experience. The revision must always be for the purpose of realizing our traditional ideals. But it is those ideals, not the particular ways and means that our fathers devised, that are sacred. Washington himself criticized the Constitution sharply, finding in it "a host of vices and inexpediencies." We must be as critical in our attitudenot destructively but constructively critical.

Once and for all, we must give up our complacent reliance upon exhortation to the electorate and abuse of the politicians. Human nature will continue to be human nature; we must utilize it as it is. Instead of abortive or purely transient attempts to "purify" politics, we must put into operation methods that are practicable and that do not so readily lend themselves to anti-social practices. The devotion of the youth of the land is needed to evolve a system of representative government of which we may properly be proud.

SUGGESTED READINGS

James Bryce, The American Commonwealth.
W. H. Taft, Four Aspects of Civic Duty.
Elihu Root, The Citizen's Part in Government.

D. F. Wilcox, Government by all the People.

C. R. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, Chap. XI.
H. G. Wells, Social Forces in England and America, p. 293, ff.
M. P. Follett, The New State.

R. S. Childs, Short Ballot Principles.

E. S. Bradford, Commission Government in American Cities.
W. B. Munroe, The Government of American Cities.
C. E. Rightor, City Manager in Dayton.

Charles Zueblin, American Municipal Progress, revised ed., Chap. XX.

Evans Woolen, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 110, p. 41.

J. Bourne, Jr., in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, pp. 122, 429.
J. N. Larned, in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 112, p. 610.

H. A. Overstreet, Forum, vol. 54, p. 6.

CHAPTER XVIII

DEMOCRACY IN JOURNALISM

WE HAVE been considering how, in our democracy, public opinion can get itself faithfully represented and its dictates expertly carried out. But behind that problem lies the problem of how a well-informed and wise public opinion can be created. Open-forum meetings for free discussion of contemporary affairs might be of great value. But these meetings would be held only at intervals, whereas the newspapers are read daily. Whether or not their readers realize that their views are being formed by the papers they read, it is to a very great degree the fact. Americans read their newspapers more than the people of any other nation. Hence it is of the utmost importance that the news furnished in the daily press be accurate and impartial, reporting every event of importance and reporting it uncolored by the bias of the newspaperowners. If one set of facts is ignored and another set of facts emphasized or exaggerated, public opinion is in so far misled, and its resulting judgments warped.

The importance of a free and impartial press was recognized by our fathers. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, of June 2, 1776, declared that "freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty." No more fearlessly honest journal than Benjamin Franklin's Gazette was ever published. In general,

a newspaper was published to furnish the news; and editors were given a free hand.

In recent years, however, the situation has been seriously altered. Practically all of the great papers of the country are now owned by men of wealth. A few rich and ambitious men control a good many of them. It is not impossible that any year might see one or two men in absolute control of hundreds of our leading organs of public opinion. Lord Northcliffe in England is the controlling shareholder of a great trust which owns some sixty publications. Herr Stinnes in Germany was reported recently to have bought up sixty-four papers to push his propaganda. With the strong forces making for centralization and combination in American business, it is surprising that no greater mergers have been made as yet in this field. Possibly there is already more centralization of control than is made public. At any rate, we have Mr. Hearst, with his many newspapers and magazines, and certain other fairly large-scale manipulators of opinion.

Then we have the Associated Press, which has almost a monopoly of the news-gathering service. The Manager of this agency is said to have remarked recently that he was more powerful than the President of the United States. If his censorship of the news is as autocratic and as drastic as is commonly reported, that remark may well be true. He who can select the news upon which millions of readers are to be fed every day has an enormous, if unseen, influence upon the creation of the popular will. A few rich newspapers can afford to maintain their own special correspondents. But the great majority of them are almost wholly dependent, and all are very largely dependent, upon the despatches which the

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