The Simplicity That Never Was

INGENUOUS reformers of the press seem to think the whole question turns on the raw, obvious influence of money. “Is an honest newspaper possible?” somebody asks, and has been asking any time these past ten years, and he usually goes on to prove the effect of the counting-room on the “policy.” Far be it from me as a former newspaper-writer to deny that effect, which, indeed, I found ramifying into matters that no outsider would suspect of having any counting-room significance. For example, I once wrote an article attacking the architecture of the house in which I lived. It was an abominable type of house, not uncommon at the time in our sprawling northern suburbs, — a small, cheap, frame thing, but bulging with disproportionate artistic intentions. A Charles the Bold tower absorbed most of the front, and Oriental reminiscence had made merry with the roof, throwing up a minaret or two. This haphazard romantic motive wreaking itself on clapboards and shingles in a thirty-foot lot, resulted not only in architectural burlesque, but in a good deal of domestic inconvenience. It suited the Charles the Bold idea, for example, that a bedroom window should be a mediæval slit through which to point an arquebus; but it did not suit our simple, modern needs. The house, in short, was like a practical joke, inhuman on the inside, funny without; and as there were many others of the same stamp, Charles the Bold having a grip on that neighborhood like Queen Anne’s in former times, I thought it right to protest — mildly, of course.

I may say in passing that a suburban dweller is never petulant in matters of convenience. Give him four babies and a garden, some paper bundles and a distant train to catch, and he asks little of the world. Run a water main straight through the bosom of his family, if you like, bounce him with blasting powder, joggle him with steam-drills, scoop out the land around and leave him dwelling on a cliff — and he will find his compensations. He never complains except for cause.

The article was mild but just, and in the opinion of the managing editor, himself a suburban patriot, it was welltimed and salutary. It appeared in type; but before the edition went to press the article met the immoderately watchful eye of the business manager. His financial antennæ waved in alarm. He consulted the real-estate man, and in the end the article was suppressed as an attack on landed property, and a blow in the face of the advertiser.

But the lesson from this is not that which ingenuous reformers are apt to learn. It was not a proof of sleepless vigilance, but a sign, rather, of hysteric caution, for the most part shiftless enough, the random clutch of a timid hand, helpless in real danger; and if there was no knowing when and why one’s gnats were strained at, there was reasonable certainty that one’s camels would be swallowed. The “policy” was, I think, both venal and cowardly (prudent and moderate, the baptismal names); but venality, if it would compel, must be sagacious; and cowardice, to be repressive, must know at least the faces of its foes. Reformers hunting the evil principle forget how slipshod that principle may be. To run a business devilishly, you need the devil’s own administrative skill. The worst intentions in the world often fail of a wicked management of other men through sheer lack of executive ability. That is why the reigns of the just and the unjust, if equally unintelligent, look so much alike. I apologize to grown people for these juvenilia, but they have been left out of the primers of reform.

To a degree undreamed of by reformers, the newspaper writer is “lord of himself, that heritage of woe.” Far from remotest stretches of the “policy” the lying still went on, in Dreyfus affairs and Chinese situations, as busy as if bought — no more active with a presidential candidate than with characters at safest commercial distance, the merest unmarketable, ultima-thulean Abduls and Abdurs, Mulais, Habibullahs, Yuans, Dinuzulus, and Chulalongkorns — ten thousand miles from a vested interest, yet no whit nearer the truth. “Bought up,” said the reformers, but they pointed in nine cases out of ten to a free-will offering of journalistic human nature. The mind of the journalist is too purchasable to be permanently owned; it is sold for an old song to the present moment. I wish them well, these reformers; I wish them therefore a better sense of reality. Tar and feathers for editors, by all means, and the more the merrier; but why write of newspapers as if there were only one thing the matter with them?