- pression are traced, the action, it is realized, is unjustifiable.
In the first place, elevator accidents are often due to carelessness and haste on the part of passengers, and newspaper accounts of them accordingly serve to warn many people to be more careful. Thus the publication of the news helps to prevent accidents. Again, the accidents may be due in part to the employment of young, inexperienced, or careless operators. When it is proposed to correct these difficulties by a local ordinance or by a state law providing that elevator operators must be over eighteen years of age and must be licensed as competent, the importance of passing such a regulation is more evident to the average voter if he knows of the frequency of such accidents. The suppression of news of these accidents would deprive most citizens of knowledge upon which to base an opinion as to the need of laws governing elevator operators.
The business interests of some cities, it is said, have urged newspapers to suppress the news of epidemics or threatened epidemics of such diseases as typhoid fever, smallpox, and even bubonic plague, because reports of the presence of these diseases in a city keep away travelers and hurt business. At first glance this plea might seem a just one, and records show that it has been successful in a number of instances. But the question inevitably arises, Has not the tourist, the buyer, and every one else who is planning to go to that particular city a right to know of the health conditions that prevail there, in order to decide whether he wishes to expose himself to the possibility of sickness and death? Again, Has not every citizen and voter of the city a right to know of these conditions, not only that he may protect himself and his family, but that he with other citizens and voters may remedy the conditions responsible
