naïve; I did not get this story from John Jones, I did not get it from any friend of John Jones. It happens that I know the "literary editor" fairly well, and I know a dozen of his friends. To one of these, an intimate friend of mine, this "literary editor" told the entire story. Two friends of mine were present at a club dinner, when the man was confronted by accident with his victim, and admitted what he had done, and begged pardon for it. It was his "job," he said—his "job" of thirty dollars a week! And that is how I came on the story!
I go over in my mind the newspapers concerning which I can make the statement that I know, either from direct personal knowledge, or from the evidence of a friend whom I trust, that the owner or manager of this paper has committed a definite act of crime for which, if the laws were enforced, the owner or manager would be sent to the penitentiary. I count a total of fifteen such papers, located in leading American cities, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Each one of these criminals sits in a seat of power and poisons the thinking of hundreds of thousands of helpless people. I ask myself: In what respect is the position of these people different from that of the peasantry of mediæval Germany, who lived and labored subject to raids from robber knights and barons whose castles they saw upon distant cliffs and mountain tops?
