52 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Mature opinions of scholars and experts are treated with flip- pancy and contempt. This is all accomplished by means of itera- tion and bombast, to which the average citizen yields. His senti- ments and notions are formed for him by this mysterious "we" and he is even unconscious of the fact. Mr. Stead takes much the same view.^^ No systematic effort, he says, is made to gauge public opinion. At present the journalistic assumption of utter- ing the public opinion is in most cases a hollow fraud. There seems little room left here for the office of weathercock. Against this is the opinion of Mr. Godkin, who certainly was in a position to reach a trustworthy conclusion. He says,^^ "The successful editors may have no originating power or no organizing power, and no capacity for legislation, and may even want the prophetic instinct ; but a certain intuitive sense of the direction in which the tide of popular feeling is running is the principal condition of their success." Yet strangely enough we find him later modify- ing his view as follows :^"^ "The newspapers of largest circula- tion, published in the great centers of population where most votes are cast, are less and less organs of public opinion, especi- ally in America." Mr. Peirce, the editor of Public Opinion, is also of the opinion that the metropolitan dailies are not so good reflectors of public opinion as the county newspapers and the journals of the smaller towns.^^ After Dewey's victory at Manila the question of Expansion was agitated and a favorable opinion reached by the small western papers several weeks before the New York dailies had awakened to the emergence of a new political issue of prime importance. Mr. Bryce some years ago noted a similar tendency in England,^® which has undoubtedly become stronger by this time- The long pre- eminence which the Times enjoyed was due to its quick detection of any change in the public pulse. The provincial papers are
- ' "The Future of Journalism," Contemporary Review, Vol. L, pp. 663 ff.
" Reflections and Comments, 1895, p. 246.
- • Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, 1898, p. 196.
" "Does the Press Reflect Public Opinion," Gunton's Magazine, Vol. XIX, pp. 418 fT.
- • Nation. Vol. XXXVII, p. 445.
