And it is the old way. Mr. Hearst's methods are the old methods. He is on the side of the under dog; his political ideas are sincerely democratic; and he is a fearless, forceful fighter. But he does not personify as he would like to, and as the next president should, the new spirit of the American people. His is the old spirit. And that's why so many of the plain people are afraid of him. They are afraid of the ruthless spirit in which he would do things. Even if they accept his statement of what is necessary to be done, they don't want them done as he would do them.
The New American Spirit
The local reform movements where, in states and cities, the new national spirit is breeding are all, at bottom, moral. Mr. Hearst is political. The watchword everywhere is " representative government," and that is the same as Mr. Hearst's cry "Democracy," but back of the people's demand there is a sentiment which is not only moral but, in a suppressed way, emotional. Mr. Hearst knows nothing of this. It will take a man of some fervor to express this feeling. Mr. Hearst has no fervor. Cold, isolated, hard, he is distinctly unmoral.
This is not saying that he lacks moral sense in the narrow, conventional meaning of that phrase. Mr. Hearst has much the same moral sense that those men have who most bitterly denounce him, the plutocrats. But that is the point.
Mr Hearst is of them. Not by birth alone. Everett Colby was born and brought up in that class, and he couldn't give now as good a definition of democracy as Mr. Hearst can, but the young Jersey leader is a man among men. W. R. Hearst is as hard to see and as inexpressive as E. H. Harriman and Thomas F. Ryan, who, like him, are mysteries. Hearst's self-reliance is theirs and their methods are his. He uses force as they do, and the same force, money, not "illegitimately," perhaps; but as a substitute for persuasion, charm, humor, pleadings. When he was starting his New York papers somebody protested at his extravagant methods. "They may cost money," he answered, " but they save time." Thus he uses the money power as the capitalists do. And, like them, he works entirely through agents who are men in his pay. He does not work with; he does not support, as La Follette and Folk do, the other leaders of reform. He does not know who they all are. Mr. Hearst is not a part of the general reform movement; he simply has a movement on of his own. This isn't democratic, this is plutocratic; autocratic. Mr. Hearst is a boss. We need not fear him because he has an organization of his own, for he proposes to serve us in office where we can get at him if he doesn't. Mr. Hearst is a boss who would like to give us democratic government, just as others of his class would "give us" colleges and libraries and—good, plutocratic government.
The Hearst Spirit
But we don't want Mr. Hearst to "give us" democratic government. We don't want anybody to give us self-government. We want to get that for ourselves. We must have leaders, but the kind of leaders we need are men who will not only lead us to restore the democracy, but who will inspire and foster in us the spirit that will fit us to maintain it. For, after all, what we are after is not democracy, but some- thing we think a true democracy might produce; viz., brave, free, independent men and women; "individualities," self- reliant, but on the whole just to others. Here it is that Mr. Hearst fails.
He seems to think that democracy is an end in itself, and that the end justifies the means—his journalism. So to give us better government he would make us a worse people. To get our ear, he starts a string of newspapers. To attract attention, he overstates facts and prints them garishly. To hold us, many of us, he prints stuff that satisfies our worst taste. To have us on hand to read his exposures of the plutocracy, he pictures also the vices of the rich. To arouse us to overthrow that plutocracy, he appeals to the same passions in us that have set our rulers to grafting, stealing, bribing, and, generally, to the betrayal of our faith in them. He sees and he says that we have class government—an odious thing; but to destroy it, he stirs up class feeling, which likewise is an odious thing. And, finally, by way of teaching us self-government and showing how he would bring in the democracy, he wields the terrible power of the press,—greater than that of any office he ever can dream of holding,—it actually kills men — this power he abuses with a tyranny
