York Tribune," owned by a rich capitalist, Whitelaw Reid, who publishes it as a side issue to gratify his vanity, taking his pay in the form of an ambassadorship. The circulation of such a paper will go steadily down. But then perhaps the old man will die, and his sons will take charge, and his sons won't feel like paying out twenty or thirty thousand dollars a month, and will get a "live newspaper man" to "put life into" the paper; or perhaps they will sell out to people who have less money, and will be tempted to give the public a little of what it wants.
The fundamental thing that the public wants is, of course, enough to eat. Modern society is complex, and there are thousands of public issues clamoring for newspaper attention, but in the final analysis all these questions boil down to one question—why is the cost of living going up faster than wages and salaries? So the spectre of "radicalism" haunts every newspaper office. The young publisher who wants to make money, the "live newspaper man" who wants to make a reputation, find themselves at every hour tempted to attack some form of privilege and exploitation.
So come "crusades." The kind of crusade which the newspaper undertakes will depend upon the character of circulation for which it is bidding. If the paper sells for three cents, and is read by bankers and elderly maiden aunts, the newspaper will print the sermons of some clergyman who is exposing the horrors of the red-light district, or it will call on the district attorney to begin prosecuting the loan-sharks who are robbing the poor, or it will start a free ice fund for babies in the tenements. Any cause will do, provided the victims are plunderers of a shady character—that is, small plunderers.
Or perhaps the newspaper is a popular organ. It sells at a low price to the common people. In that case it may go to extremes of radicalism; it may clamor for government ownership, and attack big public service corporations in a way that seems entirely independent and fearless. You say: "Surely this is honest journalism," and you acquire the habit of reading that newspaper. But then gradually you see the campaign die down, the great cause forgotten. The plundering of the public goes right on, the only thing that has been changed is that you, who used to be a reader of the "World," are now a reader of the "Journal"; and that is the change which the "Journal" had in mind from the outset. You will see the
