The "News" died under the axe one year from its birth. They
used the initiative to kill it. The rabble rallied to the cry, and we
foresaw the end.
The paper had attracted attention all over the English-reading world. Everywhere I have gone I have been asked about it, by people who never dreamed I had been an editor of the paper. Its death was a triumph for reaction, but its effect will not die. Some day the idea will prevail. Then I might want to go back into the "game."
City-owned newspapers are part of the solution, but not
the whole part. As a Socialist, I advocate public ownership
of the instruments and means of production; but I do not rely
entirely upon that method where intellectual matters are concerned.
I would have the state make all the steel and coal and
oil, the shoes and matches and sugar; I would have it do the
distributing of newspapers, and perhaps even the printing; but
for the editing of the newspapers I cast about for a method of
control that allows free play to the development of initiative
and the expression of personality.
In a free society the solution will be simple; there will be many groups and associations, publishing their own papers, and if you do not like the papers which these groups give you, you can form a group of your own. Being in receipt of the full product of your labor, you will have plenty of money, and will be surrounded by other free and independent individuals, also receiving the full product of their labor, and accustomed to combining for the expression of their ideas. The difference is that today the world's resources are in the hands of a class, and this class has a monopoly of self-expression. The problem of transferring such power to the people must be studied as the whole social problem, and not merely as the problem of the press.
Fortunately there are parts of America in which the people have kept at least a part of their economic independence, and have gone ahead to solve the problem of the "kept" press in true American fashion—that is, by organizing and starting honest newspapers for themselves. The editor of the "Nonpartisan Leader," Oliver S. Morris, has kindly written for me an account of the experiences of the Nonpartisan League, which I summarize as follows:
The League commenced organization work early in 1915 in North Dakota. By the summer of the next year it had forty thousand members, yet no newspaper in the state had
