ter use will be made of sketch and
diagram than at present. If the theory advanced in this book that
democracy is a transitory confusion be sound, there will not be one
world paper of this sort only--like Moses' serpent after its miraculous
struggle--but several, and as the non-provincial segregation of society
goes on, these various great papers will take on more and more decided
specific characteristics, and lose more and more their local references.
They will come to have not only a distinctive type of matter, a
distinctive method of thought and manner of expression, but distinctive
fundamental implications, and a distinctive class of writer. This
difference in character and tone renders the advent of any Napoleonic
master of the newspaper world vastly more improbable than it would
otherwise be. These specializing newspapers will, as they find their
class, throw out many features that do not belong to that class. It is
highly probable that many will restrict the space devoted to news and
sham news; that forged and inflated stuff made in offices, that bulks
out the foreign intelligence of so many English papers, for example. At
present every paper contains a little of everything, inadequate sporting
stuff, inadequate financial stuff, vague literary matter, voluminous
reports of political vapourings, because no newspaper is quite sure of
the sort of readers it has--probably no daily newspaper has yet a
distinctive sort of reader.

Many people, with their minds inspired by the number of editions which
evening papers pretend to publish and do not, incline to believe that
daily papers may presently give place to hourly papers, each with the
last news of the last sixty minutes photographically displayed. As a
matter of fact no human being wants that, and very few are so foolish as
to think they do; the only kind of news that any sort of people clamours
for hot and hot is financial and betting fluctuations, lottery lists and
examination results; and the elaborated and cheapened telegraphic and
telephonic system of the coming days, with tapes (or phonograph to
replace them) in every post-office and nearly every private house, so
far from expanding this department, will probably sweep it out of the
papers altogether. One will subscribe to a news agency which will wire
all the stuff one cares to have so violently fresh, into a phonographic
recorder perhaps, in some convenient corner. There the thing will be in
every house, bes