front the classic legend:
"Please do not look on my back." But what is dearest to the souls of
these editors is a mean commonplace. One leader, which surely had a
triumphant success, is headed, "What the Bar-tender Sees." And the
exordium is worthy so profound a speculation. "Did you ever stop to
think," murmurs the Yellow philosopher, "of all the strange beings that
pass before him?" There's profundity for you! There's invention! Is it
wonderful that five million men and women read these golden words, or
others of a like currency, every day?

And politics, theology, and philosophy are all served up in the same
thick sauce of sentiment. The "baby" seems to play a great part in the
Yellow morality. One day you are told, "A baby can educate a man"; on
another you read, "Last week's baby will surely talk some day," and you
are amazed, as at a brilliant discovery. And you cannot but ask: To whom
are these exhortations addressed? To children or to idiots? The grown
men and women of the United States, can hardly regard such poor twaddle
as this with a serious eye. And what of the writers? How can they
reconcile their lofty tone, which truly is above suspicion, with the
shameful sensationalism of their news-columns? They know not the meaning
of sincerity. If they really believed that "a baby can educate a man,"
they would suppress their reporters. In short, they are either blind
or cynical. From these alternatives there is no escape, and for their
sakes, as well as for America's, I hope they write with their tongue in
their cheeks.

The style of the Yellow Journals is appropriate to their matter. The
headlines live on and by the historic present; the text is as bald as
a paper of statistics. It is the big type that does the execution. The
"story" itself, to use the slang of the newspaper, is seldom either
humorous or picturesque. Bare facts and vulgar incidents are enough for
the public, which cares as little for wit as for sane writing. One fact
only can explain the imbecility of the Yellow Press: it is written for
immigrants, who have but an imperfect knowledge of English, who prefer
to see their news rather than to read it, and who, if they must read,
can best understand words of one syllable and sentences of no more than
five words.

For good or evil, America has the sole claim to the invention of
the Yellow Press. It came, fully armed, from the head of its first
proprietor, It owes nothing to Europe, nothing to the tra