vowedly capitalistic journalism, meet in a
preference for salacious or merely shocking news, and in a predilection
for blatant, sophistical, or merely nugatory and time-serving editorial
expressions. Between the two really allied types of newspapers are a few
which exercise a decent censorship over questionable news, and habitually
indulge in the luxury of sincere editorial opinion. There are some
exceptions to the rule. In our own day we have seen a proletarian paper
become a magnificent editorial organ, while somewhat illogically
maintaining a random and sensational policy in its news columns. But
generally the distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York
journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased publication.
It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of the mentality of the
city. Then observe on any train who are reading these papers. It is plain
enough what class among us makes decent journalism possible.

Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something for the
reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much reduced, and will be
farther, the process being limited simply by the degree to which the poor
will educate and discipline themselves. We shall never wholly do away with
bad luck, bad inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some
poverty we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The
fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a world
where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where poverty shall
be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of the world, and of the
number of the virtually rich, will never be attained by the puerile method
of expropriating the present holders of wealth. That would produce more
poor people beyond doubt--but its effect in enriching the present poor
would be inappreciable. You cannot change a man's character and capacity
simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale expropriations
and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the
same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered
has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he
was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not
interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of
dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as its immorality.

This essentially personal character of wealth m