.

Such competent observers as Mr. George W. Smalley (_Harper's
Magazine_, July, 1898) bear testimony to the fact that the
irresponsibility of the press has seriously diminished its influence
for good. Thus he points out that "the combined and active support
given by the American press to the Anglo-American Arbitration Treaty
weighed as nothing with the Senate." In recent mayoralty contests in
New York and in Boston, almost the whole of the local press carried on
vigorous but futile campaigns against the successful candidates.
Several public libraries and reading-rooms have actually put some of
the leading journals in an Index Expurgatorius.[18]

The moral and intellectual defects of the American newspaper are
reflected in its outward dress. Neither the paper nor the printing of
a New York or Boston daily paper is so good as that of the great
English dailies. American editors are apt to claim a good deal of
credit for the illustrations with which the pages of their journals
are sprinkled; but a less justifiable claim for approbation was surely
never filed. In nine cases out of ten the wood-cuts in an American
paper are an insult to one's good taste and sense of propriety, and,
indeed, form one of the chief reasons for classing the American daily
press as distinctly lower than that of England. The reason of this
physical inferiority I do not pretend to explain. It is, however, a
strange phenomenon in a country which produces the most beautiful
monthly magazines in the world, and also holds its own in the paper,
printing, and binding of its books. But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, the
magazines and books of England and America are merely varieties of the
same species, while the daily journals of the two countries belong to
totally different orders. Many of the better papers are now beginning
to give up illustrations. A bill to prevent the insertion in
newspapers of portraits without the consent of the portrayed was even
brought before the New York Legislature. An exasperating feature of
American newspapers, which seems to me to come also under the head of
physical inferiority, is the practice of scattering an article over
the whole of an issue. Thus, on reaching the foot of a column on page
1 we are more likely than not to be directed for its continuation on
page 7 or 8. The reason of this is presumably the desire to have all
the best goods in the window; _i.e._, all the most important
head-lines on the front page; but the c