ustom is a most annoying one to
the reader.

It is frequently asserted by Americans that their press is very
largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often
venal. On such points as these I venture to make no assertion. To
prove them would require either a special knowledge of the
back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the
working of American institutions and the evolution of American
character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation
can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and
attitude. I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs
may read. It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of
the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement
seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English
press.

So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high
character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and
exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a class seem to me
distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain. But I believe
this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two
countries would alone warrant the inference. The trail of the reporter
is over them all. Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of
the passage of a needle's eye by a camel, believe it impossible for
reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a
reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy
of respect for the mental privacy of others which we associate with
the idea of true gentlemanliness. Mr. Smalley, in a passage
controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always
begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admits that a modern reporter
has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to
reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession.
The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and
clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his
academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address.
This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American
journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of
men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting,
and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period
of their career, of associating