n
generally have an idea that Wall Street methods are the methods of all
the United States; and, while they have had impressed upon them every
detail of those financial irregularities in the small New York clique
which precipitated the catastrophe, they have heard and know nothing of
the coolness and cheery resolution with which the crisis has been faced
by the commercial classes as a whole.]

England has not yet forgotten the disclosures in the matter of the
Chicago packing houses. That the light which was then turned on that
industry revealed conditions that were in some details inconceivably
shocking, is hardly to be doubted: and I trust that those are mistaken
who say that if similar investigation had been made into the methods of
certain English establishments, before warning was given, the state of
affairs would have been found not much different. What is certain,
however, is that the English public received an exaggerated idea of the
extent of the abuses. In part, this was a necessary result of the
exigencies of journalism. A large majority of the newspapers even of
London--certainly those which reach a large majority of the
readers--prefer sensationalism. Even those which are anxious in such
cases to be fair and temperate are sadly hampered both by the
limitations of space in their own columns and by the costliness of
telegraphic correspondence. It is inevitable that the most conservative
and judicial of correspondents should transmit to his papers whatever
are the most striking items--revelations--accusations in an indictment
such as was then framed against the packers. The more damning details
are the best news. On the other hand he cannot, save to a ridiculously
disproportionate extent, transmit the extenuating circumstances, the
individual denials, the local atmosphere. Telegraph tolls are heavy and
space is straitened while atmosphere and extenuating circumstances are
not news at all. An Englishman is generally astonished when he reads the
accounts of some conspicuous divorce case or great financial scandal in
England as they appear in the American (or for that matter the French or
German) papers, with the editorial comments thereupon. In the picture of
any event happening at a great distance the readers of even the
best-intentioned journals necessarily have presented to their view only
the highest lights and the blackest shadows. In this instance a certain
section of the American press--what is specificall