The _Dunciad_ of the Press does not end in quite universal darkness. There is a little light over the horizon. A new organization called The Federated Press, which endeavours to “get the news in spite of the newspapers and the great news agencies,” announces that already two hundred editors all over the world are using its service. It is too soon to tell how successful this enterprise will be, but it is a ray of promise, because it is an association of working journalists and not a vague aspiration of reformers and uplifters. Until some such organization does become powerful and by practical labour make an impression on the daily paper, we shall have to depend for enlightenment on a few weekly and monthly periodicals of relatively small circulation. Most of the popular weeklies and monthlies are as bad in their way as the newspapers, but they aim chiefly at entertainment; their treatment of the news in special articles and editorials is a subordinate matter, and their chief sin is not dishonesty but banality. The periodicals which do handle the news, always honestly, usually with intelligence, the _Nation_, the _New Republic_, the _Freeman_ and one or two others, must have an influence greater than can be measured by their circulation; for though the giant press laughs at the cranky little Davids with their vicious radical ideas, and though it is too strong to be slain or even severely wounded, yet it cannot be quite insensible to the stones that fly from those valorous slings. It is, however, an indication of the low mental level of America that the combined circulation of these journals, which are, moreover, largely subscribed for by the same readers, is less than that of a newspaper in a second-rate city. Two of them are endowed or subsidized by liberal men of means and none of them is shiningly prosperous. An intelligent populace would buy them by the million. So we leave the responsibility where, after all, it belongs. The American press is an accurate gauge of the American mind. JOHN MACY THE LAW “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” This outcry of Jack Cade’s followers that the disappearance of the whole profession was the initial step in man’s progress toward a better world would be echoed in the United States by the revolutionists of to-day, and also by not a few solid business men who have nothing else in common with the mediæval agitator except perhaps the desire to see the fountains run wine and make it a felony to drink near-beer. Indeed almost every one takes his fling at the law. Doctors and ministers can be avoided if we dislike them, but the judge has a sure grip upon us all. He drags us before him against our will; no power in the land can overturn his decision, but defeated litigants, disappointed sociologists, and unsuccessful primary candidates all join in a prolonged yell, “Kill the umpire.”