Unfortunately there is another side to this record of improvement and achievement. Perhaps the most important single difference between the old personal journalism and the journalism of to-day is the large capitalistic character of the latter. When the mechanical outfit of a city paper could be supplied with a comparatively small sum of money, the personality of the editor was all important, although, as we have seen, even this favouring economic condition did not by any means produce uncorrupted journalism. At the present time large capital is necessary not only to provide the equipment, but also to meet the heavy losses of the few inevitable lean years at the outset. In most cases the money is contributed by one man or by a comparatively small number of men whose other business interests are likely to be very harmonious if not already consolidated. In consequence there is a common, and withal very human, tendency on the part of the paper thus established and owned to deal favourably under all circumstances with the financial interest or group of interests back of it. This is the typical journalistic danger of the present period, just as the political bee in the editor’s bonnet was the typical evil of the old personal journalism. Legislation requiring newspapers to print the names of their principal owners, and to deposit full lists of stockholders in some state office of record where they could be made available to all comers, ought to limit considerably the possibility of capitalistic manipulation of the press. By revealing facts regarding financial control which at best can only be suspected at the present time, publicity of this character would enable readers to make the necessary allowances for any undue form of counting-room control which might manifest itself in the editorial or news columns of a given paper. In spite of this and other shortcomings, however, most observers agree that the American press as a whole is more independent to-day than ever before.