utterly out of character, and looking so. Just as I write these lines, my attention is called to an announcement in large type in this morning’s New York Times that it will publish next Sunday “photographs of Herbert Hoover in workaday clothes and a panorama of his ranch.” So he, too, is cast for the comedy. Democracy cracks the whip, and even the most conservative of candidates and officials must dance. In the campaign of 1916 it is said that Hughes was politely asked to shave his beard to suit the people. He balked and consented only so far as to trim it. But then he lost the election. [Pg 207] The people want officials in their own image. Such men as Elihu Root, Joseph Choate, or John Hay are rarely elected, only appointed. To get anywhere in elective politics one must be a “good mixer,” and to be a good mixer one must shed a good part of one’s culture and a good part of one’s manners. Dignity to a considerable degree must be discarded. One must conceal one’s knowledge of English and learn the vernacular, except for “orations.” Henry Adams, when he became a newspaper correspondent in Washington, said that he had to “learn to talk to Western congressmen and to hide his own antecedents.” It is what every gentleman who desires to take part in elective public life on a large or small stage in the country to-day has to do to some extent except for happy accidents. Our democracy has fostered education, at least to the extent of almost fabulously increasing the numbers of the reading public. What has been, for the purpose of the present argument, the effect of that? There has been one effect, at least, germane to this discussion. It has greatly lowered the tone of our public press. Such newspaper men as I know agree with me that there has been a most marked decline even in the last twenty years, and they agree with me as to the cause. In the old days a newspaper was largely a personal organ, and what appeared in it reflected for good or ill upon the editor, who was known by name to all its readers. In New York the Sun was Charles A. Dana. The Tribune was Horace Greeley. To-day we know no editors, only owners. The newspaper of to-day aims only at circulation, and with every increase in circulation the quality has to be lowered. The case is well known[Pg 208] of the purchaser a few years ago of what had been one of the country’s most distinguished journals, who told his staff that thereafter they would have to “cut the highbrow” and write down to the level of the increased public he intended to go after. First the “yellow press,” then the tabloids, taught the older newspapers what fortunes awaited those who would stoop to pick them up by catering to the masses. A newspaper depends on its advertising for its profits. Advertising quantity and rates depend on circulation. Increased circulation spells decreased quality. There is the vicious circle which has been drawn for us by the huge mob which has become literate but not educated.