STENTOR “The new spirit in the Press, which aims, not at influencing statesmen by giving them an instructed and enlightened public opinion, but at making them subservient to a power which will exalt them or hound them out of office, according to whether they will or will not accept its dictates and its terms.” “The insolent pretensions of newspaper owners to reduce Downing Street to the position of an annexe of Fleet Street.” ――_Certain People of Importance_, by A. G. GARDINER. The freedom of the Press is the freedom of public opinion, that’s the beginning and the end of it. Can you pretend that public opinion is free, when more than half the leading journals are the voice of one man? There is a danger to the freedom of the Press, Janion; and that danger is you. You are simply a trust crushing out or buying up all opposition, till you control the market――till you can sit in your office and say, “What I think to-day, England will think to-morrow.” ――_The Earth_, by J. B. FAGAN. STENTOR OR THE PRESS OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW BY DAVID OCKHAM “The abstract and brief chronicle of the time.” [Illustration] E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC. : NEW YORK STENTOR, COPYRIGHT, 1928 BY E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED :: PRINTED IN U.S.A. First Edition CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE BIRTH OF STENTOR 9 II THE NATURE OF STENTOR 13 III THE DICTATORS 25 IV THE MANNERISMS OF STENTOR 40 V THE NEWSPAPER OF TO-MORROW 48 VI POISON GAS OR FRESH AIR 59 APPENDIX 66 STENTOR I _The Birth of Stentor_ It is some eight thousand years ago that Man, having already set himself apart from the brute creation by walking on two legs and creating the art of speech, paved the way to the “best seller” by the invention of writing.