Take up the “Saturday Evening Post.” Here is Harry Leon Wilson, who used to show signs of brains, telling a story of how a labor union tried to take control of a factory. He exhausts his imagination to make this proposition ridiculous, to pour contempt over these fool workingmen. And here is a short story writer named Patullo, solemnly setting forth that Socialism means dividing up! And here is George Kibbe Turner, who I used to think was one of America’s coming novelists, with a short story, which turns out not to be a short story at all, but a piece of preaching upon the following grave and weighty theme: that the trouble with America is that everybody is spending too much money; that the railroad brotherhoods are proposing to turn robbers and take away the property of their masters; and that a workingman who is so foolish as to buy a piano for his daughter will discover that he has ruined himself to no purpose, because workingmen’s daughters ought not to have pianos—they are too tired to play them when they get through with their work! CHAPTER XLVI THE BRIBE DIRECT We are accustomed to the idea that in Europe there exists a “reptile press,” meaning a press whose opinions are for sale, not merely to politicians and governments, but to promoters and financiers; we read of the “Bourse press” of Paris, and understand that these papers accept definite cash sums for publishing in their columns news favorable to great speculations and industrial enterprises. I have heard America congratulated that it had no such newspapers; I myself was once sufficiently naïve so to congratulate America! Naturally, it is not so easy to prove direct bribery of the press. When the promoter of an oil “deal” or of a franchise “grab” wishes to buy the support of a newspaper, he does not invite the publisher onto the sidewalk and there count a few thousand dollar bills into his hands. But as a person who steals once will go on stealing, so a newspaper proprietor who takes bribes becomes a scandal to his staff, and sooner or later bits of the truth leak out. America has been fortunate in the possession of one bold and truth-telling newspaper editor, Fremont Older; and when you read his book, “My Own Story,” you discover that we have a “reptile press” in America, a press that is for sale for cash.