The increasingly monopolistic character of the press has made its control by Big Business an automatic process. But it has had still another result: to put the press under the influence of the most reactionary, least responsible wing of Big Business. The direct agency of this influence is the more openly pro-fascist section of the press. Unfortunately, progressives cling to the illusion that this section of the press is a sort of fanatical “fringe,” ill-regarded in the trade. That is an illusion, a dangerous one. This so-called “fringe” section comprises the chains owned by Hearst, Roy Howard and Patterson-McCormick. Their combined direct circulation, according to the Editor and Publisher Yearbook for 1944, was 9,649,108 daily and 13,578,687 Sunday, roughly a quarter of all newspaper circulation. Moreover, the readers of newspapers subscribing to the Hearst International News Service, which carries the Hearst political line in full, should be added to the direct circulation figures. A tabulation from the 1944 Yearbook shows I.N.S. was sold to 290 daily and 104 Sunday papers in 220 cities and towns of 38 states. Total circulation of I.N.S.-subscribing papers was 15,827,856. This figure, plus the circulation of the papers in the three chains (after eliminating duplications) gives 22,043,146 as the actual audience of the three chainsters--half the national circulation! It is only the beginning. They also own all the important feature syndicates and the two private news agencies, U.P. and I.N.S. They control most of the columnists, more powerful than the editorial pages. (Westbrook Pegler alone is said to have 10,000,000 circulation.) Their competition and methods exert a direct influence on rival papers and on Associated Press, aside from their many memberships in A.P. (one for each member paper). Their papers dominate circulation in such key areas as New York, Chicago and Washington. But there is still more. Decisive is this fact: they form, in effect, a single political bloc. The power of the bloc begins with its material foundation, as described above. Here the new factor enters. The three chains are not just important units in the highly profitable merchandising enterprise called the newspaper industry. They are active and conscious political forces. They have a program. They utilize their papers and personnel for active organization of reactionary movements and drives. They are not only available to such characters as Representative Rankin and Senator Bilbo; they not only feature the hate-speeches of such men: they write the speeches and inspire their delivery. They instigate fascist activities. Goering and Rosenberg did not have to seek Hearst out and bribe him to print their Nazi ravings under their own by-lines: _he sought them out!_