There is no man in our public life to-day who interests me so much as William Randolph Hearst. I have been watching him for ten years, during the last half-dozen of them weighing and testing him as the man of the coming hour. I do not say that he will be the man; all that I can say is that he stands the best chance of being the candidate of the Democratic party in 1912; and that the man who secures that nomination will, if he does his work (and for him to fail to do it is almost inconceivable) write his name in our history beside the names of Washington and Lincoln. Mr. Hearst is one of the by-products of the industrial process—a member of the “second generation.” You are to picture many thousands of young men, heirs of the enormous fortunes of our captains of industry; they are brought up in luxury, and in complete idleness—the world gives them _carte blanche_, with the result that at an early age they are sated with all the ordinary pleasures of human beings. And at the same time they have big, healthy bodies, and they crave excitement. It would be interesting to compile a list of some of the things they have done. Of course, a great many simply follow in the footsteps of their fathers, and become commercial buccaneers; some devote themselves to automobiles and race-horses, some to society and gossip, some to mere brutal dissipation—such as the scions of the now extinct line of Pullman, who used to smash up the saloons of Chicago, and now and then amuse themselves by hurling brickbats through the windows of their father’s home. Now and then there is one who goes in for big game, or for monkey-dinners, or for Sunday-schools, or for Socialism, or for flying-machines; and there was one who went in for newspapers! His father was reluctant to humour the whim—he thought that a million dollar racing-stable would cost less in the end than a forty thousand dollar newspaper: which of course put the young man upon his mettle—made him set out to make the paper pay, and “show the old man.” To make it pay he had to get circulation; and to get circulation he had to get something new—there was no use doing things like the old newspapers, which were not paying, but had to be funded by the political powers which used them. So once more you see capital, as I have pictured it—“like a wild beast in a cage, pacing about, watching for an opening here and there.” And where is the opening? Why, the people! The people, whom the merciless machinery of exploitation beats down and tramples upon, and pushes out of the way and forgets. They are brutalised and ignorant, they are stupid with toil—but yet they are human beings, they crave life. They never read newspapers—but give them what they want, and they will learn to read. Give them big head-lines, and a shock on every page; give them royalty and “high life,” scandal and spice, battle, murder and sudden death—and then they will buy your paper.