“Well, is it?” asked Irv. “If there is a pest-hole in any city, where typhus or smallpox is breeding, and a newspaper exposes it, it is not pleasant reading, of course, but it arouses public attention and brings public opinion to bear to compel a remedy. If there is a health board, the newspapers all want to know what the health board is doing; if there isn’t a health board, the newspapers all cry out, ‘Why isn’t there a health board?’ and presently one is organized. Now I suppose it is very much the same way about moral plague spots. If vice or crime prevail in any part of the city, the newspapers print the news of it and call upon the police to suppress it. This arouses public attention and brings pressure to bear upon public officials until the bad thing is done away with, or at least reduced to small proportions.” “Yes,” said Ed, thinking and speaking slowly, “and there is another thing. Even when the newspapers print the details about scandals, and we say it would be better not to publish such things, it may be that the newspapers are right; because every rascal that is inclined to do scandalous things knows by experience or observation that the newspapers, if they get hold of the facts, will print them and hold him up to the execration of mankind. If the newspapers did not print the news of such things, every scoundrel would know that he could do what he pleased without fear of being made the subject of scandal. The first thought of every rascal seems to be to keep his affairs out of the newspapers. Now perhaps it is better that he cannot keep them out; as he certainly cannot. In very many cases, without doubt or question, men are restrained from doing outrageous things merely by the fear that their conduct will be exploited with pictures of themselves and fac-similes of their letters and everything of the kind, in so-called sensational newspapers.” “Well, all that is so, I suppose,” said Will, “though I hadn’t thought of it quite to the extent that you have, Ed. I have always been told that the newspapers were horribly sensational and immoral, but, now that I think of it, when they publish a story of immorality, it is because somebody has been doing the immoral thing that they report; and as you say, the fact that the newspapers are pretty sure to get hold of the truth and publish it in every case is often a check on men’s tendency to do immoral things.” Before parting with their rescued friends at Vicksburg, the boys had to go ashore and be photographed, at the planter’s solicitation.