Now, the modern newspaper is a corporation, formed for the one purpose of paying dividends to stockholders. In order to make money it must serve the people who have money, for now all the profits of the great dailies are derived from the sale of space in their columns, the receipts for the sale of papers not covering expenses. The business manager, with a few exceptions, controls the editorial department and dictates all policies. So we poor wayfarers, hungry for information concerning some important interest, seize upon a learned editorial in a great metropolitan daily, and while we think we are being instructed by the weighty opinion of some friendly and scholarly writer, we are in fact reading THE PAID ADVERTISEMENT of our enemies, placed in the paper to confuse us. When, in the news department, we read a speech or an interview, it is often so garbled that the meaning is quite changed. And what we consider to be a simple statement of fact is often a doctored narrative, containing fictitious figures, and printed for the sole purpose of misleading the public. The attempt of the gold press to array the agricultural producers against the city laborers, and the mechanics against the agriculturists is cruel and deliberate. And this power to deceive and mislead carries with it the power of life or death. Suppose I were to go to Mr. Jones and tell him that Mr. Smith had declared to me that he was going to shoot him on sight, and that I had seen him purchase a revolver for that purpose; and then I should go to Mr. Smith and tell him that his friend Jones had just armed himself to the teeth for the purpose of killing him, stating that I had heard him swear and curse and declare before heaven that Smith should not live another day. Now, suppose these two neighbors, heretofore warm friends, were to approach each other, and Smith, as a precaution, would reach his hand toward his hip-pocket, and Jones, in order to save his life, would pull out his weapon and fire, both men shooting each other at the same time. The result would be TWO DEAD FOOLS, the victims of ONE LIVE LIAR. The power to deceive great masses of people by simultaneous and premeditated conspiracy on the part of the papers owned by monopoly, carries with it the power to weaken the masses by dividing them in a struggle over false issues; and while they fight among themselves, to rob them and legislate their children into slavery. Here are the words of the great journalist, John Swinton, before the New York Press Association, in response to a toast, "The Independent Press:"