and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it
to teach in it.

When we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd is
still more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have the
most advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have the
most money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most
ability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains
and get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the last
twenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method
in letters--a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass of
advertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea,
the worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certain
point where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not be
enough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not come
to it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of
is being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there are
not enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that there
are plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to
be bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to find
fault with them are the ones who make such papers possible.

The result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journals
have fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (which
everybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression,
imagination, and foresight--the things that give distinction and results
to utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has
been practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have
been abandoned by their editors: they have become printed
counting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and