note this degradation of the newspaper.  A few years ago Senator Carter, of Montana, speaking in the United States Senate, read several printed slips which were sent out by a bankers’ association to local bankers with the request that they be inserted in the local papers as editorials, suggestion being made that the instructions to the local bankers be removed before they were handed to the papers.  The purpose of the bankers’ association was to stimulate opposition to the postal savings bank, a policy endorsed affirmatively by the Republican party and, conditionally, by the Democratic party, the two platforms being supported at the polls by more than ninety per cent, of the voters.  The bankers’ associations were opposing the policy, and, in sending out its literature, they were endeavouring to conceal the source of that literature and to make it appear that the printed matter represented the opinion of some one in the community.

The journalist who would fully perform his duty must be not only incorruptible, but ever alert, for those who are trying to misuse the newspapers are able to deceive “the very elect.”  Whenever any movement is on foot for the securing of legislation desired by the predatory interests, or when restraining legislation is threatened, news bureaus are established at Washington, and these news bureaus furnish to such papers as will use them free reports, daily or weekly as the case may be, from the national capitol—­reports which purport to give general news, but which in fact contain arguments in support of the schemes which the bureaus are organized to advance.  This ingenious method of misleading the public is only a part of the general plan which favour-holding and favour-seeking corporations pursue.

Demosthenes declared that the man who refuses a bribe conquers the man who offers it.  According to this, the journalist who resists the many temptations which come to him to surrender his ideals has the consciousness of winning a moral victory as well as the satisfaction of knowing that he is rendering a real service to his fellows.

The profession for which I was trained—­the law—­presents another line of temptations.  The court-room is a soul’s market where many barter away their ideals in the hope of winning wealth or fame.  Lawyers sometimes boast of the number of men whose acquittal they have secured when they knew them to be guilty, and of advantages won which they knew their clients did not deserve.  I do not understand how a lawyer can so boast, for he is an officer of the court and, as such, is sworn to assist in the administration of justice.  When a lawyer has helped his client to obtain all that his client is entitled to, he has done his full duty as a lawyer, and, if he goes beyond this, he goes at his own peril.  Show me a lawyer who has spent a lifetime trying to obscure the line between right and wrong—­trying to prove that to be just which he knew to be unjust, and I will show you a man who has grown weaker in character