It is frequently asserted by Americans that their press is very largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often venal.  On such points as these I venture to make no assertion.  To prove them would require either a special knowledge of the back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the working of American institutions and the evolution of American character as to be able to decide definitely that no other explanation can be given of the source of such-and-such newspaper actions and attitude.  I confine myself to criticism on matters such as he who runs may read.  It is, however, true that, contrary to the general spirit of the country, such questions as socialism and the labour movement seldom receive so fair and sympathetic treatment as in the English press.

So many of the journalists I met in the United States were men of high character, intelligence, and breeding that it may seem ungracious and exaggerated to say that American newspaper men as a class seem to me distinctly inferior to the pressmen of Great Britain.  But I believe this to be the case; and indeed a study of the journals of the two countries would alone warrant the inference.  The trail of the reporter is over them all.  Not that I, mindful of the implied practicability of the passage of a needle’s eye by a camel, believe it impossible for reporters to be gentlemen; but I do say that it is difficult for a reporter on the American system to preserve to the full that delicacy of respect for the mental privacy of others which we associate with the idea of true gentlemanliness.  Mr. Smalley, in a passage controverting the general opinion that a journalist should always begin at the lowest rung of the ladder, admits that a modern reporter has often to approach people in a way that he will find it hard to reconcile with his own self-respect or the dignity of his profession.  The representative of the press whom one meets in English society and clubs is very apt to be a university graduate, distinguished from his academic colleagues, if at all, by his superior ability and address.  This is also true of many of the editorial writers of large American journals; but side by side with these will be found a large number of men who have worked their way up from the pettiest kind of reporting, and who have not had the advantage, at the most impressionable period of their career, of associating with the best-mannered men of the time.  It is, of course, highly honourable to American society and to themselves that they have and take the opportunity of advancement, but the fact remains patent in their slipshod style and the faulty grammar of their writings, and in their vulgar familiarity of manner.  It has been asserted that journalism in America is not a profession, and is “subject to none of the conditions that would entitle it to the name.  There are no recognised rules of conduct for its members, and no tribunal to enforce them if there were.”