What are the ethics of the press of Chicago?  They are those of Joseph Medill, Victor F. Lawson, H. H. Kohlsaat, John R. Walsh, Carter Harrison, Jr., Washington Hesing, individually, not collectively.  As these gentlemen are personally able, conscientious, fearless for the right, patriotic, incorruptible, and devoted to the public good, so are their respective newspapers.  If they are otherwise, so are their respective newspapers.

As I have said before this club on another occasion, the citizens of Chicago are fortunate above those of any other great city in the United States in the average high character of their newspapers.  They may have their faults, but who has not?  Let him or her who is without fault throw stones.

If the newspaper press is as bad as some people always pretend to think, how comes it that every good cause instinctively seeks its aid with almost absolute confidence of obtaining it?  And how comes it that the workers of evil just as instinctively aim to fraudulently use it or silence it, and with such poor success?

To expose and oppose wrong is an almost involuntary rule among newspaper workers—­from chief to printer’s devil.  They make mistakes like others, they are tempted and fall like others, but I testify to a well-recognized intention of our profession, the rule is to learn the facts, and print them, too—­to know the truth and not hide it under a bushel.  Nine-tenths of the criticisms of the press one hears is the braying of the galled jades or the crackling of thorns under a pot.

The press stands for light, not darkness.  It is the greatest power in our modern civilization.  Thieves and rascals of high and low degree hate and malign it, but no honest man has reasonable cause to fear the abuse of its power.  It is a beacon, and not a false light.  It casts its blessed beams into dark places, and while it brings countless crimes to light, it also reveals to the beneficence of the world the wrongs and needs of the necessitous.  It is the embodiment of energy in the pursuit of news, for its name is Light, and its aim is Knowledge.  Ignorance and crime flee from before it like mist before the God of Light.  It stands to-day

  “For the truth that lacks assistance,
  For the wrong that needs resistance,
  For the future in the distance,
      And the good that it can do.”

It has no license to do wrong; it has boundless liberty and opportunity to do good.

THEODORE TILTON

WOMAN

[Speech of Theodore Tilton at the sixtieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1865.  The Chairman, Joseph H. Choate, gave the following toast, “Woman—­the strong staff and beautiful rod which sustained and comforted our forefathers during every step of the pilgrims’ progress.”  Theodore Tilton was called upon to respond.]