Free Ads for Willie Hearst

     I don’t like to jump on a man when he is down, particularly when I think he is only half-way down and rapidly rising again. I refer to my friend, Mr. Hearst, who is just now getting all sorts of advertising from his business rivals because he used unparliamentary language regarding the late President McKinley previous to the assassination. Hearst is now making himself a laughing-stock, outdoing all in the most extravagant laudations of the late President McKinley, putting him on a pedestal with Lincoln and Washington; whereas it was not many weeks ago that he spoke of him as—

     The trouble with Hearst is that he has no clear conception of either politics or business, and is running his paper upon the plan of giving the people the views he thinks they want, irrespective of whether those views are right or wrong; and, moreover, with no accurate knowledge of what is really wanted. He is like a grocer meeting the demand of his customers for cheap sugar by giving them sanded sugar and then excusing himself by saying he thought they wanted sanded sugar.
     Hearst has neither morals nor science to guide him in running his papers, and that he is making a financial success is only to be explained on the hypothesis that his competitors are not only lacking in what he lacks, but they lack his money and dash as well.
     It’s really a great pity that Hearst does not follow CHALLENGE more religiously. It would be a good thing for both his readers and his exchequer. If I could not add $100,000 a year to his profits by having the direction of his editorial policy, I would consider my brain failing.
     People no longer are silly enough to wish individuals made responsible for the faults of a political and industrial system confessedly beyond the control of any individual.
     It’s well enough to make fun of the Hannas and the Morgans, and direct attention to their confessed inability to control the financial forces under their nominal control, but to vituperate them simply clouds the issue. We do not wish to know whether Hanna is a brute or an angel, but we do wish the public to realize that whether he is one or the other that the brutality of the industrial system forces him to brutal methods. Hearst knows this well enough himself. There is no business man that is not forced to know it. Now, knowing that it is the system and not the Hanna, why does he not base his editorials on the facts of the case as they are, and not as he thinks the public fancy them. The trouble with Hearst and his editors is that they have never mixed with the people and they underrate the intelligence of the masses. Mr. Hearst should accompany me on one of my lecturing trips if he would get next. I need a good newspaper man on my entourage when I travel, anyway.