Hearst and His “Journal”

     Not quite four weeks ago, it would have been a mild dream that the day was at hand when Wm. R. Hearst and his “Journal” would be sufficiently ready for the dissecting table of Political Science, so as to serve the only good purpose that their joint career could be put to, to wit, a warning to the fools. But that mild dream is a reality to-day. Pluckd [sic] by its fellow capitalist concerns since McKinley’s assassination, the combibnation [sic] looks to-day like a hen “dressed” for the poultry market, and is left without comfort from the imbecile, morbid, gaping admirers whose applause it received and mistook for success. The pitiable plight of Hearst and his sheet, is the wages of flippancy and cynicism in the domain of the Social Question.
     It is not capitalism alone, all previous social systems grounded on class-rule, suffer a certain leakage among the class that rules. The degenerate, the recklesss [sic] libertine who rather injures than helps his class, makes his appearance in all. With the capitalist system, however, the leakage is largest, and the varietes [sic] in the leakage are most numerous. Among these varieties is the CYNIC. Bred on the lap of luxury; his mind idle and unfurnished with solid information, “a figure” merely through his possession of that which, without efforts on his part enables him to ride on the backs of his workers; raised in the atmosphere of adulation; brought in contact with and attracting the easily purchased of mankind; cloyed with dissipation at an early age, the capitalist cynic makes his appearnce [sic]. To him nothing is earnest, nothing sacred; “money buys all things” is his motto; he toys with women, he toys with politics, he toys with art. In the instance of Wm. R. Hearst, he thinks th [sic] Social Question also is there to be toyed with, and he approaches it with the same reckless flippancy that he has approached every other serious thing. These libertines not infrequently get run through or their brains blown out for their swagger towards women; in the instance of Hearst and his “Journal” that is relatively just what has happened to them for their swagger and cynicism towards the Social Question.
     The very etymology of the word radicalism implies deep-lying premises. Radical conclusions, accordingly, are well-knit[.] The Hearst radicalism, the radicalism of the cynic, and rattle brained, is conspicious [sic] for it [sic] flightiness. It has no substance as it has no roots. It raises only bubbles. And, eventually, if not sooner, the bubbles explode to the utter discomfiture of the “radical.”
     This has happened to Hearst. Other editors have before him been assailed; some even physically, and their plants wrecked. This happened notably to Abolition papers. But their physical ruin never dragged their moral ruin after it. Naturally so. The Abolitionists were the well grounded radicals of that time. The fury of copperhead mobs could smash men and presses but never could touch their honor, because it could not touch their Cause. To-day, tho’ physically untouched and his “Journal” plant intact, Hearst the capitalist cynic, is caught in the meshes of his [own?] flippancy. With both his feet in his own mouth, he and his paper stand branded as blatherskites, a lump of ignominy.
     Sic Semper!