“Did you go to see Adams?” asked Haynerd, not believing that she would have dared visit that journalistic demon.
“Yes,” answered the girl, to his utter astonishment. “Mr. Adams said he had no time for maudlin sentimentalism or petticoat sophistry. He was in the business of collecting and disseminating news, and he wanted that news to go shrieking out of his office! Here is one of his afternoon extras. You can see how the report of an Italian wife-murder shrieks in red letters an inch high on the very first page. But has Mr. Adams thereby seen and met his opportunity? Or has he further prostituted journalism by this ignorant act?”
“The people want it, Carmen,” said Hitt slowly, though his voice seemed not to sound a real conviction.
“They do not!” cried Carmen, her eyes snapping. “If the church and the press were not mortally and morally blind, they would see the deadly destruction which they are accomplishing by shrieking from pulpit and sanctum: ‘Evil is real! Pietro Lasanni cuts his wife’s throat! Evil is real! Look, and be convinced!’”
“But, Carmen, while what you say is doubtless true, it must be admitted that the average man, especially the day laborer, reads his yellow journal avidly, and––”
“Yes, he does,” returned the girl. “And why? The average man, as you call him, is a victim of the most pernicious social system ever devised by the human mind! Swept along in the mad rush of commercialism, or ground down beneath its ruthless wheels, his jaded, jarred nerves and his tired mind cry out for artificial stimulation, for something that will for a moment divert his wearied thought from his hopeless situation. The Church offers him little that is tangible this side of the grave. But whiskey, drugs, and yellow journalism do. Can’t you see, Mr. Hitt––can’t you, Ned––that the world’s cry for sensationalism is but a cry for something that will make it forget its misery for a brief moment? The average man feels 88 the superficiality of the high speed of this century of mad rush; he longs as never before for a foundation of truth upon which to rest; he is tired of theological fairy-tales; he is desperately tired of sin, and sickness, and dying. He cares little about a promised life beyond the grave. He wants help here and now to solve his problems. What does the press offer him? Little beyond a recount of his own daily miseries, and reports of graft and greed, and accounts of vulgar displays of material wealth that he has not and can not have. And these reports divert his jaded mind for a moment and give him a false, fleeting sense of pleasure––and then leave him sunk deeper than before in despair, and in hatred of existing conditions!”
“The girl is right,” said Hitt, turning to Haynerd. “And we knew it, of course. But we have let our confidence slip. This steam-calliope age reflects the human-mind struggle for something other than its own unsatisfying ideas. It turns to thrills; it expresses its restlessness and dissatisfaction with itself by futurist and cubist art, so-called; by the rattle and vibration of machinery; by flaring billboards that insult every sense of the artistic; and by the murk and muck of yellow journalism, with its hideous colored supplements and spine-thrilling tales. So much for the reader. But the publisher himself––well, he battens materially, of course, upon the tired victims of our degrading social system. He sees but the sordid revenue in dollars and cents. Beyond that his morals do not extend.”
“And they can’t,” said Haynerd. “Decent journalism wouldn’t pay––doesn’t––never did! Other papers have tried it, and miserably failed!”
“Then,” returned Hitt calmly, after a moment’s reflection, “oil will meet the deficit. As long as my paternal wells flow in Ohio the Express will issue forth as a clean paper, a dignified, law-supporting purveyor to a taste for better things––even if it has to create that taste. Its columns will be closed to salacious sensation, and its advertising pages will be barred to vice, liquor, tobacco, and drugs.”
“Good!” cried Carmen. “And now we’ve got to get right down to business.”