Merely as a matter of manners and good taste, it would, I think, be well if Americans endeavoured to arrive at and express a better understanding of the legislative work of the Lords. Englishmen have not much more regard for the principle of a quadrennially elected President than Americans have for an hereditary aristocracy; but they do not habitually permit that lack of regard to degenerate into the use of contemptuous language about individual Presidents. Even in contemplating the result of what seems to them so preposterous a system as that of electing a judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have generally confined themselves to a complimentary expression of surprise that the results are not worse than they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, it would be well if Americans would similarly endeavour to dissociate their detestation of that principle from their feelings for the actual personnel of the House of Lords. There is a good deal both in the constitution and work of the House to command the respect even of the citizens of a republic.
I address this protest directly to American economic and sociological writers in the hope that, recognising that it comes from one who is not unsympathetic, some of them may be influenced to speak less heedlessly on the subject than is their wont. I may add that these remarks are suggested by certain passages in the recently published book of an American author for whom, elsewhere in this volume, I express, as I feel, sincere respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[309:1] It is delightful to find, some weeks after this was written, that Mr. Wells makes precisely this common blunder and states it in almost the exact words that I have used later on. His excuse lies in the fact that, as he says, he had it "in his mind before ever he crossed the Atlantic"; but that hardly excuses his failure to disabuse himself after he was across. Most curious is it that Mr. Wells appears to think that this erroneous notion is a discovery of his own and he enlarges on it and expounds it at some length; the truth being, as I say above, that it is the common opinion of all uninformed Englishmen. Mr. Wells is in fact voicing an almost universal—even if unformulated—national prejudice, but it is a pity that he took it over to America and brought it back again.
[335:1] The reader will, of course, understand that the political or industrial power of capital is entirely a separate thing from the ability of wealth to buy luxury, deference or social recognition for its possessor. In this particular there is little to choose between the two and curiously enough, each country has been called by visitors from the other the "paradise of the wealthy."
[342:1] Englishmen often ask the meaning of the phrase "the yellow press." The history of it is as follows: In 1895, Mr. W. R. Hearst, having had experience as a journalist in California, purchased the New York Journal, which was at the time a more or less unsuccessful publication, and, spending money lavishly, converted it into the most enterprising, as well as the most sensational, paper that New York or any other American city had ever seen. In catering to the prejudices of the mass of the people, he invaded the province of the New York World. In the "war" between the two which followed, one began and the other immediately adopted the plan of using yellow ink in the printing of certain cartoons (or pictures of the Ally Sloper type) with which they adorned certain pages of their Sunday editions especially. The term "yellow press" was applied at first only to those two papers, but soon extended to include other publications which copied their general style. The yellow ink was, I believe, actually first employed by the World; but the Journal was the aggressor in the fight and in most particulars it was that paper which set the pace, and it, or Mr. Hearst, rightly bears the responsibility for the creation of yellow journalism.
