The record-union., 1896-02-17
ERROR HATES THE PRESS.
Attempts to Conceal the Truth VIII
Not Succeed.


(From the San Francisco Post)
The great canon of liberation an
nounced by Thomas Jefferson was that
error may be tolerated where truth is
left free to combat it. At the annual
meeting of the Chamber of Commerce
in Sacramento one of the members de-
clared that the Capital City had taken
harm at the hands of it's newspapers
because they had published the fact
that Sacramento is drinking dirty
water. IF any visitor at Sacramento
has drunk clean water from hydrant
in that city during the last forty years
let him come forward now and testify.
The probabilities are that the press or
Sacramento have been denouncing the
dirty water of that city in the interest
of having clean water. The only way
any abuse may be remedied is by its
exposure. If city is threatened with
flood it is wisdom on the part of its
journals to say that its levee defenses
are weak. If it is drinking dirty
slickens turned up from the muddy
river, it is not only expedient and just,
but right that the journals having some
interest in it's growth and prosperity
should seek to give it clean water.
The member of the Chamber of Com
merce who denounced the newspapers
of the Capital City for declaring the
truth relating to the water the people
of that city have tolerated ever since
its existence, evidently has some inter-
est in challenging the light of truth.
Such complaints against the press usu-
ally proceed from people who find the
perpetuation of wrong profitable.
The journal may witness the cringing
and crawling of candidate for judi
cial position in a country having an
elective judiciary, or may see the high
est and best interests of the common
wealth stabbed to the heart by a cor
rupt judicial decision, and if it exposes
the wrongs there is an outcry raised
that it is weakening the respect of the
common people for the purity Of the
judiciary, and thereby endangering the
whole fabric of society.
If your preacher offers licentious en-
braces to the female members of his
flock, commits immoralities and then
takes the woman who over her own
signature has confessed to wrong doing
with that said preacher into his house
hold, any exposure is denounced as an
assault upon ministerial character and
as tending to weaken the influence of
religion and encourage irreligion and
it's attendant horrors.
If a Legislature is notoriously cor
rupt and shamefully prodigal of public
money denunciation of it is con-
demned as sensational journalism and
the condemnation is usually loudest in
the quarter which has been on the side
of the transaction in buying and selling
sin.
If the sewers are unhealthful and are
breathing forth pestilential gases, the
denunciation of that condition by the
press is usually resented as calculated
to do the city harm by giving it a bad
reputation for healthfulness.
If colony schemes are projected which
cheat the colonists out of their little for
tune and plant them on hard pan or al
kali land where trees will not grow, and
induce them to plant orchards and in
vest their money and their labor in 10
calities where by no possibility profit
able horticulture can be pursued. all
denunciation of it is characterized as
calculated to do injury to the State and
arrest immigration.
The fact is that the people of sparsely
settled States like California are immi-
grafton mad. This sweet-scented, COM
placent member of the Chamber of Com
merce of Sacramento, who resents the