Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1910-04-01
FHF FCOMBAT OF TODAY
| ISAGA|NST IGNORANCE

alternately illumined and obscured
the human mind.
MANY things that our ancestors
could not fathom are clear to us,
what was unknown to them is known
to us. That which prevents us from
following up this line of progress
through these phrases is that each
reply brings forth anew fresh ques-
tions and thus 1t will be to the end
If the end should ever arrive"
Indispensable requirements for
the modern newspaper have been
supplied by the free public schools,
endowing every willing child with
the priceless boon of literacy and
the inauguration of universal man
hood suffrage, instilling a general de-
sire for information and instruction
on the needs of selfgovernment. II
goes without saying that the relative
intelligence of the people of COM
munity determines the possibilities
of newspaper publication.
The newspaper has been an ctive
contributor to the upbliding as we'll
as a BENEFICIARY; its mission has been
and is to use its great power to the
end of still further broadening the
area of popular intelligence and help
ing along the triumph Of truth over
ignorance.
How does the newspaper perform
this part OF its work? It does It by
bringing home to the people what is
disclosed by the searchlight of pub
licity directed at all our human ac-
tivities. The part the newspaper
plays in popular government is SO
generally understood that it scarce"
ly calls for elucidation.
The newspaper has been dubbed
the Fourth Estate" and nowhere
has popular government been really
successful without the existence of
free, vigilant, and untrammeled
public press on guard as the sentry
of individual liberty, ready to eX-
pose corruption and oppression and
to sound the alarm against the ap.
proach Of the tyrant.
I venture to affirm the belief that
the most potent deterrent Of wrong
doing and the most promising cor
rective of nearly all our crying
abuses, social industrial and gov
ernmental, lie in the line of public
ity, and the molding of public
opinion whose penalties fall more
certainly, and more heavily, on the
offender than any punishment pre-
scribed by law.
In his epochal work on the Amer
lean Commonwealth, James Bryce
calls our pre-eminently "a govern
ment by public opinion" and devotes
chapter to the newspaper as a
source and vehicle of public opin-
ion. If individual newspapers and
journalists enjoy less power here
than abroad "the cause is to be
found" declares Mr.. Bryce, mot in
the inferior capacity of the editors
and writer's, but in the superior in
dependence of the reading public.
That the modern newspaper has
its faults none would deny. It is
charged with grasping at the sensa-
tional and exceptional with too much
avidity.
We deplore that some newspapers
are too often tempted to go to ex-
tremes in everything and to exag
gerate the less important at the eX
pense of what proves to be the more
important.
But the newspaper is itself con-
stantly tested in the fiery furnace OF
discriminating public opinion, a
public opinion becoming all the time
better educated and more exacting.
AS the level of popular intelligence
is raised by the combined efforts OF
press and pupit, school and univer-
sity, the standards of all these agen-
cies are bound to be elevated along
with It,
Ignorance alone, like a dismal
swamp, furnishes the breeding pla-
ces of noxious creatures, and each
time ignorance is put to rout the cir
Gle of itelligence is widened and the
power for evil Of ignorance is weak