Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/397

Rh have miscarried, if we ourselves hesitated to apply the rules of fair measurement that we, by implication, are urging on others.

The best way to arrive at a correct historic judgment is to try to conceive of the man under dissection as being thoroughly dead and completely forgotten. He is resurrected for the purpose of finding out what he did, and what effect he had on his contemporaries. The abuse showered on him by his rivals then frequently becomes an evidence that he wielded some power. The question is, Did he wield that power for good or for evil? Was he selfish? Was he (and this is important in a democracy) corrupt?

In the matter of arousing bitter hatred, Hearst's position in American journalism has not been unique. The feeling against the elder Bennett, when the papers of the city united against him in the famous Herald war,—going to the extent of abusing the manager of the Astor House for permitting him and his wife to live there,—was far greater than it ever was against Hearst. Yet we know now that Bennett violated no law, other than the canons of good taste. The office of Greeley was almost sacked, and his life was threatened; Bennett urged for him a public hanging; he was a thorn in Lincoln's side,—but we know now that Greeley was one of the great moral forces in this nation. The "rascally Pulitzer," as his contemporaries called him, was the subject of a most scurrilous pamphlet, he was derided for his humble beginnings; yet his contribution to journalistic advancement, through his school of journalism, is greater than that of any other individual, unless it be Jefferson.

What the final judgment on Hearst will be depends very largely on his own actions, for the popularity or unpopularity of the cause espoused has much to do with the