Page:The American Magazine volume LXIII.djvu/17



''This article is an examination of the fitness of Mr. Hearst for office, based on fundamental grounds. It considers him seriously as a remarkable phenomenon in public affairs, whom it is our duty to try to understand. His political and journalistic ideas are given as they are presented by himself and his followers, with all credit for sincerity. Even then our conclusions are that Mr. Hearst does not typify the movement he represents or give reasons for hoping that he will be able to accomplish what he thinks he can.''—

LL over the country all sorts and conditions of men are asking "What about Hearst?" and, if they think you should be able to answer, they put the question with an eagerness—or an anxiety—which denotes a very real desire to know. And nobody seems to know. They have read his "yellow" newspapers, heard some yellow gossip about him, and "that's enough."

Some of those who say that Hearst's newspapers are enough to judge the man by, say also that Hearst's newspapers are not Hearst's; that he did not make them. A rich young man, Hearst was able to buy brains, and the talented men he hired, having put themselves into his newspapers, are putting him into politics. Almost his very existence is denied. The New York Evening Post declared last August that "William Randolph Hearst" was a myth, a syndicate, a trade-mark, an empty name.

Is there such a man? Somebody must be back of the papers and the politics that bear his name. If it isn't Hearst himself, who is it? And whether "Hearst" is Hearst or somebody else, what manner of man is it that moved in silence behind all the noise he was making, arousing in some people dread, in others hope, but compelling in all an interest which of itself is significant? For, suppose the worst of Hearst: suppose him to be a yellow millionaire, without a mind of his own or the morals of other people; suppose his inherited millions have fallen under the control of an unscrupulous group of able men who, by pandering in journalism to the love of the vices, and by playing in politics with the hatred of the riches of the rich, propose to bring on a class war and destroy the U. S. Government—what does it mean of the American people that so many of them read the Hearst newspapers and look to such a political leadership with at least half a mind to follow it? Why should a myth be a "menace "in this land of prosperity and liberty? We approach, in more senses than one, a national question when we ask who, what, where is the reality behind the mystery of William Randolph Hearst, the unknown?

Now the way to solve a riddle like this is,