intimate relationship . It is important for the press to publish as news both the important and the trifling transactions of the government, while the government needs and sometimes seeks the support of the press. This mutual dependence explains the large number of reporters congregated in every capital city, as it
also explains why executive messages, legislative acts, speeches, documents of every description , are sent to the press in advance to be released at a specified hour. Reporters are often taken into the confidence of governmental authorities and given important information , although permitted to print only a specified amount, and this confidence has almost never been violated . Many of the specific questions involve the press in a very direct way. The press is intimately connected with the post office department, where shortage in postal revenues is prone to be attributed to carrying second class mail at too low a rate ; the transmission of so -called “ incendiary literature ” whether issued by abolitionists or anarchists, the closing of the mails to all
newspapers advertising lotteries, or immoral occupations, and
more recently intoxicating liquors, all indicate the wide range of connection between the government and the newspaper; they must at the same time indicate the limitations on the authorita tiveness of the greater part of the press in the discussion of all
these measures that so vitally concern it. The press plays an important part in the conduct of political parties and in all political campaigns, and at various times it has
accepted, if it has not openly sought, the rewards of such political service. Editors have frequently been appointed to postmaster ships, they have held diplomatic and consular posts, they have been elected to Congress,they have been nominated for important state and municipal offices, and they have filled various other appointive and elective offices , - in apparent return for services
rendered to a political party . The biographer of Thomas Ritchie finds that “ from the very beginning (May 9, 1804) the (Rich mond] Enquirer fell under the influence of party patronage. . . . Without official patronage it could not have lived in so strong a 1 One instance of this violation of confidence occurred during the adminis tration of President Roosevelt with the result that the reporter was forbidden the White House.
