9– 440.
jackal press has ‘hushed up' or perverted utterly the story of the I. W . W . trial. Publicity could not help but win the case for the ‘wobblies' ; and so the great prostituted newspapers ignore the most dramatic legal battle since Dred Scott - one whose impli
cations are as serious, and whose sky is banked with thunder heads." 8 But while to many everything connected with the
I. W . W . is of supreme interest, to others it has not as yet become so. The press may not grasp the dimensions themovement has
already attained and hence miscalculate the proportion of space to be given it. It has been clearly shown that the press can not
give space to news that does not interest more than a third of its readers and omniscience is needed to determine what this is.'
Extraordinary conditions necessarily change proportions. During the war everything was subordinated to that and the
press gave comparatively little space to subjects that prior to it had filled many columns, - education , municipal government,
tenement house reform , and all the questions that had agitated society gave way to the war and to conditions growing out of it. News of this character was not “ suppressed ,” but public interest in it was in a state of suspended animation and could not be revived until the war had closed .
The steel strike in 1919 dropped out of the press, not necessarily because news concerning it had been suppressed , but because, after it had been running some weeks and the situation was apparently unchanged , information concerning it ceased to be
news. The mass of readers lose interest in a prolonged controversy and the press holds to the principle of printing as news only what
interests a definite proportion of readers. The declaration of war against Germany and the declaration of the armistice were re ceived by the public with equal demonstrations of rapturous joy because each furnished a new sensation . The sustained effort
required to follow the development of a situation from beginning to end is lacking and “ what the public wants ” is news pure and
simple. A society once existed to secure in the Constitution of the United States the recognition of the existence of God . But 8 A . Young and J. Reed , “ The Social Revolution in Court," Liberator, September, 1918. 9G . B . Dibblee, The Newspaper , p . 72.
