guarantee of the article advertised, but it is even more a guar
antee of the emancipation of the press from the control of the advertiser
It has been seen that the press is handicapped by many con ditions . The fundamental one is that it is a business enterprise. That the newspaper, therefore, has regard for its advertising
columns is a natural business consequence, as business is now conducted. It may in its editorial columns remember its adver
tising pages ; it may assume the semblance of virtue and exclude liquor advertisements while showing editorially that “ prohibition does not prohibit;" it may be silent in regard to local conditions that demand moral surgery to preserve the life of the community ; it may promote new federal buildings and improvements of an
as yet undiscovered watercourse in its congressional district and therefore support its representative in Congress for the sake of the
loaves and the fishes. The press is indeed handicapped by condi tions that the historian can not disregard.
The historian , however, finds similar restraints on all other means of expressing or of influencing public opinion . The politi cian and even the statesman not infrequently remember the
coming election ; the clergyman has in his congregation men and women of questionable business and private morality ; the leading
citizen does not always in time of danger press on to the front. The restraints on the individual are many and serious, and often perfectly legitimate. One property owner may wish to take
down a division fence while his neighbor may wish to keep it up ;the citizens on one side of a residential street may wish asphalt pavement while those on the other side may advocatemacadam ;
one-half a community may support municipal ownership of all public utilities and the other half advocate private ownership .
These self-evident conditions are noted to suggest that the press shares with every other known human activity, collective
or individual, the restraints inherent in human society , and prob ably to no greater or less a degree . This is only stating that the
press is a part of a most complex organization and that it can not be singled out either by itself as suffering peculiar hardships by
reason of its limitations or by others as yielding to temptations unknown in other occupations.
The historian recog
