the
human body, and of right living; of the low standards of the press that lends itself to such advertising and of the low standards of a community that tolerates such advertising in its press. Advertisements giving fictitious valuations of articles that their owners desire to sell are, for the historian , unimpeachable records of prevailing low business standards.
The historian is ceasing to write history in the flat, to be content with a study of the superficial area of a period and with a belief that what men have done expresses to the full the in terests that have occupied men 's thoughts. In his endeavor to
write history in the round the historian must read the records of contemporary interests if he is to understand and to interpret the spirit of an age, and he may quite as often find these records
in material that in and of itself is trivial, unreliable, exaggerated or grossly untrue as in material that has borne every test sub mitted for authenticity and authoritativeness.
The historian may accept the conclusions of a distinguished author who in writing of “ the waning power of the press," ? discriminates between the direct influence that the press wields “ through its definite interpretation of current events " and its indirect influence that “ radiates from the amount and character
of the news it prints, the particular features it accentuates, and its methods of presenting these.” He may agree that the direct influence of the press may be trifling and harmless while its
indirect influence may be large and pernicious, or vice versa, and yet he knows that both conditions give him records that are equally important to him in his reconstruction of the past.
Periodical literature must therefore be considered by the his torian with reference to those general parts whose authoritative
ness may be guaranteed and to such other parts as those in which errors aremost likely to abound. Itmust also be considered with reference to those parts that consciously and by design
give an account of the events of the day, and the other part that unconsciously and unintentionally records the spirit of the age. Two processes are involved for the historian. The first is the
narration of events that have happened , a narration based on 2 Francis E . Leupp , “ The Waning Power of the Press," Atlantic Monthly ,
February , 1910 , 105 : 145 -156.
