AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
temptation to sell those wares that find a market—filth, scandal and crime. The secrecy which was once a weapon for kings is now its weapon, since it prints attacks and destroys, and whose was the brain that conceived or the hand that struck, no man knows. The privileges once helpful now serve the purposes of gain. The proprietors and editors of newspapers are no worse than the rest of us, but they require the same kind of watching and ought to have no greater facilities.
The bill before me was to be treated like all other bills and to be determined according to its merits. Of course, I was well aware of the capacity of the press to do personal mischief. When I vetoed the bill authorizing the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and other railroad companies to take homesteads in the exercise of the right of eminent domain, no doubt they were pained, but they were noiseless. I did not need to be told that the stopping of the sale of scandal would not be noiseless, but I was anxious that Pennsylvania should make the first real effort to correct what thoughtful men regard as the most far-reaching of the evils of modern life. Before any disposition of the bill should be made, the newspaper men asked for a public hearing. It was to be made a great occasion to which the attention of the country should be attracted. They prepared for it by proclaiming that the bill, which no one of them printed so that what it contained could be seen, had been devised by the “gang” in order to be a “gag” upon the press which was only eager to expose iniquity for the good of the public. My reputation was at stake and now it was to be finally determined whether I should take my place as the creature of a corrupt gang or become the glorious champion of the rights of the people. On such an issue who could be in doubt. The Press had a cartoon representing a beautiful and chaste maiden (the newspaper press), proudly erect, pleading for justice before me, a judge in robes, while a brutal and hideous fellow with a cigar in his mouth and
