174 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



the change, as stated by Mr. Donald, is that the 

 press had been commercialized on a gigantic scale. 

 The central fact of this transition is that corporate 

 ownership of the joint -stock type is superseding 

 individual ownership of the idealist type. The 

 effect of this, coupled with other changes, was, 

 he said, to " place enormous power to sway public 

 opinion in the hands of a few people." It was an 

 inherent feature of these agglomerations, he con- 

 tinued, that they were controlled by exactly the 

 same forces which operated in other fields of financial 

 and commercial activity. Under the old system 

 the proprietor " preferred less profit to compromise 

 with principle," but under the new the culminating 

 aim is necessarily the payment of dividends. 

 " Dividends," said Mr. Donald, " must be earned 

 even if principle is to suffer in the process." 



The conditions under which the work of publicity 

 is done in the midst of this raging war of interests, 

 both external and internal, in which the press itself 

 has become centrally engaged, have been described 

 recently in striking and earnest language by more 

 than one experienced observer. A writer in the 

 British Review put in moderate language the party 

 feature of it as seen from the outside in saying that 

 the public is becoming uneasily aware that " a 

 fair presentment of the truth is not the main ol> 



