1232 Editors’ Table. [ December, 
readers? Although it is necessary that the leaders of the press 
should cater to the public taste in order to exist, it is not the less 
true that they are educators of the public, as they often remind 
us. That large part of the populace whose opportunities of school 
or college instruction have not been great, are undoubtedly edu- 
cated in the affairs of the world by the newspaper press. The 
responsibility of editors and writers of this mass of daily litera- 
ture is, therefore, great. It is necessary to portray the events of 
the stage on which men play their part, for more reasons than 
one. Without expatiating on this truth, which is denied by some, 
we refer to two beneficial effects of a general distribution of news. 
The publication of the good works of men stimulates imitation, 
and encourages the doers. The publication of the bad deeds of 
men brings on them that condemnation, which is their natural 
punishment, and which they naturally fear. It also brands the 
characters of evil-doers so as to practically protect society from 
them, more or less. 
But does the daily press give a prominence to the good that 
men do, equal to that which they give to the evil? The most 
casual reading of our papers will convince any person that the 
purveyors to the public taste think that they must give the evil a 
great predominance. To what extent of space the columns of our 
newspapers are occupied with narrations of all forms of crimes, as 
-compared with the space given to other subjects, everyone knows. 
When we consider the extent and number of the fields of useful 
human activity, and the number of persons engaged in them, the 
amount of space given to criminals in our newspapers is phe- 
nomenal. These people have a right to consider themselves, next 
to candidates for high office, the best advertised part of the oe 
munity. If they do not become popular heroes and heroines, it 
is because the people are better than their educators of the m 
And this at a period when the greatest discoveries in — Z 
are being made with a rapidity never before known in human his- 
tory. During the last twenty years truths have been brought zi 
_ light which will revolutionize all but the most essential principles 
of the thought of the world, on which, as is believed by polit% 
PE ists, social organization and therefore governments depene. 
What newspaper ever announced the elaboration of the cet” 
theory of Haeckel; and the presentation of the ccelom theory ™ 
the Hertwigs? Who of them knows anything about the theory 
