He receives all his political information and all his political
marching orders from what is by this time a sort of half-conscious secret
society, with very few members, but a great deal of money.
This enormous and essential fact is concealed for us by a number of
legends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that the
Press is flashy or trivial _because_ it is popular. In other words, an
attempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism as the
natural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish. The
democracy has no more to do with the papers than it has with the peerages.
The millionaire newspapers are vulgar and silly because the millionaires
are vulgar and silly. It is the proprietor, not the editor, not the
sub-editor, least of all the reader, who is pleased with this monotonous
prairie of printed words. The same slander on democracy can be noticed in
the case of advertisements. There is many a tender old Tory imagination
that vaguely feels that our streets would be hung with escutcheons and
tapestries, if only the profane vulgar had not hung them with
advertisements of Sapolio and Sunlight Soap. But advertisement does not
come from the unlettered many. It comes from the refined few. Did you
ever hear of a mob rising to placard the Town Hall with proclamations in
favour of Sapolio? Did you ever see a poor, ragged man laboriously
drawing and painting a picture on the wall in favour of Sunlight
Soap--simply as a labour of love? It is nonsense; those who hang our
public walls with ugly pictures are the same select few who hang their
private walls with exquisite and expensive pictures.
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