THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8107, 30 March 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1906.

The power of the press has been a subject greatly discussed in the Old Country since the laßt General Elec-' tlon, and, to our way of thinking, a great deal ot time and much space has beeu wasted upon a question it ia scarcely necessary to consider, and upon which it is, admittedly, extremely diffioult to come to any definite conclusions. Various newspapers and political leaders have " discovered" that the press is impotent, whiob is, possi bly, about as surprising as the immensity of the recent Liberal victory. The great mistake that these people make is this: they overlook the faot ttoat, as far as the groat bulk of the press is oonoerned, there is a general , agreement in regard to broad principles and a desire "to uphold the thing that is

right." Attacks on persons have little influence—the public generally form, their opinon of a man by his reputation, bis personality, his ability, and his manner. If he be savagely attacked by the press-; tthe usual rosult is tho creation of: sympathy for the man attacked, and that means support on polling day. It has been said of the 1 late Mr George Fisher that he declared if one Wellington paper was against him be might but if both the Wellington papers were against him, he was bound to win. ***** The London Spectator, discussing the question above alluded to, says that it ia a truth that the daily press has lost, with the gradual reduction of the franchise, much of its political influence. Just fifty years ago, in 1855, Mr John Delane, the editor of The Times, was described as "ruling England," and the statement, though, of course, a broad one, was but slightly exaggerated. As the newspapers are much more widely read than they were, and as, though the furca of their leaders has abated, there is no reason to believe that they have become in any way unpopular, it ia a little difficult to assign a convincing reason for the change. For ourselves, we believe it to be due to the wide diffusion of education, which tends to increase both self-confidence and independence of opiniou, and to a greater width in the Ossure between the minds which manage newspapers ' and the minds of the multitude who read them. The latter find their l guidanoe either in their own percep tion of their interests, which i 9 very 1 keen, and is often misread by party journalists; or in advice from leaders whom they believe to be capable, and who are often not visible to the writing class. *• *'■*** The same journal, also, says : "We doubt whether the latter knew so much as the name of one Labour leader who has praoti oally seated thirty Members—certainly they did not report either his 1 speeches or his letters. It must not be forgotten that every profession has its own intellectual bias, and journalists 1 instincts are not the same as the instinct even of educated workmen. They fail at the point so olearly revealed by a poor woman who said to a canvasser, 'We have only sixteen shillings a week, Madam, so we feel we mast vote Liberal'—a most illuminating remark. W& doubt whether they even olearly perceived the special grip of the Oh>nese labour question upon the working mind. They thought it only an appeal to hereditary anti-slavery feeling, whereas the toiler, though he acknowledged that feeling, felt also that their employers, and the Tory Government, behind them, were promoting an unfair form of competition."

The Speotator goes on to repeat: "What'we pointed out years before the present uprising of the industrials, that the English are less carried qway by writing than any population in Europe, and that newspapers are constantly read by those who do not sympathise with their polijy in the least. The spread of education promotes the prosperity of the press, but does not promote its jpower while it does to a singular degree promote the power of chat aristooracy of workmen whioh, scattered as it is over all England, gives tone and bone to the otherwise fluid thoughts of the working crowd. Everybody reads the papers; but not everbody swallows them. This loss of the press influence is, of course, greatly increased by the fact that the general body of the well-to-do derive their impressions of popular opinion from newspapers which, as they fail to perceive, have lost touch with those masses whioh they are assumed to represent."