He had established the new policy; Severance
had done no more than inform it with the heated imaginings and
provocative pictorial quality inherent in a mind intensely if scornfully
apprehensive of the unsatiated potential depravities of public taste. It
was Banneker's hand that had set the strings vibrating to a new tune;
Severance had only raised the pitch, to the _n_th degree of
sensationalism. And, in so far as the editorial page gave him a lead,
the disciple was faithful to the principles and policies of his chief.
The practice of the news columns was always informed by a patently
defensible principle. It paeaned the virtues of the poor and lowly; it
howled for the blood of the wicked and the oppressor; it was strident
for morality, the sanctity of the home, chastity, thrift, sobriety, the
People, religion, American supremacy. As a corollary of these pious
standards it invariably took sides against wealth and power,
sentimentalized every woman who found her way into the public prints,
whether she had perpetrated a murder or endowed a hospital, simpered and
slavered over any "heart-interest story" of childhood ("blue-eyed tot
stuff" was the technical office term), and licked reprehensive but
gustful lips over divorce, adultery, and the sexual complications.
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