To carry the comparison further, there are 22,806 newspapers published in America; 9,500 in England; 8,049 in Germany; and 6,681 in France: or 1 for every 4,100 of the population in America; 1 for every 4,700 in Great Britain; 1 for every 7,800 in Germany, and 1 for every 5,900 in France.
That a prime minister should have been a contributor to the press, as was Lord Salisbury; that a correspondent or editorial writer of a newspaper should find his way into cabinet circles, into diplomacy, or into high office in the colonies; that the editor and owner of a great newspaper should become an ambassador to England, as in the case of Mr. Reid, is impossible in Germany. The character of the men who take up the profession of journalism suffers from the lack of distinction and influence of their task. Raymond, Greeley, Dana, Laffan, Godkin, in America, and Delane, Hutton, Lawson, and their successors, Garvin, Strachey, Robinson, in England, are impossible products of the German journalistic soil at present.
There have been great changes, and the place of the newspaper and the power of the journalist is increasing rapidly, but the stale atmosphere of censordom hangs about the press even to-day. Freedom is too new to have bred many powerful pens or personalities, and the inconclusive results of political arguments, written for a people who are comparatively apathetic, lessen the enthusiasm of the political journalist. There are not three editors in Germany who receive as much as six thousand dollars a year, and the majority are paid from twelve hundred to three thousand a year. This does not make for independence. I am no believer in great wealth as an incentive to activity, but certainly solvency makes for emancipation from the more debasing forms of tyranny.
Several of the more popular newspapers are owned and controlled by the Jews, and to the American, with no inborn or traditional prejudice against the Jews as a race, it is somewhat difficult to understand the outspoken and unconcealed suspicion and dislike of them in Germany. There is no need to mince matters in stating that this suspicion and dislike exist. A comedy called "The Five Frankfurters" has been given in all the principal cities during the last year and has had a long run in Berlin. It is a scathing caricature of certain Jewish peculiarities of temperament and ambition.