To the two examples which have just been given of the direct influence which counting-house journalism seeks to exert upon judges and jurors, might be added others of equal importance, would space permit. But all improper influences upon legislators or other public officials, or upon judges or jurors, which these papers may exercise or attempt to exercise, are as naught in comparison with their systematic and constant efforts to instill into the minds of the ignorant and poor, who constitute the greater part of their readers, the impression that justice is not blind but bought; that the great corporations own the judges, particularly those of the Federal courts, body and soul; that American institutions are rotten to the core, and that legislative halls and courts of justice exist as instruments of oppression, to preserve the rights of property by denying or destroying the rights of man. No greater injury can be done to the working people than to create in their minds this false and groundless suspicion concerning the integrity of the judiciary. In a country whose political existence, in the ultimate analysis, depends so largely upon the intelligence and honesty of its judges, the general welfare requires, not merely that judges should be men of integrity, but that the people should believe them to be so. It is this confidence which counting-house journalism has set itself deliberately at undermining. It is not so important that the people should believe in the wisdom of their judges. The liberty of criticism is not confined to the bar and what Judge Grover used to call “the lawyer’s inalienable privilege of damning the adverse judge—out of court.” There is no divinity which hedges a judge. His opinions and his personality are proper subjects for criticism, but the charge of corruption should not be made recklessly and without good cause.
It is noticeable that this charge of corruption which yellow journalism makes against the courts is almost invariably a wholesale charge, never accompanied by any specific accusation against any definite official. These general charges are more frequently expressed by cartoon than by comment. The big-chested Carthaginian labeled “The Trusts,” holding a squirming Federal judge in his fist, is a cartoon which in one form or another appears in some of these papers whenever an injunction is granted in a labor dispute at the instance of some great corporation. Justice holding her scales with a workingman unevenly balanced by an immense bag of gold; a human basilisk with dollar marks on his clothes, a judge sticking out of his pocket, and a workingman under his foot; Justice holding her scales in one hand while the other is conveniently open to receive the bribe that is being placed in it—these and many other cartoons of similar character and meaning are familiar to all readers of sensational newspapers. If their readers believe the cartoons, what faith can they have left in American institutions? What alternative is offered but anarchy if wealth has poisoned the fountains of justice; if reason is powerless and money omnipotent? If the judges are corrupt, the political heavens are empty.