Democracy in America: In Two Volumes

Chapter 6.a Of the Relation between Associations and Newspapersb

905 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 6a Of the Relation between Associations and Newspapers b a. 1. When men are independent of one another you can only make a large number of them act in common by persuading each one separately but simultaneously of the utility of the enterprise. And only a newspaper can thus succeed in putting the same thought in a thousand ears at the same time. So newspapers are necessary in proportion as conditions are more equal. 2. A newspaper not only suggests the same plan to a large number of men at the same time, it provides them the means to carry out in common the plans that they had conceived themselves. 1. First, it makes them know each other and it puts them in contact. 2. Then, it binds them together; it makes them talk with each other withoutseeing each other and march in agreement without gathering together. 3. Since newspapers increase with associations, it is easy to understand that the less centralization there is among a people, the more newspapers there must be. For each district then forms a permanent association in which the need for a newspaper makes itself felt much more than when there is only a large national association. 4. Since a newspaper always represents an association, it explains why, the greater equality is and the weaker each individual is, the stronger the press is. The newspaper overpowers each of its readers in the name of all the others (YTC, CVf, pp. 26–27). b. The Rubish contains two jackets with notes and drafts for this chapter. One bears the same title as the chapter; the other bears the following title: particular utility that democratic peoples draw from liberty of the press and in particular from newspapers./ Chapter scarcely roughed out and weakly conceived, to review and perhaps to delete . To put in the middle of associations./ Édouard notes rightly: 1. that the subject of newspapers is of all democratic subjects the one most familiar to the French, that consequently I must hesitate to treat it. 2.that in any case it is too important to treat it accidentally in relation to associations. 906 associations and newspapers When men are no longer bound together in a solid and permanent way, you cannot get a large number to act in common, unless by persuading each one whose help is needed that his particular interest obliges him to unite his efforts voluntarily with the efforts of all the others. That can usually and conveniently be done only with the aid of a newspaper ;c only a newspaper can succeed in putting the same thought in a thousand minds at the same instant. A newspaper is an advisor that you do not need to go to find, but which appears by itself and speaks to you daily and briefly about common affairs, without disturbing you in your private affairs. So newspapers become more necessary as men are more equal and individualism more to be feared. It would diminish their importance to believe that they serve only to guarantee liberty; they maintain civilization . I will not deny that, in democratic countries, newspapers often lead citHe proposes that I only show the relation that exists between newspapers and associations. A newspaper is the voice of an association. You can consider it as the soul of the association, the most energetic means that the association uses to form itself. If, on the one hand, there is a connection between the number of associations and equality of conditions, there is a connection between the number of newspapers and that of associations. An association that has only one newspaper to read is only rough-hewn, but it already exists. To that I propose to join what I say about how the power of newspapers grows in proportion as conditions become equal./ Associations in democracies can form only from a multitude of weak and humble individuals who do not see each other from far away, who do not have the leisure to seek each other out, or the ability to consult and to agree with each other (in aristocracies , on the contrary, a powerful association can form from a small number of powerful citizens; the latter know each other and they do not need newspapers to consult and to agree with each other). All of these things can take place only because of newspapers and in general because of the free publications of the press. So...