The Portland daily press., 1871-11-14
DAILY PRESS.
PORTLAND.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER IA, 1871


A world without newspapers is to us at
this date almost as inconceivable as world
without clothes was to Carlyle, whereof he
writes that Imagination will not forward
with the picture" The nearest actual an
proach we can have to it, as we trust. is real
lied in Chicago, where every one of the 80
newspapers published in the city was blotted
out by the great disaster The few Journals
which have partially resumed operation are
overwhelmed with business. advertising"
a correspondent writes, sis essential to the re-
organization of the city. Never was the ne
cessity that the newspaper has become to civ
ilized society so wildly illustrated as during
the last three weeks in Chicago"
Without newspapers the world would crowd
again In plazas or market-places, as the Athe
mans used to, eager to hear or tell some new
thing. Every man should be again his own
reporter, chasing the busy rumor up and down
with flying feet. 1t should be next to impos-
sible to learn exactly where, when or how
anything happened, and the anxious inquirer
should bitterly repent him of the days when
he said, mockingly,'It must be true, for |
read 1t IN the newspaper" For the newspa-
per is to current rumor what history is to ira
dition. 1t is life epitomzed talk abbreviated
events daguerreotyped in the very act of hap
peniug; it is everybody and his wife dropping
in to tea or TO breakfast, and telling you in
good English all they have seen and been do
ing, without disturbing your quiet or house
hold economy. Beginning with bulletins
from kings courts and dispatches from seats
of war or councils of state, the newspaper has
by insensible degrees enlarged its re-
portorial function, until it covers with
its unsuitable tentacula quite the whole
field of public and private transactions,
and what it does not tell is not
worth knowing. The Yankee is no longer
inquisIive; whatever he wants to know he
can find out in his daily paper. Take it away
from him and he would be lost mar. 1t is
his directory, his railroad guide, his business
or financial correspondent, his familiar gossip,
his message from home. 1t is the Vanity
Fair, where you can find what you will,
whether business or pleasure. The maid
opens the damp sheet to glance at the mar
riage column; the maiden aunt at the obilua-
ries; brother Tom to scan the tally of the last
national game;;' and in this indispensable
ephemeron eVerybody's world is represented.
The wcrld without newspapers would be at
sudden loss for its ready-made ideas. Its
wits would go ragged, at least for a season.
The manufacture of public opinion, of the
different approved varieties, has become an
industry of enormous proportions. The we'll
bred and well-fed Englishman has no opinion,
they say, on the latest event till he has read
the London Times, end every man has his
printed oracle which he consults when TOO
busy or too lazy 10 do his own thinking
Dionysius aud other moDarchs used to keep
philosopher or two in the house to supply
them with ideas, or keep their minds in mo
ton; now similar luxury is open to the
poorest who may secure for a trifle the daily
or vuantlv visit of Rucv ppnplq
don't really have time to think of everything
as it happens, and they love TO have some kin
died mind, of the same sect or school, dish up
the news for them with appropriate notes and
comments, that they may say, "Just what
think about it," as very like it is, if they had
time and art to get at their own thoughts and
get it out into words. The writers for the
London Times are said to make its success not
by attempting to shape, but simply to express
the thought on current topics of the average
Englishmau. Tie last leading editorial of a
great newspaper is at least foil for thought
and provocative of intellectual activity in all
circles. In the discussion of cars and stages
YOU recognize the familiar voice OF Times or
Tribune. The literary and religious weeklies
are echoed and reflected in large circles OF adj
mring readers; the sparks struck out on their
editorial anvs scintlate all over the land.
The world without newspapers, even If ev-
crV OuOuecilnO anu QudTGO anu iOllO Wdo spar
ed, would fall into comparatively cimmerian
darkness. Knowledge is really not published
for the masses, until it gets out of books into
the convenient and cheap and quickly read
newspaper. Many mind is started upon in
quiry and investigation by some scrap of sci
entiic or curious information which 81 read in
a newspaper" AS it is said that the New
Testament might almost be reproduced from
quotations in the writings of the early fathers
so quite fair representation of Tiodern liter
atufe anu SCIENCE might be gathered up by
excerpts from newspapers which are read one
day and burned the next. A good newspaper
for the year is a small circulating library.
Newspapers are the missionaries of knowledge,
which are fairly blown into the faces of the
ignorant, like the winged seeds which propa-
gate vegetation at points no other agency
could have reached. They fill the atmosphere
with advanced thinking and Illuminating ideas,
so that they cannot be kept out by any ban,
tor everybody reads newspapers. The 1000
or more journals of the country play as indis-
pensabie part in the national education as
the public schools; blot them out and we are
at least three centuries back toward the dark
ages.
The average standard of journalistic litera-
tuIe and influence is not so high yet as it
ought to be and might be. But we have rea-
son nevertheless to congratulate ourselves that
we are not condemned to live in a world with
out negspapers- Hartford COlu0ut,