New-York tribune., 1873-07-31
4 ,tOUNTATN or NEWSPAPKRS.

The Managers of the st. Joseph (ho.) IN
dustrial Exposition and Agricultural Fair,
which will be opened on the Goth of Septem-
Der next, propose to exhibit copy Of every
newspaper published in the United States.
These specimens are to be neatly bound and
placed in the Exposition; on The fourth
day the collection is to be sold to the highest
bidder, and the proceeds are TO be given to
the fund for building the monument to Horace
Greeley the great journalist, and one of the
founders of the modern American Press. The
collection, if it be nearly complete, will be
curious and valuable. OF the purpose to
which the proceeds of its sale are to be ap-
piled it is hardly necessary for us to say any
thing more.
Whoever shall improve this opportunity Of
critically examining our Journalism will find
it thoroughly American in its range
between excellence and worthlessness, with
long distance occupied by respectable medi-
ocrity. Perhaps we are rash and even un-
charitable in rating any newspaper as
thoroughly worthless. If it contains no more,
the advertisements Of the vicinage are useful
as we'll as interesting. If there be any local
intelligence we have in it key to the char
customs, and manners of a town, of county,
and sometimes of several counties We
are able to make up our judg-
ment upon something like the old test
of n0scitir SOciis we can probably
determine what the subscribers are by the
newspaper which they take. One whose pro-
fessional business it is to read many news
papers and each regularly, soon acquires a
fair idea of localities which he never visited,
and of men and woman who have never been
seen by him-ther works and their ways, their
gossip, prejudices, knowledge, and ignorance.
Wherever Americans go the newspaper, as a
necessity Of life, soon makes its appearance,
and be it good or bad sEoot, it is always
tell-tae, and always as unreservcd and as
little false and fatteIing as a Photographic
portrait of facial beauty or uglness. There
are little towns far of in Texas
or the Territories which we Ger
tainly never have visited, but which
arc as familiar TO US as If we had lived there
for a decade. We can see the shops, the tav-
erns, and the churches; we can imagine the
physiognomy of the streets; we can picture to
ourselves the groups of gOssiping lOiterers and
idlers, who are discussing the accidents, the
births and the deaths Of the day, the health
and the prosperity of tho ncighbcrhood, all
the fluctuations and concerns which differ only
in degree from those of a crowded metropolis.
With little pains we can determine the
whole topography of the hamlet. We know
Just where the smithy is, and where the
"store," where the hall for dancing and lee
lures, where the doctors Office, where the
lawyers, where the pOstmasters. If called to
draw map of tho place, we should
hardly make rods blunder in the position
of the hay scales And moro than this, we
know something of the history of the town
for the last six months-Of its murders, fights,
robberies, of its festivals and its funer-
ais. We can conjecture, too, something of the
character. intellectual and physical, Of the
people, for the booksellers advertisement tells
us what they read the apOthecary's what
physic they take, the dentists the state Of
their teeth, and the tailor's their taste in raj
ment 1t is only in general that towns re-
semble each other, and when we come to par
tculars we find them as different and as va
riOus as human faces or as human fortunes.
. The greatest value and interest of q news
paper collection is in the future. We are our
selves too near to this great colossal face of
the present to examine it critically, which is
one reason why we bestOw so much Of our
attention and acumen upon the past. The
play must be played out before we can give
our judgment understandingly. Historical
writer's have lately discovered that it is in the
life of its people that the best annals of a
nation are to be found. When we know that
the venders of old ballads in London had no
better customer than Lord Macaulay, we under
stand in part why his History of England
is so surprisingly vigorous and entertaining.
The newspapers printed during the first French
revolution are found to be the richest roper
tory of pregnant and suggestive facts. We
have many and some excellent histories of
our own Rebellion, but mainly they are all
made up from the cotemporary newspapers.
These, in the future, are to be examined by
moro dispassionate and philosophical histo-
rans, to whom that long drama of agony and
doubt will seem no more than a necessary
episode. The facts are not in the Washington
archives, but in the bulky files of the newspa-
pers.
American journalism is rot what it should
be, but neither is it by any means the dis
jOinted nuisance which the late Or. Rush saw
fit, with distempered and dyspeptc irrtability,
to consider it, Its main errors have arisen
from its vassalage to party, and this the best
newspapers are fast throwing off with con-
temptuous impotience. The number of presses
owned and, for that matter, of editors owned
by Presidents and Governors and Members of
Congress is growing daily less and less.
There will be more sheets thoroughly inde-
pendent in the st. Joseph collection than there
would have been if it had been made no
- a. n. -. 80 ror thia little