The New Orleans daily Democrat. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1877-1880, 1878-03-17

The great newspaper conundrum Of the day
is, how is the poetry question to be treated
Poetry is a necessary evil; it is older than
civilization. It Is a disease peculiar to no
cline, universal ubiquitous, but particu-
larly malignant in the United States-thanks
to our public school system. 1t Is lament
able fact, which cannot be denied, that the ed
ucation Of the masses has had the demoraliZ-
ing effect of begetting thousands, nay mil
lions of village Millions and Byrons. The
first thing boy or girl who has got an edu-
cation does, is to grind out poetry; and here
we may claim credit and honor for the
press of this country, which although it
is the greatest sufferer by this poetcal
nuisance, yet nobly supports the public
schools. There are about five million girls
in this country between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-four. Allowing 20 per cent
Of these for deaf and dumb, blind, lunatic
and illiterate, it would leave four million
poetesses. If the male poets are half as nu-
merous-a very moderate calculation-we
will have, altogether, in the United States six
million poets, able to fling off, say dozen
poems day for the newspapers. Here is
gigantic open question, involving the rights
of millions Of people, and the life and death
of every newspaper in the country. What is
the duty Of the press
A Thousand plans have been suggested and
tried, but all Of them have proved vain. We
think, however, that the Plattsburg On. "
Sentinel has hit on a very good idea. The
following warning heads the editorial columns
of that interesting paper: announcements
of death free; obituaries, one penny for each
O., 1;,,as {Iny al
ways to accompany the obituaries or poetry
to insure insertion" The desire of the Sentinel
is evidently to encourage dying and discour-
age poetry by placing heavy tax upon it.
Plattsburg is a true locality for poetry. 1t is
close by the pellucd waters of Lake Cham
plain, and but few miles from the romantic
Hudson and the picturesque Adirondacks.
What field do these offer poetic person
for rhyme and blank verse. Evidently the
| Sentinel is in country where it can truly
! test the question-how does the taxation of
poetry work? The experiments of the editor
of the paper is, that poetry is paying and
far more lucrative than advertisements.
The Sentinel is overfiowing with poetry at
| five cents line. The hard times have not
affected the poetical market in the least. The
| Young ladies have foresworn new bOnnets in
order to get half column or so of love and
rhyme into the Sentinel, while the boys have
shown an extraordinary zeal in doing small
jobs to get money enough for sonnet to
| Molly. The Sentinel is grinding zealously
away at poetry, and growing rich at it,
taking in money by the bushel. The editor
is seriously contemplating the idea Of drop
ping politics and news altogether from his
journal and combining it to poetry alone-it
pays so we'll. .......
Here, we claim, is solution of this great
poetry question which has been disturbing and
demoralizing this country for years past, eat
ting up its substance and destroying its hope
The Plattsburg Sentinel has discovered some
thing good in occasional poetry, found how to
coin money out of rhymes and rhythm, usu-
ally deemed symbolical of pauperism. We
expect to see the Sentaseps plan generally