New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-06-20
TIE ADDRESS.

| am to speak 20 you of our common work
of its needs, Its tendencies, its possibilities.
1t NAV well happen that this may lead to a
mention OF some faults of which we are all
guilty, and of some standards by which we
might all prOftably try ourselves. No doubt
il would be easy for any critic that cared, to
show that | do not live up to these standards
myself. ] do not pretend TO. No mans work
is so good az his ideal must he. therefore,
have no ideal toward which to work No
man can wholly control his circumstances
must he, therefore, wholly surrender to them?
Growth is but succession of partial failures.
You. whose purpose is the highest, You must
perforce fail the most cOnspicuously. YET all
the same, your arrow, even though it miss
its aim, carries further If aimed at the stars.
Every now and then some Magnus Apollo
of an earlier day returns to our profession
We all give him most respectful salutation;
felicitate ourselves on the great gain we shall
have from his experience, Judgment, skill
and wait. Regularly, decisively, and at the
outset, he fails.
The reason OF this monotonous disappolnt-
ment has come 10 be recognized. The business
of making q newspaper Is IN a state OF con-
slant growth and change. You might almost say
that it is revOlut iOnized once every ten years.
The veteran returns 10 lind the old methods
useless, the old weapons ont of date, the Old
plans of action out of relation 10 the present
Arrangement of the forces. Nor Is tins to be
thought in the least unnatural. Abolish the
old forms Of procedure adopt an entirely
new code. as our Albany pests are per-
petualy proposing; and Charles OConor'
returning TO the profession of which he was
90 long an ornament and glory. and attempt
ing his own Office business, might Dreak down
in a police court, under the onset OF IOmbs
shyster.
No doubt there is progress IN the other pro.
LESSONS too at least we helpless victims OF
the lawyer and the doctor nope so: Dut theso
absolute revolutions have, in this century,
been the distinctive mark of our own.
The cylinder press made one. Before that
the circulation OF o daily newspaper was I'M
peratively limited by the number OF pulls one
pair of arms could give Washington press
WITHIN the hour or two which shut IN the ilte,
for publication purposes, 81 any days news.
-Four hundred was large, n thousand enOr-
nous. beyond fifteen hundred an lmposslOllty.
The railroads made another revolution.
They doubled, trebled. quadrupled the arta OF
circulation.
The fast printing press made another. II
is not too much to say that one man, sun
going about the streets OF New-fork, modest,
genial busy on new notions, gave new birth
to the journalism not merely of his own coun-
try but of the world When Richard NJ. Hoe
showed how types could be placed ON reyolying
cylinder instead OF a fat bed he did as much
for the profession that now rules the world
as the inventor Of gun-pOwder did for the one
that ruled 1t last. From that moment came
the possibility of addressing millions, at the
instant OF their readleSt attention from SID
gle deck, within d single hour, on the events
vi the hour
And now came another revolution as start
ling as any. The conduct Of newspapers