River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1881-11-17
TALMAGE ON NEWSPAPERS.

Eyes that Newspaper has--SOmt
of the Difficulties OF starting n Jour
naI--The blessings of Free Press
DR.. Talmage took two texts yester
day morning for his sermon about the
newspapers. One was, And the wheel'
were full of eyes" He said: "Whai
but the newspaper printing presses
have all their wheels full of eyes? AL
other wheels are blind. The manu-
facturer's wheel sometimes rolls ovel
the operative fatigued in every nerve
and muscle and bone, but sees nothing
But the newspaper press has SHARP
eyes, keen eyes, eyes that look up and
down, far-sighted and near-sighted, thai
take in the next street and the mex
hemisphere; eyes of criticism, eyes o.
investigation, eyes that sparkle with
health, eyes glaring with indignation
eyes tender and loving, eyes frowning
and suspicious, eyes of hope, blue eyes
black eyes, green eyes, sore eyes, his
torical eyes, literary eyes, ecclesiastlca
eyes, eyes of all sorts"
DIR. Talmage's second text was, Fol
all the Athenians and strangers which
were there spent their time in nothing
else but either to tell or hear some new
thing" DIR. Talmage said "That text
gives the cry of the world for news
paper. In proportion as men become
wise they become inquisitive, not about
small things, but about greater things
The great question thunders, What is
the news? There is newspaper in
Pekin, China, that has been published
every week for thousand years,
printed on silk. Rome answered the
question with the Actd Diug7lG. France
answered it when her physicians wrote
out the news for the patients. Eng
land answered it by publishing an &C.
count of the Spanish Armada, and its
newspaper press went on increasing
until the battle of Waterloo, which de-
cided the destinies of nations of Eu-
rope, was chronicled in description
of third of columnl America an
swered the question when Benjamin
Harris published the first weekly news
paper, entitled Public Occurrences, in
Boston, in 1890. The first American
daily newspaper was published in Phil
adelphia, in 1884, entitled The american
Daily advertiser. will give you the
genealogical tree of the newspaper.
The Adam was the circula; the circular
begat the pamphlet; the pamphlet be-
gat the quarterly; the quarterly begat
the monthly; the monthly begat the
semi-monthly; the semi-monthly begat
the weekly; the weekly begat the semi
weekly; the semi-weekly begat the
daily. Alas. through what a struggle
it came to its present development!
AS soon as il began to demonstrate its
power, superstition and tyranny
shackled it. There is nothing that
despotism so much fears as the print
ing press. 1t has too many eyes.
Russia, which, considering all the cir
cumstances, is the meanest and most
cruel despotism on earth to-day, keeps
the printing press under severe espion-
age. A great writer in the south of
south of Europe declared that the
king of Naples had made it unsafe for
him to write on any subject but natu-
raj history. Austria could not bear
Kossuth's journalistic pen, piled for
the redemption of Hungary Napoleon
l., wanting to keep his iron heel on
the neck of nations, said that a news
paper was regent of kings, and that
the only safe place to keep an editor
in was a prison.
"But the great battles of freedom of
the press were fought in the court
rooms of England and the United
States. One was when Erskine made
his great speech on behalf of freedom
to publish Paine's Rights of Man in
England. These battles were the Mar
athon and Thermopyl@ of the fight
which determined that the printing
press was not to be given over to hand
cuffs and hobbies of literary and politi-
cal despotism. Thomas Jefferson said:
IF l had to choose between a govern
ment without newspapers. and newspa-
pers without government, [ would
employ the latter
"Stung by some fabrication in print,
we talk of the unbridled press. Our
new book is ground up by unjust criti-
cism, and we talk of the unfair press.
Through some indistinctness of our ut
terance we are reported as saying just
the opposite of what we did say, and
we talk of the laundering press. We
take up newspaper with a social scan
dial or case of divore, and we talk of
the filthy and scurrilous press. But
this morning address you ON a SUBJ
ject you have never heard presented -
the Unreasonable, Everlasting blessing
of good newspaper. Thank God that
their wheels are full of eyes. | give
you this overwhelming statistic: that
in the year 1870 the number of copies
of literary and political newspapers
published in this country was $500 000,-
000l What church, what reformer,
what Christian man can disregard these
things? | tell you, my friends, that a
good newspaper is the grandest bless
ing that God has given to the people of
this century = the grandest temporal
blessing The theory is abroad that
anybody can make newspaper with
out the aid of capitalist. The fact is
that fortunes are swallowed up every
year in the vain effort to establish news
papers. The large papers swallow up the
small ones. The big whale eats about
fifty minnows. We have 1000 dailes
and weeklies in the United States and
Canadas, and only thirty-six are half a
century old. The average life of a news
paper is five years. Most of them die
of cholera infantum. Laughter 1t
is high time that it was understood that
the most successful way to sink for
tune and keep it sunk is to start a
newspaper. A man with an idea starts
the Universal Gazette or the Millennium
Advocate. Finally the money is all
spent, and the subscribers wonder why
their papers do not come. Laughter. !
Let me tell you that if you have an
idea, either moral, social, political, or
religious, you had better charge on the
world through the columns already es-
tablished. If you can't climb your own
backyard fence don't try the Matter
horn. If you can't sail sloop, don't
try to navigate the Great Eastern. To
publish newspaper requires the skill,
precision, vigilance, strategy and bold
ness of communicative chief To edit
a newspaper one needs to be states
man, a geographer, a statistician, and
SO far as acquisitions are concerned,
encyclopedia If you have notion to
start and publish newspaper, take it
for granted that you are threatened
with SO1tenlng OF the Draln. lake your
pocketbook and throw it into your
wife's lap. Rush up to Bloomingdale
asylum and surrender yourself before
you do something desperate. Laugh
ter.
"Our newspapers are repositories of
knowledge and are constantly lifting
the people into the sunlight. Newspa-
nor kpOw1edoe makas mn the strl1cture