San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1881-12-15

~ I
copios Of literary and political news
papers.published in this country wa
OO,0O0,000l What church, what re
former, what Christian man, can disre
gard these thingsP tell you, my
friends, that good newspaper is tn,
grandest blessing that God has giver
the people of this century-the grand
est temporal blessing. The theory i.
abroad that anybody can make news
paper with the aid Of a capitalist. The
fact is that fortunes are swallowed
up every year in the vain effort to estab
lish newspapers. The large papers
swallow up the small ones. The BIG
whale eats about fifty minnows. We
have 1000 dailies and weeklies in the
United States and Canadas, and only
thirty.six are half century old. The
average life of newspaper is five years.
Most of them die of cholera intantum.
Laughter 1t is high time that it was
understood that the most successful
way to sink fortune and keep it sunk
is to start a newspaper. A man with an
idea starts the Uniuersal 'Gozette or
the Millennium Advocate. Finally
the money is all spent and the sub
scribers wonder why their papers do
not GOMEZ [Laughter] Let me tell
you that If you have an idea,, either
moral, or social, political, or religious,
you had better charge on the world
through the columns already establish
ed. If you can't climb your own back
fence, don't try the Matterhorn. If
you can't sailsa sloop, don't. try to navi.
gate, the Great Eastern. 81 TO publish a
newspaper requires skill, precision,
viligance, starategy, and boldness of a
commander-in.chief. To edit news
paper one needs to be q statesman, q
geographer, a statistician, and SO far as
all acquisitions are concerned, ency-
If you have a. notion to
start and publish newspaper, take it
for granted :, that you. are. threatened
with softening of the brain. Take your
pocket-book 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 reposi tories Of
knowledge, and are constantly lifting
the people into the sunlight. News
paper knowledge makes up the struc-
ture of the worlds heart and brain,
and decides the fate of churches and
Adams, Jefferson, Franklin,
Clinton, all had their hands on the
press. Most of the good books
Of the day have come out in periodicals.
essays, Carlyle's essays,
Ruskin's Talfourd's and others have
first appeared in periodicals. If one
should see in a life nothing in the way
Of literature but the Bible, Shake
speare, dictionary, and a good news
paper, he would be fitted for all the du-
lies of this life and for the opening of
;he next. A good newspaper is mirror
IF life as it is. Complaints are made
because the evil is reported as well as
The good. But a newspaper that mere
y presents the fair and beautiful side
If society is misrepresentation. If
children come into the worlds active
ife and find it different from what they
lad believed, they will be incompetent
or the struggle, Complaint is some
lines made that sin is set up in great
primer type and righteousness in non
,ariel. Sin is loathsome; make it SO.
l great improvement in newspapers
Eould be to drop their impersonality. |
t would add potency to articles to see
rticles signed. 1t seem to me that no
honorable man would write an article
hat he would be ashamed to put his
ame to. What is private citizen to
10 when misrepresentation is multi
lied 10000 or $4,000 times? A wrong
one mans character in a newspaper
} more virulsnt than one done in pri-
ate life. 1t seems to me that it would
e a great advantage to the literature
f this country, if men could get the
God of what they write, and be held
for the evil they write.
mother Improvement would be q uni