The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-11-10

newspaper mania and starts one, or nave
stock in one he must or die. The course
of procedure is about this: A literary
man has an agricultural or scientific or
political or religious idea which he
wants to ventilate. He has no money
of his Own-literary men seldom have.
But he talks of his ideas among conf
Dental friends until they become in
famed with the idea, and forthwith
they buy type and press, and rent COM
posing room and gather a corps of edi-
tors, and with prospectus that proposes
to cure everything, the first. copy is
flung on the attention of an admlring
world. After while one of the plain
stockholders finds that no great reYOlu-
tiOn has been effected by this daily or
weekly publication; that neither sun
nor moon stands still; that the world
goes on lying and cheating and steal
ing just as it did before the
first issue. The aforesaid matter
of-facJ stakeholder wants to sell out his
stock, but nobody wants to buy, and
other stockholders get infected and sick
of neWspaperdOm, and an enormous bill
at the paper factory rolls into an avail
anche, and the printers refuse to work
until back wages are paid up, and the
cOmpOsitOr bows to the managing edi-
tor, and the managing editor bows to
chief bows to the directors, and the di-
rectOrs bow to the world at large, and
all the subscribers wonder why their
paper doesn't come. The world will
have to learn that-a newspaper is as
much of an institution as the Bank of
England or Yale College, and is not an
enterprise. If you have the aforesaid
agricultural, or scientific, or religious,
or political idea to ventilate, you had
better charge upon the world through
the columns already established. 1t is
folly for any one who can not succeed
at anything else to buy newspaperdOm.
If you can not climb the hill back of
your house it is folly to try the sides of
the MatterhOrn. To publish newspa-
per requires the skill, the precision, the
bOldness, the vigilance, the strategy, of
mmander-in-chief. To edit a news
paper requires that one be statesman,
an essayist, a geOgrapher, statistician,
and, in acquisition, encyclopedia. To
man, to govern, to prOpel a news
paper until it shall be fixed institu-
tiOn and national fact, demand more
qualities than any business on earth.
If you feel like starting any newspaper,
secular OF religious, understand that
you are being threatened with sOftening
Of the brain or lunacy, and, throwing
your pOcket-bOOk into your wife's lap,
start for BlOomingdale Insane Asylum
before you do something desperate.
Meanwhile, as the dead newspapers,
week by week, are carried out to the
burial lot, all the living newspapers
give respectful obituaries, telling when
they were born and when they died
The best printers ink gives at least one
stickful of epitaph. If it was a good
paper, say, peace to the ashes." If il
mo q hoH I hn mi o,,I
written for Francis Chartreuse: "Here
cOntinueth. to rot the body of Francis
Chartreuse, who, with an infleXible con
stancy and uniformity of life, persisted
in the practice of every human vice, eX
cepting prOdigality and hypocrisy; hi
Unsuitable aVarice exempted him from
| the first, his matchless impudence from
the second" say this because l wan
you to know that a good, healthy, long
| lived, entertaining newspaper is not al
easy blessing, but one that comes to u
through the fire.
First of all newspapers make knowl
| edge democratic and for the multitude
J The Public Library is hay.mow SO higl
| up that few can reach it, while tn
| newspaper throws down the forage t.
our feet. Public Libraries are the reser
vOirs where the great floods are store
| high up and away off. The newspape
| is the tunnel that brings them down t
| the pitchers of all the people. Th
chief use of great libraries is to max
| newspapers out of. Great libraries max
a few men and women very wise. News
papers lift whole nations into the sun
light Better have fifty million peOpl
moderately intelligent than one hundre
thousand SOlOns. A false impression
abroad tnat newspaper knowledge
4 nvNl, ro1 shnnnndn 0r
thrown aside, and not one out of tel
thousand people files them for futur
reference. Such knowledge, so far froI
| being ephemeral, goes into the yer
structure of the worlds heart and brain
and decides the destiny of Churches an
| Nations. knowledge on the shelf is @
| little worth. 1t is knowledge afOOt
knowledge harnessed, knowledge il
revolution, knowledge winged, knowl
edge projected, knowledge thunder
boIted. SO far from being ephemeral
nearly all the best minds and hearts hav
their hands on the printing press to-day
and have had since it got emaI
cipated. Adams and Hancock and Oti
used to go to the Boston Gazette an
compose articles on the rights of tn
people. Benjamin Franklin, Dewitt
Clinton, Hamilton, Jefferson, Quinc!
were strong in newspaperdOm. Man
of the immortal things that have bee
published in book form first appeared
what you may call the ephemeral per
Odical. All Macaulay's essays first al
peared in review. All Carlyle's, a
Ruskin's, all MeIntOsh's, all Sidne
Smiths, all Hazlett's, all Thackeray'
all the elevated works of fiction in OJ
day, are reprints from periodicals
which they appeared as serials. Tenn!
sons poems, Burns's poems, LOngfe
lows poems, Emerson's poems, Lowell
poems, Whittier's poems, were once fl
gitive pieces. You cannot find ten Ii
erary men in ChristendOm, with strOn
minds and great hearts, but are or hay
been somehow connected with the new
paper printing press. While the boo
will always have its place, the newsp
per is more potent. Because the latt
. Is multitudinOus, do not conclude it
necessarily superficial. If a man shOu
from childhood to old age see only
Bible, Webster's Dictionary and b
newspaper, he could be prepared for q
: the duties of this life, and all the ha
, piness Of the next.
Again, a good newspaper is a usef
! mirror of life as it is. 1t is sOmetim
, complained that newspapers report Il
: evil when they ought only to report t.
{ good. They must report the evil as we
! as the good, or how shall we knC
, what is to be reformed, what guard
, | AGAINST and what fought DOWN.