The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-11-10
"THE NEWSPAPER PRESS,
The Grandest Blessing of the
Century.

all the Athenians and strangers which
were there spent their. time in nothing
else but either to tell or to hear some
new thing"
What is a preacher to do when he
finds two texts equally good and sugges-
tive? In that perplexIty 1 take both.
Wheels full of eyes2 What but the
wheels of the newspaper printing press?
Other wheels are blind. They roll on,
pulling or crushing. The manufac-
turer's wheel, how it grinds the opera
tor with fatigues, and rolls over nerve
and muscle and bone and heart, not
knowing what it does. The sewing ma
chine wheel sees not the aches and pain
fastened to it-tighter than the band
that moves it, sharper than the needle
which it plies. Every moment of every
hour of every day of every month of
every year there are hundreds of thou
OF enterprise, wheels of hard work in
motion, but they are eyeless. Not
so the wheels of the printing
presses. Their entire business is
to look and report. They are full of
optic anerves, from axle to periphery.
They are like those spoken of by Eze-
k1el as full of eyes. Sharp eyes, near
sighted, far-sighted. They look up.
They look down. They look far away.
They take in the next street and the
next hemisphere. Eyes of criticism,
eyes of investigation; eyes that twinkle
with mirth, eyes glOwering with indig-
nation, eyes tender with love; eyes of
suspicion, eyes Of hope; blue eyes, black
eyes, green eyes; holy eyes, evil eyes,
sore eyes, political eyes, literary eyes,
historical eyes, religious eyes; eyes that
see every thing. 'And the wheels were
full of eyes" But in my second text is
the worlds cry for the newspaper.
Paul describes class of people in
Athens who spent their time either in
gathering the news or telling it. Why
more intelligent people become, the
more inquisitive they are-nOt about
small things, but great things.
The question then most frequently Is
the question now most frequently asked.
What is the news? To answer that cry
in the text for the newspaper the CEN
turies have put their wits to work.
China first succeeded, and has at Pekin
a newspaper that has been printed every
week for one thousand years, printed on
silk. Rome succeeded by publishing the
Acta Diurna, in the same column put
ting fires, murders, marriages and temp
ests. France succeeded bya physician
writing out the news of the day for his
patients. England succeeded under
Queen Elizabeth in first publishing the
news of the Spanish Armada and going
on until she had enough enterprise,
when the battle of Waterloo was fought,
deciding the destiny of Europe, to give
it One-third of column in the London
Morning Chronicle, about as much as
the newspaper. .O of our day gives of a
small fire. America succeeded by Ben
jamin Harris's first weekly paper called
Public Occurrences, published in Boston
in 1890, and by the first daily, the Ameri-
can Advertiser, published in Philadel-
phia in 1874. The newspaper did not
suddenly spring upon the world, but
came gradually. The genealogical line
of the newspaper is this: The Adam
of the race was a circular or news
letter created by Divine impulse in
human nature; and the circular be,
| gat the pamphlet, and the pamphlet be,
gat the quarterly, and the quarterly be.
gat the weekly, and the weekly begat
| the semi-weekly, and semi-weekly begat
| the daily. But alas, by what struggle
it became to its present development
| No sooner had its power been demon
| strated than tyranny and superstition
| shackled it. There is nothing that des
potism so fears and hates as printing
press. 1t has too many eyes in its wheel
The Russian Empire, which is, consider
ing all things, the most cruel despOtisn
on earth, to-day keeps it under mos
clared that the King of Naples made il
unsafe for him to write of anything but
natural history. Austria could not en-
duTe KOssuth's journalistic pen pleading
| for the redemption of Hungary. NapO
| leon l., trying to keep his iron heel Oh
| the neck of the nation, said: Editors
are the regents of sovereigns and the
tutors of nations, and are only fit fol
prison." But the battle for the freedom
of the press was fought in the Court
rooms of England and America and de
cided before this century began by Ham
| ilton's eloquent plea for j. Peter Zen
| gers Gazettee in America, and Erskine'
advocacy of the freedom to publisl
Paine's Rights of Man in England
| These were the Marathon and ThermOp
| yla in which the freedom of the pres
was established in the United States ant
Great Britain and all the powers of eartl
and hell will never again be able to pu
on the handouts and hobbies of literar,
and political despOtism. 1t is inotabl
that Thomas jefferson, who wrote tn
Declaration of American Independence
| wrote also: eff had to choose between
a Government without newspapers o
newspapers without Government,
should prefer the latter" Stung b,
some base fabrication coming to us il
print, we come to write or speak of tn
unbridled printing-pres or, our neN
book ground up by an unjust critic, W
come to write or speak of the unfair
ness of the printing-press; or, perhaps
through our own indistinctness of vi
terance, we are reported as saying jus
the opposite of what we did say, an
there is small riot of semi-colQns, ny
phens and commas, and we come to spea
or write of the laundering printing
press; or, seeing paper filled with d
/ Vorce cases and social scandal, we spea
and write of the filthy printing pres
OF, seeing journal, through briber.
wheel around from one political side
the other in one night, we speak of
corrupt printing-press, and many tai
about the lampOOnery, and the empt
cism, and the sans-culOt tism of tn
printing-press. lf
!. But discuss to-day subject 20
have never ,heard-the immeasurabl
and everlasting blessing of good new
paper. Thank God for the wheel full ,
eyes. Thank God we do not have, lib
the Athenians, to go about to gather u
and relate the tidings of the day, sine
the omnivorOus newspaper does both Il
us. One overwhelming statistic g1N
, you: In the year 1870 the number {
/. copies of literary and political papel
issued was 1,500, ,O00, 900. The grande'