Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1882-03-01
Starting Newspapers

Tabernacle, preached, recently Oh
newspapers, and In tho course OF the
sermon, he said
think ! could arouse you to ap'
probation Of this great blessing It
told you Of tbs money, the brain, the
evaporation, the anxiety, the losses
the wear and tear Of heart strings To-
yolycd IN tho publication Of a news
paper. On the theory 9broad IN the
world that anybody can make one, IN
experienced capitalists cAery year are
entering tho lists, and II Is II simple
statistic that there Il an average OF n
dead newspaper every day In tho year.
General three or four fortunes arc
swallowed up before u newspaper IL
established, The large papers swallow
up the small-one whale taking down
dfy minnows. Although We have
over seven thousand dailies aud week
lies In the United States and tho Cana
das, only thirty.six of them are over
half u century old. The average OF
newspaper life is five years, Most OF
them die of cholera iniantum. Laugh
ter. II Is high time that it was
understood that the most successful
way of sinking II fortune and keeping
il sunk, is to start u newspaper. Al
most every intelligent man during his
life is smittcn with the newspaper
mania; start u newspaper or have
stock in one he must or die. This Is
often the process; A literary man
has an idea, moral, social, political OF
religious, which he wishes to ventilatc.
lie has no money Of his own-litcrary
men seldom havc-but he talks his
idea among confidential friends and
forthwith they arc inhamcd with the
idac, aadthey buy types and presses
and rent Il composing room, and en-
gage corps of editors, and then a
prospectus, which threatens to conquer
everything, goes forth, and then the
first issue is thrown upon the attention
of an admirins world. After few
weeks or months u plain stockholder
finds that there is no special revolution,
and that neither the sun nor the moon
has stood still, and that the world goes
on lying and cheating and stealing just
as it did before the first issue of the
New York Thundcrer or the Universal
Gazette or the Hallelujah Advocate
Forthwith the plain stockholder wants
to sell his stock, but nobody wants to
buy it, and others, lisgusted with their
investment, want to sell their stock,
and an enormous bill from the paper
factory rolls in like an avalanche, and
the printers refuse to work unless they
have their back pay, and subscribers
wonder why their paper does not come.
Let me tel you, oh, man, that if you
have an idea on any social, moral, po-
litical or religious subject you had bet
ter charge on the world through col
umns already established. DO not
take the idea so prevalent that when a
man can do nothing else he can edit a
newspaper. If you cannot climb the
hill back of your house you had better
not try the sides of the Matterhorn; if
you cannot navigate sloop on the
North river you had better not try to
engineer the Great Eastern over to
Liverpool. TO publish a newspaper
requires the skill, the precision, the
vigilance, the strategy, the boldness of
q commander-in-chief; to edit a news
paper one needs to be statesman, an
essayist, a geographer, statistician, and
as far as all acquisition is concerned,
encyclopaedia. TO man and propel
requires more qualities than
any other business on earth. l say
this to save men from bankruptcy
Ifyou feel called on to start or publish
a newspaper take it for granted you are
with softening of the brain;
throw your pocket-book into your wife's
lap and rush up to Bloomihgdale asyl-
um and surrender yourself before you
do something desperate. Meanwhile
let the dead newspapers be carried out
to their burial week by week, and let
the newspapers that live give your
obituary.
"Jane," said he, 81 think if you
lift your feet away from the fire we
might have some heat in the room. -
And they hadn't been married two
years, either.
If your congregation goes away