Connecticut western news., 1882-06-21
JUDGE TOURGEE ON THE PRESS.
Address Before the New York State Press Association at Jamestown, New York.

New York.
 Judge Tourgee delivered the address
 to the New York Press Association or
 ''The Relations of the Newspaper Press
 to Private Morals and Public Virtue. ;
 He said that possibly his subject should
 not have been divided. The root ot
 public virtue, he said, is in private
 morals. That states the whole ques.
 ton. We are apt to estimate the press
 aa grand. vague, indefinite power. It
 is simply means, lever, an instru.
 mentality which lends itself to the Lords
 hand or the devils with equal readiness.
 The press in reality is only means of
 placing one mans ideas before a
 thousand or million. It is only man
 in disguise.
 The value of the press depends on
 the man who has his hand on the lever
 1t may mean liberty, right, conscience
 or the reverse. Every newspaper has
 one great end. It is printed for the ad-
 vantage of some individual. It is an
 honest, manly man behind the press
 that makes it fit to come into the
 family. The rumseller cannot do the
 harm in year that the bad man who
 has the long end of the lever of press
 can do in week. The man behind the
 newspaper comes into our daughters
 heart before it feels the thrill of woman
 hood to lift or degrade it.
 The speaker deprecated the publish ing of gossip and scandal urging that in treating of the ulcers of society clean language should be used, and that the treatment should be brief. The press should not be less free, but it's freedom should be that of gentleman. The editor has no right to suppress damag- ing acts In the lives of public men if on 8 careful examination of the evidence he believes them to be true, but inuen- do when there is doubt of its truthful ness, is inexcusable. The lance of the press directed against breast known to be innocent is sight to make demon blush. The decision of Philadelphia court tining a literary buzzard $1,OOO for an unjustifable libel was approved and the speaker hoped that the propri- etors of the paper on which he was en- ployed would be fined twenty five times that sum.
 Ibid you ever think, said Judge Tour | gee, how close Is the inter communion between the writer and the reader ? Between the editor and the customer The newspaper comes to us in the
 morning with the sunrise 1t sits with us at the table; it goes with us upon the street, in the omnibus, in the car, everywhere that we are. Ahl that man, good or bad, is crumpled into tie pocket and comes out with every weary moment and puts his stamp on your heart or mine. He wears our coat he IS ln our breast, and writes upon our brains when we imagine we are only thinking ourselves. He comes into your parlor, sir, perhaps 8 man that | you would no more admit there than he that came from the dusky dungeons be. low-comes, nay, did l say he comes into your parlor, comes to your daugh- ter's heart before it knows the throb of womanhood. He enters into it to ele- vate It or to degrade. He comes into your boy s hands before he has got his first boots we'll worn. That man has come, good or bad, and he has put manhood or evil into that boys heart goes to school with him he takes him along the road; he hides him in the desk; he slips him in between his books he cheats the teacher with him: teaches him to cheat the teachers, per- haps; he is in every heart 8 constant | presence that cannot be exercised, that | cannot be distinguished or known. There is no one man here who reaching | back into the past of his own life cannot | pick out some particular periodical | which he read when boy, perhaps. and say "that did me infinite good or infinite harm." Not because it was the press, but because the man behind the thought came into the unconscious heart. "Ah, but, ," we say, 'sthere is no fear, there is no danger, tho press is the beacon light of liberty. The free press is that which lifts us and bears us on." Thank God it is true. Not because it is free press, but because honest hearted men in the main have stood behind it, because the manhood that has stamped it has been a man. hood that meant good to it's fellows, light to the earth and liberty to the world. There is one thing true. Per- haps that first mention of the press our worthy divine would excuse me if it seems little ight-perhaps the first mention of the press which we have in history is not far from correct, in the in- ference that may be drawn from it when punningly read: "And many sought to come unto Him, but could not .for the press"
 Many 8 good man has been trans formed into fiend by the power of the press of to-day. Many good woman's life has been turned to shame by that same power. There is no question. brethren, and you and I who look through our exchanges know it. that the press, the newspaper press of to-day in It's Influence upon private morals IS separated by worldwide distance from that scraggly, rude affair of hun dred years ago. If Franklin's little press moved the world, it moved it always for good. l looked not long since through the copies that have been preserved of his paper in the library at Philadelphia with some care on this subject. There was not word in them that B. Frank lin, Esq, might not have gone into the finest parlor and uttered to the most modest and delicate lady in the land. It IS very rarely, am afraid, that real newspaper of to day Is printed, that the editor would exactly like to read all the way through at his supper table. ssAh, but, we say, "the people want it, the people want it, and I have right to furnish what they want" Have we? The news gatherer of to-day is the in stitution rather than the press. The idea of gathering up news and pouring 1t out before the world. The idea of meeting all the world at your breakfast table, of hearing all the worlds life and taking 1t into your being before you get a cup of coffee we'll down. That is new. That IS the great instrumentality which the press of to-day from that of yesterday. But that gatherer of the news alone-is there no responsibil- ity with him?
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