Weekly graphic. [volume] (Kirksville, Adair Co., Missouri) 1880-1949, 1882-12-29
The daily papers which usually ci,

friday. DECEMBER 2sth. 1882
The daily papers which usually cir
culate in this vicinity have recently
been so crowded and crammed with
accounts of murders, suicides, rapes,
outrages, hang,ngs, burglaries, and
thefts, not counting innumerable small.
er crimes. that one might we'll imagine
Satan had let loose fresh legion of
his emlssaries, or that the location Of
the internal regions had been suddenly
transferred to the surface of North
America. Take the contents of the two
leading dailies, in their issue following
Christmas day, and one would scarcely
imagine that it was the record Of
the do:ngs ofa Christian people, or
that the era Of Peace and good will''
had even dawned upon the world.
We have not space to analyze. .or specify
the various grades Of crime, from muir
der down, dished up with their sicken-
ing details OF horror, fifty set forth
with suitable headlines and suggestive
titles. 1t was only very little worse
than the daily run Of such things and
the "great religious daily only eclips-
ed its rival the "Old Reliable"a very
little in the race for pre-eminence as a
scavene er of the slums and cutters of
the nation. journalistic enterprise is
getting to be most wonderful thing
in these modern days: One thing is ev-
ident the reader of the average daily
need not plead ignorance..of the Grim
imal annals of the country, whatever
he may miss of the good, the noble, or
the elevated, in science, politics, or re-
liglon.
We have mentioned these two papers
for two purposes: first. to draw a COM
parison, and second, to ascertain ifthe
country is really going to he Devil as
speedily as appearances seem to lndl-
cate. We receive one New York
daily-the TVorld, and several weeklies,
among them the TIlbyne, which has
fair character for enterprise as news
gatherer, and we find IN them no
such hideous array of crime, or the
disgusting details connected with it.
We must attribute this noticeable diff
ference in the journals mentioned, not
so much to the sudden and startling
increase of crime, as to the peculiar
journalistic enterprise which has raided
the slums, dens, and prisons Of the world
for the unsavoy "feast' they serve up
to their readers. Il seems the class
which formerly furnished a constitu-
ency for the police" weeklies has
grown to such proportions that it is
worth cultivating by the daily press,
and they are now working this new
"literary' field. This is a big country
with its fifty millions of people, and
there is no doubt that well organized
corps of criminal scavengers, with
their muck rakes, can easily find
enough with which to fill even the
"great dailies, and those enterprising
journals can easily give us more rather
than less of such stuff. Let them do
SO by all means, and perhaps, by and
by, some decent journal, that does not
make a garbage cart of its columns
may find field among those who do
not appreciate quite so much "enter- .
Prise" but prefer real news, and real
This would be a great
gain all round, for the murder and rape
organs would not be compelled to
waste valuable space on commonplace
news, and decent families whose child
rem are growing up be forced to forego
a daily record Of the thought, literature,
and politics of the world, in preference
to wading through SO much that's VIC
ious and tainted.