The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1882-02-08
THE EDITORS WORK.
A Word for the Labors of Those Who
make Other Men Famous.
Edward Eggleston in the Century.l

lEQWdfu ESSiestOu III III CtuIuIY
| remember to have read that, many years
age, Wendell Phillips, riding to town where
he was to lecture, was surprised to find that
the farmer in whose vehicle he travelled be-
lieved that MIR. Greeley, the beloved editor of
the Week1y Tribune, wrote al that was in it.
When Mr.. Phillips had explained to him that
many hands were needed to make a great pa
per, the man satd "Well, l s'pose that's
so but the farmers club articles them's
old Horace all over" A journal is an epic
with but one hero, in the mind of the man
who does not know with what voracity q
great news paper or magazine eats up human
lives and swallows the regulations and tai
ents of able men in all departments, Of writ
ing and management. All the labor, all the
skillEof literary judgment and business con-
duct, are carried up to the credit of the edi-
torial head by some people, and they will
even persist in renting subscription money
to the editor. 1t is hard for those at q dis
lance to imagine the highly organized COOP
~peration of many diverse abilities that 60 to
make a supreme periodical, and people are
surprised when a great editor dies that the
genius of journalistic conduct does not at
once forsake his periodical. They fnd the
same elertness, the same discretion, the very
same flavor as before, when, according to
their notion, all of this should have been
buried with C9ser. Ionce met a lady, who
being an enthusiastic admirer of the Ply
mouth pastor, was utterly Disguised to gnd
that certain beautiful editorial articles in the
Christian Uuion, which she had been enjoy
ing, were not written by Beacher at all. but
by & man named M, of whom she had
nevet before heard. The characteristic quail
ity o. 9 periodical does not inhere to one
man. 1t is the resultant of many diverse
gen;uses, an effect produced like that seen in
q rich window by the sunlight passing
through various media, so arranged as to
form a complete whole. The chief editor gets
all the credit of this as a sort of offset for
having to take all the blame; but neither
credit nor blame belongs wholly to him.
The great mass of gifted and. effective
workers in periodical literature necessarily
90 down in the waters of forgetfulness.
They work with the heartlest enthusiasm,
though the admiring public will never know
them, but will clap it's hands with applacse
of somebody else. Only when a great editor
like DR.. Holland dies, and the magazine or
pap sr goes straight ahead in the path care
fully marked out by him and his associates,
do they realize that there were other men of
noble gift at work as well as the responsible
leader. Even then the amount and variety
of individual gifts that are used, absorbed,
devoured to make a magazine great, never
enters into the Imagination of the public,
which enjoys the repast but doesn't wished
to be troubled by complex ideas as to the
modes of preparation. 1t is, indeed, one
chief aim of a master journalist to make his
periodicals 80 great that it's quality will not
depend on one mans life or continued SER
vice.