The National tribune., 1883-02-22
Tie Tribune and Its Readers.

THE TRIBUNE appears this week en-
larged from forty-eight to f1fty-six columns
and printed from its new Scott rotary press,
built expressly for its use, at cost of
| 81, 1900, by the manufacturers, C. Potter, Jr,
| & Co., Of New York, and capable of
turning out twelve thousand perfect copies
of The TRIBUNE-cut, pasted and folded
per hour. The modern printing machine,
as our readers are doubtless aware, is one of
the most delicate and intricate pieces of
mechanism ever devised by human ingenuity,
and such accuracy and precision are requi-
site in the adjustment Of its parts that per-
fection is seldom attainable at the first trial
OF its powers. AS the practiced reinsman
gives his thoroughbred a turn or two around
the track to quicken his blood and ease his
muscles before speeding him on the course,
so it seems necessary that this creature of
mans subtlest invention should be put
through a sort of preliminary canter before
she settles down to her natural gait. If,
therefore, the present number of THE TRIB-
UNE should not present the handsome ap-
pearance that we trust it will, our readers
will understand that it is simply because
the new steed which we have harnessed has
not yet fairly settled down to work. We
could wish that they were all at hand to see
the wheels begin to turn and that cleaning
band of snow-white paper, dexterously I'M
coiling itself from the monstrous roll, flash
! like line of white between the whirring
cylinders and cut in twain with stroke of
the knife, as swift and imperceptible as a
fairy's touch, turn and bend and double on
itself, until, in the twinkling Of an eye, it
escapes from the maze of tapes and lies fut-
teFing and glistening on the table, a new
made newspaper. And now the yawning
mailbag receives it and it goes spinning
across the continent, until at last it reaches
the kindly hands that are waiting to receive
it. 1t is no longer an inanimate band of
white paper. Endowed with life and in
telligence, it becomes, by transmutation of
elements more subtle than that of water
into wine, part of thought itself and
handspring of human action-a force at once
iInpalpable and irresistible.
But the power of the press needs no ex-
emplifcation at our hands. It's responsible
ties are co-equal with its influence, and if the
editor of THE TRIBUNE views with satisfac-
tion the steady growth of its circulation, it is
because he feels that he has not been insensi-
bic to the weight of these responsibilities nor
faithless in the discharge ofthem. THE TRIB-
UNE from having been a modest monthly of
limited circulation has grown to be one ofthe
leading weekly newspapers of the age. There
is no State or Territory in which it does not
circulate, and it is welcome visitor at nearly
eleven thousand post-offices. Its principles
alone remain unchanged; its purpose un-
altered. " To care for him who has borne the
battle and for his widow and orphans" is
trust which it viii lay down only with the
removal of the occasion for it, and so long as
single veteran is left to deplore the ingrati-
tude of the Government in whose defense he
risked his life, so long the voice Of THE TRIB-
UNE win be heard above the hue and cry of
his enemies, entreating and demanding
justice.
And now, comrades, we leave you to your
own reflections. Ii there is in THE TRIB-
UYE the stuff of which great leaders of
opinion are made, shall we not have your
earnest and unfagging support? Shall we
not have the honor Of commanding an in
vincible army of one hundred thousand sub
scribers, before whom the barriers of wrong
and injustice which now environ Congress
viii crumble, like the walls of Jerico at the
sounding of the trumpet, in ruins to the
ground?