The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-01-31
WOOD ENGRAVING AND WOOD
 v CARVING.
IRsekA snnl

AReEks SMn.t
 The rage tpr newspaper illustrations vhich has spgung up in . night like Tonah's gonrd t(so slew hese 1; was il fonah cT some other fisherman who raised ehaE prize gourd D threatens to undermine the foundations of journalism and relezate the Press back to the fourth estate, the position 1t occupied in Ben Franklin's time, and the S2N feels justi- sed in speaking out in clarionette, viva yocs tones against the evil before it is everlastingly too late.
 As long as illustrations were confined to books, magazines, Bibles, and few special weekkes, we were a happy and contented nation there vas place for cuts, and cuts were in their place; Sas now, the little blsxe which some one hndled has become a raging con6agra- sion. marring the 6ir pages of a great proportion of the newspapers in the land. If you like wet goods" better than the fire simile, start it of as little rivulet, increasing until it becomes roaring tor rent. They are both the same price.
 There are several reasons why this wood-cu. craze Is bad. First, large pes cent. of the cuts are execrable in an sr. tistic point of view, especially the 90. called portraits. Occasionally there are some that are natural aud hfe-like, br, the larger part no more resemble the in- dividual they are said to portray than chalk is like cheese.
 Again, newspapers that ara in the habit of beating their readers out of large quantities of good reading matter to which they are justly entitled by the pay ment ot 1.-two dollars year in advance" (or less, as the case may bel by filling space with these alleged portraits are liable to file the cuts away for future reference, on window lodges, in the "bank," and various other handy places, and spring them again on a suffering public later. Thus, a cut purporting to be Henry Ward Beecher this season will perhaps appear next year as Gladstone or Henry Irving Lieutenant Greedy will be shown sometime in the hence as Prince Albert's son, and so on.
 Another evil growing out of this syndi- cate cut business is the cheap notoriety furnished to Thomas, Richard and Henry. Let man or woman once get his or her name in the daily papers, from whatever cause-be it running for governor, run ming away with another mans wife (or woman's husband) robbing bank, or in- venting seh.acting wheel5arrow-and forthwith their ostensible lineaments are gouged out bn boxwood or maple, stereo- types or electrotypes are made, and ap- pear by the hundred in papers which are in the @pool," for weeks thereafter. Some papers squeeze 'two-column cuts into one-column width, necessitating slicing the party's shoulders of, and giving him sort of pinched-up appear ance. This is bad.
 hsh portraits of local celebrities, the hero of the sketch standing in" with the publishers on the cost of the engraving "An old resident" listens to the seduc. tive tongue of the interviewer and is lost. A divorce suit is instituted, the details are "racy," and the unhappy pair are presented to the public, either separate and apart or linked together in wreath like Blaine and Logan cut. A new pastor is called from somewhere. at a raise over his previous salary of S67 So and his studious countenance, fur rowed OCT with the sickly cast of thought" is printed on seven-cens "print" paper, with ten-cent news ink, the inevitable sketch accompanying it, with appropriate head lines, and the dominic is disheartened and disap- pointed. It looks more like a disciple of Jack Shephard than a disseminator of the gospel,
 And So it goes. Papers in Arizona and Wyoming, which ought to devote only modicum (out with your pencils and jot this word down-it is of choice variety of their space to political and general affairs, are enabled by the dupli- cate process to fill several hundred square inches with cuts of parties that their readers don't care a continental for, to the exclusion of important happenings in Poker Flat Shirttail Gulch, Red-Dog Valley, Dead. Shot Bar and various other localities.
 Nor is the injury confined alone to the reading public. There being an appar- ent demand for illustrations, there must be supply; and hence many misguided youths and men in the back counties who are handy at tinkering around home with carpenter tools, and kaow all about the internal economy of sewing machines and clocks get the idea that they are natural born engravers, and proceed al once to sharpen up sundry brad-awls, broken files, small chisel or two, and their jack-knives, and announce them selves as ~designers and engravers." The local paper, not to be outdone by the metropolitan daily, prints the ab- normal productions of these wood-butch- CTS, and refers to them as the work of Sour special hrtist."- Mir. Soandso, and he has the big head worse than ever. Many boys are thus ruined for life. While they would have succeeded well with a scroll saw and simple carving tools. and produced many handsome brackets, paper-raeks, whatnots, etc, which would have sold readily and really been a credit to them, they have lost valuable time spelling box-vood and
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