The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-04-28

cal attachment with their mother country. How eagerly they turn every morning to read the news from abroadl Charleston might be burned a hundred times, Chicago might go up in smoke and down in flame, San Francisco might be swal- lowed by an earthquake and the isles of the sea forever disappear beneath the ceaseless tides without causing more than momentary exclamation, but let it be known that Queen Vic toria is on her deathbed, let it be understood that an uprising has taken place in Ireland, cause it to be published that the emperor and Bismarck have quarreled, tell even that 6 dynasty has been shaken in China. how eagerly they peruse, how anx- iously they wait for the coming of the next batch!
 Who tells it?
 Two reporters have been buried within the past three weeks. They were bright, useful, helpful men. One of them had served more than quar- ter of century on one of the greatest journals in the world. The other had not worked so long, but he had worked quite as we'll. No judge cast aside his judicial dignity, none of those extra ordinary creatures termed editors at- tended the funeral services. There was no dispute as to the property left. The only remains were wasted bodies, hollow cheeks, broken hearts, few bones and a little skin, all of which were decently buried, thank God, and the expenses were paid by their associates.
 Not by the great metropolitan jour- nals?
 Oh, no, these were reporters.
 These were the class of men before whom men bow and scrape in the heyday of their usefulness. These are the men who make great newspapers. These are the men whose enterprise causes the journals of the day to be talked about. These are the men and the women in whose heads are born ideas. These ideas fructify for the benefit of the newspapers, but very rarely for the benefit of the brain that conceives them. Let some reporter conceive an idea. Let him cherish it.. Let him bring it forth. It may be some rare intellectual development. It may be the unearthing of great fraud, it may be the trapping of an eminent plotter.
 Who gets the benefit of it?
 The public gets the information, the newspaper gets the profit, and the re- porter-well, the reporter gets left, as rple.>
 Whose fault is it?
 Well, l have been thinking about that, and have come to conclusion. The marvellous growth of the metro politan press is due largely to felici- tous combination of capital and. brains. Capital can always hire brains. Brains cannot always secure capital. It is fallacy to suppose the contrary, because capital is just as shrewd and as wide-awake as brains, and capital will not invest itself for the benefit of brains, and newspaper brains are pe- culiar, anyhow.
 The ordinary newspaper writer has smattering of universal knowledge.
 He writes on law, on religion, on metaphysics, on earthquakes, on poli- tics, on people, on the tariff, on the drama, on poetry, on literature in general, on science in all its branches. He is expected to be able to furnish, instantly, articles of interest, appar- ently ercathedrd, on any subject what ever. Does Recorder Smyth require a week or ten days in which to study up the Gould-Sage matter, he would be of no use in newspaper office. The moment the matter of a new in- dictment was suggested, articles were prepared in every newspaper. The whole matter was settled in the twinkling of an eye, and instead of reading carefully and respectfully the decision of the recorder, the little law yers in the sanctum tore him into fiinters in the twinkling of an eye. Had he decided the other way they would have fortified his position, em- balmed him in journalistic franklin cense and myrrh, and sent him boom- ing down the ages, sure of a re-elec- tiOn.-NeD YOrk GTuDhfc.