The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-05-01
A Word to Florida Contemporaries.

A Word to Florida Contemporaries.
Some of the newspapers of South
Florida, since the publication of Surgeon
General Hamilton's brief report and warning
on Sunday April %, relative to fever in sew
eral South Florida towns, have taken occa
sion to say something unkind about the
MORNING NEWS. The Times Union, Of
Jacksonville, also undertook to make COM
plant against the MORNING NEWS on &C
count of the publication, but on last Sunday
it was compelled to acknowledge its mean
ness and malice by publishing two-column
report from Surgeon General Hamilton con-
flrming about all that the Surgeon General
had said in the previous report
The Barlow In ormdnt is another of the
newspapers which felt called upon to inflict
upon the MORNING News what injury it
could. In its last issue 1t said: "The Sa-
vannah NEWS has heretofore had a large
circulation and stood high in the estima
ton of the people of South Florida, but
from now on we think it will and ought to
lose whatever business it has here. Before
publishing the report about yellow fever
being here the proprietor should have put
HllllScll W u lUbIo 10 IluQ OuU
whether the report was true or not"
If the Informant had desired to do only
what was fair, il would not have published
the above, because it certainly knows that
the Surgeon General is about as good au-
thority as there is for the kind of informa-
ton of which it complains. 1t knows, also
that the Surgeon General does not send out
reports that are calculated to injure COM
munity without he has excellent reasons for
doing so, and that the information he re-
ceives concerning the health of place is
furnished by reliable physicians of the
vicinity from which it is sent and who are
held responsible for the truth of the it.
If the Informant will take the trouble
to read the report Of Surgeon General Ham
ilton. published in the MORNING NEWS last
Sunday and also in one of the jacksonville
newspapers, it will see that the Surgeon
General had good grounds for sending out
the brief dispatch which was published the
previous Sunday, and that his motive for
sending out that dispatch, outside of the
law which required him to send it, was a
good one The motive which influenced
the Surgeon General in sending it, infu-
enced the MORNING NEWS in publishing it,
Last Sundays report shows two things:
First, that there has been disposition to
conceal the existence of fever in South
Florida; and, second, that owing to the late
mild winter the disease germs may yet be
active, and produce an epidemic when the
warm weather begins, if proper sanitary
measures are not at once taken.
The aim of the publication was to put
people in the localities to which attention
was called on their guard. OF course the
people were indignant when they first saw
the publication, because they thought there
was no foundation for it. The truth had
been concealed from them, and they were
being permitted to drift ignorantly toward
warm weather and danger, when only
word IN time was needed to enable them to
avert the danger. The Surgeon General
obeyed the law, which compelled
him to utter the warning of
which the Informant complains, and
the MORNING NEWS took the responsibility
of publishing it. 1t is true that the Jack
sonville newspaper suppressed it, but it was
compelled to publish it a week later, to-
ReJu0r WIFI dll Uno IacJS upon winch IT was
based. The MORNING NEWS is inclined to
think that when the people get all the facts
they will be more inclined to thank the
MORNING NEWS than to censure it. and to
continue to regard it. not as an enemy who
would wsntonly do them an injury, but as
a friend, who is ever watchful of their
interests, and who will take the
risk Of mourning their displeasure to render
them a service, feeling sure that when the
truth is known it will receive their APP
prevail. So far as its business and circula-
ton in South Florida are concerned, which
the Informant is so anxious to have wiped
out, they are matters of secondary consid-
Grafton. The MORNING NEWS, of course.
doesn't want to lose its friends in that sec
ton of Florida, and it doesn't believe it will,
but it isn't going to make any
sacrifices of principle, or to keep them in
ignorance Of anything they ought to know,
to retain them.