Arizona silver belt., 1893-04-15
Saturday, April 15, 1898.
OBlTUARY,
Representative Skinner. of arah

Representative Skinner. of Graham county, whom it is alleged was ''ceek- sure" of skinning the Territorial press, seems to have reckonsd without his host, and, consequently, instead of stripping the cuticle from the tart pre- seryative of all arts" was himself fiayed by more than two-thirds vote of his fellow members of the House, namely, Messrs. Day. Graham, Gray, Hurley, Lsathsrwood, Dryden, Hunt, Marshall, Reilly, Rogers, Ross, Schumacher, SoutAwick, Wright, Speaker Baxter, who consigned his bill to the un- honored grave, the legislative waste basket.
 Skinner, finding his bill had but few friends in the House and fewer outside the legislative halls, made a speech depicting the merits of the pro- posed law, in which he essayed to shine as an orator, ierked in his rhetorical tropes without regard to their applica- tion to the subject matter under dis cussion, but nevertheless they are there, as reported in the Arizona Republican of the 7th, and served to ill up and give piquancy to his classic allusions. His reference to the ignorance of his constituency, asserting that but one person in six read newspapers, will be criticised, and it may be charged that iR measuring the general vacuity of brain of others he contrasts it with his own, and therefore does injustice to the community in which he lives. The BELT, however, with no disrespsct for MT Skinner's opinion of the igno- rance of ArizoAans, cannot coneede that so many of them are so void of the desire to know what is transpiring be- yond the smoke of their chimneys as not'tb read newspaper. To believe otherwise would carry us back to 1881, when orders came from England "to allow none in the colonies to use press on any occasion whatever.
 But why should Mir. Skinner have 6iscrimiDated alone against the press? It, as well as common schools, are edu- cators, and while that is Q fact, why did he not n his bill also attempt to lsgislate against the lightning's flash and electric dashes, which, as soon as the key is touched becomes an educa- tor. The telephone and phonograph may also be elassed with the school master and, strange to say, Skinner's attempt to handicap education was ex- olusiyely confined tS the newspaper, which daily enters every household and familiarly converses with millions.
 The man and woman who do not read the current news, thus communicated, may properly be regarded as dolts, and yet, Skinner says there are five to oae of the class who do not read to one that does, and thus If ignorance is bliss, accarding to Skinner, Arizonans are supremely happy, which belief recalls the halcyon days that preceded the in- troduction of movable type, by Guten- berg, in the fourteenth century. period still held in grateful remem- brance, probably, by Skinner and the six members of the House (out of twen- ty-four) who, by their votes, supported his bill, and who are properly classed as back numbers. Not so, however, the hundreds of thousands who, on April 8th, current moath, celebrated the 20Oth anniversary of the establish. ment of the first newspaper in New Yerk and ihdelibly marked the build ing by a tablet, now occupying the site of the pioneer press. The world moves and the press is the motive power that moves it. We cannot spare the htera- " culture of the newspaper press It has become part of our being, and so interwoven with our very nature that to be without it society would relapse and history again become the hand maid of tradition.