Semi-weekly independent. (Plymouth, Marshall County, Ind.) 1895-1897, 1896-03-28


heartstrings involved in the production of
n good newspaper. Under the impression
that almost anybody can make newspa-
per, scores of inexperienced capitalists ev-
cry year enter the lists, and consequently
during the last few years newspaper has
died almost every day. The disease is cpl
demic. The larger papers swallow the
smaller ones, the whale taking down fifty
minnows at one swallow. With more than
1000 daiics and weeklies in the United
States and Canada, there are but thirty
six q half century old. Newspapers DO
not average more than five years exist
ence. The most of them die of cholera in
fantum. 1t is high time that the people
found out that the most successful way 10
sink money and keep it sunk is to start a
newspaper. There comes Il time when
almost every one is smtten with the news
paper mania and starts one, or have stock
in one he must or die.
The course of procedure is about this:
A literary man has an agricultural or
scientific or political or religious idea
which he wants to ventiate. He has no
money of his own-lterary men seldom
haye-but he talks of his ideas among
confidential friends until they become in
famed with the idea. and forthwith they
buy type and press and rent composing
room and gather Il corps of editors, and
with Il prospectus that proposes To cure
everything the first copy IS flung on the
attention of an admring world. After
awhile one of the plain stockholders finds
that no great revolution has been effected
by this daily or weekly publication; that
neither sun nor moon stand still; that the
world goes on lying and cheating and
stealing just as it did before the first
issue. The aforesaid mattcr-offact stock
holder wants to sell OUT his stock but
nobody wants to buy. and other stockhold-
ers get infected and sick of newspaper
dom. and an enormous bill at the paper
factory rolls into an avalanche, and the
printers refuse to work until back wages
are paid up. and the compositor bows to
the managing editor. and the managing
editor bows to TIE editor in chief. and the
editor in chief bows to the directors.
and the directors bow to the world at
large, and all the subscribers wonder why
their paper doesn't come. The world will
have to learn that a newspaper is as much
of an institution as the Bank of England
or Yale College and is not an enterprise.
If you have the aforesaid agricultural or
scientific or religious or political idea TO
ventlate, you had better charge upon the
world through the columns already cstab-
lished. 1t is folly for any one who can
not succeed at anything else to try news
paperdom. If you cannot climb the hill
back of your house. it is folly TO try the
sides of the Matterhorn.
Near to the People.
To publish a newspaper requires the
skill. the precision the boldness. the vgi-
lance, the strategy of commander in
chief To edit n newspaper requires that
one be statesman, an essayist. geogra-
pher, statstician and, in acquisition,
encyclopaedia. To man, to govern, to pro-
pei newspaper until it shall be a fixed
institution. a national fact. demands more
qualities than any business on earth. If
you feel like starting any newspaper, sec
ular or religious understand that you are
being threatened with softening of the
brain or lunacy, and throwing your peck,
etbook into your wife's lap start for some
insane asylum before you do something
desperate. Meanwhile as the dead news
papers week after week are carried out to
burial all the living newspapers give re-
spcctful obituary. telling when they were
born and when they died. The best print
crs' ink should give at least one stickful
Of eptaph. If it was n good paper, say
Peace to its ashes" If it was n bad
paper. l suggest the epitaph written for
Francis Chartreuse: Here continueth
to rot the body of Francis Chartreuse
who, with an infleXible constancy and uni
formity of life, persisted in the practice
of every human vice excepting prodigality
and hypocrisy. His Unsuitable avarice
exempted him from the first, his match
less impudence from the second" | say
this because L want you to know that Il
good, healthy. long lived. entertaining
newspaper is not an easy blessing. but one
that comes to us through the fire.
First of all, newspapers make knowl-
edge democratic and for the multitude
The public library is a haymow so high
up that few can reach it. while the news
paper throws down the forage to our feet
Public libraries are the reservoirs where
the great floods are stored high up and
away off. The newspaper is the tunnel
that brings them down to the pitchers
of all the people. The chief use of great
libraries is to make newspapers out Of
Great libraries make n few men and
women very wise. Newspapers lift whole
nations into the sunlight. Better have
5O.0O0,0O0 people moderately intelligent
than 100000 solons.
a false impression is abroad that news
paper knowledge is ephemeral because
periodicals are thrown aside, and not one
out of 10000 people files them for future
reference Such knowledge so far from
being ephemeral, goes into the very struc-
ture of the destiny of churches and ma
tons. knowledge on the shelf is of little
worth. Ii is knowledge afoot knowledge
harnosscd, knowledge in revolution.
knowledge winged, knowledge projected.
knowledge thunderbolted. So far from
being ephemeral, nearly all the best minds
and hearts have their hands on the print
ing press to-day and have had since it got
cmancipated. Adams and Hancock and
Otis used to go to the Boston Gazette and
compose articles on the rights of the peo-
pie. Benjamin Franklin, De Witt Gin
ton, Hamilton, Jefferson, Quincy, were
strong in newspaperdom. Many of the
immortal things that have been publish
ed in book form first appeared in what
you may call the ephemeral periodical