Democratic Northwest and Henry County news. [volume] (Napoleon, O. [Ohio]) 1894-1905, 1896-03-26

tsaT aInosc ANYBODY can make a 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
demio. The larger papers swallow the
smaller ones, the whale taking down so
minnows at one swallow. With more than
1000 dailies and weeklies in the United
States and Canada, there are but SO a
half century old. Newspapers do not
average more than five years existence.
The most of them die of cholera infantum
1t is high time that the people found out
that the most successful way to sink
money and keep it sunk is to start news
| paper. There comes time when almost
every one Is smitten with the newspaper
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 sci
entiflc or political or religious idea which
he wants to ventilate. He has no money
Of his own-literary men seldom have
but he talks of his ideas among conflden-
tial friends until they become inflamed
|
and press and rent composing room and
gather corps of editors, and with a pro-
spectus that proposes to cure everything the
first copy is flung on the attention of an
admiring world After awhile one of the
plain stockholders finds that no great rev.
tplution has been effected by this daily or
weekly publications. that neither sun nor
moon stands STILL that the world goes on
lying and cheating and stealing just as 1t
did before the first issue. The aforesaid
matter Of fact stockholder wants to sell
out his stock, but nobody wants to buy,
and other stockholders get infected and
sick of newspaperdom, and an enormous
bill at the paper factory rolls into an ava
lanohe, 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 the edi-
tor 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 news
paper is as much of an institution as the
Bank of England or Yale college and Is
not an enterprise. If you have the afore-
said agricultural or scientific or religious
or political idea to ventilate, you had better
charge upon the world through the col.
umns already established. 1t Is folly fo1
any one who cannot succeed at anything
else to try newspaperdom. 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 newspaper requires the
skill, the precision, the boldness, the vigi.
lance, the strategy of a commander in chief.
To edit newspaper requires that one be a
statesman, an essayist, geographer, q
statistician and, in acquisition, encyclope-
diac. To man, to govern, to propel news
paper until it shall be fixed institution,
a national fact, demands more qualities
than any business on earth. If you fee
like starting any newspaper, secular or re-
ligious, understand that you are being
threatened with softening Of the brain OIL
lunaoy, and throwing your pooketbook into
your wife's lap start for some insane asy
lum before you do something desperate
Meanwhile as the dead newspapers week
after week are carried out to burial all the
living newspapers give respectful obitu
ary, telling when they were born AND
should give at least one stickful of epitaph
If it was a good paper, say, Peace to its
ashes" :" If it was a bad paper, l suggest
the epitaph written for Francis Char
treuse: Here continueth to rot the body
of Francis Chartreuse, who, with an in
flexible constanoy and uniformity Of life
persisted in the practice of every human
vice excepting prodigality and hypocrisy
His Unsuitable avarice exempted him from
the first his matchless impudence from
the second" I say this because want
you to know that good, healthy long
lived, entertaining newspaper Is not ar
easy blessing but one that comes to u;
through the fire.
First of all, newspapers make knowledge
democratic and for the multitude. The
public library Is a haymow SO high uI
that few can reach it, while the newspaper
throws down the forage to our feet. Pub
lie 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 libra
ries is to make newspapers out Of. Great
libraries make few men and women very
WISE Newspapers lift whole nations into
the sunlight. Better have so, 600, 900 peo
pie 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 worlds heart and brain and de.
cides the destiny of churches and nations
knowledge on the shelf is of little worth
1t is knowledge afoot, knowledge harness
ed, knowledge in revolution, knowledge
winged, knowledge projected, knowledge
thunderbolted. So far from being ephem-
eral nearly all the best minds and hearts
have their hands on the printing press to.
day and have had since it got emancipated.
Adams and Hancock and Otis used to &C
to the Boston Gazette and compose articles
Oh the rights of the people. Benjamin
Franklin, De Witt Clinton, Hamilton,
jefferson, Quincy, were strong in newspa-
perdom. Many of the immortal things
that have been published in book form
first appeared in what you may call the
ephemeral periodical. All Macaulays es-
says first appeared in review. All Car
lyle's, all Ruskin's, all McIntosh's, all
Sydney Smiths, all Hazlitt's, all Thack-
eray's all the elevated works of fiction in
our day. are reprints from periodicals in
which they appeared as serials. Tenny-
sons poems, Burns poems, Longfellow' s
poems, Emerson poems, Lowell's poems,
Whittier S poems were once fugitive pieces.
You cannot find ten literary men in Chris
tendon with strong minds and great hearts
but are or have been somehow connected
with the newspaper printing press. While
the book will always have its place, the
newspaper is more potent, Because the
latter is multitudinous do not conclude ii
is necessarily superficial. If a man should