The Monitor-register., 1896-03-27

1t would work a vast mnrovament il

4tU-s
erary-should for the most mart dron
their impersonality. This would do bet
ter Justice to newspaper writers. Many
OF the strongest and best writers of the
country live and die unknown and are
denied their just fame. The vast public
never learns who they are. Nest of
tnem are on comparatively small in
come, and after awhile their hand for
gets 1T cunning. and they are without
resources, left to die. Why not, at least.
nave his initial attached to his most i'm
portant work? 1t always gave additional
force to an article when you occasional
ly saw added to some significant article
In the old New York Courier and En-.
qulrer J. w. W., Or in The Tribune. FL.
w. or IN The Herald ]. G. B., or III
Ihe Times Fl. J. R., Or in The EVENING
Post ". G. B., OR in The Evening Elk
press E. B.
Whlle this arrangement would be a
iair and just thing for newspaper writ
ers, 1t would be a defense for the pub
llc. 1t is sometimes true that things
damaging to private character are said.
Who is responsible? It is the swe'' OF
~S Na2uOAAd4 III ItDOIlOTldl columns.
Every man in every profession or occu
patton ought to be responsible for what
he does. No honorable man will ever
write that which he would be afraid TO
sign. But thousands of persons have
suffered from the impersonality of
newspapers. What can one private citi-
zen wronged in his reputation do in a
contest with misrepresentation multi
Piled into twenty or fifty thousand
copies? An injustice lone in print is il.
llmltably worse than an injustice done
in private life. During loss of temper a
man may say that for which he will be
sorry In ten minutes, but a newspaper
injustice has first to be written, set up
in type, then the proof taken off and
read and corrected, and then for six or
ten hours the presses are busy running
on the issue. Plenty of time to correct.
Plenty of time to cool off. Plenty of
time to repent. But all that is hidden
In the impersonality of a newspaper. 1t
will be a long step forward when all is
changed, and newspaper writers get
credit for the good and are held respon-
sible for the evil.
The Most Potent Influence.
Another step forward for newspaper
dom will be when in our colleges and
universities we open opportunities for
preparing candidates for the editorial
chair. We have in such institutions
medical departments, law departments.
Why not editorial departments? Do the
legal and healing professions demand
more culture and careful training than
the editorial or reportorial professions?
L know men may tumble by what seems
accident into a newspaper Office as they
may tumble into other occupations, but
1t would be an i~ncalculable advantage if
those proposing a newspaper life had an
institution to which they might go to
learn the qualifications, the RESPONSE
bilities, the trials, the temptations, the
dangers, the magnificent opportunities.
OF newspaper life. Let there be a lee
tureship In which there shall appear the
leading editors of the United States tell
ing the story of their struggles, their
victories, their mistakes, how they work
ed and what they found out to be the best
way of working. There will be strong
men who will climb up without such
aid into editorial power and efficiency.
So do men climb up to success in other
branches by sheer grit. But if we want
learned institutions to make lawyers and
artists and doctors and ministers, we
much more need learned institutions to
make editors, who occupy a position of
influence a h~undredfold greater. I do
not put the truth too strongly when I
say the most potent influence for good
on earth is q good editor and the most
potent influence for evil is a bad me-.
The best way to REINFORCE and improve
the newspaper is to endow editorial pro-
fessorates. When will Princeton or Har-
ward or Yale or Rochester lead the way?
Another blessing of the newspaper is
the foundation it lays for accurate his
tory of the time in which we live. We
for the most part blindly guess about
the ages that %antedate the newspaper
and are dependent upon the prejudices
Of this or that historian. But after a
hundred or two years what a splendid
opportunity the historian will have to
teach the people the lesson of this day.
Our Bancrofts got from the early news
papers OF this country, from the Boston
Newsletter, the New York Gazette,
and The American Rag Bag, and Royal
Gazetteer and Independent Chronicle,
and Massachusetts Spy, and the Phila-
delphia Aurora, accounts of Perry's VIC
tory, and Ramilton's duel, and Wash
ington's death, and Boston massacre,
and the oppressive foreign tax on lux
uries which turned Boston harbor into
a teapot, and Paul Revere's midnight
ride, and Rhode Island rebellion, and
South Carolina nullifaction. But what a
field for the chronicler of the great fu-
ture when he opens the files of a hun
dred standard American newspapers,
| giving the minute of all things occur
ring under the social, political, ecclesi-
astical. international headingsi Five
hundred years from now, if the world
lasts SO long, the student looking for
stirring. decisive history will pass by
the misty corridors of other centuries
and say to the libraries, ''Find me the
volumes that give the century in which
the American presidents were assassinat-
ed, the civil war enacted and the cot
1ou Sius uuo st6dlu iOCUnOtlf0 duu 1915
graph and electric pen aud telephone
and cylinder presses were invented"
Front Wheel of the Lords Chariot.
Once more I remark that a good
newspaper is a blessing as an evangelist
ic influence. You know there is a great
change in our day taking place. All the
secular newspapers of the day-for I am
not speaking now of the religious news
papers-all the secular newspapers of
the day discuss all the questions of
God, eternity and the dead, and all the
questions of the past, present and fu-
ture. There is not a single doctrine of
theology but has been discussed in the
last ten years by the secular newspapers
Of the country. They gather up all the
news of all the earth bearing ON reli-
gious subjects, and then they scatter the
G0T nEN