The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1896-04-01

the powerful Sunday press. and which
hard hitters like WestcOtt and Tag
CART had monopolized. He gave enter
tsinment from the start to that con-
siderable portion of the community
which regards a newspaper sensation
before breakfast as much of q neces-
sity as the matutinal cocktail. He
took almost as much journalistic pride
In the horse-whipping which big Nat
Mckay. then as herculean in frame as
himself. tried to give him one after
noon on Chestnut street as Story of the
Chicago Times Is said to have felt
when handsome Lydia Thompson piled
her whip on his person. When Will
lam B. Reed, Buchanan's minister to
China, and the most graceful and IN
cisive Democratic writer OF his day.
attacked him in the World, and. de-
scribing the rebel raid at Chambers
burg, wrote how the flames which Nc
Causland lighted at McClure's house
sent up showers of sparks which, leach
whirling its way up to heaven, told OF
some legislative job well paid for"
Mcclure assumed to enjoy 1t. and used
to amuse the public greatly by reprint
ing the worst things his enmies said
about him. When Forney left the
Press and was succeeded by w. w.
Nevin, he kept up a row nearly every
morning that soon became an unequal
match. In short. his policy was a
good deal like Ben Buffers when he be-
came governor of Massachusetts-to
shock ancient and respectable folk. and
to keep all the old women of either sex
In a state of nervous ferment. looking
under the bed or dreaming of ghosts.
All this would be done In a strain Of
Al,,t. .x.kt ktxl. IA
ioned stump speech. modelled after the
style of "Junius." and garnished, often
very. happily, with the latest epithets
from the vocabulary Of slang. 1t was
the kind of rhetoric which the crowd
likes and which generally jingles well
In the popular ear. 1t always had the
impressiveness which comes from a
cochsure statement delivered with the
gravity of supreme court justice
handing down an opinion, or like the
oracuiar forecasts OF clairvoyant
peeflng into the mysteries of the flu
ture. 1t often had the ring Of insincer-
ity to the judicious, and II much more
often. when analyzed for. facts. turned
out to be cloud of words, puffed up
and expanded like the gauxy skirts Of
l.oie Fuller But, after all these and
other things like them are allowed for.
'SPS'iuhs tue WHICH has
sometimes done to private character in
simian-like spirit of mischief, rather
than In malice, the Mcclure influence
In the past twenty years has been q
stimulus. 1t has given rise to new de-
partures In journalism, and with one
exception there Is not morning paper
which Is not vastly stronger In power,
circulation and a certain professional
pride than when Mcclure threw his
shining lance into the field regardless
OF whom he might hit and anxious to
prove his idea that the organ Journal
ism OF the Greeleys and the Forneys
was u thing of the past. t..
But the Mcclure of today IL not the
Mcclure of 1876. AS the colonel ap-
proaches the three score and ten he
grows mellowy and magnanimous, and
philosophical, forsiving old enemies and
no longer inviting new ones. The 1000
columns of editorials he has written in
the past tWenty-one years begin with
the bludgeon and end with the rattan,