The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-03-23
TALMAeE ON The NEWSPAPER
THE WHEELS OF TIRE PRINTING
PRESS Fill OF EYES.


Of the Growth of the Newspaper
The Press a. the Defender of HUI
man Liberty.
Washington. March 22.-'fNewspapeI
Row as il is called here in Washington
the long row of offices connected with
prominent journals through bout the lanu'
paws so much attention TO DR. TalmaEe,
they may be glad TO hear what he thinks
Of them. while ne discusses a subject IN
which the whole country is interested.
His text to-day was; And the wheels
were fun of eyes" Ezekiel, 1872 For all
the Athenians and strangers which were
there spent their time i'm nothing else but
either TO tell or TO hear some new thing. 70
Acts. Il q.
What Is a preacher TO do when he finds
two texts equally good and suggestive?
In that perpleXity 1 take both. Wheels
fun of eyes2 What but the wheels of
a newspaper printing press? Other wheels
are blind. They roll on. pulling or crush
ing. The manufacturers wheel. how it
grinds the operator with fatigues, ana
rolls over nerve and muscle and bone
and heart. not knowing what it does. The
sewing machine wheel sees not the aches
and pains fastened to it-tighter than the
band that moves il, sharper that the
needle which il plies. Every moment or
every hour of every day of every month
of every year there are hundreds of thou
sands of wheels of mechanism, wheels Of
enterprise. wheels Of hard work. in mo-
tion, but they are eyeless. Not so the
wheels of the printing press. Their entire
business is to look and report. They are
fun of optic nerves. from axle to periphery.
They are like those spoken Of by Ezekiel
as fun of eyes. Sharp eyes, near-sighted,
far-sighted. They look up. They look
down. They look far away. They take
in the next street and the next hemls-
phere. Eyes Of criticism. eyes of investi-
gauon; eyes that twinkle with mirth,
eyes glowering with Indignation. eyes ten
der with love; eyes of suspicion, eyes OF
hope; blue eyes black ewes. green ewes:
holy eyes, evil eyes, sore eyes, political
eyes, literary eyes. historical eyes, relig-
1ous eyes; eyes that see everything. And
the wheels were fun of eyes" But i'm my
second text IS the worlds cry for the
newspaper. Paul describes a class of peO-
pie IN Athens who spent their time either
in gathering the news or telling IT, WHY
especially in Athens2 Because the more
intelligent people become, the more in
Quisitive they are-not about small things,
but great things
The question then most frequently is the
question now most frequently asked. What
Is the news? To answer that cry I'm the
text FOR the newspaper the centuries have
put their wits to work China first suc-
ceeded and has al Pekin a newspaper that
mas been printed every week for one thou
sand years, printed on silk. Rome sue
ceeeded by publishing the Acta Dmrna, in
the same column putting fires, murders
marriages and tempests. France succeed
ed by a physician writing out the news
of the day for his patients England
succeeded under Queen Elizabeth in first
publishing the news of the Spanish Ar
mazda, and going on until she had enough
enterprise, when the battle of Waterloo
was fought, deciding the destiny of Eu-
rope, 10 give II one-third of a column in
the London Morning Chronicle about as
much as the newspaper of our day gives
or a small fire. America succeeded by
Benjamin Harris first weekly paper cali
ed Public Occurrences, published in Bos-
ton in 1880, and by the first dailv the
delphia in 1854.
The newspaper did not suddenly sprinp
upon the world, but came gradually The
genealogical line of the newspaper is this.
The Adam of the race was a circular or
news letter, created by Divine impulse in
human nature; and the circular begat the
panphlet, and the pamphlet begat the
quarterly, and the quarterly begat the
weekly, and the weekly begat the semi
weekly, and the semi-weekly begat the
dally. But, alasi by what a STRUGGLE ir
came came 70 its present development! No
sooner had its power been demonstrated
Inan tyranny and superstition shackled n
Ihere Is nothing that despotism so fears
ano mates as printing press. 1t has too
MANY eyes IN its wheel. A great writer
declared. that the King of Naples made If
unsafe for him to write of anvtbineS b,it
d 5S,r ord a history. Austria could not en-
lure hossuths journalistic pen plead
ing Tor the redemption of Hungary Ma
poIeon l, trying to keep his iron heel or
t tie neck OF nations, said: Editors are
ne regents OF sovereigns and the tutors
OF nations, and are only fit for prison
But the battle for the freedom of tha
press was fought in the court rooms of
f5HsIdhd ana America, and decided before
TINS century began by Hamilton's eloonenf
pea Tor J;Peter Zenger's Gazette in Amey-
lSd, ana Erskfne's advocacy of the free
dom OF publication in England These
were the Marathon and Thef-mopvlae in
which the freedom of the press was
established in the United States ana
treat Britain, and all the powers of
earth and hell will never again he ahia
70 put on the handouts and hopples Of
literary and political despotism III is
notable that Thomas Jefferson ubo
wrote the Declaration of American In
dependence, wrote also: If / had to
choose between a government without
newspaperS or newspapers without a gov
STnment, should prefer the latter -
Stung by some base fabrication coming
10 US In print, we come to write or sneak
OF the unbridled printing press; or, our
new book ground up by an unjust critic
we come TO write or speak of the I'M
FAIRNESS OF the printing press; or per-
maps, through our own indistinctness of
utterance, we are reported as saving iust
the opposite of what we did saw. and
there is small riot of semi
colons, hyphens and commas, and we
printing press; or, seeing a paper filed
with divorce cases or social scandal we
speak and write of the filthy printing
press; or, seeing a journal through brib-
cry wheel round from one political side
TO the other in one night we speak of
the corrupt printing press, and many
talk about the lampoonery, and the EN-
pirlclsm, and the sans-culotteism of the
printing press.
But / discourse now on a subject YOU
nave never heard-the immeasurab BILE and
everlasting blessing of a good newspa-
per. Thank God for the wheel fun of
eyes. Thank God that we do not have
like the Athenians-to go about to gather
up and relate the tidings of the day,
since the omniVOrous newspaper does
both for us. The grandest temporal
blessing that God has given to the nine
teenth century is the newspaper. We
would have better appreciation of this
blessing if we knew the money, the brain,
the losses, the eXasperations, the anxi-
cites, the wear and tear of heartstrings
involved in the production of a good
newspaper, Under the impression that
almost any body can make a newspaper
scores of inexperienced capitalists every
year enter the lists and, cons equentlV
during the last few years, a newspaper
has died almost every. day. The disease
is epidemic. The large papers swallow
the smaller ones the whale taking down
fifty minnows at one swallow. With more
than seven thousand dailies and weeklies