The record-union., 1897-11-28
JUSTIFIABLE OPTIMISM.

e'iio iiOliy iuulSudIlt anu supremacy OlS-
gusted over the disposition of so many
of the press to stir up trouble, to find
fault, to make a business of carping
and deploring, and of commisserating
the public on account of so much that it
finds to be threatening, rascally and
damnable. Equally it protests against
the growing habit among editors of call
ing names, denouncing and seeing all
things darkly. 1t asks if there is moth
ing noble, generous, good, kind, manly
and honest in our social and business
life, that can be discovered, approved
and held forth to encourage and to be
emulated.
1t points out that the disposition to
rake up and pull down, to hunt out small
parade petty weaknesses in large type,
blazing illustrations, and words, and
scandalous verbal assault is running
mad in the press.
To the Mercury" it SENS, from read
ing the papers of the day, that the whole
community is one of rings, and gangs,
and combines, and that everybody from
church TO school, from counter to wharf,
is going to the bad and getting worse
hourly, until it begins to fear that the
devil is lurking around the corner for
every mothers son and daughter.
Let not the Mercury" be troubled.
Ife,1 Lot, 1, tttc f,r1a
but all ills Of this kind work out their
own remedies. Croaking and murmur-
ing and charging and suspect
ing has been going on in all the
ages of civilization, yet the world has
moved forward, men are better, busi-
ness is sounder, science has more ad
Vanced, human sympathy is broader,
charity and beneficence are more gen.
eral life is more precious, love is
| stronger and friendship as still fast
binding
1t is true that it has come to pass.
that to charge one with ill-doing and
demand of him or her that innocence be
proved before guilt is established, is an
evil, and that the press very largely cul
tivates this uncharita bleness But just
in proportion as it does so the press loses
| influence, and men discard it as means
for good.
But there is the clean, the manly and
the just press, the leaven of good out of
which will come in season better jour
nalistic conditions. AS we write there
lies before us a journal which, in con-
sidering the action of public man, says
''he has been charged, and that is enough
until it is cleared up.' That is the
greater evil of the press Of the day. In
earlier periods the newspaper as the
conservator of truth and justice assumed
the innocence Of men until their guilt
was established. In these days, unhap
PLY, with a large number of the more
pretentious exponents of public opinion,
the mere suggestion Of suspicion is
| treated as guilt.
But let our contemporary be consoled.
These evils are in the main charge
able to metropolitan Journalism.
That which is best, most manly and
true in the profession, resides in coun-
try and town journalism; that is the
leaven that will save the loaf. Sensa-
tionalisrn, the exaltation of small things
and small men, the trial by newspaper
without proof or warrant, the scandal
and filth publications, groping with a
III af
| indecency and filth, will not work the
evil some assume. For public judgment
in the long run comes around to the
right, and the press that prostitutes its
Office will not escape the cool and just
verdict of public condemnation. 1t is
already so far discredited that nine men
| out of ten who read the disreputable,
sensational and corrupting press give its
tions and statements of alleged fact,
| little or no credit-they have come to
that point when they believe nothing
they see in the sensational and pessimis-
tic papers, until it is fortified by in
disputable evidence of the truth.
II will be seen therefore that the virus
is furnishing it's own remedies, and that
] despite the croakers, the scandal bear
ers and muck heap rakers, the fault
| finders and dismal delivers in the grue-
some and the unsavory, the world is bet
ter. the age better, human faith greater,
human trust larger, human beneficence
broader than ever before Civilization
is not going backward, and man has not
so far fulfilled his mission that he can be
rated as in decadence.