Connecticut western news., 1898-02-24

Il without newspapers and newspapers without government, l would prefer the latter. Stung by some new fabri- cation in print, we come to write or speak about an "unbridled printing press" Our new book ground up in un- just criticism, we come to write or speak about the unfair printing press. " Perhaps through our own indistinctness of utterance we are reported as saying just the opposite of what we did say, and there is a small riot of semicolons and hyphens and commas, and we come to write or talk about the laundering printing press, or we take up news paper full of social scandal and of cases of divorce, and we write or talk about a filthy, scurrilous printing press. " But this morning I ask you to consider the immeasurable and everlasting bless ing of n good newspaper.
 find no difficulty in accounting for the world $ advance. What has made the change? Books" you say. No, sir. The vast majority of citizens do not read books. Take this audience or any other proniiscuous assemblage, and how many histories have they read? How many treatises on. constitutional law or political economy or works of science: How many elaborate poems or books of travel? Not many. In the United States the people would not average one such book year for each individual. Whence then this intelligence, this capacity to talk about all themes, secular and reli- rio tpf,1 xx,frh and art, this power to appreciate the beautiful and grand? Next to the Bible, the newspaper, swift winged and every where present, flying over the fence, showed under the door. tossed into the counting house, laid on the work bench, hawked through the cars. All read it-- white and black, German, -Irishman. Swiss, Spaniard. American, old and young, good and bad, sick and well, be- fore breakfast and after tea, Monday morning, Saturday night, Sunday and weekday. I now declare that consider the newspaper to be the grand agency by which the gospel is to be preached, ignorance cast out, oppression dethron- ed, crime extirpated, the world raised, heaven rejoiced and God glorified In the clanking of the printing press, as the sheets fly out, hear the voice of the Lord Almighty proolaiming to all the dead nations of the earth, Lazarus, come forth p'' and to the retreating surges of darkness, "Let there be light i'' In many of our city newspapers, pro fessing no more than secular informa- tion, there have appeared during the past 80 years some of the grandest ap- peals in behalf of religion and some of the most effective interpretations of Gods government among the nations.
 Good and Bad Newspapers.
 There are only two kinds of newspa- pers-the one good, very good; the other bad, very bad. A newspaper may be started with an undecided character. but after it has been going on for years every body finds out just what it is, and it is very good or it is very bad. The one paper is the embodiment of news, the ally of virtue, the foe of crime, the delectation of elevated taste, the mighti est agency on earth for making the world better. The other paper is brig and among moral forces. it is a be- sinner of reputation, 1t is the right arm of death and he'll, it is the lnightiest agency in the universe for making the world worse and battling against the cause of God-the one an angel of in telligence and mercy, the other fiend of darkness. Between this archangel and this fury is to be fought the great battle which is to decide the fate of the world. If you have any doubt as to which is to be victor, ask the prophecies, ask God. The chief batteries with which he would vindicate the right and thuu. der down the wrong are now unlimber- ed. The great Armageddon of the ma tions is not to be fought with swords, but with steel pens; not with bullets, but with type; not with cannon, hut with lightning perfecting presses, and the Sumters and the Moultries and the Pulaskis and the Gibraltars of that con- f1ict will be the editorial and reportorial rooms of our great newspaper establish ments. Men of the press, God has put a more stupendous responsibility upon you than upon any other class of per sons. What long strides your profession has made in influence and power since the day when Peter Sheffer invented cast metal type, and because two books were found just alike they were ascribed to the work of the devil, and books were printed on strips of bamboo, and Rev. Jesse Glover originated the first Ameri- can printing press, and the common council of New York in solemn resolu- tion offered $200 to any printer who would come there and live, and when the speaker of the house of parliament in England announced with indignation that the public prints had recognized some of their doings, until in this day, when we have in this country many thousands of skilled stenographers and newspapers sending out copies by the billion. The press and the telegraph have gone down into the same great harvest field to reap, and the telegraph says to the newspaper, "Ill rake while you bind," and the iron teeth of the telegraph are set down at one end of the harvest field and drawn clean across, and the newspaper gathers up the sheaves, setting down one sheaf on the breakfast table in the shape of morn ing newspaper and putting down an- obhCA ollOd1 Ou tLO tOtb LhDlO III GbC ohdPO ef an evening newspaper. and that man who neither reads nor takes newspa- per would be curiosity. What vast progress since the days when Cardinal Wolsey declared that either the print
 ing press must go down or the church of God must go down to this time, when the printing press and the pulpit are in hundreds of glorious combinations and alliances!
 Trials of Newspaper Work.
 One of the great trials of this news paper profession is the fact that they are compelled to see more uf the shams of the world than any other profession. Through every newspaper office, day by day, 30 the weakness of the world, the vanities that want to be puffed, the re- yenges that want to be wrecked, all the mistakes that want to be corrected, all