The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1898-02-25

profession is the diseased appetite for
unhealthy intelligence. You blame the
newspaper press for giving such promi-
nence to murders and scandals. Do you
suppose that so many papers would give
prominence to these things if the people
did not demand them? Ii | go into the
meat market of foreign city and | find
that the butchers hang up on the most
conspicuous hooks meat that is tainted,
while the meat that is fresh and savOry
is put away without any special care, ]
come to the conclusion that the people
of that city love tainted meat. You
know very well that if the great mass
of people in this country get hold Of
newspaper and there are in it no runa-
way matches, no broken up families, no
defamation of men in high position
they pronounce the paper insipid. They
say "It is shockingly dull tonight. " l
believe it is one of the trials of the news
paper press that the people of this coun-
try demand moral slush instead of heal
thy and intellectual food Now you are
a respectable man, an intelligent man,
| and a paper comes into your hand. You
open it, and there are three columns OF
splendidIy written editorial, recon-
mending some moral sentiment or evolv
ing some scientific theory. In the next
column there is miserable, contempti-
BILE divorce case Which do you read
first? You dip into the editorial long
enough to say, "Well, that's very ably
written, and you read the divorce case
from the long primer type at the top to
the nonpareil type at the bottom, and
then you ask your wife if she has read
it, Oh, it is only case of supply and
demand Newspaper men are not fools.
They know what you want, and they
give it to you. l believe that if the
church and the world bought nothing
but pure, honest, healthful newspapers
nothing but pure, honest and healthful
newspapers would be published. If you
should gather all the editors and the re-
porters of this country in one great con
vention and ask of them what kind of a
paper they would prefer to publish,
believe they would unanimously say,
"We would prefer to publish an elevat-
ing paper. So long as there is an in
iuuitous demand there will be an in
iquitous supply. | make no apology for
a debauched newspaper, but | am say
ing these things in order to divide the
responsibility between those who print
and those who read.
Another temptation of the newspaper
profession is the great allurement that
surrounds them. Every occupation and
Profession has temptations peculiar to
itself, and the newspaper profession is
not an exception. The great demand,
as you know, is on the nervous force,
and the brain is racked. The laundering
political speech must read well for the
sake of the party, and so the reporter
or the editor has to make it read we'll,
although every sentence were catastro-
phe to the English language. The re-
porter must hear all that an inaudible
speaker who thinks it is vulgar to speak
out SAYS and it must be right the next
morning or the next night in the papers,
though the night before the whole audi
ence sat with its hand behind its ear in
vain trying to catch it. This man must
90 through killing night work, He must
90 into heated assemblages and into I'M
ventilated audience rooms that are
enough to take the life out of him. He
must visit courtrooms which are almost
always disgusting with rum and tobac-
co. He must expose himself at the fire.
He must write in fetid alleyways.
Added to all that he must have hasty
mastication and irregular habits. To
bear up under this tremendous nervous
strain they are tempted to artificial
stimulus, and how many thousands
have gone down under their pressure
God only knows. They must have some
thing to counterfeit the wet, they must
/ have something to keep out the chill
and after a scant nights sleep they
must have something to revive them for
the mornings work. This is what made
Horace Greeley such a stout temperance
man. l said to him, "Mr. Greeley, why
are you more eloquent on the subject of
temperance than any other subject?"
/ He replied. II have seen so many of my
best friends in journalism go down un-
/ der intemperance.
Oh my dear brother of the newspaper
profession. what you cannot do without