The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1898-05-17

eu gfeat influence or rose INTO political
power. In Europe, criticism and COM
ment are the rule, while in America
news is the one thing needful This
may be due to the slow spread of pop
ular education abroad where the readers
are more confined to the best educated
classes who demand thoughtful criticism
in good literary form. In England
great seriousness and regard for truth
IS requisite in good correspondent and
repOrtOrial work, while in France no
weight is attached to these things, if the
articles are only droll or sprightly or
written in a finished style. Their best
writer's in journalism gain fame from
editorials of high merit, and it is said
when a paper is started in Paris
that the simple collection of news or re-
porter's work carries no weight with the
proprietors of the paper, but their
''leading article and the art and theat-
rical criticism must be up to the best
standard of that kind of work. 1t con-
sequently requires much less capital
to 90 into journalism there than it does
in our own country. With us news
paper work has become almost distinct
ly news gathering process, leaving the
higher art of journalism a very small
and insignificant place, and it is for this
reason that it has become merely a step
ping stone to literary work of higher
order.
There has been some discussion as to
whether newspapers were literature at
all. Whatever is written and read is
literature either good or bad. and news
papers have taken an immense hold on
the reading public in all civilized coun-
tries. The hold they are taking on the
bulk OF the people should be considered
serious fact, for it is said and | do not
doubt the truth of the assertion, that
they care eXerting more influence on
the popular mind and the popular
morals than either the pulpit or the
book-press has exerted in five hundred
y
regard to such reading is that it units
ones taste for book-reading, and rem
ders it more difficult to concentrate
ones mind on one subject. The Ordi-
nary newspaper articles requiring four
or five minutes each, give one habit of
browsing about mentally, which is de-
structive to concentration of thought. In
confirmation of this fact | quote from
Mr.. Godkin of The Nation" who saws:
"There has grown up deep and in
creasing scorn on the part of the book
reader and the book maker, Cor the
man who reads nothing but the news
papers and gets his facts and opinions
from them. This is true in every civil
lied country. Go into a circle of scien-
titic or cultivated men in any field in
America, France, Germany or Italy and
you will have the mental food which
newspapers supply to the bulk of the
population, treated with ridicule and
contempt, the authority of a newspaper
as joke and journalism of that class
used as a synonym for shallowness, ig-
norance and blundering. The CONVEX
sion of journalism into the highest
channels of thought will be one of the
serious problems to be solved bv the
coming century," This from one of the
most eminent journalists of our country
Is entitled to respect although one
deprecates his intensity and severity.
All honor is due to the eminent men
who have done so much to elevate Jour
nalism in America, but one cannot but
remember that the ready pen has also
been i'll the hands of cultivated women.
There is no branch of literature in which
she has not shOne and none where she
has welded a larger or more lasting in
tiuence. She has paved the way to
field of work wide, various and whole
some for herself and for her readers.
spirit has asserted itself, of late wears,
which makes way for women in almost
all stations in which men are placed and
she has had the intelligence to take the
measure of the situation in reference to
journalistic work, and one NAV speak
with full assurance as regards the moral
iSSua