The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1898-03-04

want to be set right who never were
right, all the crack-brained philoso-
piers, with story as long as their hair
and as gloomy as their finger-nails, all
the itinerant bores who come to stay
five minutes and stop an hour From
the editorial and reportoria1 rooms all
the foIlles and shams of the world are
seen day by day, and the temptation is
to believe neither in God, man. nor
woman. 1t is no surprise to me that in
your profession there are some skepti-
cal men. | only wonder that You be-
lieve anything. Unless an editor or a
reporter has in his present or in his
early home a model of earnest char
acter, or he throw himself upon the up
holding grace of God, he may make
temporal and eternal shipwreck.
Another great trial of the newspaper
profession is inadequate compensation.
Since the days of Hazlitt. and Sheri-
dan, and John Milton, and the wailings
Of Grub street, London, literary toll,
with very few exceptions, has not been
properly requited When Oliver Gold
smith received friend in his house, he
(the authOr) had to sit on the window,
Linnaeus sold his splendid work for a
ducat. De Foe, the author of so many
volumes, died pennilesS. The learned
johnson dined behind a screen
because his clothes were too
shabby to allow him to dine with
the gentlemen who, on the other side
of the screen, We're applauding his
works. And so on down to the present
time literary toll is a great struggle
for bread. The world seems to have 4
grudge against man who, as they say,
gets his living by his wits; and the day
laborer says to the man OF literary toll:
You come down here and shove
plane, and hammer, a shoe last, and
break cObble stones, and earn an
honest living, as l do, instead of
sitting there in idlenesS and scrib-
bling But there are no harder
worked men in all the earth than the
newspaper men of this country 1t
is not a matter of hard times; it is char
acteristic at all times. Men have a
better appreciation for that which APP
peals to the brain. They have no idea
of the immense financial and intel
lectual exhaustion of the newspaper
press. Oh, men of the press, it will be
a great help to you if, when you get
home late at night, tagged out and
nervous with your work, you would
just kneel down and commend your
case to God, who has watched all the
fatigue of the day and the night, and
who has promised to be your God and
the God of your children forever!
Another great trial OF the newspaper
profession is the diseased appetite for
unhealthy intelligence. You blame the
newspaper press for giving such
prominence to murders and scandals.
Do you suppose that so many papers
would give prominence to these things
if the people did not demand them? If
l 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 l come to the con-
clusiOn 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 a newspaper, and there are in
1t no runaway matches, no bro6en-up
families, no defamation of men in high
position, they pronounce the paper in
sipid. They say: 1t is shOckingly
dull tonight" l believe it is one of
the trials of the newspaper press, that
the people of this country demand NOR
al sluSh instead of healthy and intel
lectual food. Now, you are a respect
able man, an intelligent man, and a
paper comes into your hand. You open
it, and there are three columns of
splcndidly-written editorial, recon-
some moral sentiment, or
evolving some scientific theory.
In the next column there is a
contemplate divorce
case. Which do you read first? |
You dip into the editorial long enough |
to say, ''Well, that's very ably writ |
ten 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's only a 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 and |
healthful newspapers, nothing |
bu1 pure, honest and healthful |
would be published. If |
you should gather all the editors and |
reporters of this country in one great |
and ask of them what kind |
of paper they would prefer to pub
lish, L believe they would unani-
mously say: I'VE would prefer to pub
lish an eleyating paper" So long as
there is an Ubiquitous demand there
will be an iniquitous supply. l make
no apology for debauched newspaper,
but am saying these things in order
to divide the responsibility between
those who print and those who read.
When L see the printing press stand
ing with the electric telegraph on the
one side gathering up material, and
the lightning express train on the other
side waiting for the tons of folded
sheets of newspapers, l pronounce it
the mightiest force in our civilization.
So l commend you to pray for all
those who manage the newspapers of
the land, for all typeSetterS, for all ed
tors, for all publishers, that, sitting
Or standing in positions of such great
influence, they may give all that in
influence for God and the betterment
IF the human race An aged woman
making her living by knitting unwound
5he yarn from the ball until she found
N the center of the ball there was an
I'D piece of newspaper She opened it
Ind read an advertisement which an
bounced that she had become heiress
20 a large property, and that frag-
nent of newspaper lifted her up
rom pauperism to affiuence. And
10 not l-nn1u hut as the thread of TINA |