Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1898-03-02

save natural history. Austria could
not bear Kossuth's journalistic pen
leading for the redemption of Hungary.
Napoleon T., wanting to keep his iron
heel on the neck of nations, said that
the newspaper was the regent of kings,
and the only safe place to keep an
editor was in prison. But the great
battle for the freedom of the press was
fought in the court rooms of England
and the United States before this CEN
tury began, when Hamilton made his
great speech in behalf of the freedom
of j. Peter Zenger's Gazette in Ameri-
ca, and when Erskine made his great
speech in behalf of the freedom to pub
lish Paine's Rights of Man" in Eng
land. Those were the Marathon ana
the Thermopylae where the battle was
fought which decided the freedom OF
the press in England and America, and
all the powers of earth and hell Will
never again be able to put upon the
| printing press the handouts and the
hopples of literary and political des-
potism. 1t is remarkable that Thomas
|
of independence, also wrote these
words: IF l had to choose between
a government without newspapers, and
newspapers without a government, l
would prefer the latter" Stung by
some new fabrication in print, we come
to write or speak about an "unbridled
printing press" Our new book ground
up in unjust criticism, we come to write
| or speak about the unfair printing
press" Perhaps through our own in
| distinctness of utterance we are report
ed as saying just the opposite OF what
we did say, and there is a small riot
of semicolons and hyphens and COM
mas, and We come to write or talk
about the "blundering printing press"
or we take up a newspaper full OF So
cial scandal and of cases OF divorce,
and we write or talk about filthy,
scurrilous printing press" But this
morning / ask you to consider the i'm
measurable and everlasting blessing of
a good newspaper.
1 find no difficulty in accounting for
the worlds 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 promiscuous assemblage,
and how many histories have they
read? How many treatises on con-
stitutional law, or political economy, or
works of science? How many elab-
crate 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 re-
! lgious: this acquaintance with science
and art this power to appreciate the
beautiful and grand? Next to the BIZ
BILE, the newspaper, swift-winged and
everywhere 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, Spaniards. American,
old and young, good and bad, sick and
we'll, before breakfast and after tea,
Monday morning, Saturday night,
| Sunday and week day. / now declare
that consider the newspaper to be the
grand agency by which the gospel is
| to be preached, ignorance cast out, op-
preston dethroned, crime extirpated,
| the world raised, heaven rejoiced, and
| God glorified In the clanking of the
printing press, as the sheets fly out, /
hear the Vai"e of the Lord Almighty
proclaiming to az the dead nations of
the earth, "LaZarur, come FORTH and
to the retreating suNges of darkness,
LET there be light" In NAV OF our
city newspapers, protesting no more
than secular information, there have
appeared during the past thirty years
some of the grandest appeals in behalf
of religion, and some Of the most eff
fective interpretations of Gods govern
ment among the nations.
One of the great trials of the news
paper profession is the fact that they
are compelled to see more of the shams
OF the world than any other profession.
Through every newspaper office, day by
day. go the weakness of the world, the
vanities that want to be puffed, the
revenges that want to be wreaked,
all the mistakes that want to be cor
rected. all the dull speakers who want
to be thought eloquent, all the mean
ness that wants to get its wares noticed
gratis in the editorial columns in order
to save the tax of the advertising col
umn. all the men who want to be set
right who never were right, all the
rack-brained philosophers. 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 honr. From the editorial
and reportorial rooms all the follies
and shams of the world are seen day
by day. and the temptation is to be-
lieve neither in God. man, nor woman.
It is no surprise to me that in your pro-
fession there are some skeptical men.
only wonder that you believe any
thing. Unless an editor or reporter
has in his present or in his early home
a model of earnest character, or he
throw himself upon the UNFOLDING
grace of God. he may make temporal