Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-04
STATE PRESS ASSOCIATION.


Tomorrow the newspaper men of Mon
tana will co~ngregate in the city of Ana
conda to exchange views as to the best
way to mold public opinion and eat reg
ularly in off years. While it may be i'm
possible for some of the bright lights Of
Montana journalism to be there during
the two days meet Of the state press
association, thereby creating a long felt
want which those present may find it
necessary to fill in the most approved
Anaconda way, the exercises will. in the
nature of things, be redolent with eclat.
! The annual meetings of the association
conserve a number of purpose more or
less interesting to the public. It means
that once a year, for two or three days,
perhaps, or for one week out in the buco-
lie regions where folks can't get along
without grass as we do in Butte, the pub
lie enjoys a respite from the great prob
lens of government that sizzle and
seethe through the bikes and assures of
the editorial brain. To receive one issue
of a great family newspaper that isn't
trying to say the country, must be a
newspaper reader, who is brought in
touch with an impending crisis every
twenty-four hours.
But the public does not alone profit
through these annua gatherings of grey
matter. Incidentally. the editors them
selves receive a great deal of benefit,
among other things getting the squarest
kind Of a square meal as the doxology
to the programme. For a man whose
diet for the year past has been chiefly
confined to intellectual pabulum, a ban
sis. as it We're, gives to life's trouble
dream a silver lining, without compelling
him to furnish his own silver for that
purpose.
While quail on toast is an interesting
advertisement for the man who has
thrived on pork and beans, with flap
Jacks and molasses for dessert, it is not
the only happiness that reigns at a meet
ing of the state press association. There
are intellectual enjoyments, such as es-
says on how to make the printing BUSH
do not, and learned dissertations on
whether MISUNDERSTANDING adver-
tisements should be published after TAX
ing them, and champagne and frog legs,
together with a chance to visit the public
schools and take in the salvation army on
a free ticket.
Hilarity usually reigns more or less SUI
preme, n newspape men whose views
are as far apart as Aguinaldo and Cen
eral Otis, will look at things through the
same glass, as it were, at these annual
meetings, for the barkeeper frequently
gets them mixed-not the glasses but the
newspaper men. All evidences of asper-
ity disappear under the sunshine of a
journalistic conclave, and newspaper
men who have jawed each other for
months will BOARD at the same hotel
without creating any disturbance. It is
q tim when newspaper men rise above
crime. and are willing to acknowledge
that there are Others. For the time being
the man who works forty-eight hours a
day on a daily paper, trying to shape the
destinies of the republic, is just as good
as the man who edits a weekly paper
and raises enough garden sass for home
consumption under his own vine and fig
tree, and can go fishing on Sunday with
out exciting suspicion.
The association is the great ~leveller. It
teaches the newspaper missionary that
his soiourn in this veil of tears is not
strictly a sinsle-handed play, but that its
~incongruities are shared by others. 1t is
Il play-day for those who earn their
bread by the sweat of their cerebrums,
an intellectual treat, a social repast, to
say nothing of the quail on toast. the frog
legs, the champagne and other things
that go to make up a journalistic holiday.
The sign of the zodiac is in the right de-
Clension of the moon to forecast a first
class time in Anaconda, and who can
doubt it?