The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-26

| invention of slang. But they are more
 generally well written than they were
 fifteen years ago; and are often more
 attractively arranged, The number oi
 young college bred men that they en-
 list grows steadily larger. They arc
 better informeds on the subject they discuss or at least they have acquired
 and organized for better means of gath ering information. Whoever has had to do with public affairs has learned that as all nature is In conspiracy against vacuum, SO under the guld- ance of the newspapers, the whole world
 around them is in conspiracy against a secret. They study the progress and
 even the politics of all nations. They
 give foreign news by cable with ten- fold the fullness of few years ago. A
 rate of fifty-five cents a word from
 China and far more from the Philip
 pines does not check the full daily re-
 ports. Telegraphs and telephones, in the energetic hands of the press, have
 made our own country from ocean to
 ocean, mere sounding board. Trans
 formations and rivalries in associated
 press organizations have made 1t easier
 to start newspapers, and easier to se-
 cure a good news service from all the
 world. There has been an extraordi-
 nary increase In the attention given to
 the interests of women, and also in the
 space surrendered, even in the most
 sedate of journals to every conceivable
 variety of sport. All kinds of special
 interests find constant and copious notice-bicycles and bicycle riders, au- tomobiles, their makers, patterns, riders and records, chess, checkers, bridge whist, spelling reform and every other crank reform, amateur photography, and so on and on to everything that may be found under the sun. In fact the great American daily has become a good deal like the great department stores, a sort of universal provider.
 Tn the villages and smaller towns scarcely anybody, fifteen or twenty years ago, habitually took more than one large daily paper and many were satisfied with weeklies. Even in the large cities, the average well-to-do householder was often content with one morning paper, to which he sometimes but not in the majority of cases added dHOlier TOT CIle evening.
 Now few readers of the prosperous class get on with less than one of each for the house, and another, preferably of different politics, for the office or the street car. Orders from New Workers to serve in all six or seven daily papers are not uncommon enough to attract notice; and even the children and ser wants are found with their favorite journals. Never since the first daily was printed did they give so much for the money, and never were they so much sought after. Everybody reads them and nearly everybody, among the more educated classes a least, abuses them.
 Tt would be unjust to say that the influence of the press at large has de- clined in proportion as its circulation increased, it's resources extended, and people acquired the habit of reading both sides. Yet with all this super fluous richness of material, facility of output, and enormous increase of cir culation, it must be obvious to every one that the influence of the modern news paper has not advanced in equal pro- portion nor has its general standing in the community Improved. When the papers show reasonable agreement they still carry the whole community with them with practical unanimity. The most corrupt and powerful com bination cannot long stand even now against a united press. Government by is in that case more than even before, the most powerful, the most resistless form of government in the known world. But when they diff fer radically on any great public ques- tion. people give less serious thought to what any of them say, and often give less to the question itself.
 'In the multitude of contradictory voices one neutralizes another and the reader thinks of something else.
 Meantime the influence of the press, If measured merely by this frequent ap- pearance of actual subservience to 1t has been enhanced. This outward de- ference may be accompanied by la tent distrust which is becoming unfor- common, and even by dis Linct dislike, which, in spite of the imprudence is now more often openly expressed than formerly. The possibility of more stringent repressive measures, social or legal, for false news md unwarranted personality Is some- times discussed, but not often seriously approached"
 The future of the press is to be dis Jay.