The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-26
ADDRESS OF WHITELAW REID
Continued From First Page.)


 appropriate introduction to the lecture:
 he wished delivered to Yale men abou
 newspaper work. He had been as en-
 thusiastic as any of us in our campaign
 for Hayes against Tilden for the presi-
 dency, but on the day after the election
 he made up his mind that we had prob.
 ably lost When the dispute over the result broke out he became more and
 more disturbed at the steady support - given by our editorial page to the re-
 publican claim of Genera Hayes cleo
 tion At first he merely avoided writing on the subject. Then he began statirg his doubts to his associates and even offering them to me in editorial form. Next he thought 1t his duty to address me long and cogent letter of remon- stIance against my course and finally he came to me with the statement that he felt as if he must give up all connec- tion with journal whose attitude in such a national crisis he could not con-
 scientiously approve. It was not till was able to tell him some of the facts which were afterward elaborately de- veloped in our translation of the fla nous cipher dispatches from Gramercy Park that his purpose was changed.
 Tn these days when newspaper office is sometimes sold with it's staff like livery stable with it's stock, when some editorial writers pass freely from an administration to an opposition pa- per, or from a protectice tariff to a free I trade one, without the dropping of an eyelid or sign that they consider the change more important than that of the bricklayer who passes from work on a church to work on dance hall or liquor saloon it is good to remember editors of anotber kind, and to begin these lec | lures by recalling this characteristic incident in the life. of the man who founded them. He would have been ashamed of the vocation he followed if he thought it's successful pursuit in- volved the editorial writer in advocat- ing one doctrine he did not believe or making one statement he did not think true. Far better, more manly, more | dignifled, more self-respecting and re- spected, to be at once the hod-carrier on the liquor saloon. He at least practices no sham and tells no lies.
 T know well enough how prevalent now is contrary view of editorial eth les, especially In the large cities and among subordinates, at least, in some of the most popular and widely read newspapers. Yes, that is exactly the opposite of what used to write on the Clarion, have heard more than one bright man say, but what would you have? must furnish what I can find a market for
 "Gentlemen and scholars of Yale, I feel sure that, like Dr. Johnson in a. similar case, you will not recognize that necessity The man might at least have dug potatoes and remained respectable. There is no law compelling you to write editorials you do not believe, no order of court that may be construed into per- hitting you to attempt making the worse appear the better reason; and there is still in the mind of every hon est educated man wholesome loathing for that leprous form of modern degen- eracy, the intellectual prostitute"
 The lecturer then spoke of the in- creased tendency to newspaper work among collegians and the circumstances that led to it, but enumerated certain drawbacks that ought to be considered. He next referred to the tendency to
 
 more kinds of things more sensational treatment pictures, cheaper prices, diff ferent reading habits of the public etc., and the causes that had brought all this about. He spoke of having himself bought paper all the way from twenty two cents a pound down to one and half cents of Improvements in printing presses and of the practical abolition of typesetting. The date of the first or der for machines to replace had com- position through the general work of large newspaper was given in July, 1886. Other members of the syndicate began a year and quarter later: the first outside paper, the Providence Journal. began in 1889, and next the New York Herald in 1890. By 1900 over five thou sand of the machines first introduced were in daily use in the United States and several other kinds, also of Ameri- can invention, were endeavoring to dis pute the market.
 It was next shown that the reduc- tions in prices compelled by all these reductions in cost created a new con- stituency This constituency had diff | ferent tastes from the old one, and dulOHS ledIuIGS WllCu Iut tucI dGNCloP~ ed it was mentioned the incessant play ing on two chords of human nature, | the liking of most people to see their | names in print. and their ability to hear criticisms of their neighbors with | 
 The number of men who cannot re- strain their curiosity about what is in the newspapers they disapprove of is positive revelation to the moralist who looks into it. A craze for circulation at any cost next took possession of many old papers; circulation rather than mer- It, circulation In fact as the only prac- tical test of merit, circulation among Intelligent and moral classes, if practice able and convenient, but at any rate a very great circulation, no matter among what classes, as the final evidence of success and the only way to make the sale of a newspaper below the cost of ultimately profitable. Thus the press came at last to extend ts report over almost every conceiv- able form of the multiplied activities of Tn age when all the world seems to be wanting to rush into cities, and live in he glare of electric light, and move 0 the accompaniment of brass bands, md be tortured with unrest if ever left