Waterbury Democrat., 1901-01-24
NEWS TRAVELLED SLOW THEN.

their newspapers delivered with the regularity of clockwork, who can buy their evening journals in almost as many editions as a popular novel, and who are continually repeating the par rot phrase that there is nothing in the papers," or who, if they live far from London, can get either a choice of local papers, or receive their favor ite London journals not many hours later than dwellcrs in tOwn-it is not easy for such folk of to-day to realize how slow, how casual and hap-hazard were the transmission and circulation of news in the days before steam and electricity revolutionized the world. In the sixteenth century, when newspa- pers were not, and when pamphlets dealt more with matters of contro versy than with current events, the news of what was happening in Lon don, and that which had gradually reached the capital from foreign coun- tries, circulated through the rural dis tricts of England in a very casual, slow fashion.
 The chief purveyors and dissemina- tors of news were the peddlers and the carriers. It is mistake to sup pose that 300 years ago there was lit tie or irregular communication be- tween the capital and country towns and villages. The country was cover ed with a network of carriers routes. Their carts and wagons-great 1um- bering machines-travelled with what would be to us, an appalling degree of slowness, but they went to and fro with great irregularity. The service might be merely weekly one in many places or even monthly on not a few routes, but the carrier went his rounds with very fair regularity, and acted as universal newsmonger, as we'll as the occasional letter carrier and the con- veyer of goods of every possible kind
 An act of parliament of 1534 speaks of the poor carriers repairy- ing wekely and monthly to your citee of London.''
 An ente1priSing man. one John Taylor compiled with much difficulty and labor {, kind of carriers direc- tory which was printed in 1887. A copy lies before the present writer. It is entitled. ''The Carriers Cosmog- raphy," and the very long title page goes on to promise a list ofIinnS, etc. where the Carriers. Waggoners, Foot posts and Higglers'' from all parts of the kingdom were won't to put up. with the days of their coming. and much other information. There were curious differences in the amount of communication by carrier. Thus, those from Nantwich in Cheshire, Mir Taylor records were to he found at the Axe ill Aldermanbury on We'd nesdays, Thursdays and Fridays: those from Nuneaton. in Warwick shire came on Fridays but the carrier for Nottingham doth lodge at the cross Keys ill St Johns street. He cometh every second Saturday." Similar differences existed in the service of other provincial towns. But whether he went once OF twice or thrice q week, or but once or twice a month, the carrier was the chief newsmonger of the day.
 The thigglers' were men in a small fer way of business than the regular carriers: Taylor styles them ''demi- carriers" The name is seldom heard now. but the higgler of days gone by was :; man who owned q horse and cart and sometimes carried goods ill q small way from place to place, but whose chief occupation was the buy ing Of poultry and dairy produce from farmers and cottagers for carriage to town. and the selling to his customers of small wares brought from the shops in town. The carrier was pur- veyor of news to the towns and viii lages. while the higgler was news monger in ordinary 10 the dwellers off the main roads, to lighthouses and cot tages Defoe. in his Account of the Plague" talks of ''higglers and such people as went to and from London
 with provisions They were also called "hagglers,' and often had no cart, but went on horsebacse--a method of travelling which was probably re- sorted to for other reasons than pov- erty. At q time when the main roads were often in q most deplorable con- dition, the by-reads and country lanes were always worse, and q man going from farm to farm and from hamlet to hamlet could get about much more conveniently and rapidly on horseback
 than when hampered with cart. These higglers on horseback carried their goods in panniers Fuller, in his
 'Worthies of England," written about the time of the Commonwealth, says:
 "Dorsers are Peds or Panniers carried
 on the backs of horses, on which flag
 lers used to ride and carry their com
 modities.' An earlier name for these | most useful itinerant dealers and news
 mongers which was current four and a half centuries ago. was ''cadger." The present day offensive meaning of
 the term is an example of the degrada-
 tion which so many once reputable words and phrases have undergone in the course of time.
 Lower ill the scale of newsnlongers than the cadgers or higglers were the
 wandering salesmen who travelled
 afoot. Mir Hardy in ':Tess of the D'Urbervilles' calls them foot-hig-
 glers. but they are better known by the familiar name of peddlers. They padded or 'plodded the hoof' in the old seventeenth century phrase, from
 house to house and cottage to cottage
 all over the rural parts of the king dom. Their business was to sell, not to buy. They sold all sorts of habe1- dashery, small wares and household
 goods, resorting to the towns as often as was necessary to replenish their stock, and carried with their pack the latest news of what. was stirring, not only in the neighboring parts of their district, but the news of the greater world without, which. after slowly Altering down from London to small country towns and villages. eventual ly reached the most isolated farm houses.-London Globe.