The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1902-01-10
ONE ADVANTAGE OF
... THE HOLIDAY RECESS

There is at least one advantage in
the arrangement which interrupts the
first regular session of every congress
with holiday recess in two or three
weeks after it convenes. Without
contending for continuance of the
venerable lava constitutional pro-
vision intended for the first congress
and leaving the time OF meeting for
future congresses to be determined by
legislative action-we can admit that
there are two sides to the quest ion.
1t happens this year, as it has often
happened in the past, that the new
congress was in session long enough to
give a fairly clear indication of what
it means to do and what it means to
leave undone. 1t formulated policies
which it will consummate if the
leaders believe that in SO doing they
will have the support of the people.
Measures of great moment were in
troduced and the introduction of others
scarcely less important was foresha-
dowed. Having fairly and frankly
shown its intentions, congress took a
recess, and most of its members have
gone to their homes.
1t is not well, at this juncture,
when so many and such weighty affairs
are before the legislative agents of
the people, that these agents should
have an opportunity for contact with
their principals 1t seems to US that
good results must follow this putting
of the congressional ear to the ground.
It ought to be helpful to the dominant
party and to the minority, and, there
fore, to the country.
Public opinion is a much greater
factor in legislative and administra-
tive policy than it was in earlier
times, because it is more promptly crys-
talized and more intelligent. The
average man reads discussions Of liv-
ing issues and current topics ten times
more than his father and hundred
times more than his grandfather did.
And, unlike his progenitors, he is
apt to read both sides, or all sides, of
a question. The daily paper has super
ceded the weekly in the homes of the
masses, and the daily has doubled and
often quadrupled its dimensions. For
every pound of paper consumed by
newspaper printing presses fifty years
ago, two hundred pounds or more are
thus expended today. Not only in
quantity, but equally in quality, has
the reading matter of the people ad-
vanced,
1t is not long since it was deemed
quite the proper thing for political
newspaper to shut out or garble all
news favorable to the other party. In
those days it was impossible for any
man to be we'll informed as to public
men or issues without habitually
reading a number of papers. Happily,
all that has been turned down. No re-
spectacle newspaper now deems it ex-
pedient TO suppress or "cook' reports
to suit the side on which his paper
stands. And there are few editors
capable of the folly of printing edi
torials to which the lie is given by
their news reports.
So it has come about that public
opinion is not only more prompt in
crystalizing, but more intelligent than
it was in the not very remote past.
And this ia one of the advances deriv-
ed from the holiday recess. It is an
advantage that no man who cares for
popular appreciation can afford to
slight. w Washington Post.