The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1904-01-28
TWO POTENT FORCES IN POLL
TICS.

are the country press and the travel
ing men. According to careful
estimate sixty per cent of the news
paper reading public only read on
paper and that one is their home
local sheet. 1t has come to b.
quite generally believed that the
editor of the city daily is simply 8
hired man working for he interests
that own the paper. His editorials
do not represent his own ideas and
sentiments but the ideas of those
who pay him his salary. The great
daily of today devotes itself to
specialties and is read by special
lists. The business man chances at
the news and markets, the sports
and sporting columns. Society peo-
pie, the social news and the house
wife, the bargain sale advertise
ments. Then it is thrown into the
waste-basket and It's contents for.
gotten. 1t makes no more i'm
preston on the mind of the reader
than rain on tin roof. 1t covers
so many subjects and there is so
much of it that if one absorbed it
all he couldn't do anything else, and
he would have to sleep with ice on
his head to keep from getting the
brain fever. 1t is marvellous in
stitution, the greatest wonder of
the age but it don't have any more
influence over mems political &C
tions than the Century Cyclopedia.
On the other hand the country
weekly is usually owned by the edi.
tor. AS a general rule he isn't
looking for political favors and if
he is he seldom succeeds in getting
them and so he publishes his own
honest sentiments and opinions.
A large proportion of his papers en-
ter homes where no other publica-
ton enters. The mother reads it,
holding it in one hand while she |
works the churn dasher with the
other and rocks the cradle with her
foc::, then she carefully folds it upl
and lays it on the clock shelf. The |
man of the house comes home after
his days work, eats his supper,
takes off his coat and boots, lights
his pipe and calls for the paper, sits
down and reads the editorials, pa
tent insides, advertisements and all.
The next day it is wrapped around
the childrens' school dinner and
they read it during "nooning."
Then it is thrown away, a tramp
picks it up, lies down in the shade,
peruses its contents and imagines
he is Vanderbilt and owns the
earth. Every copy is read by a
dozen different people who absorb
it all. If the editor possesses any
virile force his opinions gradually
become the opinions of his readers
and he exercises an influence over
them beyond all computation.
Scatter five hundred spicy, readable
republican weeklys throughout the
state of Mississippi and it would 60
republican in three years.
The same kind of influence,
though perhaps not to such a great
extent, is exercised by the travelling
man. He is omnipresent. You
can no more escape the sunshine
than you can avoid running up
against a drummer. He is master
of all things at all times. He can
lead in prayer, preach, call off at a
dance, umpirea ball game or referee
a boxing match, and sometimes the
same travelling man can do all these
things and whole lot of others, at
the same time he is selling stacks
of goods, and do them all we'll.
He is a thoroughly good fellow,
sociable, companionable, for if he
isn't he don't stay on the road long.
He knows human nature as we'll as
he knows his sample case, and if he
don't some one else gets the order.
He is not soliciting votes but is
soliciting trade, but after he takes
a merchants order for twice as