The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1912-02-08
The Country Editor.

the proceedings of the house of rep
resentatives on March 2, 1898. The
house was considering the Loud bill,
which proposed to increase the postal
rates on country newspapers and to
adopt a number of restrictions on
their transmission through the mails.
Champ Clark defeated the bill by his
speech, a portion of which follows:
Newspapers are great dissemina-
tors of information. The mammoth
metropolitan papers with their vast
circulation are splendid educators,
but after all ten persons read the lit
tie country weekly where one reads
a metropolitan paper.
Having once been a country edi-
tor myself, I entertain a most kindly
feeling for my old confreres. I am
willing to make affidavit that the
eleven months I spent in editing a
rural journal were the most beneficial
of my life to myself, perhaps to 9th
ers. I am proud to have belonged
to the editorial guild. I am unalter-
ably opposed to anything that will
injure the country editor, curtail his
profits, circumscribe his usefulness,
or place an additional thorn in his
pathway:
The rural editor-God bless him!
is the most persistent of teachers.
Like charity as described by st. Paul
in the thirteenth chapter of the First
Corinthians, he "suhereth long and
is kind" which cannot be said Of the
men that got up this bill. He "envi-
eth not" in which he does not re-
semble some people over on this side
of the house. He "vaunteth not him
SELF" in which he is differentiated
from the leaders on the other side
of the big aisle. He ''is not puffed
up," in which he rises high above a
good many of us. He "does not be-
have himself unseemly; seeketh not
his own; is not easily provoked"
He is the pack horse of every COM
munity, the promoter of every laud-
able enterprise, the worst underpa1d
laborer in the vineyard. Counting
his space as his capital, he gives more
to charity, his means considered,
than any other member of society.
He is power in politics, a pillar
of the church, leader in the cru
sade for better morals. He is pre-
eminently the friend of humanity.
Line upon line, paragraph upon
paragraph, day by day, he is embalm-
ing in cold type the facts from which
the Herodotus, the Tacitus, the Sis
mondi, or the Macauley of the future
will write the history of our times.
(Applause.) He joyously announces
our advent into this world, briefly
records our uprisings and our down.
sittings. and sorrowfully chronicles
our exit from this vale Of tears.
AS a creator Of beauty, he double
discounts Nine. Aver, who undertakes
to increase feminine pulchritude only
in particular instances; but the
country editor, in the exercise OF
plenary power, impartially beauties
all women whose names appear in his
columns. daughter and applause.)
By a. touch of his magicien's wand he
converts paste. into diamonds spark
ling on beauty's neck, and with
skill of which ancient and ambitious
alchemists only dreamed, and with
politeness which Chesterfield might
have envied, he transmutes brass
trinkets into jewelry of purest gold
when they appear as ornaments OF
the family of his subscriber.
He is the greatest and most in
genious of manufacturers, for, while
other manufacturers produce only
perishable stuffs he manufactures i'm
mortal statesmen out of raw, some
time out of very raw, material.
(Laughter.) This laudable industry
no Dingley bill can protect him, and
he must ex necessitate work in COM
petition with the pauper manufac-
turers of Europe. He is
To our virtues very kind
and to our faults little blind.
We are all more or less, generally
more, his handiw ork; and it does not
become the creature to injure the
business of his creator. Without his
ingenious, generous and enthusiastic
labors most of us would never have
been here; and when he tires of us
we will retire to private life, amid ru-
raj scenes propitious for secret medi-
tation and silent prayer. Laughter.)
Working night and day during the
campaign, often without money and
without price, when the election is