The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1912-01-04

ent of that department has told me, tina
size has had no trouble at all, and tina
the result has been most wonderful"
Farmer and Editor.
An Iowa Editor Thinks the Farmer has tn,
Best of It.
Following is an address delivered by H.
L. Ram of the Manchester Press, be-
fore the Upper Iowa Editorial Associa.
ton:
II am here to say that the man who
owns eighty acres of Iowa land and who
has brains enough to till it, makes the
lot of country newspaper men look like
the last sad remnants of Dutch lunch.
The farmer has the best of it all around.
He is as independent as the American
Express Company. He doesn't have to
write a soulful obituary over the re-
mains of some peak-headed bloke who
caved his wife's ribs in with grub stake
and kept on display an exhibit of cut
plug profanity that would make the eff
forts of a steamboat mate sound like a
meeting of the Epworth League. He
doesn't have to 60 into raptures over the
beauty of an open.faced bride with a
cast of countenance that would blow out
the gas, and he can say what he dunn
pleases about candidate for congress,
something no newspaper man ever dared
to do unless he had just lost the post
Office. The farmer isn't required to lie
until his back teeth fall out, about the
sterling manhood of groom with ears
like cauliflower plant, and the brain
power of a shoat. He doesn't have to
run piano contest for the most beauti-
full young lady in the community, make
everybody sore about the winner, and
then print seventy-five cent half tone
of the beauty that looks like tintype of
grandma at the age of thirteen. There
is nothing in the farmers curriculum
that obliges him to paint the local SO
prano as heaven sent songster, when in
fact she has voice that would make a
guinea hen weep. He isn't called upon
to paint the virtues of prominent citi-
zen who earned his money by collecting
notes with draw shave and who would
have an attack of heart failure if sud
denly separated from two bits of real
money.
'"The farmer can stand on the street
corner and roar about smallpox in town
until his whisk ers curl up like lean man
with the wind collie, and if the newspa-
per man runs three-line item to the
same effect his advertisers will land on
him and make him resemble crushed
fruit salad. If the printer opens his
head about the presence of slot machines,
penny ante and holes-in-the-wall every
candidate he supports at the primary
election will have about as much show of
nomination as one-legged man in a
hurdle race. The farmer can sit on his
porch and lambast the board of super.
visors from supper to breakfast, and if
the newspaper man jars board off the
fence in that direction his appeal for the
county printing will be about as effective
as live broil with tobasco sauce.
''The farmer can express his opinion
of the new Methodist preacher in firm
and loud voice, on the four corners, and
if the printer ventures to express the
view that the preacher ought to be chas-
ing currycomb over milk COW instead
of filling large room with thin ozone
and misinformation, he will lose SUBJ
scribers so fast that he won't have the
circulation of cold-storage egg. The
farmer does not have to impress chaste
kiss on the moist nose of his foreman in
order to keep him from getting drunk on
press day, neither does he have to get
somebody to go on his note when the
devil carelessly feeds a pair of pipe
tongs through the cylinder press or the
rats chew the lining off a new set of
rollers. There is no law which compels
him to fill four columns of space with
clogged think-tank and stickful of
brain-food.
eff the editor takes two successive
days off in fishing, his patrons call him
a loafer and take their job work to the
other Office. If he works until he is
bowed over like fat man with cramps
people say he is too stingy to hire extra
help. If he contributes $500 to the w.
C. T. U. and wears a boiled shirt
on Sunday, the banks call in his notes
with noise like woodenlegged man
falling on a tin roof, and if he refuses to
dig up for the Woman's- Relief Corps
supper he is branded as miser and
avoided as if he had the hives The
farmer can look every man in the face
ard tell him to 60 where there is no pre-
MUM on coal slack, and if the printer in
1OTIus d HAL WHO Tries 10 peat alm OuC
of four years subscription thatihe is so
crooked that he couldn't go to sleep in a
roundhouse he is liable to be reduced to
the consistency of a cornstarch pud-
ding.
I'm view Of these facts, why is the
profession overcrowded? There are sew
eral reasons. One is that man is vain
bird and is never happier than when he
is yapping in linotype slugs. Many a
man would rather dispense fourteen
columns of crooked rhetoric and reform
ed spelling once week and live on ossi-
fed liver and iced tea, than shave the
warts off calf's head and hold a pail
for a sucking calf, even though he can
fill up on green corn and side pork un,
til he wheezes like an accordion with the
asthma, There are others, including a
fair shrinking of jack-leg lawyers and
ham-strung school teachers, who have
imbibed the notion that the editors life
is softer than the head of two-ply
sport. These rush in with $50 dollar
outfit and wind pressure that would
blister the lining out of steel range and
! fill a loag felt want with the grace and
abandon of hare-lipped hired girl at q
beauty show. Nothing ever drives these
startlings out Of the profession except
cl1Idon fh fb.,