The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-05-07
VICIOUS NEWSPAPER MEN.

New York Commercials: Lieutenant
Governor O'Hara of Illinois is also the
chairman of the illinois vice commits.
sion. He has recently caused to be in.
troduced into the legislature a bill tc
license all persons employed on the
press OF an editorial or reportorial
sort. This proposed measure includes
everybody engaged in the making OF
newspapers. with the exception of the
counting room contingent and the me-
chanlcal side. The proprietor who
permits an unlicensed person to serve
on his journalistic staff is liable to q
heavy fine, and the writer is mulcted
in a goodly amount for every day in
which he thus works, or in lieu must
go to Jail.
The bill. also provides for the insti-
tuition of a state examining and super
yising board, the membership Of which
are to receive the fat little salary Of
$4,000 a year and the chairman S., 200
The men Of the newspaper pressed are
looked on by the v%irtuous and high
minded G.Hara as potentially danger.
U persons to be kept under D
vision, after they shall have undergone
a strict examination as to intellectual
and moral fitness, for the benefit of
which responsibility the new inauisi-
ton is to be very comfortably com
pensated. '
OF course it will make some fat sine
cures for professional politicians out
OF a job, all of whom are presumably
highly competent to decide whether a
man can write, good editorials, indite
readable news stories, handle COPY
skillfully,, criticise a play or an opera,
study n report the markets with re-
liability. or to go a little higher, man
age a staff of workers with energy and
grasp of detail. The board who would
have this in charge would have cut out
for them a trying task, even if they
We're all intellectually competent. But
as the matter would probably event.
uate, they would soon become a laugh
ing stock, even If it were dangerous
for the press men to scott at them; for
the newspaper sense of humor would
be irrepressible and find a way to vent
it.
The OrHara law would possibly last
a year or two and then pass into the
limbo of forgotten experiments. 1t is
q notorious fact hat there are many
persons who believe they could make
better newspapers than the newspaper
men themselves can. Possibly they
could sometimes; but it is only by be-
coming Journalists in ownership with
enough financial resource to employ
trained and competent ~subordinates to
do the work that the trial succeeds.
The Illinois O'Hara person evidently
mas been the Well-battered butt of the
illinois press and carries a very sore
crouch" He has none of thai racy
Of the incongruous and ridicu-
lous which enriches the idiosyncrasy
or h gifted race which his eognomen
connotes. He is evidently very much
In earnest. Unfortunately a genuinely
solemn Irishman, when this rara avis
is found, is about the dreariest person.
in the world, and is pretty sure to
do stupid and incomprehensible things.
Yet, Governor O'Iara is no doubt,
animated by sound motives in his i'm
portant duty of yiee-tracking and COR
He makes the great mistake
or assuming that because a few news
papers, directly or indirectly, cater to-
public vice by their s-ensationalism Of
utterance and the Importance they
give to criminal doings, all of them are
to be reprobated as allies of evil.
The truth is that without the entht1-
slastic backing of the public press in
the antivice crusade, that important
movement would go with a cr1ltch. IL
is the interest as wen as the iilclina-
ton Of all reputable journals to be on
the sidesof virtue and reform Of evil.
They have struck the hardest blows in
this cause, and vice commissions would
find al their teeth drawn without their
powerful backing.