Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1916-05-26
Bv William Allen White

tendent is not interested in preserving
the romance of a day that is past. he
is not bothered by the touch of a van
ished hand. When the vanished hand
tries to touch the superintendent oil
the country newspaper Office today,
ticket to the associated charities
wood ward is his dull response. The
is interested largely
in efficiency. The day of romance is
past in the back room of the country
newspaper.
But in the front room. in the editor
ial offices, in the business Office even,
there abides the spirit of high adj
venture that is incarnate in these
marvellous modern times. Never be-
fore were there such grand doings IN
the world as we are seeing today.
Screen the great war from us, and still
we have a world full of romance, full
of poetry, full of an unfolding prog
ress that is like the gorgeous story or
some enchanter's spell. Where in all
the tales of those Ara bian Nights En-
tertainments is anything so wonderful
as wireless telegraphy, so weird and
uncanny as talking over the seas with
out wires? What is Cinderella and her
romance compared with the Cinderella
story today-the story that tells us
how the world is turning into her
prince, shortening her hours of work,
guaranteeing her a living wage, keep
ing her little brothers and sisters
away from the factory and in school,
and pensioning her widowed mother
that she may care for her little flock!
How tame is the old Cinderella story
beside this. And Sinbad is losing his
load, too-slowly, as the years form in
to decades, Sinbad is sloughing off the
old man of the sea; the 12-hour day IS
almost gone, and the eight-hour day is
coming quickly; the diseases and &C
cidents of labor are falling from his
shoulders, being assumed by his en-
ployer; his bank savings are guaran-
teed by his government; his food is
no longer poisoned; his tenement is
ceasing to be a pit of infection; his
shop is no longer a place of torture.
And every day the newspaper brings
some fresh and inspiring chapter OF
these great stories to their readers.
Stories of progress are the magnifi-
cent tales of sorcery and wizarding that
come cleaning in celestial light across
the pages of our newspapers every
day And in our country papers We
rejoice in them, because we know the
heroes. We know Cinderella; she
works in our button factory. We knew
her father, who lived on Upper MUD
creek and was soldier in the war of
the sixties We know Sinbad; he is
our neighbor and friend. He is not Il
mere member and wheeltender to US.
| We played with him as boys; we went
to school with him in the lower grades
and before he had to leave, when his
father died, to support the family. We
see Cinderella and Sinbad every day,
and when we read of their good for
tunes we feel kindly toward the paper
| that tells US of these fine things. We
open the country paper and say,
How blessed on the mountains are the
| feet of them that bring glad tidings,"
and so we read it, every line. 1t is the
daily chronicle Of the doings of our
friends.
OF course our country papers are
provincial We know that as well as
any one But then, so far as that goes,
we know that all papers are provin-
cial How we laugh at the provincial
isms of the New York and Boston and
Chicago papers when we visit the
cities! For the high gods of civiliza-
ton. being jealous of the press, have
put upon all newspapers this spell:
that every one must be limited in in
terest to its own town and territory.
There can be no national daily news
paper, for before it reaches the nation
its news is old and dull and as clammy
as a cold pancake. News does not
keep. Twelve hours from the press it
is stale, fiat, and highly Improbable.
However the trains may speed. how
ever the organization of the subscrip-
ton department and the press-room
may perfect itself, the news spoils be-
fore the ink dries, and there never
may be in our land a cosmopolitan
press. So the cities papers find that
they must fill up those spaces, which
in a nationwide paper should be filled
with the news from the far corners of
our land, with city news. Thus in ev-
cry country paper we have the local
gossip of its little world. And our
country papers are duplicated on a
rather grander scale in the cities
What we do in six or eight or ten or
twelve pages in the country, the city
papers do in twenty or forty pages.
What they do with certain prominent
citizens in the social and criminal and
financial world, we do also with our
prominent citizens in their little
worlds.
And in the matter of mere circula-
ton, our American country newspa-
pers are feeble folk, yet they do as a
matter of fact build their homes upon
the rock. The circulation of daily