The advanced thinkers of to-day agree that the hundred years just ended have been especially remarkable from a humanitarian standpoint. They have been made notable by movements tending toward man’s elevation, toward the righting of his wrongs, and the alleviation of his sufferings. Victor Hugo declares: “This century is the grandest of centuries ... because it is the sweetest. This century ... freed the slave in America, elevated the pariahs in Asia, extinguished the funeral pile in India, and crushed the last fire-brands at the martyr’s stake in Europe.” If we ask how these great reforms were wrought, the answer must be, in part at least, that their accomplishment was the result of public sentiment properly educated and directed. This were surely impossible without paper. By dint of the universality of its service to mankind the ruling minds of all thinking nations are frequently placed upon a common plane, becoming possessed of common convictions, and upon the sudden presentation of important international problems, often act with a degree of unison that strikingly illustrates how much of one mind we are, how nearly upon one plane the thoughts of men are moving. As a force both in shaping and giving expression to public opinion, the press wields a power that is at once unquestioned and invincible. As Chapin says, the productions of the press “go abroad through the land, silent as snowflakes, but potent as thunder.” Power without an agency of expression is helpless, and the paper sheet is the medium that makes possible the potency of the press. On its white wings it bears abroad the inspired words that stir men’s hearts and prove the heralds of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
♦The power of education♦
When man has been set free from his fetters, whether they be the physical ones of iron or the no less binding chains of caste and custom, he is helpless until education and enlightenment restore to him the manhood, independence, and self-reliance which he has been denied. It is the chief glory of this century that mankind has been helped to a higher intellectual plane and the blessings of truth and knowledge have been more widely disseminated than ever before. “The statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.” Higher education has brought to man a quickened sense of the inherent nobility of his nature, and has changed his conceptions of the relations that exist between his own life and that which pulsates about him. To quote again from the great French writer: “This century proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people and consecrates man.” And this broadened enlightenment, this deepened sense of man’s dignity and nobility, have in their turn contributed to the humanitarian side of life, making it easier to redress wrong and establish justice.
In all these great movements of the century, paper has been the means of transmitting intellectual force; it has been the messenger and herald of better things than the world had known. Its history has always been closely linked with that of man; it has been the pace-maker of his progress, in the realm of mechanics and of economics as well as in music, literature, and art. They have come up together out of the past; they are associated in noble and uplifting work in the present; together they go forward to such broader fields of usefulness as the future may disclose.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Both “watermark” and “water-mark” occur frequently.
Text uses “Pittsburg”, not “Pittsburgh”.