Like them, I never thought of being else than a worker for wages, and ran away mentally at any idea of taking responsibilities. Like them I regarded the class who did, as living in a world I never could reach. Like them I regarded the only sure and safe haven was a “job,” or situation at steady, regular wages.
So, for years I had indifferent luck, and lived a good deal on the threadbare side of life. The cause and the fault lay entirely in myself. Industriously, though unconsciously I sat down on myself, punched myself into corners; as I in mind accepted the bottom of the heap as the inevitable I stayed near the bottom.
If I should live that and previous portions of my life over again, I should probably do the same thing. Because I believe there is a truth in predestination. In other words, when you are in a certain mental condition your physical life and fortune will be an exact correspondence or material reflection of that condition. When you grow out of that condition and get a different mind your surroundings, fortunes, and associations will be in accordance with that state of mind. Thank Heaven, we can grow. But the I that existed twenty-five years ago was predestined to meet the fortunes it did twenty-five years ago, and those fortunes could only change as the mind of that “I” changed.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
EDITING VS. WRITING.
In course of time I came temporarily to the occupancy of an editorial chair. I became a “We.” Because on becoming an editor you cease to be an “I,” you are more. You are several persons rolled into one. You are then the publisher, the proprietor, the paper’s biggest paying advertisers, the political party you represent, and the rest of your brother editors. Under these circumstances it is impossible for you to say what “I” think. Because in some cases you may not know what your own private opinions really are, or if they should assert themselves strongly you might not want to know them. You are a “we,” one advantage of which is that as in a sense you have ceased to exist as a personality. You are no longer personally responsible for what you say in print. The responsibility of the “we” can be distributed among so many that it need not stick anywhere and the bigger the paper the larger the area over which it can be distributed.
I knew there was a difference between “editing” a paper and writing for one, but how much of a difference I did not realize until my destiny placed me temporarily in charge of the Sunday supplement of a city daily, which, in accordance with the regulations, or rather exactions, of modern journalism, published a Sunday paper, or rather magazine, of sixteen pages. I had about forty-six columns to “edit.”
To “edit” is not to write. I speak thus plainly for the benefit of the many young men and maidens who are to swell the ranks of the great army now industriously engaged in sending contributions to the editor’s waste basket, and who still imagine that the editor does nothing but write for the paper.
I pause here a moment to ask where, at the present increase of size and amount of matter published, are our Sunday papers to stop. Already the contents of some Sunday issues amount to more than that of the average monthly magazine.
While this competition is going on at such a lively and increasing rate between newspaper publishers to give the most reading matter for the least money, I wonder if the idea may not in due course of time strike them that they may be giving to those who read more than they can really read and digest.
Our business men to-day do not read one-half the contents of the daily paper. They have only time to glance at them. They would really be much better suited could some device of journalism give them their news in readable print in the compass of a handkerchief, and give them no more.