For many years this was accomplished by books, but after a time the newspaper was invented, and the exchange increased.
Before this, every peasant thought his king the greatest being in the world. He compared this king—his splendor, his palace—with the peasant neighbor, with his rags and with his hut. All his thoughts were provincial, all his knowledge confined to his own neighborhood—the great world was to him an unknown land.
Long after papers were published, the circulation was small, the means of intercommunication slow, painful, few and costly.
The same was true in our own country, and here, too, was in a great degree, the provincialism of the Old World.
Finally, the means of intercommunication increased, and they became plentiful and cheap.
Then the peasant found that he must compare his king with the kings of other nations—the statesmen of his country with the statesmen of others—and these comparisons were not always favorable to the men of his own country.
This enlarged his knowledge and his vision, and the tendency of this was to make him a citizen of the world.
Here in our own country, a little while ago, the citizen of each State regarded his State as the best of all. To love that State more than all others, was considered the highest evidence of patriotism.
The Press finally informed him of the condition of other States. He found that other States were superior to his in many ways—in climate, in production, in men, in invention, in commerce and in influence. Slowly he transferred the love of State, the prejudice of locality—what I call mud patriotism—to the Nation, and he became an American in the best and highest sense.
This, then, is one of the greatest things to be accomplished by the Press in America—namely, the unification of the country—the destruction of provincialism, and the creation of a patriotism broad as the territory covered by our flag.