Paul and the Printing Press

by Sara Ware Bassett

But now, to his amazement and chagrin, a publication had been born that was undermining his prestige and putting to naught his creeds and theories. This absurd March Hare was actually becoming the authorized mouthpiece of the town. It would have been blind not to recognize the fact. Fools had indeed rushed in where angels feared to tread, as Mr. Carter himself had jeeringly asserted they sometimes did, and as a result there had come into being this unique monthly whose subscription list was constantly swelling.

The publisher shrugged his shoulders. He was a shrewd business man. He had, he confessed to himself, been trapped into printing this amateur thing, and once trapped he had been game enough to live up to his contract; but he had always viewed the new magazine with a patronizing scorn. For a press of the Echo's reputation to be printing a silly High School publication had never ceased to be an absurdity in his eyes. He had regarded the first issues with derision. Then slowly his disdain had melted into astonishment, respect, admiration. There evidently was a spirit in Burmingham of which he had never suspected the existence,—an intelligence, an open-mindedness, a searching after truth. Hitherto the subscribers to any paper had been represented in his mind by a long list of names in purple ink, or else, by their money equivalent. Now, suddenly, these names became persons, voices, opinions. No one could take up the March Hare and not be conscious of a throbbing of hearts. It sounded through every page—that beating of hearts—fathers, mothers, girls, boys speaking with simple sincerity of the things they held dearest in their lives.

Why, it was a miracle, this living flesh and blood that glowed so warmly and sympathetically through the dead mediums of paper and ink!

How had the enchantment been wrought? the magnate asked himself. To be sure, he had never tried through the columns of the Echo to get into actual touch with those into whose homes his paper traveled. He had never cared who they were, what they thought, or how they lived. The problems puzzling their brains were nothing to him. But he now owned with characteristic honesty that had he cared to obtain from them this free expression of opinion and learn the reactions their minds were constantly reflecting, he would have been at a loss as to how to proceed.

Yet here, through the instrumentality of a mere boy, a boy the age of his own son, the elusive result had been accomplished!

Where lay the magic?

The March Hare was not a paper that could speak with authority on any subject, nor was it a magazine of distinct literary merit. On the contrary it naïvely confessed that it was young and did not know. It explained with frankness that it had not the wisdom to speak; that instead it merely echoed the thought of its readers.

It was this "echoing idea" that was new to Mr. Arthur Presby Carter. He had always spoken. To listen to the opinions of others he had considered tiresome. Very few persons had opinions that were worth listening to.

Nevertheless, after dissecting the reasons for the March Hare's popularity, and lopping off the minor elements of its uniqueness and wide appeal, the elder man faced the real psychological secret of the junior paper's success: it listened and did not talk; it was a dialogue instead of a monologue,—an exact reversal of his policy.

Moreover, this dialogue, contrary to his previous beliefs, presented amazingly interesting opinions. Here were the past and the present generation arguing on the policy of the new America,—what its government, its statesmanship, its ideals should be. The Past was rich in advice, experience; the Present in hope, faith, courage. Youth, the citizen of to-morrow, had a thousand theories for righting the nation's faults; and some of these theories were not wholly visionary.