For many years the “Cincinnati Gazette” and the “Commercial” had continued an energetic rivalry. Their political attitude was very much the same, and there was everything to gain and little to lose by the consolidation of the two papers which occurred early in the eighties, with Mr. Halstead as editor-in-chief, and Mr. Richard Smith, of the “Gazette,” as business Manager. Since 1884 Mr. Halstead has made his headquarters in Washington or New York; his editorial contributions going by telegraph to his paper and for several years past he has been editor of the Brooklyn “Standard Union,” and has contributed very largely to other papers, his signed articles upon the money question in “The New York Herald” being notable examples of his ability as a writer and of his grasp of the great questions of the time. The amount of work turned off by such a writer is prodigious. He says that he has undoubtedly written and published an average of more than a million words a year for forty years. If put in book form this would make in the aggregate some five hundred volumes of good size.
Mr. Halstead was married in 1857 to Miss Mary Banks. They have four grown sons, all engaged in journalism; three younger ones, and three daughters. Their family life has been all that such life should be, and the present generation of the Halsteads bears every promise of maintaining the high standard of honest thought and persistent effort set by the florid faced man, whose large figure and massive head—hair and beard long since snow white—seem likely to be conspicuous in many presidential conventions yet to come, as they have been in almost every one for nearly half a century.
TO THE YOUNG MAN AT THE DOOR.
(FROM ADDRESS ON “THE MAXIMS, MARKETS, AND MISSIONS OF THE PRESS,” DELIVERED BEFORE THE WISCONSIN PRESS ASSOCIATION, 1889.)
E need to guard against ways of exclusiveness—against the assumption that for some mysterious reason the press has rights that the people have not; that there are privileges of the press in which the masses and classes do not participate. The claim of privilege is a serious error. One either gains or loses rights in a profession. We have the same authority to speak as editors that we have as citizens. If we use a longer “pole to knock the persimmons,” it is because we have a larger constituency for our conversational ability; that doesn’t affect rights. It simply increases responsibility. One can say of a meritorious man or enterprise, or of a rascally schemer or scheme, as an editor the same that he could as a citizen, a tax-payer, a lawyer, minister, farmer, or blacksmith. It conduces to the better understanding of our business to know that we are like other folks, and not set apart, baptized, anointed, or otherwise sanctified, for an appointed and exclusive and unique service.
It is in our line of occupation to buy white paper, impress ink upon it in such form as may be expressive of the news and our views, and agreeable to our friends or disagreeable to our foes, and sell the sheet when the paper becomes, by the inking thereof, that peculiar manufactured product, a newspaper, for a margin of profit. We are as gifted and good as anybody, so far as our natural rights are concerned, and are better or worse according to our behavior. It is our position to stand on the common ground with the people, and publish the news, and tell the truth about it as well as we can; and we shall, through influences certain in their operation, find the places wherein we belong. No one can escape the logic of his labor.
Communications from young gentlemen in, or fresh from college, or active in other shops, who propose to go into journalism or newspaperdom, and want to know how to do it, are a common experience, for there is a popular fascination about our employment. There is nothing one could know—neither faculty to perform nor ability to endure—perfection of recollection, thoroughness in history, capacity to apply the lessons of philosophy, comprehension of the law, or cultivated intuition of the Gospel—that would not be of servicegoing into newspaperdom. But it is beyond me to prescribe a course of study. It is easier, when you have the knack, to do than to tell.
When the young man comes to say that he would be willing to undertake to run a newspaper—and we know that young man as soon as we see his anxious face at the door—and we sympathize with him, for we may remember to have been at the door instead of the desk, and willing to undertake the task of the gentleman who sat at the desk and asked what was wanted—when, perhaps, the youth at the door had in his pocket an essay on the “Mound Builders” that he believed was the news of the day—and we don’t like to speak unkindly to the young man. But there are so many of him. He is so numerous that he is monotonous, and it is not always fair to utter the commonplaces of encouragement. It is well to ask the young man, who is willing to come in and do things, what he has done (and often he hasn’t done anything but have his being). What is it that he knows how to do better than anyone else can do it? If there be anything, the question settles itself, for one who knows how to do right well something that is to do, has a trade. The world is under his feet, and its hardness is firm footing. We must ask what the young man wants to do? and he comes back with the awful vagueness that he is willing to do anything; and that always means nothing at all. It is the intensity of the current of electricity that makes the carbon incandescent and illuminating. The vital flame is the mystery that is immortal in the soul and in the universe.