Journalism, indeed, seems to have fallen, or wandered, into dangerous or demoralizing ways. This, also, is laid at the door of "popular demand," etc. The old-time editor had a personality, and this he infused into the columns of his paper. He was not always right, of course, but the general tendency of such journalism was to breed a spirit of independence, of character, of research. The consensus thus evolved by the masses was wholesome.
To-day the editor is a mere machine. His individuality is suppressed, and the effort is to keep him entirely under the thumb and rack-screw of the publisher, who manipulates the finances, the "business" end of the concern. This publisher generally gets his "cue" from his banker, who may be his backer, and, who, at any rate, sets the pace for editorials, news—and in fact the whole tone of the paper. In all this there is concert. From some great business center the word goes out, and the newspapers catch up the echo. In this way the individual, the great personality that once made the newspaper a power for good, is lost; instead, the press has become a mob—the most dangerous mob that ever existed, for it comes in the guise of instruction, of morals, of culture, of learning. Thus masquerading, journalism to-day is fast lapsing—or rather plunging—into a vortex that is positively appalling in its aspects. How and when the remedy will come is of grave concern. The mob may, in sheer desperation, rend itself, commit hari-kari; or it may go on until in frenzy, the long-deluded and outraged populace shall rise and revolutionize newspaperdom.
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
FREEMASONRY.
By Charles H. Halstead.
The earliest authentic record of masonry in New York, or in fact in the American colonies, is the deputation appointing Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, to be provincial grand master of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, signed by the Duke of Norfolk, grand master of the grand lodge of England, and dated "this fifth day of June, 1730, and of Masonry 5730."
From that date and until 1781 there were five different masonic deputations granted to provincial grand masters for New York, by the grand lodge of England.
During this period there were two provincial grand lodges in the State of New York, organized at different periods by authority of rival grand lodges in England, which were termed the "Moderns" and "Ancients."
In 1813 these two grand bodies united into what is now the "United Grand Lodge of England."
The provincial grand lodge authorized by the Atholl warrant, dated September 5, 1781, existed from December 5, 1782, to September 19, 1783. when the British troops evacuated New York City, and as the grand lodge was essentially a royalist institution, and a majority of its officers and members were connected with the evacuating army, the brethren were in a quandary, the solution of which we find in the minutes of a grand lodge of emergency, held on the nineteenth of September, 1783, when "The propriety of leaving the grand warrant by which this lodge is established in the province of New York, being fully discussed, it was resolved, that the same should be left and remain in the care of such brethren as may hereafter be appointed to succeed the present grand officers, the most of whom being under the necessity of leaving New York upon the removal of his majesty's troops."