The editor of this class is a barbarian who forgets that Rome is only a memory.
The successful editor of to-day recognizes the fact that the newspaper exists to amuse and instruct, to uphold public honor and private virtue quite as much as to denounce fraud or expose official corruption. The newspaper is powerful exactly in proportion as it is successful in representing the people who read it; in following, rather than dictating, their line of policy; and, whether it exists for the people or not, it certainly endures only by their sufferance and good-will. Therefore, it is well that we consider the relations of the people at large to the newspaper; then, the editor’s relation to his neighbors, the public; and, finally, the chivalry of editors toward each other.
The newspaper is so large a part of our modern life that it would be trivial to argue the question whether it can be dispensed with. Men who live abreast of the age cannot consent to miss a single day’s communion with the news of the world. The non-arrival of the mail will render an active man absent from town utterly miserable. The purchaser of the daily newspaper of to-day receives for the price of a half yard of calico a manufactured article that has required the employment of millions of capital to produce,—to say nothing of genius to sustain.
And he is often somewhat grateful.
But the chivalry of the public toward the newspaper is peculiar. The public would appear to believe that anything it can coax, wheedle, or extort from the newspaper is fair salvage from the necessary expenditures of life.
Recently I listened in amazement to the Rev. Robert Collyer boast at a Cornell University dinner of having beguiled the newspapers of the country. He told how he had schemed and got money to build a new church after the Chicago fire. He did not make it very clear that the civilized members of his race clamored for the new edifice, but he made painfully apparent his ideas of chivalry to the press.
“In this matter,” he began, “I have always been proud of the way in which I ‘worked the newspapers.’ I succeeded in raising the money, because I coaxed the editors into coöperating with me. I wrote long puffs about the congregation and its pastor, and got them printed. Then I hurried ’round with the subscription list and a copy of the paper.”
Of course, this was all said good-naturedly, was meant to be funny, and was uttered from a public rostrum with an utter obliviousness to the mental obliquity that a moment’s thought will disclose. It left upon my mind much the same impression as that once made by hearing an apparently respectable man boast of having stolen an umbrella out of a hotel rack.
Later in the evening, when the reverend gentleman occupied a seat near mine, I asked, with as much naiveté as I could command, if he had “worked” the plumbers, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, and the bell-founders? To each of these questions he returned a regretful, “No.”
Despite his apparent innocence regarding the purport of my inquiry, I doubt if this gentleman would have boasted that he secured his clothes for nothing, that he wheedled his chops from his butcher, or coaxed his groceries from the shopkeeper at the corner of his street.