And yet, he spoke with condescension of the editor and his means of livelihood!
Theoretically, the editor is the public’s mutton. Men who know him boast of their influence with him, and over him. They dictate his policy for him—or say they do, which, of course, is the same thing. Men who never saw him claim to own him. Strangers, casually introduced, ask him questions about his personal affairs that would be instantly resented in any other walk of life.
An experience of my own will illustrate what I mean. At a country house, near Philadelphia, I was introduced to a respectable-looking old man. In the period following dinner, as we sat on the porch to enjoy a smoke, this stranger interrogated me in the most offensive way. When he had paused for breath I gave him a dose of his own medicine. “The deadly parallel” column will tell the story.
| WHAT HE ASKED. | WHAT I ASKED. |
|---|---|
| I hear you are an editor? | I am told you are a hatter? |
| Do most newspapers pay? | Is hat-making profitable? |
| How much do editors earn? | How much does your business net you yearly? |
| You began as a reporter? | Grew up in the trade? |
| Does it require any education to be a reporter? | You can “block a hat while I wait”? |
| Do you write shorthand? | You can handle a hot goose? |
| Eh? used to? | Could once? |
| Please write some: let’s see how it looks? | Please take this hat and show me how it is put together. |
| Curious-looking characters, aren’t they? | Have seen a great many queerly shaped hats in your time, no doubt? |
| How many columns can you write a day? | How many hats can you make in a day? |
| Do you write by the column? | Do you work by the piece? |
| What? Don’t write at all? How strange!—and so on. | Ah? Don’t work any longer? Supposed every hatter made his own hats!—and so on. |
The editor may be to blame for this state of things; but if so, his good-nature is responsible. He endures more than other men. He is often worried by the troubles of other people; but he never has been weaned from the milk of human kindness. He may be over-persuaded, he may be deceived, and editors have been fooled, like judge and jurors, by the perjured affidavit of apparently honorable men—but he still continues to believe in mankind.
The chivalry of the politician toward the press is comprehended to a nicety by every man who has served as a newspaper correspondent at Washington.
The average congressman thinks it clever to deceive a newspaper editor or correspondent. He believes they are to be “used,” whenever possible, for the congressman’s advantage. A correspondent is to be tricked or cajoled into praising the statesman, revising the bad English in his speeches, “saving the country and—the appropriations.” All the charities require and demand his aid, and, I am ashamed to say (knowing as I do what a hollow mockery some of the alleged charities really are), generally get the assistance they ask.
The chivalry of the press toward the public is unquestionable. The editor keeps awake nearly all night to serve it, and the facts are not altered because in best serving the public he serves himself.
Journalism, I regret to say, is often spoken of as a “profession,” and while we may accept the plebeian word “journalism,” as describing a daily labor, I sincerely desire to enter a protest against its designation as a profession. It seems entirely proper to me that this word be relegated to the pedagogue, the chiropodist, and the barn-storming actor who so boldly assert a right to its use.
The making of the newspaper is a mechanical art. It matters very little how much intelligence—or genius, if you prefer the word—enters into its production, the inter-dependence of the so-called “intellectual” branch of the paper upon its mechanical adjuncts is so great that it cannot be maintained that the manufactured article offered to purchasers in the shape of a newspaper is the product of any one lobe of brain tissue. Of what value are a hundred thousand copies of the best newspaper in this land, edited, revised and printed, if its circulation department break down at the critical moment? And what about the newsman? Who shall say that he does not belong to journalism? He’s to the service what the Don Cossack is to the Russian hosts. He’s the Cossack of journalism—our Cossack of the dawn!