Our Common Country/Chapter 6
The passing years have wrought great changes in the newspaper business even in the comparatively short time since my adventurous entry upon it. The prolific inventors of printing machinery and other appliances have borne their share in it; the free rural delivery, the advance in education bringing new multitudes of readers, have all had their influence in the developments and evolutions which have followed. I can remember when in most of the county-seat towns the possession by one of the papers of a power-press,—even if the power was applied by a husky man attached to a cranked wheel,—was widely proclaimed as an evidence of astounding prosperity and recognized as a potential influence.
We have seen the type-setting machines come in—not to supplant the hand compositor, but to shift him to the "Ad. Alleys" and the job cases. They have taught the printers, as the mowers and reapers have taught the farmers, that increased capacity in production does not mean a lessening of a demand for labor, but on the contrary increased production, through increased efficiency, mental, manual or mechanical, opens new avenues for employment and brings luxuries into the class of common commodities.
The diminished numbers of country weekly publications came in the extension of the rural delivery mail carriers. We learned that the farmer who got his mail every morning at his front door would not wait a week or even two or three days for his newspaper. He learned, too, what market reports meant to him. Machinery had lightened his toil and shortened his hours, except seasonably, and he had time to read and the desire to be informed. The telephones had brought him in touch with some news centers and he heard hints which he wanted confirmed. Electricity lighted many farm-houses and lengthened the reading period.
The rural delivery with the parcel post also wiped out many of the cross-roads stores where the rural dweller was wont to gather for neighborly gossip and discussion of great events, and this, too, had its influence in broadening the demand for the daily paper.
Another change was brought about by two causes. In the days of thirty or forty years ago, there was a bitterness and acerbity about political discussion which caused the factional newspaper to multiply if not to flourish. It was not difficult to start a newspaper in those days. A very small amount of cash and a little credit would procure a modest plant, and another journal would be "established" to fight its owner's quarrels and divide the limited patronage of its limited field.
But now it costs real money to equip a newspaper plant—to install linotype machines, fast presses and type in quantities, and it costs a "fortune" to buy news print. The "high cost of printing" has had way with us and we find fewer but generally better newspapers than we had in the Ohio counties when our population was half what it is now.
The changes have been great, but I question whether they have all been in the nature of improvements. The old-time paper—going back to the last half of last century—was usually a real journal of opinion. It reflected the convictions as well as the opinions of its owner and editor, and it was a real molder of opinion in its influence upon its readers and the community it served. The editors were not always great writers, but they were generally patriots, and honestly desirous to render service. And they were generally partisan and they preached party gospel and believed in it. Sometimes it seems to me that the transition from the party organ to the "independent" newspaper, so-called, has not been an unmixed blessing. The partisan newspaper, in its editorial expression, uttered the considered views of a large element of our citizenship, while the "independent" paper is often the organ solely of its owner, or it is colorlessly neutral.
There is a temptation to blend shop talk with politics, because I know how intimately newspaper men are thinking of the problem of news print, the cost of which has added so excessively to the expense account of every newspaper. Men speak of immediate relief, but the problem is too big for that.
Permanent and ample relief must come by going to the underlying causes. No forest consumption like ours can go on indefinitely without imperiling our pulpwood supply. Competent authority tells us that the pulpwood in New York State will be exhausted in ten years, that New England will be denuded of its supply in twenty years. Our needs are so vast that we imported nearly one and a half million tons of pulpwood from Canada in 1918, and the Canadian price advanced from ten to twenty-five dollars per cord. It is obvious that we must have a forest policy which shall make us self-reliant once more. We ought to be looking ahead to produce our timber for our pulpwood needs and also our timber for our lumber needs. Forest conservation is a necessary accompaniment to printing expansion, and a matter of common concern to all the people.
Three-fifths of the original timber in this country is gone, and there are eighty million idle acres in which we ought to be growing forests for the future. Planning for the future, with added protection of our present forests from fire, is a matter of deep concern to publishers in particular, but to all of constructive America as well.
But I want to turn your thoughts to a service in the columns. There is one service for the American press, not partisan but patriotic, for which there is a call to-day such as we have never known before. America needs a baptism in righteousness and a new consecration in morality.
It was stated the other day that a reflex of the war has been so revealed in broken obligations and betrayed trusts that the bonding companies are called upon to meet such losses that the whole schedule for fidelity policies must be rewritten. If my information is correct, the security companies have never been called upon to meet so many and such heavy losses in all the history of that business.
Probably the betrayals of trust, the smaller ones at least, are in part due to the high cost of living, and the failure of salary scales to respond to the new demands of the salaried working forces. Many instances are reported, however, where salaries were ample to meet even extravagant practises, and the sums stolen were beyond all limits which might attend living costs. The conclusion is forced that it is a reflex of the moral degeneracy of war, of the barbarity and cunning, and ruthlessness and greed in war's aftermath.
There was so much of extravagance, so much of waste, so much of needless expenditures in seeking for speed in war preparation, that the government often was robbed without scruple of conscience, often without hindrance. It is not surprising to find a reflex in offices and counting rooms.
Call it reaction if you like, we need the old standards of honesty, the lofty standards of fidelity. If I could call for but one distinction, I would like ours to be known as an honest people. We need the stamp of common, every-day honesty, everywhere. We need it in business, we need it in labor, we need it in professions, in pulpits, in editorial rooms, in circulation count. Aye, we need it in politics, in government, in our daily lives. Dishonesty and corruption had more to do with the Russian revolution than all the cruelty of autocracy.
If governments and their diplomats in Europe had been honest, there would have been no war. If everybody concerned had been rigidly honest, peace might have followed the armistice within ninety days. If we could only be genuinely honest with one another, we could put an end to industrial and social unrest, and if we were only honest with God, we would become a moral and religious people again.
I suppose some people will say I am "looking backward." But if we may look backward to clear our vision we may look forward more confidently, and lift our gaze above and beyond the sordid and selfish things and the baser side of life so horridly revealed when passions are aflame. There is sure progress for a simple-living, reverent people, fearing God and loving righteousness. It is good to look back to make sure of the way religious mothers taught and then face the front with renewed faith.
If we are living in the past to recall the wisdom of Washington, the equal rights of Jefferson, the genius of Hamilton, the philosophy of Franklin, or the sturdiness of Jackson; if it is looking backward to recall the sympathy and steadfastness of Lincoln, the restoration of McKinley or the awakening by Roosevelt, I am happy to drink of the past for my inspiration for the morrow.
Engineering is a scientific pursuit and a very accurate one. It has been my fortune to witness some railway surveys, and I never knew an engineer who did not turn his transit to his back-sight to make sure of his line by which we were to move on. We are thinking to-day of the route by which America is to go on. The past is secure, and I would like to project our future course on the security of the past.
Something has been said lately about looking to the sunrise of to-morrow, not the sky-line of the setting sun. Every hope in life is of to-morrow, we could not live yesterdays again if we would. But the glory of ten thousand morrows was wrought in the wisdom gleaned on yesterday. Mariners and planters and harvesters—all study the sky. Sometimes above the sky-line, in lands where the desert stretches, there is the mirage, with its lure to the fevered and thirsting, with inviting promise of relief. It has speeded travel and revived hopes, and spurned waning strength, it has diverted from proved routes, and left death and destruction as its monument to broken promises. In the horizon of maintained constitutionalism, there is no mirage to lure the American caravan, but we mean to go securely on, over the proved routes of triumph for the republic and the people thereof.
No one agency can render a greater service in holding to the charted way than a conscientious and patriotic American press. But it must remain free, utterly free; along with freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief, and the freedom of righteous pursuit, it must be honest and it must be rejoicing in American nationality which is our priceless possession.