TRIUMPHANT DEMOCRACY.

Evening Star, Issue 7658, 7 July 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRIUMPHANT DEMOCRACY.

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[By Andrew Carnegie. J CHAPTER XV. LITERATURE. He hath never fid of the dainties that aro bred in & book ; bo hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink ; his intellect ia not replenished ; be is only an animal, only sensible in his dull.rpjrts.— Shakespeare. This was not written of the omnivorous American, for he has eaten paper, as it were, and drunk ink ever since he was born. These are his daily food. As far back as the year 1836, which brings us to the beginning of the fifty years under review, a writer in the Philadelphia ' Public Ledger' for March 25, describing the extent of newspaper reading in America, says : In the cities of New York and Brooklyn, containing together a population of three hundred thousand, the daily circulation of the penny papers is not less thin seventy thousand. These papers are to be found in every street, lane, and alley; in every hotel, tavern, counting-house, Bhop, and store. Almost every porter and drayman, while not engaged in his occupation, may be seen with a penny paper in his hand. j This was the year when in England the newspaper tax was reduced from 4d (8 cents) I to Id (2 cents) per copy, when the usual I price of London papers was 5d (10 cents) or tkl (12 cents). The great mass of the people, even if they could read, could only obtain a news-sheet by sharing among many the cost of the luxury. The majority of the intelligent had to be content with hearing articles read from papers to the company in a hall or coffee room. Several factors have conspired to make the American people great newspaper readers. The Puritan settlers were active political partisans. Everything which concerned government was of deepest interest to them, and it was among such as they that the first manuscript newsletters had their largest circulation. The descendants of these hardy pilgrims inherited that jealous regard for the rights of the citizen which in the sixteenth century manifested itself in political non-conformity, and in the eighteenth century was the propelling force of the American Revolution. Every man, woman, and child of New England at that trying time habitually discussed politics and sought news with an eagerness that we never feel, except under the stimulus of a great political crisis. In 1800 the young Republic had two hundred newspapers, of which several were dailies. In 1810-11 disputes with England revived men's interest in politics, an interest which became doubly keen when war was declared, and every able-bodied man took from its nail his trusty flint-lock in preparation for battle. Conceived in political tribulation, born amid the throes of a severe political struggle, and nursed in the midst of political excitements, the young American nation developed an aptitude for government which republican institutions have ever since tended to strengthen. Whereevery man is a voter, every man is a politician; and a nation of politicianflis thejournalist'sfavorite field. Afurther cause is the eduoation which during the century has been so widely diffused. Teach a man how to read and you at once invest him with the appetite for reading. And what can be of greater interest than the world's history read in contemporary lights ? Again, newspaper taxes have never existed in the United States. As a consequence journalism attained maturity in America earlier than in Europe. These combined factors have made the American nation greater newspaper readers than any other people. The Republic has aptly been called the Editor's Paradise ; for certainly, except in the " wild West," where revolvers are jocularly said to be as necessary to editors as inkstands, journalists do have pretty much their own way. In 1880 the number of periodicals of all classes published in the United States was eleven thousand three hundred and fourteen. Of these more than four-fifths are devoted to news, politics, and family reading. The remainder are technical publications, relating to trade, industry, the professions, science, etc. More than three-fourths of the whole are weekly publications, ten per cent, are monthlies; daily newspapers form rathei less than ten per cent. Ten thousand five hundred and fifteen periodicals are published in the English language, and six hundred and one in German. The remaining percentage is contributed in the following languages in this order: French, Scandinavian, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Welsh, Bohemian, and Polish. There is, moreover, a Portuguese paper in New York, a Chinese paper in San Francisco, and a Cherokee one at Tahlequah, Indian Territory. In none of these languages does the proportion of periodicals reach one per cent, of the whole. The combined issue of the periodical press exceeds thirty-one millions. The copies printed aggregate, in a year, one billion three hundred and forty-four million, giving an average of two copies a week to every family. The growth of American newspaper literature is no less astonishing than the growth of so many other things American. The first census of the press was taken in 1850, though Mulhall gives an estimate for 1840. The number of newspapers in 1850 was eight hundred and thirty; ten years later it had increased to two thousand five hundred and twenty-six. In 1860 it reached four thousand and fifty-one;, in 1870 five thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, while ten years later it had nearly doubled, reachingthe number of eleven thousand three hundred and fourteen, or more than four times as many as in 1850. In circulation the increase has been even greater. In 1850 the average circulation per issue was five million one hundred and forty-two thousand one hundred and seventy-seven; it leaped to thirteen million six hundred and sixtythree thousand four hundred and nine in 1860 ; to twenty million eight hundred and twenty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-five in 1870, and in 1880 it reached the enormous number of thirty-one million seven hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and eighty-six. The morning newspapers of the principal cities consist of eight pages, like those ef London, and are sold at the same price, 2 cents (1 penny). The republican sheets are characterised by greater vivacity than the monarchicalmore spicy news, and, above all, a much more attractive mode of displaying it. A leading English editor once remarked to me: " We have no ' editors' who rank with the American, but many writers who excel yours." This was a just criticism. We see, however, in nothing more strongly than the newspaper presß of the two countries the operation of that law of assimilation which tends to make their products alike. The American press is rapidly acquiring greater dignity, and the British press more sparkle. T'heywill soon be as like as two peas, and the change toward each other will improve both. There are many things other than the press in which a mixture of the old and new would be equally advantageous. The falsest impressions of a country are created in the minds of foreigners by its newspaper press, because people forget that the press deals in the uncommon, the abnormal. A column is given to some startling monstrosity, a tbree-headed calf, for instance, but it doesn't follow that American calves, as a rule, possess more than the usual number of head pieces seen in Europe. An unruly refugee with twenty aliases kills a Texan rowdy in a bar room, | farther away from New York than Cairo is I from London, and the press on both sides of i the water gives the fullest details. It isn't I a corollary at all that human life is not i respected in the Republic. i A defaulter absconds, and the world is filled I with the news-, not a word is said about the j thousands of men in positions of trust who ! guard their charge to the last penny. My experience with newspapers upon both sides of the Atlantic has shown me how incorrect ideas are instilled of the one land in the other by the Press. A New York sheet, referring to the meeting of a few hairbrained cranks in Hyde Park, a motley crowd, whoseappearancemade me feel as Falstaff did about his soldiers: " I'll not march with them through Coventry, that's flat," lays this episode before its readers headed in large type: " A Gkand Republican Rally." And many readers think the Prince of Wales has not the ghost of a chance. I wish it were so, indeed, and I honor these cranks very much—all real reformers are oranks in their day. Pym, Hampden, Cromwell were, and John Bright himself was a very pronounced one till he brought the nation up to his level; now he is a regulation statesman in *' good form." But truth compels me to say that the republican

rally in Hyde Park was not much of a rally; it was like the great ball which the Princess wished to give in Ottawa upon court lines of etiquette and could not. In Canada, society was all in vulgar trade. There was not enough left to make a ball at all. In like manner, a Socialists' procession marches through the streets in Chicago, probably not an American in the array—a parcel of foreign cranks whose Communistic ideas are the natural growth of the unjust laws of their native land, which deny these men the privileges of equal citizenship, and hold them down as inferiors from their birth —and forthwith European papers alarm the timid and well-to-do masses of Europe by picturing this threatened assault upon property as the result of republicanism, the truth beiug that in no other country are the rights of property held eo sacredly as in America. Legislation to fix values of anything here, as values of land are fixed in Ireland, for instance, would be decried from one end of the land to the other. The only true and abiding conservatism is that engendered by republican institutions—conservatism of what is just, what is good—for these no party seeks to destroy. In like manner the books of travel written by visitors to any land must in their very nature be misleading. What strikes the stranger is not the thousand and one matters which are alike to those at home, nor the thousand occurrences which are common to him at home or abroad; it is the one exceptional matter, thing, or event which he notes down at once, and says " I can work that up—it is so strange." Very true, only it may be just as exceptional, just as strange to the native. The false impression is conveyed to the public, for whom he writes, by implying that it is the common and usual custom, or occurrence. Few travellers know how to arrive at the real every-day life of people, and yet from this alone is a just estimate of that people to be obtained. As the two divisions get to know each other better, they will understand that in the main, human life is very much the same on both sides of the Atlantic. It is after we cross the Mississippi and come to the " great West" —that new region which the hardy pioneer is rapidly bringing into civilisation—that life takes on different features. Aa might be expected, the difference in the press there gives us the best idea of the chasm which still divides the settled State from the unsettled territory. When a party of prospectors have found a mineral vein in the West, about the first thing they do after deciding to build a city, is to start a newspaper. With characteristic Western eccentricity this is named the ' Leadgulch Screamer,' or the ' Peek-a-800 Avalanche.' Then a press and type are brought in, the most literate of the gang invests in a table, an arm-chair, and an inkstand, and being already furnished with a revolver, he begins to " run " the paper. As the town grows, competing editors come in, and soon the struggle for existence sets in with an acerbity of feeling not excelled in those poetic. Dragons of the prime Who tore each other in their slime. Specimens of " slime " are carefully collected by European bookmakers and quoted as representative of American journalism. After the rough pioneering has been done, the gentler evidences of white civilisation soon manifest themselves. Fine streets lined with handsome buildings and towering churches spring up on the site of the wilderness; and literature takes upon itself a milder form. Present editors in Western towns which have originated and grown in this way, are men of culture, often graduates from Eastern universities; and these are not the men who pen the articles so largely quoted from by bookmakers. Dickens's amusing representation of the editorial combat in ' Pickwick' will keep in memory the fact that a few years ago British editors used inks of concentrated gall and venom. In periodical literature the child land has for a few years excelled its mother. In ' Harper's Magazine' and the ' Century' the art of editing has joined the arts of printing and engraving, and has surpassed anything before known in the history of periodical literature. These magazines, which for years have been educating the ? American people in principles of true art and instilling a love of pure literature, have done more than all the rest of the world's periodical publications to raise the artistic standard of printing. Not in America alone, but in England, has their influence been potent for good; and undisguised imitations of these magazines now appear even in Germany, which not many years ago seemed to have a monopoly of good engravers. It is in vain that any English or German magazine can hope to rival its Republican compeer ; not because the necessary talent and skill do not exist, or, at least, that it could not be created, but simply because it will not pay to employ it. The American publisher prints a quarter of a million of copies. This number has even been exceeded. The expense for art and matter, distributed among this huge edition, is a trifle per copy. What is the poor publisher to do who has not forty thousand subscribers? And this not one shilling magazine has in Britain or Germany. He yields the race perforce to the republican. ' Harper's' and the ' Century' actually sell more copies in Britain than any British monthly publication of equal price. Truly their venture in England is a strange and startling success. Let us note here that as population grows faster in the new than in the old land, more and more sure is it that the American publisher can afford to expend greater sums upon his magazine, which means that the native publications must encounter fiercer warfare than ever. Periodicals of high order for the girls and boys of a nation are of vital consequence. The world has not anything comparable to the ' St. Nicholas' or 'Harper's Young People.' Every friend to whom I have sent them in Britain has substantially said: "We have nothing like these. Our children watch for their arrival as for a great Wat. They are devoured." It was all very well for the Democracy to supply the monarchies with pork and flour, ' cheese and provisions the necessaries of life; a coarse, material triumph this; but what are we to say to this exportation of food for the mind ? If Democracy is successfully to invade the higher province, and minister to the things of the spirit as well as to those of the body, before it is more than a century old, what is the Monarchy to set forth as that in which it excels ? It is, at all events, to take the crumbs which fall from the republican magazine table. That much is settled, and it is with special pride we note the triumph of Democracy in these branches of art. The thanks of the Republic are due to ' Harper's' and the ' Century' for a successful, and, I hope, a permanent and profitable invasion of Great Britain. May their circulation never be less on either side of the Atlantic! American journalists have become noted all over the world, as indeed have Americans generally, for enterprise and energy. American foreign correspondents have revo' lutionised their profession. Until Stanley was sent into equatorial Africa by the ' New York Herald' to find Livingstone, such extraordinary missions were unknown; bat English journals quickly followed, and O'Donovan, brave, bright, and young when he fell in the Soudan, was sent by the ' Daily News' to Merv. The Jeannette expedition was a newspaper enterprise. The Bengal famine, the condition of Ireland, the Tunisian difficulty, the Bunnah dispute, the exploration of Corea, all these and many other matters have come within the scope of the modern foreign correspondent.