THE INFLUENCE OF NEWSPAPERS ON THE PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 73, 8 February 1862, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE INFLUENCE OF NEWSPAPERS ON THE PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION.

Tlio following paper was presented by Mr. Blanchavd JoiTold at tho Social Science Congress atrDublin;—

■Ifc occurred to me some time since that I might give observations oil the }.>rogre.is of education to this congress that, as editor of a journal that appeals to the musses, I have had peculiar opportunities uf making.

..The influence which the spread of newspapers has exercised on the public mind is worth the very serious attention of every lv.m who pretends to speak oi- write upon popular education. Sage professors tell us—with a power—that the teachings of the mere newspapers are neither sound nor lofty. Crimes are paraded : the breakfast of the doomed malefactor is .described ; the activities of Sir Cresswell CrcssweU's court are frequently set forth; the public greed for horrors and scandals is met with a bountiful supply. It may b3 that these ulcers of our social system should be covered from the public view; but I "am inclined to think that the light of day and the air of heaven are the best, and that these will sweeten and heal them. For the rest the newspaper records the great struggles of gallant peoples for freedom, the doings of parliaments, the great achievement of armies; the launching of a Ureat Eastern ; the gallantry of a Bel lot; and searching to the bottom of our social scale, places in the light of day, that we may sea and help, the much suffering aud the many wrongs of the poor. Jean Paul tolls us in his " Doctrine of Education that, "although there is only one spirit of poetry, there are many different forms in which it can incorporate itself, comedies, tragedies, odes, aud the thin wasp's body of the epigram." We may find the spirit of poetry in the newspaper, for it is often called upon to record the acted poetry of life. "When it tells the story of the great and honored judge who has fought liis way through difficulties to fame ; when it j describes the splendid intellect that has almost circumnavigated the world of knowledge, there is much of the spirit of poetry in its columns. I can hardly call to mind nobler pictures than shipwrecks, made solemn by the gallantry of the men who did their duty therein at the gates of death, which the newspaper has given to the world say within the last ten years. That day of gallant deeds when the Northern Belle was upon our Kentish coast touched the hearts of millions. Could a father, setting his child upon his knee, offer the youngster a nobler example of duty greatly fulfilled then that of the man in charge of the mails on board a Belgian boat, who, when the ship was settling, in a shrieking storm, upon the Goodwin Sands, calmly floated his mail bags, and went to his grave of angry foam, satisfied that he had done his duty ? Every day, every hour, brings to the Editor's office revelations of heroic deeds as well as of diabolical crimes. His box is stored with a chronicle of all the world has lately done, and by his hero thousands sitting at their fireside obtain that teaching which the daily doings of the nations on the earth can afford them.

'We are told that newspaper reading is somewhat idle work after all. Certainly it is not serious study, arid there is little or no mental discipline iv it. But to- the scholar whose judgment has been trained —even as Fansday: would train itl —the chronicle of daily hninan action is vastly interesting and important; while it is, at least, useful to the unpractised thinker and half-educated man, since it stimulates his.curiosity and cultivates his attention. Men go from newspapers to books. They see that it is to their interest to have some knowledge. The wondrous varieties of-trade, the broad expanse over which British activity is cast, necessitate the reading of newspapers which give the trade quotations of China, New York, and the coast Africa. The sailor's wife hears from the newspaper of where her husband's ship lies. By its friendly help the intending emigrant discovers a distant market for his labor. We find our houses and servants by consulting its columns. But it is not merely a chronicle. It.endaavoura also to guide the opinions and cultivate the taste of its readers. Some of the highest intellects of our time, and many of the ripest scholars, have 'given their geaius, and opened their storehouses, for the benefit of the newspaper reader. The influence, then, of the newspapers upon the progress of education must have been weighty and beneficial. It appeals at once to the curiosity and the interest of all classes. ■ It is a strong and healthy tonic that acts powerfully upon the appetite for knowledge. It has made thousands think who in its absence would have vegetated to the end of their chapter. I remember being much struck with a conversation I heard last.autumn, when, during a tramp, I rested for an honr at a Kentish ale-house. Tiie farm servants, the day's labour done, met to have a song and a pipe. Not many years since the conversation would have besn of the coarsest and saddest, about rabbits snared, brutal practical jokes, and news about pigs, and hens, and cows. But there was a penny daily paper with the morning news from London upon the table, and the first cry was for the news, Muster Sfmms, the barber, appeared to be the scholar of the party, and was reqnested to rand. The reading was )iot "remarkable for its purity of style, and words turned up that sorely puzzled Muster Sirams; but lie had an attentive audience, and it was evident that the men were familiar with the living European celebrities. They had their political views also. One man stoutly maintained that Garibaldi was the greatest man in Europe, while, the barber made no secret of his Austrian sympathies. In other villages 1 visited, I fouud still a well thumbed copy of a penny paper in wayside places that could never afford to take the Times or Daily News. Evidently these "penny paper 3 are so many cheap school-masters. The best evidence, however, of the effect of the newspapers upon the working classes, is to be found in the editor's letter box. I have been at some pains of late years to collect and arrange the remarkable letters which have been sent by correspondents into my letter box. The collection is a striking, and, I thirvk, an instructive one. Men struggling clumsily from the darkness of ignorance, j catching desperately at an idea that is dim: poor fellows heated with' a sense of wrong, yet unable to give ifc shaps that it may be completely seen, are among the scholars whom the newspaper has aroused from complete mental torpor. I have a remarkable letter from a railway porter, who is overpowered with a sense of the tyranny the company he serves have in--flicted upon Jiim and his fellow portera. Yet, after attentive repeated readings, I have fouud it impossible to extract a single fact from the poor man's folios of tumbled words. The letter 13 as rambling and foggy as the celebrated" statement of the engineer against his employin, which Mr. Albert. Smith recited in his Mont Blanc entertainment. It is painful as'the struggle of a mind in bondage, yet I take it we j may accept eftbrts like these as "the blind uneasy I motion that foretells the higher life." 1

Even the ticket-of-leave mau sends his contribution 3to the editor's letter box. I have a letter from an offender inquiring how he may get liis name and portrait removed from the Hue and Cry ; letters from dock laborers, written upon ibul scraps of piper, complaining of rapacious landlords, or appealing to the public to aid them in the formation of some humble meeting' house or club; letters* from the •workhouse, contrasting the diet of the pauper with that of the criminal. A series of admirable letter.-) were addressed to me by a pauper, an .inmate of one of the metropolitan poor-houses, in which the shortcomings of the poor-law system were lucidly set forth-in excellent English. The writer was evidently an educated man, who had been worsted in the battle of life, and was reduced to the shame of taking- his holiday in pauper clothes, with the pauper's badge marked upon them by authority of the board of ■guardians. He kept "up an intercourse with the world by means of some cheap newspaper thnt was probably sent to him by a friend, and he was enabled hereby to make n just contrast between state treatment of poverty and" crime. But perhaps the most remarkable instance of the direct effect of newspapers upon the education of the; masses, is that which the present unhappy strike in tlie London buildingtrade offei's.

In the vast mass of letters I liove received on this subject there is much confusion about labor find capital; political economy is treated scornfully, and evil motives 'arc often attributed both to the capitalist and to the working man's advocate. But on all sides there is anxiety to discuss differences, not to settle them by violence. It is clear that the fiorce3t among the workmen have put all weapon?, save the pen, aside. They are very self opinionated, violent in expression, and mostly led by a few very sharp and uncompromising loaders. But they are ready to listen | to sirgumsnt, and to accept mediation. Some among them take the opportunity wliioh the discussion of these differences' between employer and employed offers to raise splendid Utopia, or to review within | the limits of a sheet of note paper the real wants of the people. A letter from an operative I received recently opens with the question : — I ■'•'- " What aye the wants of the people?" j My correspondent replies to his own question : "At once, I say, sufficient remunerative work : good, unadulterated food, abuudant, cheap, and good ! sufficient homes and clothes to keep the cold and wet out; and as a matter of course, a sufficient voice in the representation of the people, to insure a just and righteous administration of the monies which the paople pay into the public purse." The writer then proceeds to state that these things must be demanded in "a voice of resistless thunder." His similes and image 3 jolt against one another till he discovers the demon of hunger dancing "in the vitals of the constitution." All this is very clumsy ; and the logic is of the poorest—but these are the first steps of tiie man who will danes deftly presently, and it may be, if we humour and have a care of him, to the genteelest of tunes. I have by me more daring flights than this. Upon a greasy shapeless piece of paper, a Whitechapel operative shows how the national debt may be liquidated in a few years—and a handsome balance left to boot in the hands of the chancellor of the exchequer. lam assured that Mr. Gladstone has not paid that attention to the writer which he deserved ; and it is slyly hinted the right hon. gentleman is suffering all the torments of jealousy, as ho contemplates tha coming glory of tSie national debt uuniliilator. I am-appeale! to set the discoverer upon hi 3 proper pedestal, and to reliave him from the drudgery of gasfitting, which is his present occupation. Even the <?W Greenwich, an,d phelsea pensioners figurf in, the

list of mv corresnohdents. Atone time I was overwhelmed' with'memorials, praying fur grievances, signed with the mark, or very crooked autographs, of rhoso old pensioners. Their supply of shirts is short, and the order of the late Duke of Wellington is quoted in rapport of a better supply. The coots pi'.ler their rations. They may smoke only in the horse-road. i!vi;u tJ.i-,- olil soldiers and sailor.-; have learned something from, their uew&papcr, and know h'>w to' set their crrievances right. ihey are cvci: adopts at the artful forms of newspaper correspondence; and seek pleasantly _to throw in a compliment to the editor, by way of ingratiating themselves. The race of constant readers and subscribers from tie beginning is indeed a large one. I remember that on the day when the first number of the Daily News appeared, the editor thereof received n letter Ki'snerl " Your Constant Reader."

The contrast between the letters of old soldiers now I laid up in Chelsea Hospital and those of soldiers on I active service is suggestive. During ihe last three or ! four years I have been engaged in the advocation of j the total abolition of flogging in the army and navy. This advocacy has brought me into contact with hundreds of private soldiers. I have been in daily correspondence with them. From all parts of the world they have appealed to me to endeavor to set some grievance right, or to describe some revolting case of flogging. In the autumn of last year T received letters of complaint about clothing, from privates in the_3rd Dragoon Guards, who were in India. I described these letters to Lord Herbert, then Mr. Sidney Herbert, whereupon he directed an inquiry to Ids made, which resulted in a complete report from the commanding officer. The privates saw that their complaints, having been reasonably and rationally described, were remedied, and that they were not marked men. This is, I venture to assert, a new and important development of popular education. The private soldier has learned that he has an appeal to the. public : and he is sufficiently educated to set forth his petition in writing. Some admirably written articles in military discipline that I have recently published, were conti-ibuted to my journal by a corporal in one of the household regiments. In the list of the modern editor's correspondents, we must not forget the poets. If poetry be I

" A gum that oozeth Whence 'tis nourished1' we shall certainly not he ill off for bards as education progresses. Plough-boys, sweeps, farm-labourers, artisans of all descriptions are in my list. The subjects are as varied as the writers. The verse is ragged and unreadable as a rule, but the sentiments are generous aud patriotic. I might fill baskets with lines to Garibaldi, songs in honor of labour, rude amatory verse and dirges ; even the winding up of a company, called the Inventors' Assistance Company, was nottoo prosiac an affair for the muse of a snareholder who dwelt at Cow-cross, Sniithfield. His lines on the catastrophe are the expression of a determined man roused to exertion by misfortune. Appealing to the discomfited shareholders, he cries.—

"In me they will find the lion that ne'er knocks under."

Some of the weakest of these endeavours, to speak in numbers, are sent in with an air of splendid generosity. The editor is at liberty to print the enclosed poem—is presented with the copywright thereof.

These shortcomings, trips, errors of judgment, are signs full of promise, because they are proofs of mental activity—just as the stumbles of a child show its endeavours to walk, and give promise that it will walk without stumbling presently. If the newspaper be not the balancing pole by which the mind may poise itself to read the stars, it is a go-cart at least. The recent spread of the co-operative system among the working classes is the fruit of a cheap press. The newspaper reports the success of one store : and forthwith new stores are opened. A year ago I received, perhaps, two letters weekly on co-operation ; now I receive about twenty, chiefly from secretaries of new societies, who unanimously appeal to their newspapers for support and often for advice. Co-opera-tive societies have at length started their own organ; so that co-operation is successfully worked, out anil its successes are accurately and lucidly described by the working classes themselves. It is curious to remark how from the vantage ground of one sound and clear iden, men nimbly reach a second. These co-operating men, who sit smiling over a ledger that shows a profit to be divided, look about to see what is to bo done next and next. "We have been thinking," a cooperative secretary wrote to me the other day, "that co-operative societies might act with your National Book Union." These societies do not in all csisps restrict tha application of their dominant principle to the chc.ip provision of food and clothing. The prospectus of a society that proposes to put aside profits as an education'fund has been recently sent to me. It is, indeed, cheering1 to the friends of popular education to perceive that the working man who once adopts an economic system of life, who consumes unadulterated cheap food, and has freed himself from the public house, at once turns to book*, and thus the advocate of co-operative societies and temperance apostles are promoters of education.

I The literature offered to unlettered renders, with certain ii;\v honourable exceptions, is hardly wholesome. The repeal of the paper duty will ultimately put a shelf of jrooil books in every cottage of the empire, but up to this time tbe new journals which cheap paper has brought into existence are fungi rather than flowers. The dagger and the bowl; the murder at the smithie ; the lurking- gipsy ; all seasoned and leavened with columns of facctke, and answers to correspondents, who exist only in the ay ild imagination of the gentleman who is retained to make replies by the hundred; such materials, with stalfi domestic receipts to fill up columns, even when supplied at one halfpenny, will hardly raise a race of intellectual giants. It occurred to me, early in the springl of the prseent year, that something sounder, more lasting than this cheap literary miscellany, than the yellow and red shilling libraries which blaze at railway stations, might, by an agency, based on that of the London Art Union, be carried into the homes of the million. lat onco communicated my plan to Mr. Layard, who remarked that the distribution of the British classics among- the pnbple was at least as important as the diffusion of prints that are not always the very highest and mightiest art. Mr. Massey, chairman of ways and weans, offered me his influence ; Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, Mr. Henry Berkeley, Dr. Peney, Mr. Anthony Trollope, Dr. Mackay, Mr. W. H, "Russell, Mr. Sala, and others, brought their adhesion and support to the projected National Book Union. So backed, I felt justified in asking the great man whose name is music in the ears of all classes of his countrymen —whose fame in letters, in law, as orator and scientific inquirer, ranks with that of the Iron Duke in war and state craft— need I say I allude to your noble president I—l1 —I repeat that"l felt justified in asking Lord Brougham to be our president ?

His lordship took our plan heartily in hand. The Book Unions bill was introduced into the House < f Commons by Mr. Layard, and passed that house, with the support of the Government, without a division. We naturally coxmted upon the support of Government in the Upper Chamber : lmt just as under the guidance of Lord Brougham, the second reading of the bill was about to pass, Earl Grey opposed it, and Lord Granville supported the earl. For the present year the bill was lost. But

Checks and disasters Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd. Parliament will be again asked to' legali.se Book Unions for the people. Meantime "we have tacked ; we have not retreated. We have made those modifications of our plan which were necessary to shield us from the penalties of the Lottery Act; and I trust that when this great association meets next year, I shall be permitted to submit to it the result of the first year's campaign. Dr. Charming said that a shelf of books in a poor mail's house was some pledge of his keeping the peace. This is the pledge which our Book Union advocates, and will endeavour to farce upon the acceptance of the masses, The newspapers have paved our way; audit now lies smooth before us.