Newspapers: A Fragment From John Neal

Time was, when, tiko the French, we liad but few newspnpcrs; and they were wrilten for by the ablest men of the country, without pay. At the oulbreak of the revolütionary war, and afler the treaty of eighty-three up to the consummution of their great work, our wholo Jiterature wns a newspnper literature, and the Btrongest minds and best hearts altve were engaged in wholesome newspaper controversies that shook the world. The Adamses, the Otise?, tlie Frankün?, the Hamiltons, the Jeffersons, the Madisonf, the Jays - were ahvaj's at work upon the public rnind, through the newspapers. And thpn, afterthis- up to about the year 1G12, when there were not in the who!e of these Unit cd States, peradventure, so inany as half a dozen editora cmployed - proprietors being their own editors, and almost alwnys printers, depenc'ing upon gratuitous, and in ninety nine ca?s out of a hundred, upon anoHymous coiitribiitions and extracts from one another to mako up their sheets, pnrers went on muHipIying over the land as a mere experiment in business, a ncw branch in the. booktrade or jo'o-printing, tül every villagc in the country had its one, tvvo or threc, and someiiincs its half a score of newspapcrs; most ot' which wore not heanl of at the end of a twelvemonlh, when thé subscription feil due, andparrons wero osked for somethinw moie than their names. Ahout thifi iime, editors begon to ba thonghl of at a regular salarv. Proprietors were commonenough, wlio were called editors, and occasionally wrote a paragroph or a stickfull - 'i'here was Dnane, for example, and Alexander líanson, and Colman, and Major Russel, but there wore no editors properly speaking, till about the time of Paul Allen's nppearanca ia Bronson's United States Gazettc. Smce then, although news.papers have multiplieci liko the frogs of Egypt - in worth ns well as in quantity - they have been gradually growing belier. Hardly one of the whole two Uiousand now fiourishing - after a fashioo peculiar to cewspapers - wlthin ourdaries, vvould perinit such poetry, or sucli prose indeed, to appear n iheir columns (ulways excepting politica] papers and qtiaclt cdv'ertisemenls) ;is iñude up the lnrger pnrt of our bcst niíig.izincs and book-lUeralureforiy years ago. Two fhous-tnd newspapers! Let us pee vvhat they cost our people, and how good á penny wort I) lliey gel for their inone'y. Snppose eacli pnper to have upon'the average one thousand subscribers- an estimale bt'ldvv the truth if ve consider tfie preent prico of the most popular; hardly a fonrth partofwhai they wcre a dozen years ago: let us takc for our average cost to the reader, tliree dollars ayear, includiig postage, a moderate computation, certainly, when wc take into view the daiües and liigh-priced weeklies - then have we, for the yearly cosí for ench newspaper, which somebody must pay for, the wronged type fonnder, or the vronged paper-maker, no lesa a sum ihnn hroe thousand dollars. This, multiplied by wo tliousand, the total number of ncwspapers publishíd in our country, (Vattemar colleeted pecimens of more than that number,) gives-a jrand total of eix núllions of dollars yearly cost of th'i8 fourth estáte to the American peo)le! Add tlie time wasled with newspapers - and tlje tax would betrebled. Ana then, what becomes of these ncwspas'ers? Of thc five hundred niiliions of copies, at least, circnlating over the land, at the rale of more than a million and a half per day, forty-nine fiftieths perish wilh the going down of the sun. Not one in a tlioueand, or perhaps ten thousand, is to befound alive at the end of a week, and before amontli is over, the only copy on earth must bc looked for on the proprietor's fi!e, or in the hands of a collector. And yet with all this waste,vho that knows their true value, would venture to say that newspapers cost this country more than they are Wörth? Peoplé read newspnpers who reac nothing else. People read newspipera when and wiicro thev read nothinL elso. To a grreatbody of our men, women and children,a newapaper ie a drama of the universe. To cal] it the World, or the Timos, or the Globe, or the Sun, is by no means to overéate ils valué in tlieir eyes. To thcm it is the only World they are acquáinted with; a Sun, without which they and their families would prope in darkness forever. Of the Times, either in the old world or the nevv, what knovv they but by the help of the newsnaperg? They have no hooks beyond the Bible, an aJmanac or a Btray a-Kempie, or Joeephus, o a tattered copy of Noah Web6ter's Thirü Par - and how wculd they be able to guess at the doings of the rest of the world, at the rise hik fall of empires, the condition of Europe, or th progrese of knowledge, ay, or of what thei ow rulers were doing for them, but for the newspapers? There are ten inillions of people in theee United States, who never heard o the invasión of Russia, nor the overthrów o Napoleon - nor cf Napoleon himself - excep through the newspnpers; and who.nt this hour but for the newspaper?, would not know tha such a man ever existed, to eay nothing of th ten thousand sceptered shadows, that have ap peared and disoppeared upon the thrones o. the world within the last half century. Do our newspapers cost U9 too muefa then even at this price?