Press Club: I do not remember to have agreed or consented to make any
remarks about the press or anything else on the present occasion, but I
am glad of this opportunity to say a word or two. Of course, I have the
very greatest respect for this profession, the profession of the press,
knowing it, as I do, to be one of the greatest civilizers of the
world. Above all other institutions and all other influences, it is the
greatest agency in breaking down the hedges of provincialism. In olden
times one nation had no knowledge or understanding of another nation,
and no insight or understanding into its life; and, indeed, various
parts of one nation held the other parts of it somewhat in the attitude
of hostility, because of a lack of more thorough knowledge; and,
curiously enough, we are prone to look upon strangers more or less in
the light of enemies. Indeed, enemy and stranger in the old vocabularies
are pretty much of the same significance. A stranger was an enemy. I
think it is Darwin who alludes to the instinctive fear a child has of
a stranger as one of the heritages of centuries of instinctive
cultivation, the handed-down instinct of years ago. And even now it is
a fact that we have very little sympathy with people of a different
country, even people speaking the same language, having the same god
with a different name, or another god with the same name, recognizing
the same principles of right and wrong.
But the moment people began to trade with each other, the moment they
began to enjoy the results of each other's industry and brain, the
moment that, through this medium, they began to get an insight into
each other's life, people began to see each other as they were; and
so commerce became the greatest of all missionaries of civilization,
because, like the press, it tended to do away with provincialism.
You know there is no one else in the world so egotistic as the man who
knows nothing. No man is more certain than the man who knows nothing.
The savage knows everything. The moment man begins to be civilized he
begins to appreciate how little he knows, how very circumscribed in its
very nature human knowledge is.
Now, after commerce came the press. From the Moors, I believe, we
learned the first rudiments of that art which has civilized the world.
With the invention of movable type came an easy and cheap method of
preserving the thoughts and history of one generation to another and
transmitting the life of one nation to another. Facts became immortal,
and from that day to this the intelligence of the world has rapidly and
steadily increased.
And now, if we are provincial, it is our own fault, and if we are
hateful and odious and circumscribed and narrow and peevish and limited
in the light we get from the known universe, it is our own fault.
Day by day the world is growing smaller and men larger. But a few years
ago the State of New York was as large as the United States is to-day.
It required as much time to reach Albany from New York as it now
requires to reach San Francisco from the same city, and so far as the
transmission of thought goes the world is but a hamlet.
I count as one of the great good things of the modern press--as one
of the specific good things--that the same news, the same direction of
thought is transmitted to many millions of people each day. So that the
thoughts of multitudes of men are substantially tending at the same time
along the same direction. It tends more and more to make us citizens
in the highest sense of the term, and that is the reason that I have so
much respect for the press.
Of course I know that the news and opinions are written by folks liable
to the same percentage of error as characterizes all mankind. No one
makes no mistakes but the man who knows everything--no one makes no
mistakes but the hypocrite.
I must confess, however, that there are things about the press of to-day
that I would have changed--that I do not like.
I hate to see brain the slave of the material god. I hate to see money
own genius. So I think that every writer on every paper should be
compelled to sign his name to everything he writes. There are many
reasons why he has a right to the reputation he makes. His reputation
is his property, his capital, his stock in trade, and it is not just
or fair or right that it should be absorbed by the corporation which
employs him. After giving great thoughts to the world, after millions of
people have read his thoughts with delight, no one knows this lonely
man or his solitary name. If he loses the good will of his employer, he
loses his place and with it all that his labor and time and brain have
earned for himself as his own inalienable property, and his corporation
or employer reaps the benefit of it.
There is another reason establishing the absolute equity of this
proposition, a reason pointing in other directions than to the writer
and his rights. It is no more than right to the reader that the opinion
or the narrative should be that of Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown or Mr. So and
So, and not that of, say, the _Picayune_. That is too impersonal. It is
no more than right that a single man should have his honor at stake for
what is said, and not an impersonal something. I know that we are all
liable to believe it if the _Picayune_ says it, and yet, after all,
it is the individual man who is saying it and it is in the interest of
justice that the reader be apprised of the fact.
I believe I have just a little fault to find with the tendency of
the modern press to go into personal affairs--into so-called private
affairs. In saying this, I have no complaint to lodge on my own behalf,
for I have no private affairs. I am not so much opposed to what
is called sensationalism, for that must exist as long as crime is
considered news, and believe me, when virtue becomes news it can only be
when this will have become an exceedingly bad world. At the same time I
think that the publication of crime may have more or less the tendency
of increasing it.
I read not long ago that if some heavy piece of furniture were dropped
in a room in which there was a string instrument, the strings in harmony
with the vibrations of the air made by that noise would take up the
sound. Now a man with a tendency to crime would pick up that criminal
feeling inspiring the act which he sees blazoned forth in all its detail
in the press. In that view of the matter it seems to me better not to
give details of all offences.
Now, as to the matter of being too personal, I think that one of the
results of that sort of journalism is to drive a great many capable and
excellent men out of public life. I heard a little story quite recently
of a man who was being urged for the Legislature, and yet hesitated
because of his fear of newspaper criticism of this character. "I
don't want to run," said he to his wife, who urged that this was an
opportunity to do himself and his friends honor, and that it was a sort
of duty in him. "I would if I were you," said his wife. "Well, but there
is no saying," he responded, "what the newspapers might print about me."
"Why, your life has always been honorable," said she; "they could not
say anything to your disparagement." "But they might attack my father."
"Well, there was nothing in his career of which any one might feel
ashamed. He was as irreproachable as you." "Ay, but they might attack
you and tell of some devilment you went into before we were married."
"Then you better not run," said his wife promptly. I think this fear on
the part of husband and wife is identical with that which keeps many a
great man out of public service.
Now, there is another thing which every one ought to abhor. All men and
newspapers are entirely too apt to criticise the motives of men. It is
a fault common to all good men--except the clergy, of course--this habit
of attacking motives. And whenever we see a man do something which is
great and praiseworthy, let us talk about the act itself and not go
into a speculation or an attack upon the motive which prompted the act.
Attack what a man actually does.
But these are only small matters. The press is the most powerful of all
agencies for the dissemination of intelligence, and as such I hail
it always. It has nearly always been very friendly and kind to me
and certainly I have received at the hands of the New Orleans press a
treatment I shall never forget.
Our Sunday newspapers, to my mind, rank among the greatest institutions
of the present day. One finds in them matter that could not be found in
several hundreds of books,--beautiful thoughts, broad intelligence, a
range of information perfectly startling in its usefulness and perfectly
charming in its entertainment. Contrast, please, how we are enabled by
their good offices to spend the Sabbath, with the descriptions of hell
with all its terrors and all the gloom characterizing the Sabbaths our
forefathers had to spend. The Sunday newspaper is an absolute blessing
to the American people, a picture gallery, short stories, little poems,
a symposium of brain and intelligence and refinement and--divorce
proceedings.
As I have said, the good will and the fair treatment of the American
press have nearly always been my lot. There have been some misguided
people who have said harsh things, but when I remember all the
misguided things I have done, I am inclined to be charitable for their
shortcomings.
I do not know that I have anything else to say, except that I wish you
all good luck and sunshine and prosperity, and enough of it to last you
through a long life.