_An Editorial Schedule._
It has occurred to us that there could be no better time than the
present for a combined strike among newspaper-men for less work and more
pay. The employees of the press throughout the country have been
painfully aware for a long time that their services are not remunerated
as they should be,—that too little pay is doled out to them for too much
work. While train-movers and butcher-boys and dirt-shovellers in divers
parts of the republic are demanding compensation commensurate with their
toil, why should not the meek and lowly journalist turn like the trodden
worm, and sting the iron heel that is grinding him in the dust of
starvation and obscurity? We are told that a secret order is now being
organized among editors and reporters, and that, within a short time,
this continent will be convulsed with the most prodigious uprising that
has ever taken place between the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The object of this secret, modest, but puissant organization is to
better the condition of the practical journalist, and thus directly
benefit the universal cause of literature; and we are confidently
informed that upon next Fourth of July,—being the hundred and tenth
anniversary of this nation’s independence,—the following schedule of
weekly wages to be paid editors and reporters will be submitted to the
proprietors of American newspapers:—
To editorial writers who “used to know Thurlow Weed and Horace
Greeley,” and who wear long beards and no neckties, and who write
essays beginning with “We opine,” or with “Albeit” $30
To editorial writers who read “The Nation,” and “The Scientific
American” 40
To editorial writers who would like to spend their declining years
at the head of an established country weekly 25
To editorial writers who receive mail addressed to “The Hon.,” and
who covet a foreign mission 20
To reporters who “know Dana, and have worked on ‘The New-York Sun’” 8
To reporters who say “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” to the city editor 12
To critics who discuss “the rendition,” “the mise en scene,” “the
floritures, bravuras,” etc. 15
To poets of the “Hope,” “Eternity,” “Spring,” “Banana,”
“Stovepipe,” and “Bobtail-Flush” kind 18
To female reporters who seek to demonstrate that a female can do a
man’s work 10
For “society” drivel 8
To ex-lawyers, ex-preachers, ex-statesmen, and ex-tradesmen who
have been starved into journalism 15
To editorial writers who have held a clerkship in Washington one
winter, and are thoroughly acquainted with national politics and
the tariff question 20
But we can violate this confidence no further. Suffice it to say, that,
when once the grasping monopolists who now hold the journalistic
intellect of our country by the throat are compelled to accede to the
just demands of brain-labor, pale faces and haggard forms will be
banished from our newspaper offices, and affluence will reign where the
twin vultures, starvation and penury, now brood in hideous silence.
_A White-House Ballad.—II._