If, as a New York paper recently said, the journalist is superseding the
orator, it is full time for the work upon _Journals and Journalism_,
which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in
our political contests the "campaign speech" is not intended or adapted
to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage
friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of
partisans, and the more extravagant the assertion and the more unsparing
the denunciation of "the enemy," the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the
audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely
the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are
not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to
party feeling. "Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid" is the
Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech.
As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment,
the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision.
But this, the journalist asserts, is not done by the orator, for the reason
just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not
with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures
and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not
under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper,
also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and
states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and
of great space to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of
argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the
orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and
ample plea, and the orator, it is asserted, would often serve his cause
infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by
pouring out his loose and illogical declamation.
But the argument for the newspaper can be pushed still further. Since
phonographic reporting has become universal, and the speaker is conscious
that his very words will be spread the next morning before hundreds of
thousands of readers, it is of those readers, and not of the thousand
hearers before him, of whom he thinks, and for whom his address is really
prepared. Formerly a single charge was all that was needed for the
fusillade of a whole political campaign. The speech that was originally
carefully prepared was known practically only to the audience that heard
it. It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery,
and was fresh and new to every new audience. But now, when delivered to an
audience, it is spoken to the whole country. It is often in type before
it is uttered, so that the orator is in fact repeating the article of
to-morrow morning. The result is good so far as it compels him to precision
of statement, but it inevitably suggests the question whether the newspaper
is not correct in its assertion that the great object of the oration is
accomplished not by the orator, but by the writer.
But this, after all, is like asking whether a chromo copy of a great
picture does not supersede painting, and prove it to be an antiquated or
obsolete art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar charm and power cannot be
superseded by any other art. Great orations are now prepared with care, and
may be printed word for word. But the reading cannot produce the impression
of the hearing. We can all read the words that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill
at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument fifty years after the
battle. But those who saw him standing there, in his majestic prime, and
speaking to that vast throng, heard and saw and felt something that we
cannot know. The ordinary stump speech which imperfectly echoes a leading
article can well be spared. But the speech of an orator still remains a
work of art, the words of which may be accurately lithographed, while the
spirit and glow and inspiration of utterance which made it a work of art
cannot be reproduced.
The general statement of the critic, however, remains true, and the
effective work of a political campaign is certainly done by the newspaper.
The newspaper is of two kinds, again--that which shows exclusively the
virtue and advantage of the party it favors, and that which aims to be
judicial and impartial. The tendency of the first kind is obvious enough,
but that of the last is not less positive if less obvious. The tendency
of the independent newspaper is to good-natured indifference. The very
ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, with which a side is advocated,
prejudices such a paper against the cause itself. Because the hot orator
exclaims that the success of the adversary would ruin the country, the
independent Mentor gayly suggests that the country is not so easily ruined,
and that such an argument is a reason for voting against the orator. The
position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen
on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything
and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really
in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very
unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction,
which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and
partiality of the party advocate. Thorough independence is perfectly
compatible with the strongest conviction that the public welfare will be
best promoted by the success of this or that party. Such independence
criticises its own party and partisans, but it would not have wavered in
the support of the Revolution because Gates and Conway were intriguers, and
Charles Lee an adventurer, and it would have sustained Sir Robert Walpole
although he would not repeal the Corporation and Test laws, and withdrew
his excise act.
Journalism, if it be true that it really shapes the policy of nations, well
deserves to be treated as thoughtfully as Mr. "John Oldcastle" apparently
treats it in the book we have mentioned, for it is the most exacting of
professions in the ready use of various knowledge. Mr. Anthony Trollope
says that anybody can set up the business or profession of literature who
can command a room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. Would he also say
that any man may set up the trade of an artist who can buy an easel, a
palette, a few brushes, and some colors? It can be done, indeed, but only
as a man who can hire a boat may set up for an East India merchant.
(_December_, 1880)