Canton High School - Echo Yearbook (Canton, MA)

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g THE ECHO at a very low figure, even less than the actual cost of carriage. During the years from 1840 to 1860 the question that most agitated the country was that of slavery, and like every other national tendency or con- troversy, it found ready expression in the press of the period. William Lloyd Garrison was the publisher of an abolition paper, THE L-IBER- ATOR, which he circulated all over the country by the thousands of copies, and kept up an effectual agi- tation of the subject in the public mind. Not all Northerners were of the rabid stamp of Garrison, and many of them resented his methods of treating the question. At one time he was dragged through the str gets of Boston with a rope about his neck, and his publication was excluded from the mails in many of the south- ern states. But the question could not be shoved aside. Prohibition, as ever, failed to quiet it, and persecution made it flourish the more. Other leaders flocked to the anti-slavery banner, Horace Greeley brought his TRIBUNE and Henry Ward Beecher his NEW YORK INDEPENDENT, and lined them up by the side of the struggling Garrison and his impover- ished LIBERATOR. Wendell Phillips, the orator, and Charles Sumner, Sen- ator from Massachusetts, threw their immense influence into the balance on the side of freedom. Slowly, but nevertheless surely, the scales began to turn in their favor, but slavery was not to be abolished by peaceful means. It took a long and bloody war to end it, but it was ended, and the first indication of its doom was the growth of abolitionist sentiment in the newspapers of the time. One other influence should be men- tioned in a journalistic summary: Uncle Tom's Cabin, the somewhat sobby and sentimental but effective novel written by Mrs. Harriet Beech- er Stowe. Strictly speaking, this was not journalism, for it did not truly picture the plight of the ordin- ary slave family, but like many mod- ern newspapers, seized upon an ex- aggerated phase of Southern life and magnified it. Not all slave-owners were like Simon Legree, nor did every slave become an Uncle Tom. How- ever, the novel did its work in placing the slavery question uppermost in the minds of the younger generation of voters and it sold by the hundreds of thousands, becoming a stage play that survived the Emancipation Proc- lamation by more than seventy-five years. Journalism entered a new phase after the war, influenced by the war- time hysteria, the flood of corruption which ensued as the North divided the spoils of its conquest, and new in- ventions and methods in the art of printing. Gone were the direct meth- ods of handling news, and with tnem went the old-time editor-printer, per- sonified by Benjamin Franklin. In his place came college-trained men, executives, and men of letters, who recognized the importance of the newspaper in American life and pre- pared to make the most of it. An important feature of news- paper development at this time was the Associated Press, an organization of newspapers formed in 1848 to co- operate in gathering the news in the city of New York. During the war, the great demand for news of the armies led to its extension in branches with member newspapers in every large city and correspondents in every village in America. This eliminated costly telegraph and cable tolls and simplined the gathering of news. The modern paper depends upon such an Association for its outside news and maintains only a few correspondents in localities in which it is especially interested. From time to time, over the wires of this nation-wide newspaper orga- nization had come rumors of corrup- tion in the large cities of the East and in Washington itself, but it was left to a national magazine to lift the veil on the shame of the cities and reveal the fearful graft of Tammany in New York State under Boss Tweed, and in Philadelphia under the Republican mogul , Matt Quay. These political rings stole over two hundred and fifty millions of' dollars before they were broken up and their leaders sent to the penitentiary, large- ly through the efforts of Thomas lfTontinur,-fl on page 2-13

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Q THE ECHO g star of that liberty which subsequent- ly revolutionized America. The royal officers were correct in assuming that a free press would stir up public discontent with the govern- ment. The feeling against Great Britain on the eve of the revolution was strongest in the news centers: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, An- napolis, and Williamsburg'. In the newspaper oiiices ardent young revo- lutionists wrote appeals to their countrymen to resist Great Britain. These little newspapers were scat- tered around in the coffee houses and club rooms, spreading rebellion every- where. They helped carry the news of the revolutionary movement and to create a nation by enabling the citizens in every part to know what was going on in the most distant places. The Royalists of Boston called the ofiices of the MASSACHUSETTS SPY the sedition foundry. During the war these received a powerful there appeared numerous political pamphlets, the most effective of which, Thomas Paine's, Common Sense , was reprinted in thousands of copies and circulated among four mil- lion readers. It contended that inde- pendence was vital, not conciliation with the mother country, and proved most influential in forcing the nnal separation. It is doubtful if any other printed work in American His- tory has had a greater influence than Common Sense . With the successful conclusion of the war, newspapers multiplied and a new period of growth began during the nineteenth century, which was to build up a free American press un- equalled by any in the world for ac- curacy and freedom from arbitrary governmental censorship. Following the adoption of the Constitution, and the rise of the two political parties, Federalists and Jeffersonians, the discussion of political issues became of supreme importance. Hamilton supported the UNITED STATES GAZETTE, while Jefferson gave his utmost to the NATIONAL GAZ- ETTE. In the contest over the adoption of the Constitution, Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay wrote a remarkable impetus, and in addition, series of papers in defense of the new plan of government, later collected and now published as a school text- book on American government. Among later political writers should be mentioned John C. Calhoun, from South Carolina, the famous statesman and defender of slavery, and Daniel Webster, whose speeches on the Con- stitution and the Union were almost as widely circulated in the north as the Federalist itself. Some reasons for the marvelous growth of newspapers during the first half of the nineteenth century were: 1. The telegraph and rail- way, multiplying the means of securing information. 2. Advertising, which grew in proportion as the cities grew in size and population, enabling the newspaper own- er to reduce the cost of his paper and allowing the man in the street to have his pa- per every day. 3. Universal E d u c a t i o n. which made it possible for even the humblest to read. 4. There appeared a number of newspapers of national importance. One of these was the NEW YORK TRIB- UNE, founded by Horace Greeley. Daily and weekly editions of this paper were published, and thosuands of farmers in the East and West relied upon the TRIB- UNE for their national news, and more important, their political opinions. 5. Improved presses. About 1850 the rapid rotary press driven 'by steam took the place of the old-fashioned hand press in the largest newspaper plant and made it possible to turn out thou- sands of copies an hour. Cheap printing, combined with advertising, made books and newspapers available to all at small cost. 6. In order to encourage the reading of newspapers, the government fixed the post- age rate for printed material fContinued on page 231

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24 THE ECHO Nast, whose biting cartoons in Har- per's focused public interest on the shady svide of politics. The Spanish War marks the rise of the yellow press. QSO called from the Yellow Kid comic strips, which lirst ran in the Hearst news- papers in the late 90's. Hearst, him- self, was termed the Yellow Kid by rival journals, especially after he be- gan to campaign against The Yel- low Peril. J A distinction must be made between the yellow press and sensationalism. They are quite separate, one is never excusableg the other is sometimes painfully neces- sary. The yellow sheets, typified by the Hearst newspapers and by the tabloid picture papers, is luridg it digs up the dirt for dirt's sake, ex- cusing itself with the plea, We give the public what it wants. Unfortunately, the defense is only too true, for the public, whether it wants it or not, simply gorges itself on the glaring headlines, the porno- graphic pictures, and the smutty filth detailed in the stories of 'love nests' and divorce. The tabloid pic- ture paper caters to a picture-reading public, a large percentage of which is of alien extraction or birth. This section of our populatio-n often ob- tains its iirst knowledge of American ideals in the muck of the DAILY BLEAT. Is it any wonder that we have our Capones? Giving the public what it wants is indefensible. There is a certain de- mand for narcotics which it is, no doubt, profitable to satisfy, but the law forbids it. So, too, there is a public which patronizes the gambling house and the speakeasy, and the law forbids them also. The editor is, or he ought to be, a public teacher, and he ought always to give the public the facts of life and the truths of life as honestly and accurately as he can do it with the means at his disposal. He cannot, however, justify himself for doing anything that seems to him evil, on the ground that a certain pub- lic will pay him for it, any more than he can justify himself on the ground that a certain individual will be Will- ing to bribe him to do it. The sensational press is the repre- sentative American newspaperg it is typified by the Associated Press and by the NEW YORK WORLD, THE BOSTON POST, THE BOSTON GLOBE, and THE CHICAGO TRIB- UNE. These papers were and are fearlessly independent, allowing no coloring of the day's events in the news columns and reserving all com- ment for the editorial page. This is the editor's special province and here he should not be afraid to speak his mind, all of it, when necessary to accomplish public good, and nothing is too low or scandalous to be d-ragged into the limelight when public good may be accomplished by doing so. What the good Lord lets happen, I am not ashamed to print in my pa- per, said Charles A.. Dana of the NEW YORK SUN, yet D-ana made THE SUN the most convenient and reliable paper of the timeg as Henry Watterson said, He made it shine for all. The wages of sin is publicity and pitiless publicity is the chief weapon of the editorial crusader in fighting graft and corruption in every form. Laying aside for the moment the ethical aspects of sensationalism, it is true that the yellow journalism has had an enormous vogue and that for- tunes have been made in it. Yet, the smutty sheets are not representative of American life. They have flour- ished during the warg they had their beginnings in the excitement of the Spanish War and gained a new lease on life during the late war and the subsequent economic and social re- adjustment, but it is my opinion that conservatism will return and that lib- eral newspapers will take the place of the scandal sheets. For a generation after the war that freed the slave, moral enthusiasm had little place in politics. New evils in society were allowed to grow, almost unnoticed, so long as they threw no obstacles in the path of prosperity's chariot wheels. But by 1890 there had begun, to swell a new tide of moral earnestness in American life. Once more was heard the call to line up in a struggle for social justice. For a time the nation found itself in the dark, curiously unable to grap- ple with its real problems. But soon iContinued on page 251