Canton High School - Echo Yearbook (Canton, MA)

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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

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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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THE ECHO 25 a new Literature of Exposure be- gan to throw light upon that dark- ness, sometimes, to be sure, a flaring and distorted light. In 1902-03, Ida Tarbe1l's HISTORY OF THE STAN- DARD OIL COMPANY appeared in McCZure's Magazine Cthen a ten-cent monthlyl, followed by Laws.m's FRENZIED FINANCE in Every- body's. In 1905, Ray Stannard Bak- er published a series of revealing arti- cles about railroads in McClure's, and Lincoln Steffens followed with two amazing articles on The Sha-me of the Cities and The Enemies of the Republic. In this same year Upton Sinclair's Jungle called at- tention to horrible conditions in the Chicago stockyards, and Frank Nor- ris' Octopus and Churchill's Con- iston dealt with ways in which rail- roads then controlled politics and abused producers. Most of these writers were hopeful young crusaders, inflamed with zeal for righteousness, but here and there no doubt one or another degen- erated toward Hjaundiced journal- ism. President Roosevelt nnally ap- plied the catchy epitaph muckrak- ers to themg and the average man falways quick to weary of crusadesl turned his attention away, but not until the nation had been stirred for some years as it never has been by any other literature, and the passage of pure food acts had safeguarded the health of the nation. Crusading has by no means passed out of journalismg it never will. Among recent crusades may be men- tioned: The exposure of Get-Rich- Quick Ponzi for which the BOSTON POST received the Pulitzer prize in 1921, the work of the NEW YORK WORLD in clearing up the Florida peonage evil in 1924, and that of the ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH for the exposure of Naval oil leases, the work of many newspapers all over the country in unemployment relief, the LITERARY DIGEST presidential polls which proved remarkably pro- phetic in the past two campaigns. and the BOSTON POST Santa Claus Fund, which raises every year thous- ands of dollars for the poor children of the city. -Iournalism has grown impersonal. It is no longer distinguished by the great ovcrshadovving personalities which marked it ia generation ago. N o single editorial chief puts his stamp on a paper as H-orace Greeley did, with his controversial power, his moral earnestness, and his incisive force, which seemed to make the whole paper breathe his spirit and speak his voice. There are no suc- cessors to Raymond, Weed, Bennett, Bowles, and Dana. Still, there are no tears to shed over the passing of personal journal- ism. The backyard squaibbles carried on by both city and country papers did more than any other agency to destroy the public confidence in the press. If doctors should stand on a street corner and attack the motives and personal lives of fellow-doctors, it wifuld not be long before we should lose faith in all doctors. For the cel fury and more, we have had af sim- ilar spectacle in which editors have thrown mud and filth at each other, and in all the category of the foolish short-sightedness of the newspaper man there is nothing more foolish than this. The old idea of law and medicine and the ministry was that the cash register was not a measure of success. Service was the standard. So in journalism, the movement is toward service to its readers and advertisers. The coming newspaper man will take Kipling's phrase for his motto: I am of service to my kind. D, Kelehgr, '31, THE C. H. S. ORCHESTRA By the addition of wind instru- ments and a cello, the Orchestra has shown, on many occasions, ia decided improvement over last year. Miss Ridge has developed a fine orchestra and even though many members will leave this year, the prospects are good as there are many talented Freshies and Sophs. Mention should be made of Nicho- las Rasetzki for his able leadership in the absence of Miss Ridge. He showed remarkable talent and he is probably the undisputed successor of Serge Koussevitzky, of the Boston Sym- phony Orchestra. The Canton High School Orchestra has played on the following occa- sions: Sc-nior l'lay, Coinniunity Club Play, Opcrctta, Special Assembly l'ro- groni, l'armit-'ll-ac-licr' Association's Mc-clings J. flroak.