talented writers and place their editions on the market as organs of public opinion. The healthy taste of the public is not to be relied upon. The great mass of readers, idlers for the most part, is ruled less by a few healthy instincts than by a base and despicable hankering for idle amusement, and the support of the people may be secured by any editor who provides for the satisfaction of these hankerings, for the love of scandal, and for intellectual pruriency of the basest kind. Of this we meet with evidence daily; even in our capital no search is necessary to find it; it is enough to note the supply and demand of the news-venders' shops and at the railway stations.
Such a paper may nourish, attain consideration as an organ of public opinion, and be immensely remunerative to its owners, while no paper conducted upon firm moral principles or founded to meet the healthier instincts of the people could compete with it for a moment.
The full text of this criticism of journalism by Pobiedenostseff will be found in the appendix of Albert J. Beveridge's book entitled "Russian Advance."
RURAL JOURNALISM
Preceding chapters have recorded the relationship which Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, bore to his daily contemporaries. Yet Greeley exerted such a tremendous influence over the country weekly that it still bears his imprint. The latchstring of his editorial sanctum in New York was ever out for the country editor who cared to call, no matter whether he wanted to talk about the present coming presidential election or to discuss the squash or pumpkin crop in his own county; for Greeley was always prepared to give advice on either topic. Of all the New York editors of his time, Greeley was the most willing to send his paper to, or to exchange with, country publishers, and no matter how busy he might be he always found time to give advice about country weeklies. One such letter, which was extensively published, so influenced the making of the country weekly that it ought, in spite of its length, to be reproduced in this chapter. On April 3, 1860, Greeley penned the following letter:—
Friend Fletcher: I have a line from you, informing me that you are about to start a paper at Sparta, and hinting that a line from me for its first issue would be acceptable. Allow me, then, as one who spent
