pedigree of American journalism, detachedly and simply, has been the intent of Mr. Payne. He has done it.
This book may well prove to be profitable reading for earnest and careless alike—both perforce are members of the great army of newspaper consumers. It will repay, amply, snatched perusal in the city room of any Park Row between assignments—how many reporters can pass a genuine test in the fundamentals of a profession into which they are putting even more of themselves than their fellows of the law and medicine? Finally, it will be worth a great deal to students in the schools of journalism, so rapidly increasing throughout the country. For seven years I have watched mature minded young men and women leave Morningside to help get and write the news you and I read. They and their sort must know the background of their craft. A decade ago one embarked upon a newspaper career in an almost jocund spirit of adventure. The jocund spirit and the flavor of adventure will persist, but let us carry with us the records and the maps—old fashioned though they be—of the pioneers, strong and weak alike, who made the newspaper of to-day possible.
