hensive historical interpretation of American journalism still remains not fully completed. Professor Lee, however, besides making an excellent start toward a true history, has accomplished a valuable labor in verifying thousands of facts, and laying the basis for some future writer—perhaps for himself in a subsequent work.
Lee's history is especially strong in its research into the earliest beginnings of various manifestations of journalistic enterprise. It has chapters on the "Beginnings in the Colonies," "The First Dailies," "The Beginnings of the Penny Press" and many pages on the beginnings in the separate states and territories. Oregon journalism, for instance, is covered in a section that gives a full account of the founding of the Spectator and the Free Press at Oregon City in 1846 and 1848, the Daily Advertiser and Daily News at Portland _in 1859, the Oregon City Argus in 1855, the Western Star at Milwaukie in 1850, and the Weekly Oregonian in 1850. This is all that is noticed of the seventy years of journalism in Oregon except for a passing reference to Mr. H. L. Pittock as a leader in Western journalism at a later date.
Professor Lee abundantly deserves all the credit that is due to an able pioneer in a field that he found urgently in need of intelligent study. The writing profession, curiously enough, is the only profession that has no written annals. Lee's "History of American Journalism" is a reference work of serious value, that should be in every newspaperman's library. It is beautifully printed and substantially bound.
A book of unusual interest to newspapermen is "The Country Weekly," by Phil G. Bing, assistant professor of journalism in the University of Minnesota. The author evidently has had experience in the country news
paper field, or has been a careful observer of those men in that line of endeavor, for none other could be so familiar with the problems of the country publisher. Indeed he doesn't minimize the difficulties one is sure to encounter in the business, nor does he predict success unless there is a willingness to put every ounce of effort into the undertaking. But he gives some pointers that will tend to lessen the difficulties and make it easier for the country publisher to give his readers a better newspaper, at the same time enabling him to make his investment a paying one financially.
Too often, unfortunately, the country newspaper has not yielded the income to which the publisher is entitled, and it is to correct this condition that the author recommends the installation of an efficient cost finding system in every office. Publishers of the larger papers have practically
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