Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/79

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similar protests has everywhere taken on new aspects and at the same time religious intelligence and religious inspiration have

been more widely diffused than ever before through the secular press . The circumference of the circle enlarges as the radius is prolonged .

The religious press illustrates how different are the problems presented to the historian by it and by the political press. Poli tical newspapers represent organized parties with definite politics. The election barometer may indicate a rise or fall in the tariff temperature, - Brand Whitlock speaks of Joseph Medill's low tariff editorials in the Chicago Tribune becoming high tariff editorials during national campaigns, “ the percentage of pro tection rising like a thermometer in the heat of political excite ment.” 60 But there is never a shade of variation in the deter mination of the “ outs ” to get in and of the " ins ” to stay in .

The religious press, on the other hand, represents not simply two but scores of warring factions and of divisions within sects each actuated by a missionary zeal for converting every one to its own particular tenets. The political press has shown the same tendencies towards the establishment of local organs representing the political views of individual owners, new political alignments involving press

combinations, and still again the individual owner looking upon the press as a business enterprise with the resulting chain of newspapers and periodicals of every description , together with the control of pulp mills and other activities concerned in their

publication .61 The newspaper can not live longer than the special 60 Forty Years of It, p . 48.

67 The " string " of English newspapers controlled by the “ Amalgamated Press” - the stock company under the presidency of Lord Northcliffe and of American newspapers belonging to W . R . Hearst are the most con

spicuous illustrations of this principle. A recent writer comments on this tendency : " Perhaps, as there were once too few newspapers, there are now too many, and I should be in favour of a law forbidding any one to own more than one hundred and fifty news

papers.” — J. A . Bridges, “ Country Editors in the Past,” Victorian Recol lections, pp. 90- 101.

J . S . Buckingham started the Athenaeum in January, 1828 ; he was al ready the proprietor of the Sphynx, “ a journal of politics, literature, and news;" of the Oriental Herald that dealt with Indian affairs ; of the Verulam , a weekly scientific periodical; and in May he started the Argus, an evening newspaper. - J. C . Francis, John Francis, I, 20