Recollections of a Varied Life Part 34

His mind had one notable quality in common with Emerson's--the capacity to fecundate every other mind with which it came into close contact.

One came away, from a conference with him, feeling enriched, inspired, enlarged, not so much by the thought he had expressed as by the thinking he had instigated in his listener's mind.

It was so with me on that occasion. I came away full of a thought that grew and fruited in my mind. Presently--an occasion offering--I wrote it into a series of articles in the newspaper. These attracted the attention of Dr. William M. Sloane, now of Columbia University, then professor of history at Princeton and editor of the _Princeton Review_.

At his instigation I presented the same thought in his _Review_, and a little later by invitation I addressed the Nineteenth Century Club on the subject. I called it "The American Idea." In substance it was that our country had been founded and had grown great upon the idea that every man born into the world has a right to do as he pleases, so long as he does not trespa.s.s upon the equal right of any other man to do as he pleases, and that in a free country it is the sole function of government to maintain the conditions of liberty and to let men alone.

The idea seemed to be successful in its appeal to men's intelligence at that time, but many years later--only a year or so ago, in fact--I put it forward in a commencement address at a Virginia College and found it sharply though silently antagonized by professors and trustees on the ground that it seemed to deny to government the right to enact prohibitory liquor laws, or otherwise to make men moral by statute. The doctrine was pure Jeffersonianism, of course, and the professors and trustees sincerely believed themselves to be Jeffersonians. But the doctrine had gored their pet ox, and that made a difference.

[Sidenote: Some Recollections of Mr. G.o.dwin]

One day Mr. G.o.dwin expressed himself as delighted with all I had written on the American Idea. I responded:

"That is very natural. The idea is yours, not mine, and in all that I have written about it, I have merely been reporting what you said to me, as we stood looking at the surf das.h.i.+ng itself to pieces on the rocks at Bar Harbor."

"Not at all," he answered. "No man can expound and elaborate another man's thought without putting so much of himself into it as to make it essentially and altogether his own. I may have dropped a seed into your mind, but I didn't know it or intend it. The fruitage is all your own.

My thinking on the subject was casual, vagrant, unorganized. I had never formulated it in my own mind. You see we all gather ideas in converse with others. That is what speech was given to man for. But the value of the ideas depends upon the use made of them."

Mr. G.o.dwin had been at one time in his life rather intimately a.s.sociated with Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and statesman. As all old newspaper men remember, Kossuth had a habit of dying frequently. News of his death would come and all the newspapers would print extended obituary articles. Within a day or two the news would be authoritatively contradicted, and the obituaries would be laid away for use at some future time. On one of these occasions Mr. G.o.dwin wrote for me a singularly interesting article, giving his personal reminiscences of Kossuth. Before I could print it despatches came contradicting the news of the old Hungarian's death. I put Mr. G.o.dwin's ma.n.u.script into a pigeonhole and both he and I forgot all about it. A year or so later Kossuth did in fact die, and in looking through my papers to see what I might have ready for printing on the subject, I discovered Mr. G.o.dwin's paper. It was not signed, but purported to be the personal recollections of one who had known the patriot well.

I hurried it into print, thus gaining twelve or fourteen hours on the morning newspapers.

The next morning Mr. G.o.dwin called upon me, declaring that he had come face to face with the most extraordinary psychological problem he had ever encountered.

"The chapter of Kossuth reminiscences that you printed yesterday," he said, "was as exact a report of my own recollections of the man as I could have given you if you had sent a reporter to interview me on the subject; and the strangest part of it is that the article reports many things which I could have sworn were known only to myself. It is astonis.h.i.+ng, inexplicable."

"This isn't a case of talking your thought into another person," I answered, referring to the former incident. "This time you put yourself down on paper, and what I printed was set from the ma.n.u.script you gave me a year or so ago."

This solved the psychological puzzle and to that extent relieved his mind. But there remained the further difficulty that, cudgel his brain as he might, he could find in it no trace of recollection regarding the matter.

[Sidenote: A Mystery of Forgetting]

"I remember very well," he said, "that I often thought I ought to write out my recollections of Kossuth, but I can't remember that I ever did so. I remember taking myself to task many times for my indolence in postponing a thing that I knew I ought to do, but that only makes the case the more inexplicable. When I scourged myself for neglecting the task, why didn't my memory remind me that I had actually discharged the duty? And now that I have read the reminiscences in print, why am I unable to recall the fact that I wrote them? The article fills several columns. Certainly I ought to have some recollection of the labor involved in writing so much. Are you entirely certain that the ma.n.u.script was mine?"

I sent to the composing room for the "copy" and showed it to him. As he looked it over he said:

"'Strange to say, on Club paper.' You remember Thackeray's Roundabout paper with that headline? It has a bearing here, for this is written on paper that the Century Club alone provides for the use of its members.

I must, therefore, have written the thing at the Century Club, and that ought to resurrect some memory of it in my mind, but it doesn't. No. I have not the slightest recollection of having put that matter on paper."

At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought.

"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of this in the way of psychical manifestation--which usually belongs to the domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?"

In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer in things mystical, adding Mr. G.o.dwin's laughingly conjectural explanation of it, whereupon the reply came:

"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and Mr. G.o.dwin's skepticism?"

I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. G.o.dwin had intended as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind.

LXIV

In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, reserve, contentment--call it what you will--in the conduct of newspapers of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many newspapers. The era of ill.u.s.tration and exploitation by the use of pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes.

Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such legends as "continued on page five," and the like.

Headlines were confined to the column that began the article. The art of stretching them halfway or all the way across the page and involving half a dozen of them in gymnastic wrestlings with each other for supremacy in conspicuity had not then been invented, and in its absence the use of circus poster type and circus poster exaggeration of phrase was undreamed of.

Now and then an advertiser anxious for conspicuity would pay a heavy price to have column rules cut so that his announcement might stretch over two or more columns, but the cost of that was so great that indulgence in it was rare even among ambitious advertisers, while in the reading columns the practice was wholly unknown.

[Sidenote: The Price of Newspapers]

Another thing. It was then thought that when a copy of a newspaper was sold, the price paid for it ought to be sufficient at least to pay the cost of its manufacture, plus some small margin of profit. All the great morning newspapers except the _Sun_ were sold at four cents a copy; the _Sun_, by virtue of extraordinary literary condensation, used only about half the amount of paper consumed by the others, and was sold at two cents. The afternoon newspapers were sold at three cents.

The publishers of newspapers had not then grasped the idea that is now dominant, that if a great circulation can be achieved by selling newspapers for less than the mere paper in them costs, the increase in the volume and price of advertising will make of them enormously valuable properties.

That idea was not born suddenly. Even after the revolution was established, the cost of the white paper used in making a newspaper helped to determine the price of it to the public. It was not until the phenomenal success of cheap newspapers years afterwards tempted even more reckless adventurers into the field that publishers generally threw the entire burden of profit-making upon the advertising columns and thus established the business office in the seat before occupied by the editor and made business considerations altogether dominant over utterance, att.i.tude, and conduct.

There were in the meantime many attempts made to establish a cheaper form of journalism, but they were inadequately supported by working capital; they were usually conducted by men of small capacity; they had no traditions of good will behind them, and above all, they could not get a.s.sociated Press franchises. For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the facts, I explain that the a.s.sociated Press is an organization for news-gathering, formed by the great newspapers by way of securing news that no newspaper could afford to secure for itself.

It maintains bureaus in all the great news centers of the world, and these collect and distribute to the newspapers concerned a great ma.s.s of routine news that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. If a president's message, or an inaugural address, or any other public doc.u.ment of voluminous character is to be given out, it is obvious that the newspapers concerned cannot wait for telegraphic reports of its contents. By way of saving time and telegraphic expense, the doc.u.ment is delivered to the a.s.sociated Press, and copies of it are sent to all the newspapers concerned, with a strict limitation upon the hour of its publication. Until that hour comes no newspaper in the a.s.sociation is privileged to print it or in any way, by reference or otherwise, to reveal any part of its contents. But in the meanwhile they can put it into type, and with it their editorial comments upon it, so that when the hour of release comes, they can print the whole thing--text and comment--without loss of time. The newspaper not endowed with an a.s.sociated Press franchise must wait for twenty-four hours or more for its copy of the doc.u.ment.

Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village in the country, the a.s.sociated Press has its agent--the local editor or the telegraph operator, or some one else--who is commissioned to report to it every news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in either case the newspaper not allied with a press a.s.sociation must miss them.

At the time of which I am writing, the a.s.sociated Press was the only organization in the country that could render such service, and every newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure.

[Sidenote: The Pulitzer Revolution]

But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us.

In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the _World_ and inst.i.tuted a totally new system of newspaper conduct.

His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large proportion of the conservative public.

In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated cla.s.s.

Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated cla.s.s, but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook the educated cla.s.s, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even chiefly.

The results were instantaneous and startling. The _World_, which had never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying const.i.tuency of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was imperfectly equipped to handle."

It is an interesting fact, that the _World's_ gain in circulation was not made at the expense of any other newspaper. The books of account show clearly that while the _World_ was gaining circulation by scores and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The simple fact was that by appealing to a larger cla.s.s, the _World_ had created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other morning newspapers adopted the _World's_ methods, and won to themselves a larger const.i.tuency than they had ever enjoyed before.

All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their const.i.tuencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to repeat very often.

But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions.

The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr.

William M. Laffan--then a subordinate on the _Sun's_ staff, later the proprietor and editor of that newspaper--saw and seized an opportunity.

The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal to the mult.i.tude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated cla.s.s." Mr.

Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more mult.i.tudinous audience. Under his inspiration the _Evening Sun_ was established on the seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation of forty thousand--from twice to four times that of its more conservative compet.i.tors.