X.

The Newspaper as an Educator.

By Regent WILLARD A. COBB, Lockport.

MR. CHANCELLOR AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVOCATION.-To extol the newspaper as an educator does not detract from the honor due the teacher. It in no way limits his field of widening influence. Indeed, the teacher stands first. Attempts to depreciate the scholar are a weak sign of the times. Alleged wit is never so melancholy as when pressed into this dubious service. When analyzed, conceited ignorance is invariably found settling at the bottom. And yet, while our recognized educators are per force dignified and thoughtful, and conversant with the grandest problems which the human mind is always aiming to solve, still it does not necessarily follow that they have little aptitude for the practical side of life, lack keen appreciation of its sunny aspects, or, at proper times, have due perception of humor. Contrary to the possibly popular belief they do not breakfast on trilinear co-ordinates, dine on Sanskrit roots or sup on trilobites. So much for the popular misconception. But the world moves rapidly to-day and our educators must move with it. It is an iconoclastic age, too iconoclastic some think. Thus many of us were, and are, quite content with the college curriculum and the college ways of a quarter of a century ago. Then our pabulum was neatly cut and dried by others and deftly placed before us. That it was a healthful and effective dose was fully attested by the after-success of graduates, shining examples of which it is not necessary to name before this discerning assemblage of middle-aged college men. Now all seems changed. Our colleges, or some of them, seem to be sort of go-as-you-please affairs, with baseball and boat-racing included in the curriculum or joined as an annex. If his Satanic Blackness does not eventually grab the foremost, as well as the proverbial hindmost, of these scholarly delinquents, then, indeed, is he now sadly lacking in quondam alertness. Special departments are multiplied with superficial uselessness. Teaching journalism abstractly, for instance, in cloisters or closets is a trifle absurd. The veteran editor would as soon choose the intelligent graduate from "the printer's case" as from the college. The special train

ing, the real editorial make-up and skill are taught best in the concrete, in the composing room rather than the lecture room. Is there not danger that in the general rush we are sacrificing recognized good for questionable advance? "The newspaper as an educator," while not claiming the first place—or at least, discreetly not before this body of rival educators

possesses features in the common work, if not wholly perfect, yet pleasantly gracious and attractive. We can, and perhaps will, find faults in it as we do with other educators; but its claims as an educational factor are entitled to respectful consideration. The material with which the newspaper deals is as extensive as the wide world. The subjects of the teaching and instructive newspaper are the most numerous students that can be named. They cover the circuit of man's career from youth to hoary age. All who read, go to school to this dominating master. Bút unlike most organized educational establishments, the newspaper does not include young people distinctively. It teaches all classes and "all sorts and conditions of men" and women; the learned and the poorly educated; the professional man and the workingman; the citizen of the metropolis and the countryman, who clings to the sod. To all, the newspaper is the welcome instructor. It is this wide diffusion of the influence of the newspaper and the other fact that it goes to the adult population, which renders its service peculiar, and its actual power so effective. Its real field "is the world." For this reason its influence transcends that of all specialists, of the professional teachers, of the institutions of learning. It handles all themes, shrinks from no questions, is abashed in no presence. It is not always wise, it is sometimes foolish. But it is soon found out when thus foolish and does small harm. Above all it deals with life, its activities, it hopes, its repulses, its aspirations, and its failures. Its foot stands on the earth, however high it carries its head. So the red blood of life moves in it. It is as human as the warm hand that we grasp.

The character of a newspaper, like any other educator, is fairly open to criticism. High character is the product of good intentions when put into noble acts. A name springs from character. Now it is susceptible of proof that to the American newspaper, more than all other potent factors was due the credit of establishing, during the Revolutionary period, the cardinal principal of national unity—a principle upon which the pillars of the Union have ever since securely rested. It was thus at the outset the most powerful educator in the land. Note briefly its formative part in our earlier history. The years 1775 and 1776 were indeed dark and portentous. But what times and scenes for shaping the American newspaper. Intolerable aggression was raising

a storm of discontent. Dark drifts of opposition obscured the horizon. A strange shadow was spreading over men and over ideas. Jefferson and Adams were "at home thinking." Patrick Henry was inspiring and uniting all by the magic power of his resistless eloquence. Minds trembled as leaves do at the approach of the storm. But that appalling gale which swept from Concord and Lexington found the American press of that day prepared to meet it. First and foremost, sentinel like, stood the Boston Gazette with brave Samuel Adams virtually, if not really, in the editorial chair. With him, as contributors to the Gazette, which plead for American independence, were James Otis, and John Adams, and Joseph Warren, and Samuel Cooper, and a host of others whose pens fairly bristled with intelligent and patriotic opposition to British rule. The Gazette and kindred sheets so fanned and nursed and guarded the embers of popular discontent, that in time they leaped into a flame, and the War of the Revolution was fought and won. Following the Revolution a new phase of the American newspaper as an educator was developed. The contest over, it was to the credit of the press of that day that cool and deliberate caution held sway. The newspapers more than all else pointed out the rocks ahead when self-government was to be instituted, and proved a guide to public opinion and an arbiter of public worth. With marvelous grasp of mind and depth of thought that sounded the profoundest public questions, they united that clearness of vision, that truth of judgment, that richness of imagination which men call genius. The American press of that day recognized the fact that out of the Revolution a new nation had been born. It did not spring all panoplied from the brain of Divinity. It had been prostrated by the throes of its birth. Men knew not what to do. The old government, always oppressed, had been suddenly thrown off. Congress, the only bond of nationality, was insignificant a convention without constitutional rights, and utterly devoid of inherent strength. The country was a system whose centre borrowed its full light from surrounding individuals. At this critical juncture, the American press as a whole leaned, and rightly too, toward the course marked out by the directing hand of Alexander Hamilton. Democracy, it was held, required two things for its success; it must feel itself to be trusted and yet restrained. The first condition was already achieved. The people were free, and freedom itself was a state of trust. But the danger lay in not admitting the second. And this requisite, the restraint of general law, was to be obtained, as the majority of newspapers of that day argued, by union and by union only. And in that Constitution which made us a nation by making us united there is not an

element of order, durability or strength to which they did not powerfully contribute. A strong party honestly feared a central power. We had just escaped the thralldom of England, and complete unity seemed an approach to the restrictions of English monarchy. To them the abstract ideas of French revolutionists had a most specious sound, but the bulk of the newspapers, with unerring good judgment, as popular teachers, saw in the existing confusion the necessity for a stronger bond of unity, for over the past came the brilliant but appalling story of Grecian democracy, a warning and a lesson. The people were doubtful, undecided, factional. To educate them to a true sense of the needs of a government by law, Hamilton, Madison and others found the press the most effective agency they could use, and through it by the force of their reasoning, the fervor of their patriotism, the fertility of their illustrations, and the warmth of their zeal they kindled in the minds of their fellow-citizens the heat which fused differences and antagonisms into a common sentiment of nationality. Thus they became educators indeed. And yet all this time the newspaper was but husbanding its resources and testing its metal; trying its power in emergencies. Marvelous as was then its success in teaching and enforcing unity in national affairs its triumph a century later was even greater.

Who that recalls the tremendous and patriotic influence of the enterprising northern press from 1860 to '61 can ever forget it? It again so persistently plead for unity that beyond all other forces combined, barring the white heat of innate patriotism itself in the people, it turned the scale for the right and the Union. It cheered the stout-hearted, encouraged the weak, helped recruit armies, assisted everywhere even to minutest details, and kept the flag at the front. It was thus a second time the great power back of the government to teach and enforce the American cardinal principle of unity.

But what, you rightfully and further ask, of the newspaper of to-day as an educator? Now, there are bad and good educators. Unhappily the present newspaper does not present the fair side only. There is bad enough to serve as a foil, at least. Here are illustrations, faithful but true; relating neighborhood gossip formerly heard over backyard fences only; a tendency toward dominant ridicule rather than serious discussion of important subjects, especially those of a religious nature; a general pervading substratum of editorial unbelief; exaggeration at the expense of facts. Strange to say, the first offense noted is chiefly confined to the metropolitan press. Twenty, yes, ten years ago, columns of neighborhood interviews now filling New York papers would have been unquestionably refused as refuse properly relegated

to the rural Cross Roads Bugle and the Four Corners Avalanche. The other delinquencies noted are to be regretted as an educator weakening Puritan bearings. And when we do that, conventional as the proposition may be, we take long chances towards scuttling the ship, newspapers and all. The overshadowing danger to this country, if danger there is ahead, is not so much a wrong religion as no religion at all. License, under the false cry of liberty, is the mistake of the hour.

And yet so far as newspapers are concerned the good after all dominates.

The effect of the newspaper as an educator should be estimated largely. Its actual power is displayed in numerous and diverse individual centres of activity and of opinion. The newspaper, as we now speak of it, is the aggregate. Its real power upon the people is a resultant force. And one plain fact should be recognized always for it is one which makes the newspaper so potential and holds it to the line of high endeavor and rectitude the ultimate results of its influence. The page of the newspaper is open. All eyes may read it. The false is quickly run down, the illogical is overthrown, the profundity of pretension is punctured by the pen which is sharper than a lance and keener than a Damascus blade. The interviewed statesman may be misreported, but the interviewer puts his report in cold type and he can not deny the "record." So whatever vagaries cranks may have, whatever schemes partisans may have, whatever devices politicians may set as traps, whatever principles pessimists may assert all, everything, is put into the crucible of the newspaper and is there melted down, is pulverized, sifted, analyzed, and the final elements found if any there are. In this attrition of opinion, the best result in the search after the absolute truth is obtained. And no mill in Christendom grinds so finely as the free newspaper addressing a free people. Here, perhaps, is its greatest function - its ablest and most useful performance. So, thus unrivaled in opportunity, the newspaper grasp of the situation is the marvel of the century. No profession, trade or business approaches present newspaper success. Within recent memory the making of newspapers was a business, not a profession. It was not clothed with dignity. This was largely due to want of selfrespect on the part of the publishers themselves. Printers, simply masters of the art itself and too often profoundly ignorant otherwise, with a few hundred dollars ahead, became ambitious to mould public opinion. They were the willing slaves of scheming politicians, and sold their columns to whoever would buy. They seemed to glory in self-abasement, and to laugh loudest themselves at senseless jibes about poverty-striken editors. Such newspapers largely were. But