INTRODUCTION. 31 



and sometimes other merchandise : Now, labor-saving machines, with mechanical 

 and brute power, are substituted for the arm of the pressman ; and with the aid of 

 stereotype foundries, the press has departments distinctly separated, and as 

 numerous as the divisions and subdivisions, classes, combinations, interests, occu- 

 pations, studies and tastes of society. The book press seizes with avidity all new 

 publications, whether designed to instruct or only to amuse, whether foreign or 

 domestic, and prints and reprints and scatters them over the continent with in- 

 conceivable rapidity. Works of fiction most adapted to the popular taste are 

 now printed and sold at prices less than, fifty years ago, were charged to subscri- 

 bers for the perusal of such volumes by circulating libraries. The commercial 

 press, morning and evening, records with accuracy every occurrence and every 

 indication which affects trade ; and the advertising columns are indispensable 

 auxiliaries in every operation of commerce or finance. The political press, 

 divided between contending parties, and again subdivided with nice adaptation 

 to the tempers and the tastes, the passions and the prejudices of the community, 

 conducts party warfare with energy, zeal and unsparing severity ; and the com- 

 batants, faithful throughout all changes, abide the trials and share the fortunes of 

 their respective parties. The religious press furnishes to Jew and Christian, 

 Protestant and Catholic, and to each of the sects and denominations of those grand 

 divisions of the church, a devoted organ more effective than an army of mis- 

 sionaries. The moral, the scientific, the literary, the legal, the medical, the agri- 

 cultural, the military, the abolition, the temperance, the colonization and the 

 association newspapers each represent a portion of society desirous to inculcate 

 peculiar views of truth, and promote reforms which it deems essential to the 

 general welfare. The emigrants from every foreign country communicate with 

 each other through organs furnished by the press, and preserve mutual sympa- 

 thies and endearing recollections of their father-lands. The press was dependent 

 on European facts, sentiments, opinions, tastes and customs : now it is in all things 

 independent, and purely American. It was metropolitan : now it is universal. 

 The newspaper in each important town conveys intelligence of all interesting 



