200 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



aim of all "was to publish the general news of the day, but politi- 

 cal iiitiiiciices were still strong enough to control editorial policy, 

 and nltra-partisan and sectional views were incorporated in the 

 record of events. There were still editors of great power and 

 inthience in })olitics and public affairs, and they tried to shape 

 the current of the new condition by the force of editorial writing. 

 A number of editors, of both the old and new order, for a time 

 followed the policy of subordinating to partisan politics all other 

 features of the newspaper. They sought to make the j^i'ess the 

 dominant influence in politics, and to do that they presented in 

 their journals only one side of public and party questions. They 

 undertook to think and to reason for their readers, and their par- 

 tisan and sectional views were reflected in the news columns of 

 their papers. So long as party feeling ran high this style of jour- 

 nalism w^as popular and successful, but the newspaper, being in 

 the nature of an educator of the masses, soon set the people to 

 thinking for themselves, and created a demand for the news of 

 public and political events without the color of individual opinion. 

 The change from intense partisanship to partial or complete inde- 

 pendence of editorial utterance has come slowly, and is still under 

 way. To-day there is no great daily newspaper in the United 

 States so entirely subservient to a political party as to support any 

 man or measure without question or protest. Politicians fear this 

 spirit of independence, and therein lies the secret of the great 

 power of the ])ress in public affairs. The most powerful and suc- 

 cessful journals are those that combine absolute fairness and hon- 

 esty w'ith ind(q)endence. 



So-called schools of journalism, in the rapid development of 

 the profession during the past twenty years, have merged into one 

 general system or ])lan, which is to get all the news and publish it. 

 Journals may be graded or classified by their treatment of news 

 and their judgment as to the intelligence and moral character of 

 the reading public. 



A detailed record of the development of the mechajiical part 

 of the newspaper business during the past thirty years would be 

 almost a synopsis of all progress in science and art. The news- 

 paper printing press of to-day, which prints, cuts, folds, and counts 

 ninety-six thousand papers per hour, with one man to operate it, 

 is the mechanical wonder of the age. It is justly regarded as the 

 greatest piece of machinery that the ingenuity of man has yet 

 devised. Type is no longer set by hand in the making of a news- 

 paper, the letters being formed from the metal direct and cast in 

 finished lines by machinery. 



Studying the perfection and magnitude of the newspaper print- 



