Jonathan and His Continent Part 17

In New York, the large daily papers which you see in the hands of everyone are: the _Tribune_, the _Times_, the _Herald_, the _World_, the _Sun_, and the _Star_.

The first two are those most read by the cultivated cla.s.ses; the most popular are the two following.

Five or six important newspapers appear in the afternoon: the _Post_ (the most respectable and respected of all American organs); the _Commercial Advertiser_, an excellent literary, political, and financial publication; the _Mail and Express_; the _Telegram_, the _Sun_, and the _World_.

Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago possess newspapers in no way second in importance to those of New York. Of such are the _Globe_, the _Post_, the _Advertiser_, the _Herald_, the _Transcript_, and the _Journal_, of Boston; the _Ledger_ and the _Press_, of Philadelphia; the _Tribune_, the _Herald_, the _Inter-Ocean_, and the _Journal_, of Chicago.

Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, and many other towns, have also newspapers of the first importance.

Every little town of a thousand to fifteen hundred inhabitants has its two newspapers, one democratic, the other republican. For lively reading, take up these papers during the electoral struggle which terminates with the installation of a new President at the White House.

The names of some of them will suffice to give you an idea of the style of the contents: very favourite names are the _Paralyser_, the _Rustler_, the _Cyclone_, the _Prairie Dog_, the _Bazoo_, the _Lucifer_, the _Bundle of Sticks_, the _Thunderer_, the _Earthquake_. I saw and read a copy of the sheet which rejoiced in the name of _Bundle of Sticks_. The first article contained advice to a certain Joseph Muller, who, instead of working, had taken up street preaching and house-to-house prayer. "We give Joseph Muller a fortnight to find some honourable employment. If at the end of that time he is still leading an idle life, we will find an exalted position for him." The joke makes one shudder, when one thinks that, if Joseph should turn a deaf ear to the warning, he is quite sure to be hung by his townsmen to the highest branch of some tree in the town.

Manners will tone down in the West, as they have in the East, and in twenty years the _Thunderer_ and the _Avalanche_ will give place to the _Times_ and the _Tribune_.

The characteristic of new societies is freedom of speech as well as of action. I read in some _Thunderer_ the following lines about the editor of the _Lightning_, the other newspaper of the town: "We wish to use moderation, and to keep within the limits of good breeding. We will only go so far as to say that personally he is a sneak; and that as a journalist he is a liar and a scoundrel." The _Lightning_ replies in the same strain, and the public gets amus.e.m.e.nt for the moderate sum of one halfpenny.

Many of these papers of Kentucky, Texas, and other Western States may be paid for in kind. I extract the following from the _Herald_, of Hazel Green (Kentucky):--

"_NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORANCE._

_How you may get the 'Herald' for a year without money._

_Bring us_:--

_Twenty pounds of pork; or Ten pounds of pork sausage; or Two bushels of sound potatoes; or Five bushels of sound turnips: or Ten good chickens; or One bushel of good onions._

_For half the quant.i.ty, we will send the paper half the time._"

And so the whole population of Hazel Green has the newspaper put within its reach.

The _Thunderer_ and the _Lightning_ are not the only papers that indulge in violent polemics, in which insulting personalities take the place of arguments.

During the whole time I was in America, Mr. Pulitzer, proprietor and manager of the _World_, and Mr. Dana, editor of the _Sun_, one of the most accomplished American journalists, were day after day calling each other such names as "robber, liar, mortgaged, dirty Jew." I see by papers that my New York friends kindly send me from time to time, that these gentlemen have not yet exhausted their Billingsgate vocabulary.

Do not draw hasty conclusions from this. I do not know Mr. Pulitzer personally, but I have the pleasure of knowing Colonel c.o.c.kerill, chief editor of the _World_, and Mr. Charles Dana, of the _Sun_. In private life they are perfect gentlemen, and men of great talent. In public life they are in the swim--they go with the tide. As a study of English, the polemic of the _World_ and the _Sun_ was most interesting.

The American press was divided into two camps: the partisans of Pulitzer and the partisans of Dana. Whenever the combatants were driven up for want of fresh epithets of the requisite strength, their supporters suggested some to them. Here are some congratulations, addressed to Mr.

Dana, which I read in the St. Louis _Globe_:

"It was from beginning to end the _Sun's_ stiletto against the _World's_ meat-axe, and, as is always the case, the meat-axe came out second best.

The literature of invective contains nothing finer than some of the _Sun's_ attacks on the _World_, and the literature of the gutter contains nothing more feeble than the _World's_ defence. The _Sun_ dealt out prussic acid by the drop, and the _World_ replied with rough-on-rats by the pound. The flatulent anger of Pulitzer was completely overwhelmed by the concentrated venom of Dana."

A _confrere_ could scarcely be more amiable, and I hope Mr. Dana appreciated the compliments.

America, New York especially, has some capital comic papers.

By that, I mean more comic than the rest.

Similar to the Paris _Charivari_ and to _Punch_, _Puck_ and _Judge_ have always skits on the questions of the day, touched off with the freedom which one would expect in free America. The manners of the people are criticised with wit and good taste. The little ill.u.s.trations are charming, but two or three huge coloured pictures done in the crudest style disfigure each of these papers. Several other publications, such as _Life_, written in a light, sparkling style, and ornamented with little fine, tasteful ill.u.s.trations, concern themselves with the sayings and doings of higher American society, Little stories, anecdotes, _bons mots_, material for a merry hour. Admirable are these papers, which know how to be comic, witty, and bright, without being objectionable, or unfit to put into the hands of a girl in her teens.

These papers are not only amusing to the stranger, they are instructive.

The funny stories, the naive jokes, as descriptive as they are diverting, give a truer idea of American character and manners than many a ponderous volume.

As in France and England, the comic papers in America are the only ones which give proof of a little wisdom or common sense when the horizon is darkened and home and foreign political questions are disturbing the peace of the country.

If I were asked to name the most amusing papers published in the United States, I should not hesitate to award the palm to the _Detroit Free Press_ and the _Omaha World_; in these two, American humour reveals itself in all its spontaneous gaiety, and their drolleries are reproduced from New York to San Francisco, from Montreal to New Orleans.

s.p.a.ce fails me here to do justice to the literary, dramatic, and artistic journals. Among the first, however, mention must be made of the _Critic_. Its a.n.a.lyses are amiable and discreetly erudite. Its criticisms are always fair, and never crabbed.

I cannot close this chapter without speaking of the American Reviews; they have attained a perfection which is the highest utterance of journalism, as understood by the educated world. But they are for the most part so well known in England that I need not enlarge upon the merit and charms of such publications as the _North American Review_, the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Forum_, the _Century_, the _Harper_, _Scribner_, _Lippincott_, and that treasure of English-reading children all over the world, the incomparable _St. Nicholas_. Besides all these, there are the _Cosmopolitan_, the _America_, the _American Magazine_, and numbers of others.

Alas, it would need a score of volumes to do anything like justice to that which one can see in America. Unhappily, it would take a score of years to see it in. And so I alight but a moment at each turning, happy if, by trying to show the reader a little of everything, I succeed in showing him something.

CHAPTER XX.

_Reporting.--For the American Reporter Nothing is Sacred.--Demolition of the Wall of Private Life.--Does your Husband Snore?--St. Anthony and the Reporters.--I am Interviewed.--My Manager drops Asleep over it.--The Interview in Print.--The President of the United States and the Reporters.--"I am the Interviewer."_

"Journalism has killed literature, and reporting is killing journalism.

It is the last gasp of the dying of literature of an epoch; it is the man letters replaced by the _concierge_." So exclaims M. Albert Millaud in one of his clever articles in the _Figaro_.

In America, reporting has simply overrun, swallowed up, journalism. It is a demolition of the wall of private life; the subst.i.tution of gossip for chronicle, of chatter for criticism.

For the interviewer, nothing is sacred. Audacity is his stock-in-trade: the most private details of your daily life are at his mercy; and unless you blow his brains out--which is not lawful in New York State--you have no means of getting rid of him.

Do not believe you have got over the difficulty by having him told that you are not at home. He will return to the charge ten, twenty times; he will stand sentinel at your door, sleep on the mat outside your hotel bedroom, so as to pounce on you as soon as you show your face in the morning. He is patient; and if any indisposition should oblige you to keep your room, he will wait till you are well again, and will have his meals brought to him in the corridor. Should you succeed in escaping the hunter, rather than return to the newspaper-office empty-handed from the chase, he will find your wife, and ask her if you snore, whether you are an early riser, whether you are the more amiable after dinner or before, what you eat at breakfast, what is your favourite colour in trousers, and what size boots you take. He will ask her when you were married, how long your honeymoon lasted, if you have children, and whether they have cut their teeth. With these materials he will make up a column.

There is no question too indiscreet for these enterprising inquisitors: they would have interviewed St. Anthony in his hut.

Do not shout victory, either, because you have succeeded in getting rid of the interviewer without replying to his questions. It is in such cases that the American journalist reveals himself in all his glory. To your stupefaction, the newspapers next day will have an account of the conversation which you _might have had_ with their reporters.

If my advice be worth giving, the best thing you can do, when the interviewer presents himself, and says, "I am a reporter, sir, and I have come to ask you for a few moments' chat," is to say to him:

"Mad to see you. Pray be seated."

After all, interviewing is an operation that one survives; and, to be just, I must say that American reporters in general are courteous, obliging, and--which is simply astounding when one considers that they rarely take notes--exact in their accounts of interviews.