THE AMERICAN PRESS AND THE NEW YORK "EVENING POST."*

THE history of the origin, development, and power of the Press is one of the most interesting and significant things in the story of America. Very early the Americans realized what Carlyle defined in the celebrated passage on journalism in Sartor Resarlus which Mr. Nevins has so wisely put on the title-page of his book :— " The journalists are now the true kings and clergy ; henceforth historians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon dynasties, and Tudors. and Hapsburgs, but of stamped, broadsheet dynasties, and quite new successive names, according as this or the other able editor, or combination of able editors, gains the world's ear."

In a community scattered but yet eager for news, the printed word is bound to have a special influence. It is

through this influence that a man is able to realize his citizenship and know and exercise his power as a co-partner in the State. But the American journalists were not

content to stop at this intensive function. While they physically enlarged the scope of their profession they endowed it with further and greater powers. They discovered pub- licity in its highest sense and showed how in it lay the remedy for many of the ills of representative democracy. Finally, they made first their own countrymen and then the world at large see that publicity, though, like all good things, it may turn to evil, is a good in itself apart from its derivate virtues. It is the business of the journalist to endow matters with publicity, even though at the moment neither he nor, apparently, anyone else can see the reflective value of the happenings which he chronicles. It is often enough

for him that the things have happened. He does his duty -when he records them. It is for others to find the uses of such records. But, of course, the American Press has been much more than a machine for discovery and record. No Press has exercised greater direct influence, and no Press

has been more deliberately used as a lever to influence mankind. No journalist can ever forget Whitman's deeply moving passage on the war " leaders " in the early 'sixties—" years that reeled beneath me." Here was the first inspired appre- ciation of what the mighty brazen trumpets of the Press may do for a great cause among a great people.

In the hierarchy of the American Press, the New York Evening Post has always filled a special position. Ever since its foundation under the fostering care of Alexander Hamilton, greatest of Constitutional publicists, the Post has played an important and, on the whole, a useful and distinguished part in American public life. Though

the nature of its political "urge "—a word how useful • The EsesifiF Post a CaaarY of Jaursaligss. By Allan Nevins. New York ; Beni and Livenght. MAIO act,4

and how ugly—has varied from time to time, it has always maintained a high intellectual standpoint and also one which, as a rule, could best be described as that of the left-centre. Whether it was Cullen Bryant, Bigelow, Schurz, White, Godkin, or Villard who sat in the editorial chair, the character of the paper was maintained and largely the policy on which it was founded. The author of the book before us tells us that in the original prospectus of the paper, issued at the beginning of the last century, i.e., in 1801, occurred the following passage :—

" The design of this paper is to diffuse among the people correct information on all interesting subjects, to inculcate just principles in religion, morals and politics, and to cultivate a taste for sound literature."

Besides being a statement of the journalist's ideals, as simple and natural as it is sound and vivid, this is also a prophetic promise which has been well fulfilled.

It was the good fortune of the present writer when a young man to havc many long talks with Mr. Godkin, who must in sonic ways be considered the greatest editor of the Post and also one of the greatest publicists of whom the English- speaking world could boast in the period from 1870 to 1890.

Godkin at the end of his life was accustomed to take an English country-house in Surrey or in some other county near London and have his holiday there. He was a sociable man as well as a good talker, and he loved to sit on English lawns under English trees, to stretch his legs and to have his talk out. And no man ever put the Individualist, Anti-

Socialist, and also Anti-Capitalistic ease better than he did. Mr. Nevins gives a very just and balanced view of Godkin's qualities and the defects of those qualities. Take, for example,

the following passage :—

" His writings upon capitalism show a steady development of ideas. He objected to demagoguish attacks upon Capital, a word which he disliked, saying that if people called it Savings they would have fewer misconceptions. But he was no more inclined to defend abuses by capital than abuses by labor. He argued for the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in his first year with the Post. He was more and more alarmed by the trusts, both as instruments of economic oppression, and as dangerous influences upon the Government. He wanted evil combinations sharply attacked and broken up—not ' regulated ' —to prevent monopoly, and in later years much of his zeal In attack- ing the high tariff sprang from his conviction that it and the trusts were mutual supports. No one inveighed more constantly than he against ill-gotten wealth, or against the abuse of money power. His editorial on the death of Peter Cooper, who used to boast that he never made a dollar he could not take up to the Great White Throne, was one of a long series of arguments for a public sentiment that would distinguish between honest success and dishonest ' success,' between Peter Cooper and Jay Gould. The chief peril to the republic, he wrote 'In 1886, was worship of wealth :

It is here that our greatest danger lies. The popular hero to-day, whom our young men in cities most admire and would soonest imitate, is neither the saint, the sage, the scholar, the soldier, nor the statesman, but the successful stock-gambler. Stocks and bonds are the commonest of our dinner-table topics. The man we show with most pride to foreigners is the man who has made most millions. Our wisest men are those who can draw the biggest cheeks; and—what is worst of all—there is a growing tendency to believe that everybody is entitled to what- ever he can buy, from the Presidency down to a street-railroad franchise.'"

No doubt Godkin, like so many journalists, was apt to over- emphasize and to become too much the public advocate. The poet Quarks in one of his "Religious Emblems" advises Isis readers to enhance their earnestness and zealousness in

promoting the Kingdom of God. He tells them to "screw their divine theorboes six notes higher." Godkin was very apt to screw his theorbo, not six, but a dozen notes higher. Yet, in spite of his vehemence, he was a great journalist, as one test will show. It has been said that the hardest thing in poetry is to earn the praise. of being the poets' poet. Godkin was essentially the journalists' journalist. No news- paper man, however much he differed in theory, could help reading Godkin in practice. This was largely because Godkin was so austere in presentation and because he ruthlessly cut oil all the frills. (Frillmakers do not like frills—at any rate

for home consumption.) Godkin was all dry light, and that was exactly what his brother publicists liked and respected.

"me Evening Post and Nation long exercised a peculiar sway in newspaper offices from Maine to California. Gov. David B. Hill remarked to a secretary during the fight Godkin was waging against his machine : '1 don't care anything about the handful of Mug- wumps who read it in New York City. The trouble with the dainxed sheet is that every editor in New York State reads it I' It was a Western edito'r who said that only a bold newspaper made up its mind on any new issue till it saw what the Post had to say."

We cannot leave the subject of the Evening Post without saying something as to its admirable War record.

"When Germany entered Belgium its condemnation was instant- ' By this action Germany has shown herself ready to lift an outlaw hand against She whole of Western Europe.' The paper did not know whether Germany directly caused and desired the war ; but it believed that she indirectly caused it, and that she failed to prevent it when she might easily have done so. Before fighting had fairly commenced it ventured upon a prophecy which the fate of three thrones has fully justified : The human mind cannot yet begin to grasp the consequences. One of them, however, seems plainly written in the book of the future. It is that, after this most awful and most wicked of all wars is over, the power of life and death over millions of men, the right to decree the ruin of industry and commerce and finance, with untold human misery stalking through the land like a plague, will be taken away from three men. No safe prediction of actual results of battle can be made. Dynasties may crumble before all is done, empires change their form of government. But what- ever happens, Europe—humanity—will not settle back into a position enabling three Emperors to give, on their individual choice or whim, the signal for destruction and massacre.'"

At the end of 1917 Mr. Villard, who had been with the paper as.chief proprietor, sold his shares to Mr. Thomas W. Lamont. Mr. Lamont—it is no secret—bought the paper, not as a speculation, but because of certain high ideals in journalism and literature which be desired to see carried out. The task which he set himself was as onerous as it was distinguished and high-minded, for he came in at the time when news- papers were losing; not paying, and when all the prospects seemed dark. Happily the difficult time has now passed. Mr. Lamont placed the actual working of the paper in the hands of Mr. Gay, and just a year ago Mr. Gay organized a syndicate into whose hands the ownership of the Evening Post passed. The Evening Post Literary Review, edited since 1920 by Mr. Canby, has become one of the most distinguishect examples of American literary journalism, while in the body of the paper itself all the things of good report in journalisth have been strengthened and developed. It is with well- deserved pride, then, that Mr. Allan Nevins can say that "in a period not favourable to increase of circulation, that of the Evening Post has risen, under Mr. Gay, to the highest point in its history." Mr. Gay and all concerned with the writing and production of the Evening Post have every reason to be proud of what they have accomplished and are