Miseries of a Provincial Editor.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 175, 18 March 1873, Page 7

Miseries of a Provincial Editor.

“Snyder” in the Auckland Weekly Herald writes the following amusing bit : “ I shall never cease to regret, so long as I live and contihiVe to be an insignificant unit in this sublunary sphere, the time when, some tjpsrs ago, I turned from a useful and respectij dd occupation and became a writer for newspapers. I was pursuing the peaceful calling of a brickmaker, at which I earned a humble and contented livelihood, when in a weak moment I refused to listen to the voice of reason, and I became a newspaper editor. It was in a small province in the Middle Island where I chanced to learn that the newspaper of its chief town, long and ably conducted by a respectable proprietor, had been bought up by thirteen pump-policians, who were dissatisfied with him because his editor would not advocate a measure by which this baker’s dozen should alienate to themselves all the land in the province, to he bought at five and threepence per acre on deferred payments. These men bought up the paper and then advertised f;r an editor. I applied. 1 was asked what qualifications I possessed. I told the whole truth. I said that in my youth I had run for three different newspapers hpon commission on the sale of them. That I had on another occasion been engaged to sweep ont a newspaper office, and carry up editor’s and reporters’ “ copy” to the printers ; and that possessing a quarter of an acre of clay upon lease, I had turned to brick-making. I yas asked what were rny politics, and I said just as 1 made my bricks to order so would I make my politics to suit them. I was deemed admirably fitted for the duties of a newspaper editor, and received an engagement forthwith at about half the rate of wages of a journeyman blacksmith. ,

" When I had written my first leader for the following morning’s issue, eight of the proprietors came down to read it before it went into type. Three approved of the sentiments didn’t see that; it had any sense in it. Within a fortnight five shareholders, two of whom not spell at all and three only very

little, brought mo each a leader to insert in the paper. Two of these in substance were advertisements calculated to benefit the writer’s business. Two were controversial on matters of religions faith, and one recommended a petition to bo drawn up and sent to the English Parliament praying that the Province should be placed under its control, and ashing the Queen to appoint one of her sons as a resident minister. I could not convince these shareholders that such writing was not the material of which leading articles were composed any more than they could have convinced me that bricks could be made from soft soap. Every one of them insisted that his leader must go in. After battling over the matter for nearly five hours, and nine quarts of beer, it was agreed at my suggestion that the leaders should be inserted as letters addressed to the editor. And in this form they appeared by shutting out seven columns of good paying advertisements. These five leader-writers were ever after mine enemies, who finally compassed my downfall. “ One morning a shareholder brought me what he termed a splendid local article. He said it would make the paper go down like wild-fire and winkey. It would be read by everyone all through the Colonies. Having run my eyes over it I quite concurred with the writer that it would make the paper go down—so much down that it was never likely to come up again ; and I was also quite certain that the local would be read by everyone ; for I think it was one of the most splendid and magnificent libels I ever read in my life. The article, without the slightest circumlocution, stated that hereditary wilful murder ran in the family of a man who lived next house but one to him and whose wife had quarrelled with his wife. I told the writer that it would never do : that it was libellous and that all the shareholders would be answerable for the consequences of publishing it. He replied by saying that he didn’t want them to be responsible—that he would be responsible for the consequences himself. But as no jury would have returned damages at the lowest figure under £IOO,OOO, and the individual’s wealth merely consisted of a horse, a dray, and a stack of firewood, I took the j grave responsibility upon myself of refusing to hand it in to the printers, by which I made one more enemy.

“ One shareholder after another would come and carry away ray newspaper ex changes, so that I had nothing to select my reprint matter from. Another considered that it was part of my duty to write a poem in commemoration of the birth of his firstborn baby. Another considered I did wrong in always putting in the latest news first, as I should keep it back until the stale news had been used up. One shareholder wanted me to publish two columns of the novel “ Monte Christo” in each issue of the paper. This man was a little reasonable, for upon showing him my figures that at the rate of two columns an issue in a twice-a-week paper the whole of the work would take 84 years six months and three weeks before it was finished, he expressed himself satisfied that it should not be commenced until we brought out twice a day a paper a trifle bigger than the London Times. Before I could draw my salary, the cheques had to he signed by three j of the shareholders, and as these three! happened to be among the very men whose j editorials I had objected to have printed, I j had a great amount of anxiety and trouble | before 1 could obtain their signatures. And even when this was accomplished the cheque was generally handed back to me by the hank cashier with the words ‘ not sufficient funds’ initialed on the back. “During the eleven months and three days 1 remained on this paper the agonies I endured were and will ever he unspeakable. My misery was greater than I could bear. I j carefully reviewed all the sins of my past life, but I felt that I had done nothing doserving of such terrible punishment. I observed ( that my wife pursued a strange, and for her, a j very extraordinary and unusual line of behaviour towards me. When at home she would never leave the room I happened to be sitting in or resting in. She frequently visited my editorial office where the news- j paper articles were written. There was a solicitude evinced towards me which I never before believed she was capable of. Two years after she divulged her secret. She had feared, she told me, through every hour of the day and night that I intended to commit suicide, and she considered itwas hex duty to exercise all her watchfulness in preventing such a rash act, although she was bound to confess, she said, that I would have been perfectly justified in making away with myself, and that Heaven would scarcely have been sufficient compensation for the sufferings I had endured on earth. I endeavoured once more to obtain employment at my old trade of brick-making, but found I had completely unfitted myself for continuous and honest work. I would deliver eight hundred bricks and charge them as a thousand. I scorched them outside to make them look thoroughly baked through, when the inside was only wet clay. I mixed gravel with the composite, and did all manner of mean things. The editor business had utterly demoralised me, and I felt that if I was to live I must seek employment on some newspaper. “I found my way to the capital of'the Southern Province during the gold rush of 1861, and became a correspondent for seven different newspapers, throe of them Victorian and four of them published in the North Island. Editors and newspaper proprietors in those days (of course they never do so now) furnished instructions to correspondents, who were expected to write to suit the particular views of the newspaper they corresponded for. For Victoria I was to write in a way which would Stop the rush then so furiously sotting

in from that colony to this. Of course Victoria did not want to lose its population, So while rich fields in the Otago province were being worked, and thousands of ounces of gold wore being weekly obtained, the newspaper correspondents were made to say it was a duffing rush, and that very shortly men would bo returning in droves as thick as fleas in a Maori blanket. The four newspapers I corresponded for in this colony held opposite views in politics. By one I was ordered to speak in favour of provincial institutions. By another in favour of Centralism. By a third I was told to compare favorably the province I wrote for as compared with the province I lived in, A fourth asked for the very opposite view. My ideas by my various opposing advocacies at length got so confused that 1 made most extraordinary mistakes, and to this day I am not quite certain what my views on politics are. Sometimes I think I am a Centralist, and at others I think I am not. If a policy could bo established embracing the two I think 1 should be that policy, and advocate it with consummate ability. 1 have now become steeped in demoralisation, I only hope my confession will have a chastening and purifying effect. I hope so. I trust so.”