NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE IN AMERICA.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 536, 24 June 1869, Page 4

NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE IN AMERICA.

Even London itself is Vcastly inferior to New York in the matter of newspaper enterprise. The Herald and the Tribune have, their correspondents in every quarter of the globe, maintain travellers in distant countries— even in times of peace, .and give employment to a very large staff of writeia and reporters. When thinking of tliejdvoncJorfnl influence of the two papers, my mind has off on revortod to some story I must have heard when very yonngof the elder Bannet, which caused me to regard an American editor as a lire-eating monster of gigantic proportions, If I mistake not, Mr Bennett has fought a duel, or kicked somebody down stairs, or something of that sort — at any ra.te there is nothing in his appearance or his public history to make such a supposition impossible. However, the New York Herald ia one of the most wonderful monuments of individual genius in this or any other country. Like most of the prominent men of America, Mr Bennett was originally poor. Scotch by birth, he possesses the long-headed coolness and calculation of his country. To this, however, nature has added an amount of pretension and self-assertion, seldom met with even in an American. Then- he is thoroughly and consistently-' -unscrupulous. The Herald turns with every change in public sentiment — is everything by turns, and nothing long. The editorials, as a general rule, are bold and daring ; infidel or religious, impious or sanctimonious, as public feeling may require, or the editor's unscrupulous sense of "smartness" may demand ; often scurrilous, always readable. Its rage, or scorn, or laughter besides, is not by any means confined to measures ; every public man, no matter how consistent in his principles, how pure in conduct, how noble in character, is sure, sooner or later, to come under the cutting lash of the Herald. It has always been, as you are aware, specially severe fin England and Englishmen. Its unprincipled attacks on Dr Newman Hall, while in this country, are strong evidence of its-consistency in this respect. As long as it could afford to do so, it stood out fair and square on behalf of the rebels in the late war, and condescended only to hoist the Union flag in the presence of an exasperated New York crowd, of tens of thousands who threatened to burn the establishment, Mr Bennett is an aristocrat of the haughtiest kind. No prominent public man is less known or has fewer friends. X never heard of him at a public meeting, and never knew of him being "on the stump," He despises office and cares not for any man's sympathy, or the sympathy of any party. His writers assemble in the office in the forenoon ; the questions of the day are discussed ; each one chooses his subject and writes upon it, and thus the editorial columns of the Herald are made nj>. And in the columns of the Herald you may be as scurrilous, as personal, as wicked as you can desire to be with the fear of the law of libel before your eyes. In one department, the Herald is far before any other existing newspaper — the fullness and reliability of its foreign news. The Herald correspondents are maintained at an enormous outlay, and they seem in every case to be able completely to outwit the attadies of the London press. The late war in Abyssinia afforded many examples of the truth of this. The editor of the Herald is now possessed of a princely fortune. He is tall and commanding, with a fine head of silver-grey hair, and an eye yet keen and piercing as an eagle. It isn't very many years since, penniless and an adventurer, he started the first penny newspaper in the United States, which has lived and thrived by temporising, blasphemy and abuse. He stands to-day, feared, proud, rich, and friendless ; a believer in the Herald, and a believer in nothing else ; with a son, reckless, and daring, but possessing, according to the opinion of those who know him best, but little of his father's talent. He inherits the family presumption at the cost of the family ability. Not less astonishing has been the career of the Tritium ; in every sense, except that of success, the direct opposite of the Herald. Its present wonderful influence is alsu the result of individual genius (for I can give it no lesser name), and the Tribune is as closely indentified with the name of Horace Greeley, as the Herald with that of James Gordon Bennett. Mr Greenley is a Pickwickian of an improved species — I mean in matters of the heart. Cosmopolitan in knowledge, universal in sympathy, consistent in principle, identified all life long with the interests and aspirations of the masses ; honest, and a politician as he is, the Tribune has come to be the leading Republican paper in the United States, and is read and respected by men of all shades of political opinion. Horace Greeley came to New York a poor boy with a bundle under his arm, and was taken into a printing office rather out of charity than anything else ; and by dint of hard labor, unceasing study, and the most frugal living, has worked himself up to the most enviable position in America. The Tribune is, perhaps, the solitary example of a great newspaper which is bound by no law but the law of the editor's conscience. All through the war it was magnanimous in its defence of the principles of the Union. Then, latterly, when Mr Greeley went bail for Jefferson Davis in a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the outcry raised against h'ni would have dammed any other newspaper, and outlawed any other editor. Mr Greeley, however, persevered in defending his position, and continued pleading for mercy, and the consequence is that now not a murmur is heard, and the circulation of the Tribune is increasing by the thousand every week. In this matter the Herald and the Tribune sundered as far as pole is from pole. The former lives only to humor the rabble ; borne along by the misguided crowd, it would sink to any depth, and natters and despises the public at the same time, Mr. Greeley believes that the great public is right in the main ; that when it does go astray it is ruin and degradation to go with it, and that reason and persuasion will bring it right in the end. Is it not so'/ The voice of the people may be temporarily the voice of the devil, but the great public heart, is naturally teachable and submissive. The Saviour whom the learned men — the Rabbis— -rejected with scorn and contempt, was the very son of God to the poor and to the outcast — the fisherman mending his net, the beggar by the wayside, and the poor woman with a stained life and a stained conscience. He who flatters the people hates the people. Flattery is the trick of the politician who smooths the victim's hair and pats her cheek before putting his

heel upon her neck. The people, in the eyes of Mr Bennett, are dogs ; but they can bite, and hence they must be fed and flattered and caressed. The people, in the eyes of Mr Greeley, are the creatures of | God, and he tries to awaken them to a sense of their powers, privileges, and duties, and succeeds in the main. It is the old story of Orpheus and his lyre, adapted to modern ideas, You remember how the notes of the musician tamed the ferocity of the beasts. To my mind there issomethingnoble, God-like, in the thought that Mr Greeley's position, by the power of principle, earnestness, and truth, does exert such a mighty influence over the minds of the American people. Some of Mr Greeley's schemes are visionary, but he has lived to see many that were once laughed at become the national policy and the universal belief, His caricaturists call him " The Philosopher" of the Tribune. He is of medium size, tolerably stout, with fat, chubby cheeks j mild, contemplative eyes ; broad, high forehead ; double chin, straggling grey hairs, unimposing side whiskers, a high, old-fashioned stock, and shuffles about in a suit of broadcloth, apparently • half a century old, .and with the genuine Pickwickian goggles sitting astride the bridge of his nose. His private, hobby, so to speak, is agriculture. He hankers after the green fields and the vocal woods as a trapped {bird in a city cage. He is a universalist in religious opinion, a water-drinker on principle, and was formerly, if he is not now, a vegetarian. He is, in a word, the simplest, kindest, cleverest, wisest, most laborious, best man in America. He has now a princely establishment, and employs In sts of the ablest writers, but time has been when he has been obliged to write every sentence of his paper with his own hand. Of Mr Bennett the public know nothing outside the columns of the Herald. Mr Greeley is known and beloved by all. — R.M., in Northern Whig,