TALMAGE ON THE NEWSPAPERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume I, Issue 73, 13 May 1879, Page 3

TALMAGE ON THE NEWSPAPERS.

In the courso of one of his sermons on " City life in now York," the Key. Do Witt Talmage recently said : — " Hastening on up a few blocks, we came where, on the right side, we saw large establishments ablaze from foundation to capstone These were the great printinghouses of the New York dailies. We went in. We went up from editorial rooms to typesetters' and proofreaders' loft. These are the foundries where the great thunderbolts of the public opinion are forged, liow the pens scratched ! How the typps . clicked ! How the scissors cut ! How the wheels rushed, all the world's news rolling over^ the cylinder like Niagara at the Table Bock. Great ;torrehts of opinion of crimes, of accidents, of destroyed reputations, of avenged character. Who can estimate the niigbtness for good or evil of a daily newspaper? Fingers of Steel picking off the end of telegraphic whiil of facts of religion and philosophy and science, and information from the f-ur winis of In 1850 the Associated ?ress began to pay 200,000d015. a year jEacJiflSßß^. and. some. of the indi-vidual-sheets paying 50,000d015. extra fur despatches. Some of them, independent of the Associated Press, with a wire rake gathering up sheaves of news from all the great ham U

fields of the world. It is Ivi'.'U tinif that good men understood that tin printing press is the mightiest ei:giii< of all the centimes. The higlnvatci mark of the printer's type-easy slmwi the ebb or flow of the great oceanic tides of civilization or Christianity. Just think of it! Tn 1835 all th< daily newspapers of New York issued but 10,000 copies. Now thero ate 500,000, and taking the oitlinary calculation that five people read a newspaper, two million five hundred thousand people read the daily newspapers of New York ! I once could not understand how the Bible statement could be true when it says that nations shall be born in a day. I can understand it now. Get the telegraph operators and the editors converted, and in twenty-four hours the whole earth will hear the salvation call. Nothing more impressed me in the night exploration than the power of the press. But it is carried on with oh ! what aching eyes, and what ex** haustion of health. I did not find one man out of ten who had anything like brawny health in the great newspaper establishments of New York. The malodour of the ink, however complete the ventilation j the necessity of toiling at hours when Godhad drawn the curtain of the night for natural seep; the pressure of daily publication whatever breaks down ; the temptation to intoxicating stimulants in order to keep the nervous energy up, a temptation which only the strongest c»n resist — all these make newspaper life something to be sympathised with. Do not begrudge the three or the five cents you give r tor the newspaf er. : You \my not only intelligence with (hat, but you help to pay for sleepless nights, and smarting eyeballs, and racked brain and sepulchre"