Chapter XXXIV: Opinions Journalistic

For five years I wrote for many papers in San Francisco and wrote some things good, some bad, some indifferent. I attacked and ridiculed the errors and foibles of others with the miraculous confidence and inferred self-righteousness of a man who had not as yet begun to realize his own shortcomings. I assailed abuses and was sometimes disgusted at what then I deemed the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of newspaper publishers, when they refused to print my tirades, reproofs, and sarcasms. As a champion I was very brave to speak on paper in the privacy of my own room. As a man with no capital at stake, I was very wise in showing others where to put their money.

I was rated in San Francisco as a “Bohemian” and deserved the name. I was largely in sympathy with the idea that life being short should be worked at a rapid pace for all that could be got out of it, and that we the dwellers on the top floor of intellect were justified in regarding with a certain scorn the duller and generally wealthier plodders on the lower floors of business. We were as proud of our comparative poverty and disregard of money because we held in some way we never could explain that such poverty argued for us the possession of more brains, though we were very glad to receive our money from people we deemed ourselves so far above. I think this is all nonsense.

I think now that the ability to express ideas well on paper is a vastly over-rated and over-praised talent. A man may write well and not have sufficient executive ability to build a hen coop or govern one after it is built, and brains play a very important part in any kind of managerial ability, be the field large or small.

Bohemianism as it existed thirty years ago is nearly dead. It has been discovered that late hours, gin, and nocturnal out-pourings of wit, brain, and brilliancy, do not increase the writer’s originality, or fertility of idea, and that a great deal of force is wasted at such times which should be turned into dollars and cents.

A man or woman to-day who succeeds permanently with the pen will not only live well-ordered lives, but possess a business ability outside of the pen, in order to get their ideas before the public. Never before were there so many writers, and never before so many able writers. The literary mediocrity of to-day would have made a brilliant reputation sixty years ago. But of those who are merely writers, even if good writers, three-fourths as regards compensation are almost on the same relative plane as the type-writer. The supply is greater than the demand. People must write even if not paid for the pleasure of seeing their ideas in print, and for this reason to-day do we find country weeklies furnished regularly free of expense with interesting correspondence from abroad by the editor’s travelling friends.

As a newspaper man and correspondent, I was not always very particular in writing about people, and dragging their personality before the public. I wanted subjects and something or somebody to write about. These were my capital stock in trade.

I don’t wonder that a certain unpopularity with a class attaches itself to “newspaper men,” “correspondents” and reporters. The tendency and temptation is to become social Paul Pry’s, especially when family or individual secrets will swell a column and bring dollars. Of all this I did my share, and regard myself now with small favor for so doing.

The freedom of the Press has developed Press freebooters male and female, and the Press has now all the freedom of the village gossip.

On the other hand a great many people like to see their names in print. The remark “don’t put my name in the paper” often means “do put my name in the paper,” with little care as to the accompanying comment.

Many people have a terrible and I think needless fear of what the newspaper can do and say to make or unmake them, to give a book or a play a reputation or kill it outright. I notice that a play often becomes very popular when its first critics condemned it, and the same can be said of books. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, Helper’s Irrepressible Conflict and Bret Harte’s Heathen Chinee were not advertised into notice by the Press. Their force made the Press advertise them.

The Press, which so often claims to “mould popular opinion” is in reality moulded by popular opinion and follows it, while sometimes claiming to lead it. There is a power which brings men and movements for greater or lesser periods into public notice, which the Press does not manufacture.

The Press which claims indirectly to have so much of the public morals and the public good in its care and keeping--this “lever of civilization” which will deluge its columns for days and weeks with the preliminaries of a prize fight or parades for a similar time the details of a scandal, places a great deal before the eyes of every boy and girl which seems to me neither civilized nor civilizing.

I object here neither to the prize fight nor its publication. But I can’t think the man who spreads it all broadcast day after day before the community as a promoter of the highest refinement or civilization.

The Press of to-day is either ridiculing ideas or ignoring them entirely, which the Press of a near Future will treat as most important realities, just as fifty years ago, nine-tenths of the American newspapers treated the subject of human slavery. Did the Press of America mould public opinion in this respect or was it the idea that moulded public opinion first and as a necessary consequence the Press followed. Not that I advocate the idea that the editor should express himself far in advance of public opinion or rather of public knowledge. It is a very unwise thing to do. The inevitable result is the kick instead of the copper. Martyrdom is not the business of a newspaper. Many a leading editor of to-day deemed conservative and old fogyish is really more liberal and progressive than those who rail at him. But he is wiser than they and has learned that ideas which may be accepted and in full sway a century hence, cannot be argued as if in full fruition to-day. He may know also how to pave the way for a new idea, and is often doing it while his readers never realize his intent.