Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/227

Rh great epoch-making contest in the history of democracy, for it was to the reading public that they appealed; not to the House of Parliament, not to those alone who enjoyed the suffrage privilege,—a minority at that time — but to the reading public. Their battles in the public press influenced the character of development in the west, where the printing press almost anticipated the trader. So we find in the new settlements, those founded immediately after the Revolution, a vigorous belief in public affairs.

The thin line of colonies on the Atlantic coast had scarcely thrown off the British rule in 1783 when their power, influence and territorial aggrandizement began to develop in a way that was to make the next hundred years far more remarkable than the century just closed. With the end of the Revolutionary War, the country back of the Appalachian mountains began to swarm with new settlers, and in this wilderness the press was not only welcome but was considered a necessary symbol of the dignity of the settlement.

One of the reasons for the emigration after the Revolution was the fact that, for the poor working classes, life was but a miserable existence. They were daily in sharp contrast with those who had plenty. The stories of fertile fields, of easy and independent living, were attractive. Conditions in the wilderness could not be worse than they were in the so-called civilized places, and so these sons of hardy settlers packed their goods and chattels and trekked west.

Two wagon roads penetrated the great wilderness that lay back of the thirteen colonies, one through Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and the other from the Potomac to the Monongahela, A third load led through Virginia