Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/135

 us.

77.

Registration in the federal post office as second class matter carries with it the privileges of the mails and therefore this be comes a guarantee that the periodical containsno advertisements

of lotteries or other forms of business prohibited in any state. Registration also assures regularity of appearance. Copyright legislation protecting authors and artists benefits the historian

in so far as it assures him that the articles and illustrations are the property, if not the actual work , of the person holding the copy

right, and thus he is able to decide who is responsible for at least a part of the literary and the art columns. through its constitution and its laws, but it becomes itself respon

sible for the authoritativeness of no small or unimportant part of what appears on the pages of the press. The weather reports and forecasts, the times of sun and moon and tides, the arrival and

departure of domestic and foreign mails, shipping news, regu lations affecting the army and navy, the time and place for hold ing examinations for the federal civil service, the calendars of

federal courts and summaries of court decisions, the names of persons admitted to practice in these courts, signed proclamations

of the chief federal executive, reports of the regular federal ad ministrative departments as well as those appointed for times of emergencies, and a mass of official announcements and reports are

made with the sanction and approval of the federal government. In a similar way the state governments are directly or in directly responsible for the publication of state laws, proclama tions of governors, the calendars of state courts, the notices of the incorporation of stock companies, election notices, change of personal name, reports of state bureaus or commissions charged with the oversight of state educational, charitable, reformatory, and penal institutions, and with the direction of all efforts to

conserve food and fuel, and for other large classes of legal and public matters.

County, town and municipal governments are responsible for calendars of cases arising in criminal, civil and surrogates ' courts;

for all notices concerning the administration of the estates of de ceased persons, for notices concerning recorded transfers of property, recorded, satisfied , and assigned mortgages, an