Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/489

 30.

apples of discord,” and to throw several other apples of discord into literary and scientific circles. The hoax is sometimes planned to teach “ a high moral lesson .”

The New York Courier and Enquirer, " in order to expose those who were guilty of appropriating news without credit,” once printed a small edition, specially intended for the morning papers, denying the fall of Warsaw announced a few days before.

The later news purported to have been gleaned from papers brought by the ship Ajax, but " there was no Marjory Daw .” Other papers announced the news, without giving credit to the Courier and Enquirer, — the trap set for them had sprung.30 But far more troublesome to the historian than questions of authenticity, fabrication , identification of anonymous articles , or correct attribution of signed articles must be that of the real

authorship of newspaper articles signed by noted names but written by persons whose names do not appear. The tendency has been more and more away from anonymity and more and

more towards measuring the importance of an article by the name attached to it. This has resulted in extraordinary pressure

on persons of distinguished reputation and those occupying high official position to contribute articles to the press of every degree of periodicity. It is absolutely impossible for these demands to

be met by those on whom they are made and hence the writing of the articles has been delegated to others, but it appears under the signature desired. This is not indeed a new device, - it has long been a well-known custom in official circles for secretaries and clerks to prepare

public documents that are subsequently signed by the official higher up. This is done, not with intent to deceive, but through

the application of the principle of division of labor and from the necessity of economizing the time of those on whom unusual de

mands are made.31 But it is the wide extension of this principle 30 A Journalist, Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and his Times, p. 135 . 31 Washington 's farewell address is attributed to Alexander Hamilton.

The phraseology of the Monroe Doctrine has been ascribed to John Quincy Adams. - Webster was asked just prior to the inauguration of President

Harrison the reason for his unusual weariness and he replied that he had that day “ killed seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them .” The anecdote is given by Peter Harvey, Reminiscences of Daniel

Webster, pp. 160 – 163. Many of Harvey's anecdotes are given first hand, but