Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/555

 er.

from another in glory, so the metropolitan press of different countries and of different sections of the same country have their own variations. A historian of the press finds that “ the local news in Berlin and other large cities is written with the minuteness and the familiarity of style of a village chronicle, and gives the impression that every one is occupied in observing

the doings of his neighbor.” 25 An and England reconstructed from

the adi Engl

13 of Ada

the advertisements of the Spectator 26 of Addison is a very different England from the England that it would be possible

to reconstruct from the advertisements of to -day. Many extracts from early Australian newspapers make it possible to reconstruct social and industrial life in Australia during the first part of the nineteenth century, although not political conditions since “ there were but two classes, those who ruled and those who obeyed .” Although the first fleet for

Australia carried out a printing press in 1787, no one in the colony was able to set type and when the first paper was issued in 1803 it was found that Australia had not only inherited all of the press disabilities of the mother country but it had added to them the trouble of securing paper and ink as well as com positors since ships were sent out but once or twice a year. “ Being under the strictest censorship ,” the Sydney Gazette " did not attempt to discuss public matters . Officials of all grades, when mentioned at all, were spoken of in terms of the most fulsome flattery .” 27 The press is the limelight that illumines,

as do no other sources, the hardships of frontier life as well as the courage with which they are met. The newspapers that come to -day from Australia, the Fiji

Islands, Hawaii, and the Philippines are invaluable in recon structing present-day life there, - even to the extent of showing

how long the advertisements linger of patent medicines an nounced as cures for cholera. In The Voice of the Negro, R. T. Kerlin, through a compilation from the negro press of America for the four consecutive months

25 Hugh Chisholm, “ The German Press,” Encyclopaedia Britannica , XIX, 579.

26 Lawrence Lewis, The Advertisements of the Spectator; “ The'Spectator' as an Advertising Medium ," Atlantic Monthly, May, 1909, 103 : 605 -615. 27 James Bonwick, Early Struggles of the Australian Press.