No, newspaper articles, sparkling and spectacular as many of them are, must be recognized as ephemeral. The editor has no time for leisurely work. He rarely studies a single subject long enough or intensely enough to become profoundly authoritative on that subject. He goes on through life informing, elucidating, explaining, protesting, analyzing, until overtaken by the infirmities of years he passes from view. In a hazy sort of a way it is said of him that he was a great editor, but all that he wrote for his newspaper is forgotten. He leaves little for future generations to ponder over.
Alas! It is a sickening, saddening thought that the newspaper is for the moment only and that the editor who leaves behind him a lasting record of greatness has gained it through some other line of endeavor.
To the ambitious man the average newspaper salary means little. Any possible savings from it must be insufficient to make him especially prosperous. They do not insure against a pinch in old age or against misfortune. They do not permit of the accumulation of much property or capital. They furnish a feeble inspiration to the ambition that seeks the comfort of leisurely life, the stimulation of extended travel, or the luxury of intellectual repose and freedom from physical exertion that every one hopes may bless his declining years.
And if these conditions be true of metropolitan workers, how much the more must they befit the writers for newspapers in the smaller cities and villages. It is not the ideal of the American boy either in country or city to live forever in a rented house or on a small salary, or, indeed, to live the simple life. The small-city journalism offers little else than these if the young man cannot become a newspaper owner. To the man who owns his sheet the rewards are more abundant. But ownership involves the possession of capital and usually the young man just through with student life has no capital except his brains. In other callings the capital of brains commands success, notably in the law, in medicine, in engineering, in architecture, but in the newspaper business, while brains are absolutely essential they advance the young man only so far, give but feeble reward, unless reinforced with capital with which to buy a newspaper property. It surely is a discouraging feature of the calling that, however intellectual or learned a man may be, he rarely achieves more than moderate pecuniary success, as long as he remains an employee.
