Life — July 28, 1910 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

138 Life's Fresh Air Fund Previously acknowledged... Wm. 0. Morse In Memory of Db: A Grateful Pomerainiun idward udley Myers 1. rs. John Woods Myers}. mp Leafy | wee «$4,209.15, 5.00 *Tetty Howe GHW In Memory of “A Newport Subscriber Mrs. W. A. Hornell. A.W. RB . Ciarence €, “Buel: sph M. Low. The Fund of Simon Maurice Saunders, Jr. cand Cousins Joe’ and Billy... Finily ti. “Cowperthwai “In Memory S.J. B. $4.608.3¢ ACKNOWLEDGED WITH THANKS A candy treat from Mr. George Pratt In- gersoll W seldom get enough until we get too much. The Newspaper HE American newspaper is the palladium of our lib- erty, the source of our misin- formation, the herald of our social activities, the recorder of our scandals, the depository of our kicks, the companion of our breakfast food, the expositor of our politics and the first aid to furnace and cooking stove. It ranges in quantity from the four-page skimpiness of the weekly to the wood-pulp tonna the urban Sunday horror; and tents represents the sim total of the taste, haste, waste, scissors and paste of the editor. The quality of the cargo is very mixed and ranges from the incon- sequence of Hattie Hatpin’s “ Houschold Hints for Hearth and Home" along through columns of murders, burglaries, embezzlements, carthquakes, revolutions, cooking recipes, denunciations, revela- tions, exposures, baseball dialects, so- ciety chit-chat, refined pugilism and so on, down to Lydia Strongarm’s passion- ate plea for the Dethronement of Man and a thoughtful criticism of Maizie AT LFE'S FARM BEING Muckruder’s latest vocal triumph, “ When Lizzie Pulled the Old Man's Leg.” It matters little whether it is called news or nuisance, noise or nonsense, truth or twaddle, provided it fills space and lures advertising; a publisher in search of cir- culation and cash is not apt to be fus- sily esthetic and the editor can't be. Circulation means getting the crowd; numbers count; clamor and froth attract more attention than conviction and faith; tickle the unthinking, flatter the foolish, magnify the mediocre, dignify the dull, praise punk and preach platitude and— circulation comes, The value and importance of news arc purely local; the standards are all paro- chial and provincial. The painting of fences and barns in rural Indiana is as important as the smearing of canvases in cosmopolitan New York; hog-cholera and boll-weevil may interest: Arkansas and Texas, but Mrs. Belmont's vital views on varicose veins, or Mr. George Cohan’s on Ibsen, will get more space and scare- heads in Manhattan. Newspapers and Chinese pictorial art are devoid of per- spective and proportion, and news items like tadpoles seem to derive their dig- nity from the size of their heads. After long years of careful observation, we are convinced that the order of importance of the news of the day, estimating im- portance by the size of the head and the TAKEN illustration of the item, would rank about as follows: 1. Gladys Shrinker tights, Portrait. 2. Society sensation Biggses seeking divorce. refuses to wear The Buggs- A LITTLE GAME oF “RoUGE FT NOIR" comicbooks.com