coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

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tunity for finding out as much about all their
industries and occupations as those in the great
city have for learning what was done only the
clay before in a single factor that enters into
their lives. And yet, the people of a given State
where development of its resources has onlygone
a little way towards completion are just as
amenable to a local interest ancl lo an appeal
(o their patriotic pride as they ever were. If
they can get the salient points in the industries
by which they live; if, as you intend, the difficulties
incident to mining and marketing coal
are explained to them and they are made to feel
how important it is to themselves, does any man
before me believe that unnatural, artificial and
unjust methods will find friends or support? If
the best of the cultural experiments now being
carried on could be explained to your farmers,
year by year, who can doubt that many men nowcareless
or thoughtless -would adopt them to the
advantage of production and the expansion of
this primal industry? If your wonderful forests
and their relation to the prosperity of your Statewere
fully known the feeling would soon arise
that here was
SOMETHING FOR PRIDE
rather than for abuse, or detraction, or suspicion.
In like manner, when you let the outside world
know that your coal, water power, timber, and
other natural resources, fit you for the broader
development ancl concentration of manufactures,
then capital and men will come to you.
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that
you can only make your State and its possibilities
known to the world outside by making them
a household word among yourselves. When you
have scattered knowledge of these down among
your people, so that they look upon their own
home as the one place in the world in which
they are really interested, you will have found
a magnet powerful enough to draw the rest of
the world to you. When this is done and the
policy has been followed up with system and intelligence,
the disputes, riots, and violences with
which you have had to deal, will become impossible
because you will have behind you an interested,
an intelligent, and a determined public
sentiment which will neither invite nor permit
that interference which has both hampered
normal development and has cost you so much of
everything that men have or prize. A people
properly instructed will never allow interlopers
to come among them and to interfere with the
orderly conduct of industries of which they themselves
are the proprietors and by which they must
live. Nor does the application of such methods
demand that any processes or methods that belong
naturally to the confidences essential to
business or labor shall be revealed to the world.
It relates only to
THOSE MATTERS
about which the world has always desired information;
the how, the why, and the what of
industry.
It seems only natural that I should say something
about newspapers which a good many persons
discuss with little warrant in knowledge.
My own may perhaps be found in the relations
which, for more than forty years, I have borne
to them. 1 have tried to study them all along
the lines from the time when I became the proprietor
of a country weekly, through experience
in directing, reporting, correspondence, and
leader writing in dailies in many cities, up to a
connection with the most important newspaper
in the world.
There have been many changes in my time
but from the first to the last among the men
connected with newspapers in their various
spheres I have found not only a desire but a
determination to publish the news that seemed
to them of interest. In most cases, the prime
requisite has been news about their readers
themselves, their doings, their varied thoughts,
and especially their industries. When the editor
collects news of the latter he does it because he
knows that it is the one thing that comes "closest
to man's business and bosoms," as Lord Bacon
long ago told the world. Whatever mankind
may know or want to know, the labors necessary
to provide food, clothing, and shelter concern it
most nearly because all others depend upon these.
If, at any time, the men who are back of industry
NEGLECT OR REFUSE
to supply this news, they are soon enveloped in
an atmosphere of doubt ancl suspicion to the
hurt of themselves and society. Rumor tnen succeeds
to certainty and confidence is so shattered
that bad results must follow.
It does not depend upon money paid in any
form because this is not an element that enters
into the collection or the publication of the news;
but it does depend upon frankness, willingness
to give information, determination to furnish the
facts to which the public—the newspaper in this
case being its unconscious agent—believes itself
entitled, and honest co-operation in writing the
day's history, which is the vital function of the
newspaper. This is why, from the greatest to
the least, they welcome trustworthy reports about
human enterprise as it takes the form of industries;
but it must be genuine, independent, full
of information, expressive of the opinion of responsible,
well-meaning men, and interesting to
the people it is desired to reach. I have never