The newsvendors and newsmen are a very subordinate part of that
wonderful engine--the newspaper press. Still I think we all know
very well that they are to the fountain-head what a good service of
water pipes is to a good water supply. Just as a goodly store of
water at Watford would be a tantalization to thirsty London if it
were not brought into town for its use, so any amount of news
accumulated at Printing-house Square, or Fleet Street, or the
Strand, would be if there were no skill and enterprise engaged in
its dissemination.
We are all of us in the habit of saying in our every-day life, that
"We never know the value of anything until we lose it." Let us try
the newsvendors by the test. A few years ago we discovered one
morning that there was a strike among the cab-drivers. Now, let us
imagine a strike of newsmen. Imagine the trains waiting in vain
for the newspapers. Imagine all sorts and conditions of men dying
to know the shipping news, the commercial news, the foreign news,
the legal news, the criminal news, the dramatic news. Imagine the
paralysis on all the provincial exchanges; the silence and
desertion of all the newsmen's exchanges in London. Imagine the
circulation of the blood of the nation and of the country standing
still,--the clock of the world. Why, even Mr. Reuter, the great
Reuter--whom I am always glad to imagine slumbering at night by the
side of Mrs.
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