Thomas B. Reed

[Speech of James Jeffrey Roche at the banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, New York City, March 17, 1894. John D. Crimmins presided. Mr. Roche, as editor of the "Boston Pilot," responded for "The Press."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick:—I am deeply sensible of the honor you have done me in inviting me to respond to the toast which has just been read.

The virtues of the Press are so many and so self-evident that they scarcely need a eulogist. Even the newspapers recognize and admit them. If you had asked a New York journalist to sing the praises of his craft, his native and professional modesty would have embarrassed his voice. If you had asked a Chicagoan, the honorable chairman would have been compelled to resort to cloture before the orator got through. If you had asked a Philadelphian, he would have been in bed by this hour.

Therefore, you wisely went to the city which not only produces all the virtues—but puts them up in cans, for export to all the world. We do not claim to know everything, in Boston—but we do know where to find it. We have an excellent newspaper press, daily and weekly, and should either or both ever, by any chance, fail to know anything—past, present, or to come—we have a Monday Lectureship, beside which the Oracle of Delphi was a last year's almanac. [Applause.]

I met a man, on the train, yesterday—a New York man (he said he was)—of very agreeable manners. He told me what his business was, and when I told him my business in New York, he surprised me by asking: "What are you going to say to them in your speech that will be real sassy, and calculated to make all their pet corns ache?" I told him I did not know what he meant, that of course I should say nothing but the most pleasant things I could think of; that, in fact, I intended to read my speech, lest, in the agitation of the moment, I might overlook some complimentary impromptu little touch. Then he laughed and said: "Why, that isn't the way to do at all—in New York. It is easy to see you are a stranger, and don't read the papers. The correct thing nowadays is for the guest to criticise his entertainers. Mayor So-and-So always does it. And only last year—it was at an Irish banquet, too—the speaker of the evening, a Down-Easter like yourself, just spilled boiling vitriol over the whole company, and rubbed it in."

I told him I didn't believe that story, and asked him to tell me the gentleman's name. And he only answered me, evasively: "I didn't say he was a gentleman."

I trust I know better than to say anything uncomplimentary about the Press of New York, which compiles, or constructs, news for the whole Continent, not only before our slower communities have heard of the things chronicled, but often, with commendable enterprise, before they have happened.

I admire the Press of New York. There are a great many Boston men on it, and I have no mission to reform it. In New York, when you have a surplus of journalistic talent, you export it to London, where it is out of place—some of it. The feverish race for priority, which kills off so many American journalists, sometimes, it would seem, almost before their time (but that is a matter of opinion), is unknown in London. A man who reads the "London Times," regularly and conscientiously, is guaranteed forever against insomnia. London "Punch" is a paper which the severest ascetic may read, all through Lent, without danger to his sobriety of soul.

London gets even with you, too. You send her an Astor, and she retaliates with a Stead. We ought to deal gently with Mr. Stead; for he says that we are all children of the one "Anglo-Saxon" family—without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. He avers that England looks upon America as a brother, and that may be so. It is not easy, at this distance of time, to know just how Romulus looked upon Remus, how Esau looked upon Jacob, how Cain looked upon Abel—but I have no doubt that it was in about the same light that England looks upon America—fraternally! But she ought not to afflict us with Mr. Stead. We have enough to bear without him.

We know that the Press has its faults and its weaknesses. We can see them every day, in our miserable contemporaries, and we do not shirk the painful duty of pointing them out. We know that it has also virtues, manifold, and we do not deny them, when an appreciative audience compliments us upon them. A conscientious journalist never shrinks from the truth, even when it does violence to his modesty. In fact, he tells the truth under all circumstances, or nearly all. If driven to the painful alternative of choosing between that which is new and that which is true, he wisely decides that "truth" is mighty, and will prevail, whereas news won't keep. Nevertheless, it is a safe rule not to believe everything that you see in the papers. Advertisers are human, and liable to err.

Lamartine predicted, long ago, that before the end of the present century the Press would be the whole literature of the world. His prediction is almost verified already. The multiplication and the magnitude of newspapers present, not a literary, but an economic problem. The Sunday paper alone has grown, within a decade, from a modest quarto to a volume of 48, 60, 96, 120 pages, with the stream steadily rising and threatening the levees on both banks. At a similar rate of expansion in the next ten years, it will be made up of not less than 1,000 pages, and the man who undertakes to read it will be liable to miss First Mass.

The thoughtful provision of giving away a "farm coupon" with every number may avert trouble for a time, but it will be only for a time. The reader will need a farm, on which to spread out and peruse his purchase; but the world is small, and land has not the self-inflating quality of paper.

But to speak more seriously: Is modern journalism, then, nothing but a reflection of the frivolity of the day, of the passing love of notoriety? I say no! I believe that the day of sensational journalism, of the blanket sheet and the fearful woodcut, is already passing away. Quantity cannot forever overcome quality, in that or any other field. When we think of the men who have done honor to the newspaper profession, we do not think so proudly of this or that one who "scooped" his contemporaries with the first, or "exclusive," report of a murder or a hanging, but of men like the late George W. Childs, whom all true journalists honor and lament.

We think of the heroes of the pen, who carried their lives in their hands as they went into strange, savage countries, pioneers of civilization. It would be invidious to mention names, where the roll is so long and glorious; but I think, at the moment, of O'Donovan, Forbes, Stanley, Burnaby, Collins, and our own Irish-American, MacGahan, the great-hearted correspondent, who changed the political map of Eastern Europe by exposing the Bulgarian atrocities. The instinct which impelled those men was the same which impelled Columbus.

I think, in another field, of the noblest man I have ever known, the truest, most chivalrous gentleman, a newspaper man, an editor—I am proud to say, an Irish-American editor—the memory of whose honored name, I well know, is the only excuse for my being here to-night—John Boyle O'Reilly! You have honored his name more than once here to-night, and in honoring him you honor the profession which he so adorned.