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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
One-third of the fools of the country (says an American paper) think they can beat the lawyer in expounding law, one-half think they can beat the doctor in healing the sick, two-thirds of them think they can beat the minister in preaching the gospel—and all of them know that they can beat the editor in running a newspaper.
The Hawera Star says that the Press Association has now between three and four thousand pounds to its credit; and that the subscription paid by papers belonging to the Association will probably be reduced, while the entrance fee will be increased. A probable result of the late conference will be that evening papers will receive more consideration than heretofore.
We are just wondering (says the European Mail) what steps the Treasury intends finally to take towards suppressing the taste for gambling that newspaper competitions undoubtedly excite. For the public, especially the little boys and girls whose youthful minds should be devoted to their elementary studies, they are anything but a blessing. For journalists they are something more than a nuisance, and if permitted to develop, would greatly degrade what ought to be a very honorable calling. There is little capital needed for starting one of these journalistic enterprises beyond a pot of paste, and a pair of scissors, and a few morning and evening papers—although an old jest-book will be found useful. The printer and paper-maker can often be induced to give credit, for the sake of favors to come. By dint of offering valuable prizes for idiotic guesses, a temporary circulation is easily obtained. But from the guessing-competition to the State-lottery is only a step, and the instinct many weekly papers of the baser sort are now stimulating is a very dangerous one, and already—in London, at least—sufficiently active without a tonic. At the present moment uneasiness reigns in the bosoms of not a few enterprising gentlemen who have been earning large incomes by artfully encouraging gambling. If similar methods of gaining money are denied hospitals, why should they be permitted to the proprietor of the « Pastepot and Scissors »?