Matthews, Edgar Fawcett, Henry Harland, Mrs. Van Renssalaer Cruger and Mrs. Burton Harrison.

Four writers who refuse the convenience of classification are Edward Everett Hale, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Amelie Rives and Edgar Saltus. Only as the unclassifiable can they be mentioned in one breath. Dr. Hale, the last survival from the Attic days of Boston, is the soul of whim dwelling in a unitarian mind. His best work is that solemnly patriotic story, The Man Without a Country, which at the beginning of the war did so much to strengthen a spirit of loyalty to the union. Mrs. Phelps-Ward, in her passionate control of passion, is a feminine embodiment of the New England conscience. Miss Rives, who is now the Princess Troubotzky, exhibits in prose and poetry all the alertness and exuberance of the south. Mr. Saltus is one of the wittiest of Frenchmen compelled by the accident of his American birth and ancestry to express himself in epigrammatic English.

As realism was the shibboleth of the generation now passing from the field, romanticism is that of the latest arrival. Among the leaders of the new movement should be mentioned Winston Churchill, Mary Johnston, the prematurely deceased Paul Leicester Ford, and the veteran Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who has aroused a life of scientific study and achievement with a brilliant garland from the flower garden of fancy.

THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.

BY MEDILL MCCORMICK.

[Medill McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Cleveland Leader; born Chicago, May 16, 1877; educated in English and American schools and graduated from Yale university; successively reporter, editorial writer, staff correspondent in the Philippines, assistant publisher and publisher of the Chicago Tribune; acquired control of the Cleveland Leader 1905, and is now publisher of both newspapers.]

The American newspaper of the present day is a development-one of the greatest-of the generation that is passing away. Seventy five years ago the making of newspapers was a diversion. Later it became a means to an end— the political success of the party to which the editor was an adherent, and the attainment of that party's success in all its efforts. To-day the American newspaper ranks foremost as a universal educator; the making of it has become a business as well as a profession, than which no other demands a more widely extended and diversified knowledge, of the arts, science, literature and history.

One hundred years ago, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the newspaper was just beginning in this country. In 1784 the first daily newspaper was attempted and so slow was its development that in 1800 daily papers were being issued in but four or five of the larger cities of the country.

At that time there were 200 newspapers of all sorts published in the country. That meant a newspaper for each 26,450 of the population.

There are now more than 23,000 newspapers published in this country regularly, or one for every 350 of the population. In the state of Illinois there are fifty five newspapers with a circulation of more than 1,000 and in the entire country there are more than 6,000 papers the circulation of each of which is above 1,000, running up in some cases as high as 300,000 for one newspaper. There are seven hundred Sunday newspapers published in the country and an infinite variety

of journals which appeal to particular classes. There are fourteen publications for the deaf, dumb and blind, 6 matrimonial papers, of which four are published in Chicago, and 62 which treat on anarchy, single tax, communism and socialism. And all this when but 100 years ago there were but 4 daily newspapers in the entire country!

In comparison with the conditions at that time it is impressive to glance through the following list of the states and territories of the union with the number of newspapers in each at the beginning of 1905:

The development of the American newspaper in the early part of the last century was almost as slow as the development in the art of printing. After the invention of type by Gutenberg three and one half centuries passed with scarcely any improvement in the art of printing, until, when newspapers were published in this country in 1784 and a few years previous they were the product of almost infinite labor.

Printing presses of those days were primitive in the extreme. The type was large, poorly formed, the presses were of wood and difficult of operation and the paper itself