Capital's regular place for the most important news.

Along with this news item I printed a call for famine relief asking the readers of the news to send in contributions. This appeal followed the account of the famine on the front page. I may say that I still believe that news of this kind should be edited; that editorial comment on great world-events should be made directly on the page which prints the event. The first great daily in this country to print editorial comment directly under Associated Press news calling for such comment will have a reading that editorials printed on the editorial page do not now have. Very much of what is called news needs intelligent comment in order to be understood by the average reader of newspapers. In very many cases the newspaper reader does not know what the news item means. The editor ought to be able to tell him. If the editorial were written immediately under the news it would be read. It is a question whether the average editorial in the regular dailies of this country is read by more than two per cent of the readers. If it were written with the news everyone would read it. If editorials are written to be read, why not put them where the reader will read them?

As a direct result of the appeal for help in the case of the famine sufferers, a trainload of Kansas corn was sent by Kansas farmers to New York, and the Christian Herald of New York chartered a ship and sent the cargo to Bombay, where it was handled by the missionaries and distributed all over the famine district. In correspondence which came to me months afterward, the missionaries told me that this Kansas corn saved thousands of children from starving, and I have learned that some of them have since held responsible positions under the British

government. Sometimes when people have asked me if the paper was not a failure, as the press reports for the most part said it was, I have replied that if it accomplished nothing more than saving several thousand children from starving to death I should always feel that the paper was a success.

Besides the shipload of corn that was contributed, I forwarded from the Capital office that week and for weeks afterward money contributions for the famine amounting to more than $40,000, which were disbursed by different church and missionary organizations. This money came from all over the world in response to an appeal that took up less than two inches of space in the paper.

During the remainder of the week the Christian Herald carried a halfpage advertisement making an appeal for the people of India, and stating that the British Secretary of State for India would pay all transportation charges for food sent from America. The Herald received in response to that appeal over $100,000 in cash, besides the shipload of corn given by the Kansas farmers. It is within modest bounds to say that over $150,000 worth of food and relief was sent to a starving people from the first item of real news published in the Topeka Daily Capital of March 13, 1900. I hope the reader of this article will not think that I write in any spirit of cheap boastfulness. I am trying to tell the whole story of that week's experiment as if I stood outside of it. If anyone else knew all the facts, I should be more than glad to have him tell them.

It may be interesting to those who did not see the paper to know what subjects were discussed in the week's issues, which were being published as nearly as possible according to the standard of what I thought Jesus might do. Considering the fact that a

majority of the newspaper correspondents characterized the paper as deadly dull and a failure as a newspaper, it seems no more than fair to let the actual contents of the paper speak for themselves. Here are the titles of some of the articles published, and some of the news items discussed, either editorially or on a news page:Starving India; The War-Spirit Denounced (wars going on at the time were the war in the Philippines and the Boer War); Is the Boer War Just? (answer, no); New Books (with reviews by well-known authors); Federal Reforms; Against Cigarettes; Kindergarten Schools; The Philippines (a history of their internal affairs then published for the first time); Letters from Famous People; Sunday Observance (advocated); Market Reports (abbreviated on account of some questionable transactions on the stock market at the time); Prison Reform; Liquor Advertisements in Magazines (a protest against them this protest was followed by letters written by prominent people in Kansas, and most of the advertisements were dropped by the magazines when their contracts ran out); Kansas Millers; Livestock Market; Mormonism (its menace); The Tax Dodger (with a cartoon by a wellknown artist, M. A. Waterman); The Union of the Churches (advocated; a front page editorial); Woman Suffrage (advocated); Extracts from the National Brewers' Journal Conceding Progress of Prohibition in Kansas; Municipal Ownership (advocated); In Labor's Behalf (a plea for better housing-conditions); Appeal for Cleaner Humor; Tenement House Reform; League of Mothers (advocated); Police Department (a plea for decent wages); Women's Clubs; The Y. W. C. A. (appeal for endowment); Dairying in Kansas (a very

remarkable series of articles by Mr. F. D. Coburn, at the time Secretary of Agriculture in Kansas; these articles went all over the world and were copied in scores of journals); Social Settlements; Against War (written by Dr. Parkhurst of New York); Sunday School Lessons; The Churches of Topeka; Letters from Ministers; The Armenian Massacres (a protest against them); Disease Prevention.

These were, of course, only a very few of the topics discussed in the six issues of the paper. All of the outside contributions were freely given, as all the writers agreed to the plan of no compensation. Among the many contributors were Bishop John H. Vincent, who wrote the prayer printed above the news on the first page; Dr. J. E. Abbott, Bombay Mission; C. N. Howard, Rochester, N. Y.; F. D. Coburn; Governor W. E. Stanley of Kansas; Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus; Whitelaw Reid; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court David J. Brewer; Leonard D. Abbott; Frank Beard, the cartoonist. Mr. Myron A. Waterman also contributed some very telling cartoons.

If the paper was characterized by most of the newspaper correspondents as dull, it is also true that the subscribers received their money's worth in contributed articles which would be able to stand comparison with any table of contents in any periodical of the present time.

One reason for the assumption that the Christian Daily was dull and uninteresting may be found in the fact that crime and scandal and sensational divorce cases were absent from its pages. When crime was reported it was reported briefly and the emphasis was placed on the cause, and if possible on the remedy. This is the only scientific way to report crime. It is the way the Bible always reports it, and the Bible is the most scientific world-news reporter

that was ever compiled. It is childish and useless to report human frailty simply for the sake of creating a morbid mental sensation in the reader; yet this is the regular and stupid fashion of reporting human sin adopted by those dailies which print elaborate stories of human lapses. The rule which the Capital observed during the week that it was a Christian Daily was the Bible rule, and in time that will be the rule observed by all the daily Press.

A signal opportunity to practise this method of dealing with sensational news occurred in the office of the Capital itself during the week I was in charge. Senator Peffer of Kansas, who was as highly respected and honored by his townspeople generally as he was caricatured and dishonored by the public that did not know him, had a son who happened to be an employee in the advertising department of our paper. During the week, this son of the Kansas senator went down to Kansas City, and in a fit of despondency committed suicide, leaving a note addressed to his father, saying, 'Father, I don't like to do what I am doing, but I am tired.'

The fact of the suicide was published briefly in the Thursday edition of the paper, together with the note he had left, and after the item I wrote, "The Capital extends to Senator Peffer and his family profound sympathy in the time of their trouble. May the God of all comfort bless and strengthen all those who mourn.'

The news of the suicide reached one of the Capital reporters before we received it in the office, and I remember how he came running in with it to me, asking for instructions about going right up to Senator Peffer's home to interview the family so as to get inside facts about the affair. I not only refused to let any reporter go to the house, but I turned down a long ac

count of the tragedy which came up from Kansas City, in which there was a detailed description of the room where the young man was found, and more than a hint at some motive for suicide other than that given in the note which he had left for his father. It seemed to me at the time, it does yet, and it always will, that such human tragedy should be reported, if at all, in the briefest and most sympathetic manner. I see nothing to be gained by relating the ghastly details of human sin. Even the tremendous story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas is told in the Gospel narrative in a space less than one third the length of a newspaper column, and the stupendous event of the Crucifixion occupies what would be less than a single column in a modern metropolitan daily. Yet the great dailies will give whole pages to a robbery in which some silly woman's jewels have been taken from her hotel; and they will keep it up for weeks at a time.

The greatest examples we have of idcal reporting of wrongdoing are in the New Testament, and they are ideal because they do not attempt to report improper detail.

V

The Capital, being a morning paper, had a regular Sunday edition, and, owing to the fact that Sunday papers were then and are yet repugnant to me, it was at first something of a problem to know how we were going to give our subscribers a week's issues. But with the combined and willing coöperation of everyone on the paper, and with enormous loss of sleep and meals, we issued a Saturday afternoon edition in place of the Sunday paper. This edition was off the press at eleven-fifteen Saturday morning, in spite of the fact that the Saturday morning issue did

tions were sent in from all over the world, accompanied often with penmanship of the sort that makes editors feel around for the waste-paper basket, it is surprising that so few complaints came in to the Capital office after the week was over.

Payment of subscriptions was made in every conceivable shape, stamps, money orders, bills, silver coin. German marks and French francs probably made their first appearance in Topeka that week. Seven thousand dollars' worth of stamps was received, hundreds of dollars' worth from foreign countries, and it was months before these could be cashed, as the banks and business houses had to handle them through their correspondents.

People sent the silver quarters glued and fastened in various ways to paper. We had to soak the paper off by throwing the coins into tubs of water. One night one of these tubs, owing to the fact that every place for locking up money after banking hours had been used, was shoved under a counter in the office room. The Negro janitor stumbled upon it, and in dismay he ran in to the press foreman shouting, 'Bob, all the money in the world is in a washtub under the front counter!'

One hundred and thirty-five tons of paper and six barrels of ink were used to print the issues. The cost of these two items was $60,000. Ninety thousand dollars were received in subscriptions, and over a hundred persons were employed in the office and pressroom.

In the opening editorial of March 13, I said I would receive no financial compensation, but that a share of the profits, if there were any, would be given to some benevolent work. At the end of the week $5000 was deposited in the bank to my order. One thousand was sent to the India Famine Fund; one thousand was used to build a hospital room for the county

jail; one thousand was given to Washburn College, and the balance to the Young Men's Christian Association and the Orphans' Home.

During the week I averaged about three hours' sleep a day. I had a room at a hotel and went home only once. If I had to do it again, I should not change in any radical way the main plan of the paper. It remains to be seen whether what was only an experiment may sometime become a fact. I think it is safe to say that in my correspondence for weeks after the Capital week I had hundreds of letters asking if a paper along the same line could not be established. No one, however, came forward with the millions necessary to establish it. And a Christian daily, like any other, would have to be endowed or financed with a large amount. But the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.

VII

In looking over the press notices which commented on the paper, I find that the most frequent criticism, made oftener by ministers than by anyone else, was the severe objection to the thought of Jesus' taking any part in such a prosaic and material thing as a daily paper. The terms 'blasphemous,' 'sacrilegious,' 'irreverent,' are used to describe what the critics called an irreligious attempt to think of Jesus as participating in any of the common everyday things that mere human beings have to do for a living.

This thought of Jesus in history is so strange to me that I cannot let this criticism of an attempt to imitate Him in the work of journalism pass without comment. The entire concept of Christianity, to my mind, is stripped of its tremendous meaning if we do not think of Jesus as more vitally interested in the common doings of men