The Miracle of the Daily Paper: How Pullman’s New Herald Brings the World to Your Doorstep

The Washington Importers Co. was located only half a mile East of Pullman, Wash. This is so, and there you can buy imported English Shire and Cleveland Bay Stallions; also, genuine Hambletonian and Thoroughbred Horses.

In other words, Good morning! And with the compliments of the season we present you with the first issue of Pullman's best paper, The Herald. In regard to the 'long-felt want' well, you know how it is, how it has been for some time past. We are here to fill that vacuum to the best of our ability, and to rustle like all get-out for Pullman and the county, its citizens, its farmers, its general interests. Incidently we shall also rustle somewhat for ourselves. We are not here for our health, but for business with a big B.

We don't invest much stock in the stereotyped now-newspaper 'promises,' and 'resolves,' and 'pledges,' as to what their future course is to be. Deeds are worth more to the pound than words, especially in the Palouse country. However, we will remark that the Herald intends to be, first of all, a local paper, devoted mainly to home and county affairs, with an observant eye upon territorial doings of interest, meanwhile. To politically, it will be of Republican color, fast-dyed and warranted to wear, but not so deeply 'set' as to be bigoted.

How does this strike you? Two dollars worth?

In a nutshell, then: You remember the proverb, 'As thy days thy strength shall be.' In the case of the Herald we will paraphrase it thus for a motto: 'As its support, so the paper shall be.' That's fair, all around. We are mightily encouraged with the present business, and shall be ready at any time to make our paper larger and give more reading space if it continues, -the business, we mean. So, a strong pull, a long pull, and let us all pull together for Pullman.

THE NEWSPAPER. There are some things from which crops of Eastern Washington is the freshness now never dies. Day by day we may stand beside a telegraph operator, for instance, but the mystery of his performance never becomes clear. Just so the newspaper is a constantly recurring miracle whose wonder never wears away. Whether lying carefully folded in the office or invitingly open upon the table; whether wrapping cheese and codfish, or thrown discarded into the street to scare horses and be trampled on, it is always invested with a strange kind of awe.

The newspaper! Look at it. It seems empty and vacant, perhaps. 'Nothing in the paper,' you say; yet you will find it an open secret to many people who know. Clue another sort of death. Look at its news items, its list of accidents, of times see how sudden wealth has surprised some, and sudden poverty saddened others: take into your mind the import or the consequence of all these things, and you will find that you hold in your hand 'the ends of myriad invisible, electric conductors, along which tremble the joys, sorrows, wrongs, triumphs, hopes and despairs of as many men and women,' all as sensitive to pleasure or pain as yourself. Here you have the lore of the scholar and the wisdom of the sage. Here the divine preaches, the poet sings, and the partisan lies. Here the statesman proclaims his principles and the auctioneer offers his wares. Here is the result of the antiquarian's research, and through the very next column throbs a tale of present love, passion and romance.

This is but a feeble portrayal of what a newspaper is: let us see how it is made. Come with us to the office. We will pass that pile of paper. Yet, stop; pick up a sheet of it. We cannot wait to explain the curious process of its manufacture, yet that clean white sheet is the purified product of rags and filth. The fiber which forms its texture may have been stripped from Egyptian mummies; it may have come from the city streets, or from great garrets in country homes; it may have wrapped the luxurious form of beauty, or been the scanty covering of want. But, whether from the robes of a queen or the rags of a harlot, it gives no clue now to its former condition. Like a sanctified soul, it is ready for a new life.

We pass into the editorial room. Its occupant is busy. There are papers from far and near; letters from society; intelligence in every form; wit from the mass id to be investigated what is of been Cl rnd^"i^tf| 'The work of PULLMAN, W. T. ing high renj .-^patsound? "C'Jick! ypn^ltrf^ fe that? Wh- y H,^' <«ft Progress mar^-a to. i*') 1 I r ,..v■; fj; 'cast-.' Look at that j 'A^Sfi' 'r '01>os? s 'ca?^ filled with l/P-c'B of rijotX^ W hat are they? Tliey .a* the w aerh t i Jt ,v >;r TYPES. The paper is being 'made.' The types, one by one, have been pasted up by nimble fingers and placed in W-oper position. The errors have been correct-1 ed; every punctuation {point is in ita place. The scattered '-columns' ere massed together; the 'form,' or page, is securely locked up' and sent to the press-room, whither we will follow. Ah! hero is where the wonderful transformation is wrought; here matter becomes the exponent of mind.

The pages are properly placed upon the press; the machine moves rapidly forward, its arms reaching for their strong embrace. 'Stop the press!' There is an error of statement to be corrected, or an objectionable article to bo removed. The types are taken out and borne away—corpses of a dead thought.

Look, now, upon that mass of type on the press —quiet, dark, inert as tho earth you tread. But, yet again, —the white sheet has fallen upon their upturned faces, the touch of the press baptizing them; the life that was in them ha i passed upon paper, and the new creation is pregnant with thought—a thing with a soul, for it can move the souls of men. That sheet so blank before, is now a living power. A change has passed over it, as marvelous as if, in an instant, tho unwritten face of a boy should put on the furrows of age, the lines of care, tho impress of manhood's experience.

Here, now. we have it—the newspaper! Wonderful product of brain and toil! One would think it should be dearly bought and highly prized; and yet it in the cheapest thing in tlio world. Five cents will buy it. One or two dollars will bring it to your homo every week in the year. And still, strange to say. (iciC are men 'too poor to take a newspaper.' They can pay ten cents for a glass of beer, or fifteen cents for a beverage of unknown composition called a 'cocktail'; they campay fifty cents fora circus ticket, or a dollar for tho theatre, yet they are 'too poor' to buy a newspaper, which is a ticket of admission to t he great World's theatre, whose dramas are written by God himself, whose scene shifter is Time, and whose curtain is rung down by Death.