in 1800, moved the journal to Washington, as has been men- tioned elsewhere in this book, and gave it the name of The National Intelligencer. Gales then went to Raleigh, North Caro- lina, where he started another paper, The Raleigh Register, a name which suggested itself from his first-born newspaper ven- ture, The Sheffield Register, of England. After the malignant fever had attacked New York City in 1803, The Evening Post of that city pledged itself "to pursue the discussion of the origin of the late pestilence to a regular and satisfactory close." Wil- liam Coleman, the editor of that paper, had evidently seen a vision that a newspaper might do something more than merely print the news of political squabbles.
NEWSPAPERS DISINFECTED
At times when epidemics similar to those just named in the preceding paragraph were appearing in the larger cities, the publishers of newspapers disinfected their sheets before deliv- ering them to newsboys and post-riders. Frequently, in order that the sheets might not be carriers of disease, they were put into stoves and thoroughly smoked before being wrapped for delivery. In the South, where yellow fever often spread very rapidly, special stoves, built of sheet iron, were designed for this purpose and used tobacco as fuel, but the process was slow, as only one sheet "smoked" at a time. The plan of "smoking" by wholesale from resinous woods was probably more commonly employed in the North than in other sections of the country be- cause of the great infection feared from smallpox. The academic and pedantic newspaper critics, who, like the poor, have been ever present, used to assert at such times that a publisher would perform a much more useful service for the public if he would pay more attention to disinfecting the contents of his papers and less to disinfecting the sheets themselves. The latter, so the critics asserted, could be done when necessary by the reader in his own home.
FREEDOM OF PRESS
For some unaccountable reason the American colonies, after they established their independence and had drawn up their
