most difficult of all forms of literature, although often in the past relegated to hack writers on the theory that it is a simple form of composition for any one who wields a facile pen . Yet even so, very able writers, in full sympathy with the men whose biographies they are writing, with a fearless determination to write impartially even while writing sympathetically, in possession often failed to make editors live again in their pages.
It is probable that the difficulty is inherent in the nature of the subject. Many years ago a great publishing house planned a series of volumes dealing with American statesmen, and so successfully were these men discussed in their public capacity that a companion series quickly followed . But the series of American commonwealths was less successful since it is impossible to separate the life and history of a state from that of the larger political unit of which it forms but a part. The editor, or "newspaper man," is in large measure the counterpart of the commonwealth . The more successful he is as an editor the more his individuality is merged in that of the newspaper with which he is connected. Delane was always "Delane of The Times." With the passing of personal journalism and the merging of the individual journalist into the composite board, it becomes still more difficult to individualize the editor. It is true that many of the "stories" and special departments of the paper bear the names of individual writers, but this becomes rather a means of identifying the authorship of articles than a clue to the individuality of the writer.
The biographical material dealing with the press has thus, considered as a whole, something of an external character in its relation to the press, and it gives comparatively little help in discovering the secret of the success or the failure of those who have been a very vital part of the press.
Technical works on journalism form a new but comparatively large class of works. Collectively they give an insight into the evolution of methods that are changing the press on its literary side; individually and separately they vary little. They give minute directions for the construction of copy, especially for writing the "story," the headline, advertisements, and the editorial, and for the advantageous display of all features of the news paper on its mechanical side. But since they concern the form rather than the spirit, their use to the historian is comparatively slight.
The works treating of the business administration of the press are concerned in the main with the subject of advertising in all of its ramifications, psychological, ethical, literary, and commercial. They probably form the numerically largest single class of works connected with the press and they are of importance in showing the development of the powerful alliance be tween the business management and the editorial side of the newspaper.
The newspaper press has long been a favorite subject for articles in reviews and magazines. They are roughly classified into the descriptions of the newspaper press of other countries, accounts of war correspondents and
