when all of these conditions have been understood , it must still
remain true that but one general conclusion can be safely drawn concerning the press and that is that all general statements
concerning it collectively are untrue. These are but suggestions of the internal changes that have
been developed in the newspaper partly as a cause, partly as a result of the changes that have come in the purpose and the
function of the newspaper, - changes that in themselves form an important record for the use of the historian .100 In and of them
selves they have added enormously to the complexity of the newspaper and have to the same degree increased the difficulties of the student of history in dealing with it as historicalmaterial.
They have been suggested to make evident the statement that in the use of the newspaper as historical material the historian
must first of all consider the time at which the newspaper was
published and understand the transformations through which it has passed . The world has been enlarged through the steam
boat, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the trolley, and the automobile ,— the personal letter no longer is adequate to meet the needs of a world thus enlarged. The newspaper has
adapted itself to meet this expansion of interests. The trans formation also includes the variations that have been developed in the press of different nationalities.101 The historian who uses
the newspaper must be familiar with the history of the press, and conform his use of it to the conditions under which it arose.
It must also be remembered that the enumeration made of the accumulated interests of the newspaper applies chiefly to 100 “ And if anything is plain in newspaper history of recent years, it is the fact that the political, militant phase of the newspaper artist' s work
has been steadily receding before what we may characterize as the com mentative, social phase. The spirit of the Home Page, with its absorption in the simple norms and simple oddities of the every -day life , has penetrated
the first page also and the editorial page. Men and women in the home, the man in the office, the child in the home and on the playground , landlords ,
employers, commuters, theatres, fashions — these are the topics that now absorb thenewspaper draughtsman .” — New York Evening Post, May 3 , 1912. This is written specifically of the illustration , but it describes perfectly
the changes that are coming in the newspaper as a whole . 101 “ The power of the newspaper in France differs from that of the English newspaper , in that it seems to act more on the government and the parliament than on public opinion.” — H . Chisholm , “ Newspapers,” in
Encyclopaedia Britannica , XIX , 577.
